The Many Cults of Lebanon and the Lies that Sustain their Fiction

It takes humans a while to realize they’re being brazenly manipulated, this is because most of us desperately want to trust someone or something, to believe in something that gives our existence meaning. To call one group of people gullible and trusting is to suggest another group may not be equally gullible and trusting. However, there are degrees of gullibility depending on the circumstances and the ethno-cultural ground upon which to build a truly gullible people. From my two decades-wroth of experience living in Lebanon, I can say that the Lebanese rank high on the gullibility scale. 

One of the most notorious cult leaders, Charles Manson

First, we have the almost cult-like devotion to our national homeland, although I appear to have been spared that particular affliction. Ask an Italian American or a transplanted Britt in the Antipodes or any eastern European calling western Europe home, ask them to tell you about their homelands, they’d likely just want to avoid the subject and tell you in no uncertain terms that their land of birth is a place worth leaving and that their future lies in their current homeland not that of their ancestors. Not so the Lebanese, mention to any Lebanese any story or bit of news about hearth and home and they transform from mild mannered joe anybody to Lebnani-qoh! Talk of Fairuz, the village, Kebbeh Nayyyeh (disgusting raw meat paste) and the dirty politicians of Lebanon will suddenly burst forth, a flood gate of repressed emotions opens up like a wall of water smashing through a flimsy dam.

 

Second, in equally cult-like fashion, many Lebanese have an almost pathological narcissism and myth-like belief in their own superiority, each is a cult of one you could say! They possess a bizarre kind of self-confidence that borders on cockiness and an ugly and repulsive kind of arrogance and selfishness that I think hides a deep seated sense of inferiority. 

 

My talk of cults is probably because I have been watching the rather excellent docuseries on Netflix “How to Become a Cult Leader”. A lightbulb metaphorically turned on while I was watching it and I realized that each and every cult leader mentioned in the series has two main attributes of significance, first, a very high and unjustified sense of self regard and an impulse to make others serve him slavishly, and second, each possess an exceptional ability to promote themselves and to build up their larger than life persona. These two aspects are things many Lebanese share with cult leaders.

 

On the other side of the coin, self-belief and marketing skills notwithstanding, the same Lebanese also seem to have a slavish devotion to homeland, village and certain saints, a devotion they all too readily assign to anyone of their homeland who promises the moon and the stars without much in the way of a plan, but seems to enjoy success and seems willing to share that success with them, from political masters to masters of commerce and finance.

 

Without knowing how, all we knew is that our central banker was a genius who by some miracle kept ensuring high rates of interest in the midst of a global financial crisis. He seemed almost god-like to so many. Without having a clear plan or program, early in our own financial and political crisis, there were voices advocating revolution, no one knew who they were, no leadership of the revolution has ever emerged to claim responsibility, but desperate and frightened Lebanese flocked to their angry banner and believed that shouting really loud and protesting in the streets would miraculously empty the palaces of the peoples’ oppressors.

 

Our political leaders require absolute devotion, in return they give us a sense of purpose and a feeling of righteous superiority, they tell us that we have been chosen for enlightenment from among the ignorant masses, that we are the most honorable people, the greatest people. I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a cult to me, not a political party or movement.

 

Imagine for example if in the UK at the end of the 80s and as the reign of Margaret Thatcher at the head of government was coming to a close, an offshoot of the conservative party decided to break from the main body of the party and set up a Thatcherite Party with a huge statue to Maggie at its main headquarters. You would as any right thinking human being think that these people were a bunch lunatics and crazies establishing a cult, not a serious political party. But that is exactly how politics works in Lebanon. Sadly, Lebanon is one huge collection of cults that challenge and antagonize one another from time to time. 

 

For most cult leaders in Lebanon, a corrupt unscrupulous bunch to a man, the expatriate Lebanese is a cow to be milked. They do so by triggering in each Lebanese abroad, whether that person is a first, second or third generation transplanted Lebanese, that devotion to homeland that they learned and suckled with mothers’ milk. These cult leaders use tourism as an excuse to get Lebanese abroad to waste their holidays coming to Lebanon to spend money here to support an open drain economy, a collapsed Ponzi scheme much like a collapsed star or black hole, is something from which nothing escapes, it simply feeds political leaders’ lifestyles, because they are the drain, the slanted opening that leads to the fetid sewer of corruption. 

 

Tourism is great, sure it is, in any normal country it is, but not in Lebanon. So long as foreign currency flows into this miserable place from one source or another the currency remains stable, prices remain relatively stable too. But this is unsustainable, the cult leaders know this, but for many transplanted Lebanese, the cult is home, they can’t see the deception because they don’t want to see it. They want to believe in someone, in something greater than themselves, they want to believe that Lebanon is not terminally ill, that as long as the Arak flows, as long as the music of Fairuz sounds, and people dance and go to festivals, things will be ok. It’s a beautiful lie, but maybe it’s time we woke up and faced reality.