Long gone are the days when being a Lebanese activist meant bracing yourself against the tyranny of the Syrian army in order to get them off your land. Long gone are the days when being a Lebanese activist meant physically protesting the Israeli occupation of your country. Long gone are the days when Lebanese activists were truly active.
Today, you are called an activist if you have the following: a blog and a twitter account. Why so? Because the majority of self-proclaimed activists use those two means the most in communicating their ideology. The ideology in question is a neo-leftist manifesto that hides under an umbrella of no politics.
And so the activism begins. Some child is killed in Gaza, let’s tweet about it. Some woman is raped in Lebanon, let’s post a Facebook status about it. Gas prices are going up, let’s blog about it.
Now you might ask me: but you’ve done those exact same things!
Yes, I concede. The slight distinction is I’m not a self-proclaimed activist. I don’t want to be an activist. I don’t have the word activist in my twitter bio, nor on my Facebook account. I don’t want activists to start “free Elie” campaigns if I end up going to jail for something illegal that I did. I don’t want my blog to be that of a Lebanese activist. I am simply a proud Lebanese who shares his interests and the woes of his society that he finds relevant.
Lebanese activists nowadays have redefined activism.
A Lebanese “artist” possibly defames our president and is brought into questioning? This is an obvious breach of freedom of speech. Why? because libel is under the jurisdiction of free speech these days.
Two Lebanese “activists” decide to write anti-Assad slogans on a wall and they get arrested? This is a travesty. How is vandalizing public property not a form of artistic free speech?
An “activist” is called out for a blinded mentality? They all rally behind their own. They can never be wrong. You are never right. You cannot criticize them being arrested for any reason whatsoever. You lack empathy. You lack compassion. How patriotic can you be when these people are giving their all to save you?
You really don’t understand, do you? These are neo-holy creatures. Their sacrifices are incomparable. You cannot fathom how much they take out of their time just to give you a better country and community.
An activist gets arrested? It cannot but be because security had an eye for him/her for a long time. Someone who has done SO much for your country cannot be in the wrong. Ever. This is a fact.
They call for a state of law. Once the law is applied, which happens once in a blue moon, they cry against it. Why? They argue that worse things are still happening elsewhere. Well, try to make sense of that argument.
What’s worse, if you don’t agree with most of what’s previously mentioned then you are simply unworthy, for lack of better words.
Activism in Lebanon is tweeting your fingers away, updating your Facebook status, while checking in at the protest or at the site of where you’ve decided to draw a graffiti on foursquare . It’s choosing passepartout causes and going with the flow. Today’s topic could be AIDS, tomorrow let’s make it gay rights. The day after that, why not dabble our fingers in some cinema? And down the list we go.
Their revolutions are ones that consists of drawing graffiti on a wall or writing a scathing blog post about an issue. Their logic is so impeccable that comparisons are drawn between, well, anything: graffiti and gas prices? Why not. Movie bans and electricity? Of course.
Today, even our activism has become sedentary.
But don’t tell them I told you that.
A Separate State of Mind | A Blog by Elie Fares 
This is such a pretentious post.
And you got upset that other article was defaming lebanese women and calling them bimbos and saying those who disagree are just haters, when you are using *the exact same logic*.
You have the exact tone you are claiming to hate. “No no they can’t be wrong and are always right” is what you are criticizing right? And yet here you are belittling the views that are opposing (mine included) just because you don’t agree with them.
No form of actual give-and-take discussion, no actual conversations, no. Dripping sarcasm from beginning to end. Which is a shame, really. Because take arrogance and sarcasm out of the equation, and graffiti as a form of vernacular/tool from the community for the community/free speech tools versus whether the community even welcomes this graffiti at all/whether it should be allowed/vandalism of properties because a wonderfully stimulating discussion to have.
PS: Ali and Khodr did not consider themselves to be activist.
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These are my convictions from the get-go.
1) The bimbo article used horrible language to defame women. I called it out on it. I don’t see that type of language here.
2) Satirical articles are not off limits, since I wrote a very similar piece about Lebanese know-it-alls.
3) I don’t hate satirical tones. I hate satirical tones that use profanities to prove a point and then cower away behind satire while they have no point to make.
4) I’m not saying I’m right and they’re wrong. I’m saying: don’t shove your activism down my throat because YOU think you’ve done so much and I don’t. Don’t call me a d*ck (which some people did) for not bowing to every activist that walks the face of the Earth and saluting them for their outstanding efforts.
5) Both people that you mentioned had, until yesterday, the word activist in their twitter bio. Many other “activists” do. I’m not talking out of nothing.
6) I’m not offering conversation. I’m just showcasing a situation as I see it. As for the other points about graffiti and whatnot, let’s agree to disagree.
Or perhaps you can check out a comment by Nayla Hamadeh on the previous post and reply to her.
Dripping sarcasm? Since when is that wrong?
PS: I’m not belittling views. They are free to have their own views. But don’t expect anyone not to criticize just because you think you are better than them, which many of them do.
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“I’m not offering conversation”
Wow. Okay.
Dripping sarcasm is not wrong BECAUSE IT’S NOT ILLEGAL. maybe if it is illegal you would have a completely different view about it, attacking those who do make posts that drip sarcasm and then get arrested because, hey “you can’t call for a state of law and then complain that it’s being counterproductive”
You didn’t call us haters, but you dedicated an entire post to making fun of us. Which is just the same.
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Yes, I’m not opening the platform to have a conversation on whether graffiti should or shouldn’t be illegal. We already did that yesterday. No need to turn it into a byzantine debate.
So let’s see dripping sarcasm can be made illegal because…. I don’t see any point. In fact, your whole argument is unfounded to me.
And yeah, when I’m bad-mouthed for not adorning every activist and their sacrifices, I will speak out.
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Btw, I didn’t call those who disagree haters. She was calling those who disagreed with her “hoe-lovers.” Just saying.
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I think this is not a pretentious post at all. What’s pretentious is all those activists shoving themselves down my throat every single day and expecting me to go with the flow and not speak out.
You do know, for instance, that another graffiti artist was arrested in February. No one spoke about that. They didn’t start “free” campaigns for him. So yes that is pretentious.
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I read about that an hour ago. No comment.
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Great post. Sadly though, it won’t change anything. They will still think they are better than everyone else.
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Thank you for reading. I know it won’t change anything. But talking about it doesn’t hurt.
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the activists that annoy me are the foreign ones that see lebanon as a good testing ground for their skills, tweet, write, get their 300-fan fame and then jot it on their CV and wander off to university of columbia to do a phd on the transgendered body politics of the mind in neo-modern burmese cinema.
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Well we lebanese ppl are known to “labnane” everything. From the burgers that saro 3a falafel now to being an activist probably.. we have own or way of running shit. Thats why arabs hate us. We are unexpected and have our hits.
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