Is Hezbollah, an Authoritarian Party, Also Nazi?

In a democratic country, a political party is generally defined as a legally constituted organization made up of individuals seeking to attain political power peacefully, through elections. They come together around shared ideas or principles to achieve specific objectives, whether political, economic, social or cultural.

Lebanon's traditional parties constitute a unique case. They do not fully meet the criteria of the democratic model. Their structures are sectarian and family-based, their leadership is most often passed down through inheritance, and they rely on providing services to their supporters in exchange for political loyalty. Nevertheless, they function as political forces, do not currently possess military wings operating alongside the army, participate in elections, are represented in government and remain subject to the law. Yet they depart from democratic standards in several respects.

Their leadership is not subject to rotation and generally changes only upon the death of a leader. These leaders are not held accountable and rarely tolerate internal dissent. Moreover, because these parties are sectarian, they are inseparable from the communities they represent.

Hezbollah, by contrast, operates without an official license. It built up a vast arsenal and a quasi-regular army (before the war), giving it enough power to drag Lebanon into several conflicts. Despite the catastrophic losses it suffered in its confrontation with Israel, it continues to impose its choices on the ground through its weapons. It is also an ideological and religious party, organically tied to Iran, subordinate to it and committed to implementing its strategy.

Admittedly, Lebanese parties generally emerge from sectarian affiliations. Legally, however, the 1909 Law on Associations grants them licenses to establish themselves as civilian political associations, not as "religious or armed associations," even when their supporters and ideologies are rooted in a particular sect or religion.

Because of the absolute secrecy surrounding its operations, the Lebanese public lacks sufficient information to assess all of Hezbollah's internal accountability mechanisms. Nevertheless, the organization's closed structure and the centralization of its decisions, particularly military and strategic ones, raise serious questions about the limits of participation and accountability. Hezbollah is, as is well known, a doctrinaire party that adheres to the tradition of wilayat al-faqih, or guardianship of the Islamic jurist. Its decisions are treated as binding "religious obligations," while its supreme authority, the wali al-faqih, is regarded as infallible and sacred. The party maintains its own security apparatus, which monitors its members and holds them accountable. It thus exercises control over its own members.

Hezbollah is characterized by absolute discipline and the complete centralization of decision-making. Everyone must comply with the decisions of the supreme leadership. It allows no room for opposition or pluralism, which it regards as threats to the unity of the group. It is therefore an authoritarian organization with an ironclad structure. The party claims a monopoly over the interpretation of the Shiite doctrine it follows, that of wilayat al-faqih, and links political loyalty to organizational and ideological allegiance. Its leadership is not subject to accountability, while the party possesses means of pressure that fall outside normal political competition.

Incidentally, even a democratic party, or a parliamentary and secular one, can be described as iron-disciplined when it prevents its members from voting in any way other than that prescribed by its leadership.

But describing Hezbollah merely as an iron-disciplined organization because of its secrecy overlooks other dimensions that distinguish it. Its structure combines two contradictory models: rigid, iron-fisted authoritarianism internally and popular legitimacy externally.

The support it enjoys within its communal environment has been one of the pillars of its continuity, to the point that its acceptance has extended beyond its own sect. This has been one of the factors facilitating its dominance over Lebanese political life. The presence of Hassan Nasrallah and the extraordinary charismatic authority he enjoyed, in the Weberian sense of the term, were also decisive.

The question remains as to how far the concept of totalitarianism applies to Hezbollah. The party aspired to exercise complete control over every aspect of public life, from the economy and the media to education and culture. It long proclaimed its desire to change Lebanon's political system in order to establish an Islamic state that would form part of the greater, universal Islamic state Iran intends to create. To achieve its objectives, the party relies on repression, domination and monopolization. With the complicity of the political authorities following Michel Aoun's election as president, Hezbollah succeeded in gaining control of the main institutions of the Lebanese state, until the war launched by Israel following the support wars the party itself had instigated.

Another question arises: Is Hezbollah a Nazi party, as some describe it?

