Between Discipline, Silent Resistance, and the Beginnings of Revolt

The publication of two appeals launched by activists in Tyre and Nabatiyeh, addressed to the Lebanese State calling for the protection of these two ancient cities from the Israeli threat to erase them, for the deployment of the army and security forces within them, and for their designation as open, demilitarised cities, constituted the first public and organised act of resistance from within the Shia milieu. A milieu whose voices calling for the overcoming of fear and the raising of dissent have multiplied in recent times, against those who have confiscated its history, its present, and its future in vengeance for Khamenei. These activists were subjected to a campaign of threats, denunciation, and character assassination that led some to withdraw.

I had begun writing this article before these two appeals appeared, in an attempt to understand the mechanisms of Hezbollah's control and its capacity for domination, as well as to grasp the silent resistance of this milieu and the dynamics that sustain its hold.

Yet if one were to limit one's understanding of power in partisan milieus to the tools of direct repression alone, one would be overlooking its most operative dimension. As Michel Foucault shows, modern power rests not only on prohibition and punishment, but on the production of individuals who monitor themselves and reshape their behaviour in conformity with the norms imposed upon them. This does not mean, however, that domination is ever fully achieved or stabilised. It is precisely here that James Scott's contribution becomes indispensable, illuminating the other face of the matter: even in the most disciplined milieus, resistance does not disappear ; it assumes hidden, quotidian, undeclared forms.

This entanglement manifests with particular clarity in Hezbollah's grip over the entire social and cultural space of its milieu. On one hand, there exists an integrated disciplinary system that operates not only through apparatuses or official discourse, but through the milieu's own internalisation of Hezbollah's norms and its reproduction of them. On the other, one can also discern minute daily practices that betray a silent distance between individuals and these norms, a distance that has grown more pronounced since the current war that Hezbollah itself provoked.

According to Foucault, surveillance is effective not because it is comprehensive, but because it is internalised. In watching himself, the individual learns to choose his words, to calibrate his tone, to reconsider what might be understood or misunderstood. This self-censorship becomes, over time, a component of his social formation, without any direct intervention from outside. It transforms into something resembling a "second nature", in which compliance appears to be a personal choice rather than the outcome of external pressure.

It is precisely here that the paradox Scott illuminates comes into view. For when individuals are compelled to conform in public, this does not mean they concur inwardly. What develops instead is what he calls the "hidden transcript", a set of attitudes and feelings that find no path into public space, yet circulate within narrow circles or surface in indirect forms.

In this context, politics is no longer confined to speeches or demonstrations ; it migrates into the details of everyday life. Silence, for instance, is not always a sign of acquiescence ; it can be a strategy of abstention. Allusive language is not a deficiency of expression but a means of avoiding the cost of plain speech. And even the refusal to participate can be read as a political act, rather than an absence of one.

What the conjunction of Foucault and Scott offers is an understanding of the relationship between these two levels. For the system that succeeds in producing disciplined individuals is precisely the one that creates the conditions for "resistance by cunning". The higher the cost of expression, the greater the need for oblique forms of refusal. The deeper the surveillance, the more freighted with meaning the silence becomes.

In the milieu under examination, under the pressure of war and continuous Israeli escalation, the behaviour of the "support milieu" reveals a profound transformation in the image taking shape in public space, something that far exceeds mere economic decline or social exhaustion. We are witnessing a mutation in the very relationship between people and the political discourse that purports to represent them. It is here that the intertwining of internalisation and resistance becomes visible. An individual may conform to the public discourse, reproduce its vocabulary, display his belonging, while simultaneously maintaining an interior distance. That distance is not declared, but it surfaces at specific moments: in a passing joke, in an ambiguous remark, in a withheld enthusiasm, or in the absence of a response to a call for mobilisation.

And this is where the most formidable form of resistance resides, not the kind that announces itself, but the kind that goes unnoticed.

This resistance, however, despite its concealment, does not necessarily imply a radical break or rupture with the dominant power. It tends to remain within the limits of the system, adapting to it as much as opposing it. This is what makes it simultaneously a sign of weakness and of strength: weakness, because it does not translate into visible collective action ; strength, because it reveals the limits of domination.

Foucault also reminds us that power is damaged not only by direct opposition, but by internal erosion. When compliance becomes purely formal, when obedience is reduced to performance, power loses a measure of its effectiveness. It may succeed in regulating outward behaviour, but it fails to produce genuine conviction.

Within this framework, phenomena such as the absence of response to calls for mobilisation, or the spread of indifference, can be understood not as an absence of politics but as a transformation of its forms. People do not take to the streets, but neither do they engage. They do not protest, but they do not respond either.

In the end, this dynamic cannot be reduced to a simple opposition between domination and resistance. What we observe is a continuous intertwining of the two, in which power generates its own forms of rejection, and in which resistance adjusts to the conditions of power rather than confronting it head-on. In this grey zone where silence is not consent and abstention is not neutrality, real politics takes shape, far from the declared discourse.

This is how one can understand how a milieu that appears, on the surface, disciplined and cohesive, can carry within itself multiple strata of hesitation, detachment, and silent resistance, imperceptible at first glance, yet leaving their mark with time.

It is from this vantage point that the failure to respond to Naim Qassem's calls to take to the streets must be read, not as neutrality, but as a form of silent refusal. People do not announce their opposition, but neither do they confer real legitimacy through participation. It is an intermediate state between obedience and rebellion, a state of suspension, of waiting, and perhaps of reassessment.

In this sense, what we are witnessing today is a gradual shift from the "support milieu" to the "exhausted milieu". The support milieu responds, mobilises, engages. The exhausted milieu endures, falls silent, but no longer associates itself. This shift, even if partial or incomplete, carries a profound political significance: the erosion of the capacity for mobilisation.

As for the two recent appeals that implored Lebanese State intervention and the withdrawal of arms from Tyre and Nabatiyeh, they mark with clarity and courage the beginnings of a breach in the wall of fear within Hezbollah's own milieu.