The Trouble With Nadim Shehadi’s Lebanon
Note: This post was supposed to be a tweet. It’s not meant as an academic critique, just a quick opinion casually stated in writing.
Nadim Shehadi brings a very important perspective to the conversation about change in Lebanon. His opinion is particularly valuable because his “defense” of sectarianism, despite being a widely held opinion, puts him in a uniquely unpopular Devil’s Advocate position in western and intellectual circles. That’s why I always enjoy reading him and listening to him when I can (like at The Beirut Banyan podcast recently).
Very roughly, Shehadi argues that lebanon, in its diversity and freedom, has proven to be a much better model than the other alternatives in the region, which are nationalist, statist and authoritarian. That freedom, he contends, has brought in people from all over the region and the world to explore their ideas and to make money, for good and for ill (because sometimes even foreign revolutionaries benefited from this freedom to establish themselves at lebanon’s expense).
So far so good. I, like many, wholly agree with him. But then he goes on to imply, for whatever reason, that criticism of the current corrupt sectarian regime and calls for change like those at October 17, are driven mostly by young people who want to change Lebanon’s system from one of diversity and freedom and capitalism to one of statism, authoritarianism and socialism.
This strawman approach is at best lazy and at worst a character assassination for those of us who are trying to change the regime to make it more accountable, more effective and less corrupt, without changing its free, diverse and capitalistic foundations, which we cherish.
Yes, many of the loudest voices in the October 17 movement were on the populist Left. But they were soundly rejected by the voters in the ballots. So much so that even their most charismatic and popular Patron Saint, Jad Ghosn, couldn’t make the cut.
Nadim Shehadi spent most of his life in the U.K. So he must know that the English and the Anglo-Saxon world have managed to break from the Authoritarianism/Freedom duality. Yes, you can be free and diverse and still provide services and a dignified existence to your people. All of our intellectual efforts should be towards how we can achieve that goal in Lebanon.
Update: Shehadi wrote a response here…
