Saade Abdel Rahim
Introduction: From Gandhi to Saade
In the midst of World War II, the magazine “Al-Zawba’a” (The Tempest) published issue number 50, Buenos Aires, dated August 15, 1942, an article entitled “Syrian Leadership and Indian Leadership” by Saadeh, In it, he made a striking comparison between Gandhi’s Indian movement and the Syrian Social Nationalist Movement, The comparison was not intended to rank the two leaders, but rather to reveal a fundamental truth: the difference between a leadership that creates a new spirit in its people and one that remains captive to its people’s circumstances. While Gandhi was guiding the Indians in 1942 to “begin to feel that they are free,” Saadeh had declared seven years earlier: “We have liberated ourselves within the party from foreign domination.” This time gap reflects a deeper gap in the very concept of leadership itself.
But the comparison with Gandhi, however significant, remains limited if it does not encompass the most dangerous phenomenon in our modern history: the phenomenon of intellectual imitation that produced failed Arab nationalist and Marxist projects, and gave rise to accusations that the Syrian Social Nationalist Party was imitating Nazism and Fascism, Herein lies the real battle: the methodological battle between authenticity and subservience.
Accusation of imitation and acquittal of originality
“The Syrian Social Nationalist Party’s system is neither Hitlerian nor fascist; it is a purely Syrian system based not on useless imitation, but on original innovation,” This explicit statement from Saadeh’s first programmatic address (1935) did not prevent his opponents from repeating the accusation of imitation. Why? Because the subservient mentality cannot conceive that an original thought could spring from Syrian soil. It sees the world only through the mirrors of others, judging everything new as a mere reflection of what it already knows.
Nazism was founded on the myth of “racial purity,” while Saadeh, in “The Rise of Nations,” demonstrates that anyone claiming racial purity within a nation is making a false claim, Fascism sanctified the “historical state” as an end in itself, whereas Saadeh views the nation as the inevitable result of the interaction of racial elements with each other and with the natural environment, not as a product of the state’s emergence, The difference is fundamental: some formulate their theories from sociology and the realities of their own society, while others interpret their reality through the theories of others, The former produces solutions, while the latter produces illusions.
Arab nationalism: The imported definition
Since the inception of Arab nationalism, it has echoed a definition of nationalism imported from European theories: language, history, ethnicity, and religion. Stalin defined the nation using these elements in “Marxism and the National Question,” and Arab nationalists have repeated the same definition as if it were an absolute truth beyond question.
The result was a systemic disaster for Syrian society,This definition failed to forge Syrians into a single nation because it fragmented and splintered them. One Syrian is Christian, another Muslim, this one Kurdish, that one Circassian—how could “religion” or “ethnicity” unite them? The solution was hypothetical: either denial (no minorities exist) or repression (unity by force), Saadeh saw the nation as “a shared community in actual participation in life,” regardless of ethnicity, language, or religion. Arab nationalists failed to understand that the problem lay in the definition itself, not in reality.
This is the bane of imitation: viewing your own society through the lenses others have used to view theirs, Arab nationalists remained trapped in the “minorities” dilemma because they imported the question and its answer without realizing that societies differ in their composition, and that what applies to a homogeneous ethnic society may not apply to a complex one like Syrian society.
Syrian Marxism: The Theory of Imported Minorities
The Marxist tragedy in Syria was no less dire. Syrian Marxists viewed their society through a Soviet lens, seeing it as a collection of “minorities” where a shared life existed, They treated Syrian society as a replica of the Soviet Union, dividing it into sects and ethnicities, each with its own “rights” that must be protected.
The result was the entrenchment of divisions instead of overcoming them,Even worse, they accepted settler colonialism in Palestine as a “new minority” to be dealt with within the framework of a “two-state solution”—a term that hadn’t even been coined! Here, tradition reaches its nadir of detachment from reality: to treat a colonial project occupying a homeland as if it were the homeland’s own people demanding their rights.
This is what the literal transfer of experiences did: it rendered Syrian Marxists incapable of seeing the unique nature of the conflict in their country, because their theory held that the conflict was class-based, that colonialism was merely a phase, and that the solution lay in applying the Soviet model, They failed to grasp that the Soviet model itself was the product of specific historical and social conditions that could not be replicated.
National Social Authenticity: The Emergence of Theory from Reality
What distinguished the Syrian Social Nationalist project was that it did not start from an imported theory applied to Syria, but rather from Syria itself to produce its own theory,This is the essence of the “original innovation” that Saadeh spoke of.
For him, the Syrian nation is not an application of Stalin’s theory, nor an imitation of Fichte’s or Herder’s model, It is “the sum of the settled population in the Fertile Crescent, distinguished by this stability, united by life, naturally integrated with each other, and composed of different elements that have merged into the crucible of the Syrian environment and blended within it through interaction and fusion, thus forming a single social body when compared to other nations.”
This definition doesn’t import ready-made concepts, but rather stems from facts: continuous stability in a specific geographical environment, and natural integration over thousands of years, which produced a distinct social structure, It is an organic, not a mechanical, definition, It views society as a living organism that has evolved over time, not as a collection of mechanical elements that can be assembled and disassembled.
Saadeh did not eliminate diversity; rather, he transformed it into a source of strength and richness. The religious, linguistic, and cultural diversity in Syria did not hinder the unity of life for its inhabitants within a single identity, because the factors of integration and interaction with the environment were stronger than those of division. This is a sophisticated dialectical perspective that surpasses the mechanistic view that treats society as merely the sum of its components.
Lessons from the curriculum in a time of collapse: Towards a renewed authenticity
The failure of both Arab nationalist and Marxist projects can be summarized in one point: both viewed Syrian society through the lens of theories created by others to understand their own societies, The Arab nationalist saw an “Arab nation” where the Arab world included the multifaceted Syrian nation, while the Marxist saw his society as comprised of “minorities” where the unity of life was paramount. Both imposed an external model on a reality that did not resemble their own, and the results were disastrous.
The accusation that the Syrian Social Nationalist Party imitated Nazism or Fascism was nothing more than a reflection of a subservient mentality incapable of producing original thought, Those who don’t know how to innovate accuse others of imitation, because imitation is all they know.
The lesson Saadeh’s experience offers is that salvation begins when you look at your reality with your own eyes, not through the eyes of others, When you realize that “socio-political experiences in the world are based on the interaction of internal societal factors and external factors that do not repeat themselves,” only then can you innovate, not imitate.
But this lesson raises a bigger question today: How do we build authenticity in a time of the collapse of traditional projects (Baathism, Marxism, political Islam with its transformations), and the dominance of new regional and international models? Syria and Iraq today are living through a transitional phase, where regional (Iranian, Turkish) and international (American) projects are clashing, amidst the disintegration of the social fabric, sectarian divisions and obstacles.
In this void, it is not enough to literally replicate Saadeh’s experience; that is mere imitation. What is required is a return to his approach: to look at our reality with our own eyes and to produce a new reading of the Fertile Crescent that takes into account the transformations of the century, The collapse of the nation-state, the rise of Iranian and Turkish influence, the American occupation, sectarian divisions, and the disintegration of the social fabric—all these are new realities that demand new tools, imbued with Saadeh’s own spirit: resistance to any ready-made model and trust in the ability of the people of this land to understand their own unique circumstances.