by Adel Beshara
From about 1955, an eerie silence fell on the formerly venerated Sa’adeh due to a sudden upswell of opinion hostile to his party. A host of officially and unofficially inspired articles appeared castigating his legacy and ideas. Their objective was more than a personal attack and reflected a crusade to uproot the merits of his school and to eradicate his influence completely. Some intellectuals responded with shock and rage, but most, knowing that they would face illegal harassment, intimidation, censorship and even physical threats, dropped out quietly. Within a very short period of time Sa’adeh’s views became anathema to the prevailing outlook and his political philosophy was declared valueless.
While the beginning of Sa’adeh’s de-emphasization cannot be ascertained with certainty, some fruitful speculation is possible. Deemphasization appears to parallel the emergence of militant pan-Arabism after 1954, first in Syria, and then in Egypt after Nasser’s power surge. It was most likely sparked by the assassination of Colonel Adnan Malki, who was slated to become Syria’s Chief of Staff, allegedly for his support of Syria’s alignment with Egypt. A sergeant in the SSNP was blamed for the assassination and the Party inevitably was accused of plotting to overthrow the government with US covert support. The investigation into the Malki affair then took an anti-Western turn, with “leftists exploiting [the] belief of some Syrians that there is [a] USG-SSNP connection.”27 The core of these leftists was the young radical nationalists of the Baath party,28 who had been intriguing for all-out control. In the ensuing treason trials, these Baathists lionized their fallen comrade as a victim of American imperialism and unleashed a wave of anti-SSNP feelings that eventually drove the SSNP out of Syria. Events took a turn for the worse when the Syrian authorities discovered ‘fresh evidence’ implicating the SSNP with the US (the so-called Sharabi letters) and again, in 1956, when Abdul Hamid al-Sarraj, the Baathist colonel who served as Syria’s chief of counterintelligence, snuffed out a CIA plot to trigger a pro-Western coup by “indigenous anticommunist elements within Syria” including the SSNP.29
The climactic and decisive moment that brought this about was Gamal Abdel Nasser’s spectacular rise after 1956. Up until then, Arab nationalism as an idea had been essentially an elite endeavor of publicists, intellectuals and a few officers. Nasser took the theories and the emotions that lay behind the idea and transformed them into living images among the masses.30 The result was nothing short of spectacular. Nasser’s popularity among the people in Egypt and abroad exploded: massive rallies were organized in Cairo, where the crowds gathered to hear him speak, and for the first time the common people were mobilized in favor of the pan-Arab cause. Especially after the nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1956 and the victorious (mainly because of the help of the United States) confrontation with Britain, France and Israel that followed, Nasser became the undisputed leader of the Arabs.31 His nationalistic speeches gave pride to the Arab masses and a new strength to pan-Arabism.
In that moment and in the high tide of his rule, Gamal Abdel Nasser was to millions of Arabs a classic example of Thomas Carlyle’s ‘hero’: ‘the man with savage sincerity’, ‘who comes into historical being to lead his people’, ‘who represents the aspirations of generations before and beyond him’, ‘the man whose valour is value’, and ‘whose work is achievements and calamities’.32
Nasser’s ascendancy fueled a vehement rejection of Sa’adeh and gave rise to a negative evaluation of his life that would last until 1967. The young militant Arab nationalists in Syria, overwhelmed by Nasser’s charisma and hero stature, turned on the SSNP and then on Sa’adeh himself. Their anti-Sa’adeh crusade approached the stage of demonization, a “process in which ambiguities of moral character are erased, so that the commemorated figure is seen as fully, intensely, and quintessentially evil.”33 It is a form of negative commemoration of an individual through a degradation process during which a person’s past is scrutinized for indications of evil intent or ability and underlying motives are sought, assessed, and ascribed to confirm a deviant identity. With Sa’adeh, demonization was accomplished through a degradation process of massive proportions. It is almost impossible to describe the flood of abuse, contempt, execration and hatred that poured upon the name and reputation of Sa’adeh once the process started. The SSNP leader was pronounced fit only for Western imperialism, a sworn enemy of the Arabs and the “Arab Nation.” Seizing on perceived affinities between his work and that of groups that faulted Arab nationalism or rejected it, they turned him into a trailblazer for Shu’ubism.34 Others sought to make him wholly odious by linking his position on one issue with a range of other allegedly related issues. In contrast, Nasser was depicted as a man true to his cause, who embodied all those elements central to public virtue.
Sa’adeh’s degradation in Syria transformed him into a nonperson, literally and figuratively erased from the social and physical landscape. All that could remain of him was his “treachery,” the symbol of his perfect depravity. The rest of his existence was expunged. His legacy was encased and stashed away; his very name vanished from Syrian periodicals; and his works were not to be found in bookstores or in libraries. The Baathists pulled no punches. They revised the history books in such a way as to foster an extremely negative and unappealing perception of Sa’adeh, and deliberately exaggerated and manipulated facts when reference to him was unavoidable. Quite often Sa’adeh was linked to the Greater Syria Scheme and placed along King Abdullah as a stooge of the British.35 If not that, he was depicted as a petit-bourgeois and an enemy of the toiling classes. At one point, Sa’adeh was identified with Western imperialism, fascism, Nazism, sectarianism (as a Christian Orthodox thinker),36 bourgeoisism, and Shu’ubism37 at one fell swoop. The irony was not lost on Syria’s leading intellectuals and lay thinkers, but in the end they too toed the line and joined the Nasser hysteria.
