Does the present mirror the past?

The Syrian civil war is in its final stage, with the prospect of countless more refugees crossing the border to Turkey, and from there to where. The revolution failed because it divided into sectarian factions with different agendas (al-Nusra, ash-Sham, al-Sham, ISIL, al-Qaeda, the Kurdish YPG, Assyrian and Turkmen minorities, etc.), and because the military regime received foreign assistance with weapons and combat troops. The social revolution, where poverty confronted wealth and the weak opposed the powerful, was doubled at the start by an ideological rift between the ruling Alawite minority and the Sunni majority. This religious divide perverted the social divide and, as Alawites are followers of Ali, encouraged support from the Lebanese Hezbollah, Iraqi Shia militias and Iran. And this helped Iran advance its pawns in its regional conflict with Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile the Russians, intent on keeping their Mediterranean naval base at Latakia, an Alawite stronghold, built an aerodrome and gave air support to the Assad regime.

The revolution had started with mass street protests demanding an end to despotic rule. It echoed events in Tunisia and Egypt. But, apart from a Copt minority in Egypt, these two nations are uniformly Sunni. There the ideological divide was between religious fundamentalists and secular military, and it was virulent enough to push aside the social question of wealth distribution. The mass uprisings of the Arab Spring were diverted into ideological oppositions. The demand for more equal, free and just societies was obscured by a contest of who held the “truth” and, ultimately, of who held the force of arms. The Tunisians have fresh avid faces governing them, but the system is unchanged. Egyptians have a new tyrant not yet weary of washing blood off his hands. And Syrians are struggling to survive the final act of civil war, a war where a minority with foreign assistance and unity of purpose has overcome a vast but divided majority.

Eighty years ago the Spanish civil war ended. Barcelona fell in February 1939 and several hundred thousand refugees crossed the border to France. Madrid fell the following month, but the city was surrounded and there was no escape. The revolution failed because it split into opposing ideological factions, anarchists, Trotskyists, Stalinists, Basque and Catalan nationalists, etc. Its opponents were victorious because they united behind the Caudillo, Francisco Franco, and because their Falangist ideology was close to Italian fascism and German national socialism, who helped them with arms, ammunition, infantry and aviation. The revolution got no such support. Soviet Russia managed to send a train-load of arms, but it was reserved for their affiliates. France and Great Britain set up an arms embargo and blockaded certain Spanish ports, and the US was far away preoccupied by its New Deal. However, thousands volunteered from all three countries and elsewhere to form several International Brigades. Nazis and fascists rallied round the Spanish Falangists, whereas parliamentary democracies refused to support anarchists, communists and regional autonomists, as these were the very movements they were repressing at home. And, at the time, Hitler, Mussolini and Franco had many sympathisers in French and English governing circles (The French war minister, Petain, had commanded troops alongside Franco in the Moroccan Rif region, 1925-26). Just six months after the fall of Madrid, on September 1^st 1939, German troops invaded Poland and set off World War 2.

The Spanish and Syrian revolutions followed similar paths, where mass social movements split into conflicting ideological groups. What seems to happen is that the reactionary forces have recourse to extreme violence, which obliges the movement to take up arms. But there is no unified command or strategy, and the military leaders who emerge from the fighting have regional and personal objectives. This is when the different existing ideologies come to the fore. Social demands are universal, whereas ideological constructs are sectarian. However, social rebellions do not always tip over into civil war. They have sometimes led to elections, a change of government and social reforms. The reactionaries are pushed to the side line but are not destroyed. They regroup and wait for an opportunity to take back power. They have the backing of wealth and use it for propaganda and corruption. When they return, with the force of money and mercenary guns, they break all that had been achieved. For attempting to bring peaceful social change to Egypt, Mohamed Morsi and thousands of his supporters in the Freedom and Justice Party were arrested, tortured and jailed, and dozens have been executed. In Brazil, Lula da Silva and the Workers Party managed to improve living and working conditions for millions of their nation’s poor. He is now in prison, and may be left to die there like Mohamed Morsi. Meanwhile, El-Sisi and Bolsonaro gloat and dismantle.

How can a social movement concerned about the commonwealth and general wellbeing take political power and keep it? Violence leads to a contest of military might. Elections are open to corruption and propaganda, and abstentionists form the largest party. A workers’ dictatorship needs powerful unions and a vast cross-nation organisation able to control production, banks, transport, energy distribution, the media, the military, the police, intelligence agencies, etc. As things stand, such a widespread organisation is pure fantasy. But, as climatic disruptions increase in intensity and as financial structures slowly or suddenly break down, the neoliberal system of property and governance will no longer function. Then the alternatives will be either a dictatorship relying on armed force, or one relying on common sense and decency. The wealthy few will do their utmost to maintain their privileges. But when workers put aside their ideological differences and stand together, the rich are just paper tigers. But if they are unable to unite, the Syrian tragedy could be the prelude to a much wider conflict.

Also this previous posting: https://lelezard.blogspot.com/2013/09/deja-vu.html