Former Syrian president Hafez al-Assad (R) with his youngest brother Rifaat (L) at a military ceremony in Damascus in 1984. (AFP/Getty Images)[/caption]
In recent weeks, the Syrian Electronic Army has launched a number of high-profile attacks against institutions in the heart of the Western world, most notably the New York Times, Twitter and the website of the US Marine Corps. The war has also remained at the heart of Syrian media for some time, which has proven to be a most illuminating feature of the conflict.
From the beginning of the crisis, the Syrian media has been fighting its own battle with the opposition. This is a war in which the media aims at tarring the reputation of every member of the opposition, no matter how important their role. Syrian television has simply become a platform for those loyal to the regime to discredit the opposition movement.
After almost thirty months of conflict in Syria, state TV is preparing for a new battle, provoked by Barack Obama’s now-delayed military strike. They have brought back the old patriotic songs, the black-and-white images, and even the old logos from the 1980s. They have also begun to broadcast Hafez Al-Assad’s old speeches and black-and-white clips of the former leader on various military frontlines. During times when the media does feel that it is necessary to air a speech from one of Syria’s religious groups—such as the Salafists or the Muslim Brotherhood—they invariably show one of Hafez’s speeches from the 1980s in which he deals with the Muslim Brotherhood.
It does not seem to have crossed the minds of those senior figures in Syria’s media that by showing Hafez’s speeches, his dealings with religious currents and the black-and-white images, they are sending a clear message that their current president, Bashar Al-Assad, is incapable of conjuring even one sentence that inspires enthusiasm or stirs public opinion. State and loyalist media in Syria has announced, unwittingly perhaps, that the president is unable to attract an audience or influence people. In his place, they have opted for his late father, making it seem as though Bashar is simply a rubber stamp for presidential orders. They are implying that the attraction of the state relies on this absent leader, who is made to seem doubly magical by the ineptitude of his son—or, at the very least, his inability to inspire.
And, perhaps, it is for this reason that Hafez’s photo is always besides his son’s in official places—from the Presidential Palace to parliament and government offices. If the intention was to illustrate the heritage of the nation, there would also be photos hung of other Syrian presidents. But this, clearly, is not the case.
In addition to opening the 1980s archive of artistic and political relics, state television in Syria has been intentionally broadcasting Lebanese political songs—once again rather scandalously demonstrating that the current government is unattractive, this time to Syrian composers and song-writers. And where there is the occasional Syrian song, it is invariably lackluster and uninspiring, and so they have stopped broadcasting them. Perhaps the song most frequently shown on state TV and supportive private channels is “Baktub Ismik Ya Bilady” (“I Write your Name, My Country”) by the Lebanese singer Joseph Azar. The media ought to ask itself why there is a lack of good-quality art supporting the government and why it has to rely on the speeches of Hafez Al-Assad.
The material shown by state television and supporting private television stations in Syria sums up the situation there more ably than anything else in terms of the weakness of the current government’s vision—or perhaps the complete lack of vision—on the issue of political Islam. They try to compensate for this by showing an outdated, 1980s perspective on the matter. They also try to compensate for the current president’s lack of charisma in his speeches by showing the speeches of Hassan Nasrallah. They try to compensate for the lack of cultural or artistic activity in favour of the government by broadcasting Lebanese songs. The weakening capability of the army is papered over by extolling Iran’s missile capability and its desire to fight alongside the government.
This is the system through which the Syrian government can be seen clearly—reflecting the huge discrepancies at the core of the regime in addition to its collapsing political support base. On the basis of Algerian philosopher Mohammed Arkoun’s theory of “the religionization of meaning,” or the “religionization” of non-religious problems, one could argue that the religious-framed war of words in Syria, and in particular in the media, is the crisis of this millennium. But it was actually born in the discourse of the last. This is the reason that the Syrian media has surprised us all— by parroting a discourse from the past, it has been largely successful in its bid to win the current media war.