Throughout the remainder of the 1960s, Sa’adeh and his views remained taboo in Syrian historiography and uniformly negative. Even after the break-up of the UAR in September 1961, the endeavor to efface the memory of Sa’adeh went on unabated. Baathist leaders, citizens, and publications maintained the thrust against his legacy using his party’s dismal performances as alleged reasons. It was dramatically recounted on the annual anniversary of Malki’s assassination, which Baathists celebrated as a national day of mourning from 1956 onwards. Many Syrians may have been internally critical of the political uses to which Malki’s assassination and its memories were put, especially as they had been portrayed in military processions and posters, but it aptly served the doctrinal and political verbiage of Baathism (in recent years, the emotional and political significance of the Malki anniversary has waned). By 1970, a new generation that barely remembered Sa’adeh came of age in Syria. A dwindling number of party stalwarts kept the faith but were not allowed to speak openly about Sa’adeh or about the controversy around his execution.
In 1962, politics again impinged directly upon Sa’adeh’s reputation and brought it to a new stage. This time it was Lebanon’s turn, occasioned by an SSNP abortive coup against the Chehab regime.38 As in Syria, annual commemorations of Sa’adeh’s execution ceased completely. A blackout was imposed on his writings, and his books were confiscated and banned. The denunciation pitch was maintained at a high level for the remainder of Chehab’s regime in 1964. The main new thing about the offensive on Sa’adeh was that, for the first time in over a decade, it was backed up by a state and could therefore be systematically organized and forced upon a whole citizenry. Furthermore, the offensive was undertaken while the mechanism for self-defense by Sa’adeh’s supporters was in complete disarray both in Lebanon and Syria, just as it was back in 1949. Worse still, this time the secret apparatus of the State, the Deuxième Bureau, was more vigorously employed to ensure that the press completely conformed to the de-emphasization process. Tactics that had withered under the previous regime of Camille Chamoun were revived, anti-Syrianism was pushed to the forefront of propaganda operations, and official involvement in propaganda
was stepped up. Seizing the occasion, Sa’adeh’s detractors, in different branches and at various levels, cultivated and exploited the anti-SSNP mood to paint images of Sa’adeh of the most uncharitable kind. The obligatory expressions of sympathy that appeared after his execution suddenly counted for nothing and Sa’adeh was again elevated to the status of a public villain. As in Syria, the detractors reduced Sa’adeh in stature to a minor but troublesome character: a recidivist rebel.
There was hardly anything new in what these detractors published and, in most cases, the diatribe was nothing more than a rehashing of old clichés. Yet, it was enough to have Sa’adeh systematically consigned to the archives of Lebanon’s universities for access mainly by scholars with special research purposes. What was left in household books, by him or about him, disappeared or was destroyed by their owners to avoid retribution: one of his pupils placed his entire collection on Sa’adeh in a large public bin and then informed the Jafet Library at the American University of Beirut of their whereabouts. The ban on Sa’adeh was total, but the irony was not lost on everyone. Under normal circumstances, states utilize legends and heroes to promote social unity or a sense of national belongingness,39 a fact demonstrated by the proliferation of historical works produced by nationalists in many countries. It may also be argued that in any situation of political stress, as in Lebanon’s case, there is a socio-psychological craving for heroes. In this case, the hero was cast aside and the villain in Sa’adeh, embodied and continued by his party, was utilized to promote national consensus around the official discourse. Paradoxically, the main elements of that discourse, or al-nahj al-shihabi, as it was commonly known, were intrinsically Sa’adian, molded and adapted within a strictly Lebanese context. A case in point is the question of citizenship, which the propagators of al-nahj defined in firmly societal rather than sectarian terms, as Sa’adeh had earlier done.40
Viewed from a broader historical perspective, the de-emphasization of Sa’adeh during this period, both in Lebanon and in Syria, paralleled that of other great men of history who were denigrated, even demonized, for the wickedness of others. Karl Marx is a clear example:
For the West, during the Cold War, he was the demonic begetter of all evil, the founder of an awesomely sinister cult, the man whose baleful influence must be suppressed. In the Soviet Union of the 1950s he assumed the status of a secular God, with Lenin as John the Baptist and, of course, Comrade Stalin himself as the redeeming Messiah. This alone has been quite enough to convict Marx as an accomplice in the massacres and purges: had he lived a few years longer, by now some enterprising journalist would probably have fingered him as a prime suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders too. But why? Marx himself certainly never asked to be included in the Holy Trinity, and would have been appalled by the crimes committed in his name. The bastard creeds espoused by Stalin, Mao or Kim Il Sung treated his work rather as modern Christians use the Old Testament: much of it simply ignored or discarded, while a few resonant slogans (‘opium of the people’, ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’) are wrenched out of context, turned upside down and then cited as apparently divine justification for the most brutal inhumanities.41
Ultimately, Sa’adeh’s image and representation in popular memory were inextricably bound up with socio-economic and political conditions. In particular, his shifting image was a result of political fluctuations, the mutable needs of the establishment, and various inputs from individuals, for reasons that were not always nationalist or even political. His followers, to be sure, devoted considerable resources and effort to develop a cult around their leader, but the campaign was a qualified success. Of course, such a qualification cannot be attributed solely to external factors: the rigid and unpopular policies of the SSNP hierarchy and its protracted use of the Sa’adeh legacy for political ends contributed to the negativity as much as any other factor. The SSNP hierarchy not only fully exploited the hero cult of its former leader: its political opportunism drew charges of manipulation and betrayal of the Sa’adeh legacy.42 Such charges, however, must be seen in the political context of the day.