There are both similarities and differences between Hezbollah and Nazism. They converge in their methods of building a "totalitarian society" and subordinating individuals, and even Lebanon as a whole, to the organization.

The Similarities

Nazism was not merely an army. It was a system that structured every aspect of German life (scouting, clubs and healthcare institutions). Hezbollah applied this totalitarian model literally. It administered the entire life of the Shiite community (the Jihad al-Bina Foundation, the Islamic Health Organization, the al-Mahdi and al-Mustafa schools, the al-Mahdi Scouts, mourning rituals and recreational activities, including the organization of religious visits). Its objective is to capture the minds of Shiites and give them a new identity, one entirely subordinate to the party.

Another similarity lies in the cult of the leader. Nazism was built around the principle of an infallible leader whose charisma made him a symbol of trustworthy leadership, incapable of error. In Hezbollah's case, the same characteristics applied to Hassan Nasrallah, with an additional ideological and religious dimension. Absolute obedience to the wali is a duty, while his charisma is regarded as absolute, to the point that debate or opposition is considered a departure from religion and an attack on the project.

Another similar factor is the militarization of society. Hezbollah shares with Nazism a rigid military bearing. It adopted the Kalashnikov rifle as an emblem on its flag, while the military boot has become a sacred symbol among its supporters, raised as an emblem. It also resembles Nazism in its regular organization of celebrations and military parades. It has gone so far as to design military games for children and turn the slogan "I am a martyr" into a refrain repeated in their ranks and at their gatherings.

The two also share the use of media propaganda and an existential hostility toward the other. A vast, tightly directed media apparatus is essential to both. Media reports have referred to more than 100 channels operating under cover, linked to Iran and its regional arms, with coverage extending across the region. Hezbollah believes that the word is more powerful than the bullet. The party also demonizes media outlets that disagree with it, even going so far as to assault their journalists when they dare enter the closed areas under its control. Both have also constructed an absolute existential enemy to justify militarization and accusations of treason. For Nazism, that absolute enemy was the Jews. For Hezbollah, the designated enemies are Zionism, "global arrogance" and the takfiris.

What Are the Differences?

Despite similarities in their methods and behavior, Hezbollah differs from Nazism in its founding philosophy and strategic objectives.

The Nazi Party was a racial party espousing a chauvinistic nationalism based on the supposed superiority of the "Aryan" race over all others. Hezbollah, by contrast, is a transnational theocratic religious movement rooted in the doctrine of Twelver Shiite Islam and adherence to the principle of wilayat al-faqih.

Nazism was an extreme and expansionist nationalism that sought to establish a German empire, the Third Reich, and extend its living space at the expense of other countries through military occupation. Hezbollah, on the other hand, belongs to a regional axis, that of the Islamic Republic. It does not regard itself as exclusively Lebanese, but as an organic and military component of the project of a "global Iranian republic of the wali al-faqih."

Nazism established a totalitarian state that exercised power directly. The Nazi Party completely absorbed the German state, stripped the Weimar Constitution of its substance and ruled by force through the Gestapo and the regular army. Hezbollah, by contrast, does not govern Lebanon directly. It prefers to operate behind the façade of a weakened state, hollowed out and deprived of sovereignty. It shelters behind that state while retaining, through its weapons, a "veto power" that enables it to obstruct anything contrary to its interests.

Nazism sought to occupy the world and subject other peoples to its rule. Hezbollah's influence, by contrast, is local, with a regional reach. It acts as an arm of Iran, resorting to intervention, including military intervention. This does not mean that Iran's objective is necessarily to exercise direct control over surrounding countries. Rather, it relies on its regional arms as intermediaries.

Ultimately, Hezbollah can be regarded as a totalitarian Islamist organization that resembles Nazism in its "tactics and behavior" but differs from it in its "essence and philosophy." Nazism was a form of racial madness. Hezbollah, for its part, is a disciplined religious and ideological organization seeking to bind the Lebanese arena to the project of wilayat al-faqih, in support of its transnational ambitions.