Yassin al-Haj Saleh, born in 1961, is one of Syria’s foremost intellectuals and a long-standing dissident against the Assad regime. He spent sixteen years in prison for “political reasons,” including time in the maximum-security facility of Tadmur, also known as Palmyra. With the onset of the Syrian Spring, he immediately emerged as an opponent of the regime.
The polarization of different common culture is emerging, but tragically, it is not one that fosters unity. Instead, it is a culture of nihilism, driven by a logic of ressentiment—a narrative of injury that seeks revenge through a will to power. This culture’s negations, as Rieff once put it, lead to a nothingness that can be both radical and reactionary at the same time. The challenge of meaningful and effective governance under such conditions is immense, if not impossible. All of this is true in its own right. Add to it the multiple crises of global poverty, rogue states with nuclear weapons, climate change, mass immigration, and an increasingly unstable international order, and the stakes become even higher. My argument is that we are at a moment when the answers to these fundamental questions about the vitality and longevity of liberal democracy can no longer be taken for granted—not because of our polarization, but because we no longer have the cultural resources to navigate what divides us.
The discontent afflicting democracy stems from two main sources. One is a pervasive sense of disempowerment—a feeling among many that their voices no longer matter, that they lack a meaningful role in shaping the forces that govern their lives. In the United States, ahead of this election, 85 percent of Americans told pollsters they believed their voices did not matter to those in power. The other is the widespread sense that the moral fabric of community is unraveling—from family to neighborhood to the nation.
On November 28, 2024, a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon began, announced by US President Joe Biden as “designed to be permanent.” However, strikes continue to devastate southern Lebanon. Just days ago, Tel Aviv declared a partial troop withdrawal but refrained from a full pullback as part of the truce. Amid this fragile peace, set against Lebanon’s severe economic and political crises, we reached out to Mona Harb, Professor of Urban Studies and Politics at the American University of Beirut.
The controversial “survey” of a mosque in the small north Indian town of Sambhal, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, sparked violent protests last month, leaving at least five people dead. The incident reignited the age-old debate over the need to “correct mistakes” committed centuries ago and their impact on social harmony and peace in contemporary India.
The lightning victory of Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in its stunningly successful offensive to unseat the more than 50-year-old Assad family-led Baathist dictatorship in Syria was highly reminiscent of the manner in which the Taliban pushed down the house of cards that was the nominal Afghan government when the US withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021.
Hong Kong, once a vibrant city celebrated as an international financial hub, is now witnessing a significant new wave of mass exodus. While official data on the scale of this migration is unavailable, estimates suggest that between 200,000 and 500,000 people have left the city over the past few years. Hong Kong has long been familiar with migration; cross-border employment and split families are nothing new to Hongkongers. However, the mass migration taking place is still something worth a glance at – not only because of the factors driving it but also because, for the first time, it has created a Hong Kong diaspora.
“The siege. The hunger. Innocent children, the first victims of war. […] Why does God allow harm to be done to children? […] It pairs with another insoluble question: how could God allow the Holocaust? Children were the first to be sent to the gas chambers. The only thing that should be clear to everyone is that a Palestinian child is worth exactly the same as a Jewish child.” From the biblical massacres of the innocent to the war in Gaza. This is how Macellerie – Guerre atroci e paci ambigue (“Slaughterhouses – Atrocious wars and ambiguous peace,” by Siegmund Ginzberg begins, a book that profiles a violent humanity through conflicts and atrocities in history, from the Warring States period in China to today’s wars. Ginzberg, a journalist and essayist born in Turkey to a Jewish family, is not alone in taking a stand in recent weeks. Historian Anna Foa, “a Jew of the diaspora,” explores the “same pain for both sides”—the victims of October 7, the Israeli hostages, and the civilians killed in Gaza—in her book, Il Suicidio di Israele.
“I just hope that both of my children are returned to their tribe,” says Masta Bibi, a partially blind Pashtun woman in her seventies. Originally from Mirali in North Waziristan, Pakistan, she is the mother of two missing sons: Bilal, who disappeared 11 years ago, and Ihtesham, who vanished two years ago. Her home was destroyed during a military operation targeting terrorist groups that sought refuge in the ex-FATA region after September 11, 2001. Despite her frailty, she attended the Pashtun Qaumi Jirga, held from October 11 to 13 in Jamrud, Khyber, with a lingering hope for justice.
The sweeping majority secured by Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s leftist coalition in the snap parliamentary election on November 14 marks a major shift in the country’s electoral landscape. Cutting across ethnic and religious differences, Sri Lankans swept the National People’s Power (NPP) front to a landslide victory, granting Dissanayake’s alliance a total of 141 seats out of 225.
On October 20, 2024, tensions erupted in Jammu, Kashmir, when accusations of cow smuggling triggered a violent clash, part of an escalating wave of Gau Rakshak (cow protection vigilante) aggression across India. Under Prime Minister Modi’s third term, commonly known as “Modi 3.0,” these self-styled cow protectors have become increasingly emboldened, often targeting marginalized groups – particularly Muslims and Dalits involved in the livestock trade. Modi 3.0 has seen a noticeable rise in such incidents, with vigilante groups frequently operating with implicit political backing as they enforce cultural and religious norms around cow protection.
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