The Resurrection of Sa’adeh
After 1970, there was a renewed effort to put Sa’adeh back in an idealized picture. A gradual publication of narratives, personal recollections, and portrayals sought to highlight his accomplishments and character. The one critical theme that cut through most of those publications is that Sa’adeh lived and died for a cause in which he truly believed and practiced. In another respect, the strongest Sa’adeh supporters reflected in their eulogies lingering doubts about him. Sa’adeh really did not wish to become a dictator, they said. He really was not an atheist. He was not a teller of utopian ideas. He did not harbor ambitions beyond what he proclaimed. Openly defensive statements like these reveal that many were still unsure what kind of man Sa’adeh was: they answered some doubts about him and inspired new questions.43
Also, after 1970, commemoration of Sa’adeh’s martyrdom was revived. His life and revolutionary career were embellished and refined44 and new documents revealing a side of Sa’adeh that few people had seen before were published and circulated on a wide scale. In addition to published material, posters displaying Sa’adeh superimposed on a variety of images and a medley of nationalist symbols and references were another striking, elaborate image of memorialization to appear after 1970. Those posters, along with other paraphernalia such as calendars, created a public sphere in which participants and observers could discuss Sa’adeh from various perspectives, while simultaneously generating a forum in which public political debate occurred. The Lebanese press reflected this development by publishing celebratory articles on the occasion of his death. Special supplemental sections, lavishly illustrated and adorned with illustrations of Sa’adeh, appeared in various newspapers. Numerous intellectuals within and outside the party contributed flowery poetry in his honor and a selection of eye-catching photographs of Sa’adeh was released to the public to capitalize on the new interest in him.45
It was in the party’s press that the hero cult of Sa’adeh shone. Leading luminaries went to great lengths to make the hero cult the focus of renewed devotion. The qualities attributed to Sa’adeh were excessive, but because they were complementary among themselves an impression of balance was created. The first qualities of his leadership were his strength of character and his powerful intellect. Sa’adeh was an irreconcilable man, hard as stone. His greatest merit was his selfless service to the homeland. He was a fearless battler, a victim of internal as well as external enemies, who was prepared to sacrifice his life on the national altar. Next to this Sa’adeh was known for his wisdom, his huge theoretical powers, the crystal clarity of his mind, and the crushing force of his logic. His thinking was scientific and creatively original. His writings were known for their clarity and extraordinary depth. The two aspects of Sa’adeh’s leadership, his genius and his heroism, were reflected in the double title of “founder and teacher.” Evidently, political receptivity to these images was by no means straightforward and encountered some opposition, especially in the Lebanonist press. Moreover, the image of the good citizen, warrior-hero was shunned by the traditional detractors like the Phalange, who continued to cast Sa’adeh as a national oddity.
The Sa’adeh myth was also captured in the form of objects such as sculptures and paintings that were used and displayed in everyday life. Such objects extended the mission of the mythified flesh-and-blood Sa’adeh into the private domain of the family home, serving as a constant reminder of his heroic status to onlookers. Sa’adeh’s execution inspired commemoration in other ways too – music, poems, etiquette manuals, films, and opera recordings – but the interesting thing is that most of the participants did so of their own accord. They also contributed to the semination of the Sa’adeh myth by writing newspaper articles and creative artistic works that mirrored the message behind his martyrdom, and by organizing or taking part in literary competitions in memory of Sa’adeh.
Metaphors in praise of Antun S
a’adeh also proliferated during this period, and sometimes lurched out of control. These metaphors often lamented the deplorable state of affairs in the nation before Sa’adeh came on the scene, so as to increase the aura of power around his myth. Recited at public functions and party meetings, they were developed in a carefully thought out way so as to distance Sa’adeh from the common politicians. Metaphors also served the need to promote Sa’adeh somehow as an ongoing phenomenon and to illustrate the force and depth of his local cult. Coupled with the right images, they enabled trusted followers to project Sa’adeh through rose-tinted glasses – as a profound thinker, as a courageous fighter, as a statesman, as a man of principle, and as a leader of unquestionable integrity – and, thus, to enshrine his ideals in popular memory.