For somebody who has become acquainted with the term 'revolution' by studying those historical processes where the use of this word is undisputed (the Copernican revolution, the French revolution, the Russian revolution...), the way Arab masses have appropriated this word (or translate the Arabic word ﺛَﻮﺭَﺓ) inevitably sounds a bit too short of meaning (or too inflated) for the contexts where it has more recently popped up. Many Lebanese people refer to the largely unconsequential protest movement that followed the 2019 financial crisis as "revolution" or ﺛَﻮﺭَﺓ. At the same time, Saddam Hussein called himself a revolutionary, and Iraqi institutions under the Ba´th party used to have revolutionary names such as Revolutionary Command Council and so on. Similar debates exist in Egypt, Sudan, Tunisia, Libya... The same can be said about the 'color revolutions' in the post-Soviet space. It appears to me that ﺛَﻮﺭَﺓ or revolution has become another 'empty signifier' carrying overall positive connotations (contrary to the period where it was a very divisive word) but imprecise meaning, so I believe there are much more precise words that we can use for analysis. Interestingly, I also know several individuals who reject the use of the term 'civil war' to describe the 1975-1990 Lebanese conflict or the ongoing armed conflict in Sudan with some arguments that would be long to describe here, but that in essence tell me that there is a negative or distinctive connotations around that term different from how it is used in English or other European languages.
Also, I am not entirely convinced about the expression 'one-party dictatorship' to describe the previous Syrian government system. As a matter of fact, there were several parties in the Syrian government, and this is reflected by the fact that the new government has banned at least 11 political parties (those forming the National Progressive Front) and not just one. Even the Syrian Constitution formally stated (art. 8) that political pluralism was one of the principles of the state and admitted the participation in politics of other parties (contrary to, for example, the 1933 German law that explicitly stated that ‘the National Socialist German Workers' Party is the only political party in Germany’). Of course some would say that the presence of those parties was just a façade and this did not amount to a real multi-party system, but you would also find many Syrians saying that the Syrian Ba´th was also a façade to give some false ideological legitimacy or appearance of a proper political system to a predatory clique of families who believed the country, its people and its wealth belonged to them. Regardless of what one may think that political system really was, I think it is misleading to overlook these formal aspects.
For somebody who has become acquainted with the term 'revolution' by studying those historical processes where the use of this word is undisputed (the Copernican revolution, the French revolution, the Russian revolution...), the way Arab masses have appropriated this word (or translate the Arabic word ﺛَﻮﺭَﺓ) inevitably sounds a bit too short of meaning (or too inflated) for the contexts where it has more recently popped up. Many Lebanese people refer to the largely unconsequential protest movement that followed the 2019 financial crisis as "revolution" or ﺛَﻮﺭَﺓ. At the same time, Saddam Hussein called himself a revolutionary, and Iraqi institutions under the Ba´th party used to have revolutionary names such as Revolutionary Command Council and so on. Similar debates exist in Egypt, Sudan, Tunisia, Libya... The same can be said about the 'color revolutions' in the post-Soviet space. It appears to me that ﺛَﻮﺭَﺓ or revolution has become another 'empty signifier' carrying overall positive connotations (contrary to the period where it was a very divisive word) but imprecise meaning, so I believe there are much more precise words that we can use for analysis. Interestingly, I also know several individuals who reject the use of the term 'civil war' to describe the 1975-1990 Lebanese conflict or the ongoing armed conflict in Sudan with some arguments that would be long to describe here, but that in essence tell me that there is a negative or distinctive connotations around that term different from how it is used in English or other European languages.
Also, I am not entirely convinced about the expression 'one-party dictatorship' to describe the previous Syrian government system. As a matter of fact, there were several parties in the Syrian government, and this is reflected by the fact that the new government has banned at least 11 political parties (those forming the National Progressive Front) and not just one. Even the Syrian Constitution formally stated (art. 8) that political pluralism was one of the principles of the state and admitted the participation in politics of other parties (contrary to, for example, the 1933 German law that explicitly stated that ‘the National Socialist German Workers' Party is the only political party in Germany’). Of course some would say that the presence of those parties was just a façade and this did not amount to a real multi-party system, but you would also find many Syrians saying that the Syrian Ba´th was also a façade to give some false ideological legitimacy or appearance of a proper political system to a predatory clique of families who believed the country, its people and its wealth belonged to them. Regardless of what one may think that political system really was, I think it is misleading to overlook these formal aspects.
a better term for the conflict would be "uprising in support of the zionists"
Is no one going to acknowledge that two of the 3 photos in this article are definitely AI? What kind of ridiculous oversight is this?
It's pretty normal for 'martyr' photos/graphics to use digital alteration. It wasn't an oversight.