Lebanon Between the Spiral of Violence and the Remaking of Society

What is happening in Lebanon today can no longer be understood within the framework of a war or a conventional conflict, but within what René Girard described as the “spiral of violence”: violence is no longer a means, it becomes an autonomous system that reproduces itself through discourse before it does so on the ground.

In this context, Hezbollah’s discourse, no less than the statements of figures such as Mahmoud Qomati, cannot be read as situational or emotional expressions. We are facing a coherent discursive structure, one that goes beyond politics to remake society through symbolic and material force alike — the discourse itself becoming an instrument for reshaping reality, not merely reflecting it.

This is where the danger of a political discourse built on accusations of treason and intimidation reveals itself: not as a situational aberration, but as a component of a deeper structure seeking to redefine the very notions of state, society, and legitimacy.

René Girard offers an indispensable analytical framework for understanding what is unfolding, through his concepts of “founding violence” and the “scapegoat mechanism.” Violence, according to Girard, persists only if it is relegitimized through a moral discourse that confers upon it a quality of necessity or sanctity. In the Lebanese case, one can clearly observe: the conversion of war into a moral duty, the redefinition of defeat as “sacrifice,” and the reduction of opposition to the concept of “treason.”

In this sense, the accusation of treason is not deployed as a descriptive tool but as a mechanism of exclusion, preparing the isolation of the dissenter and stripping him of his legitimacy.

In his theory of the scapegoat, Girard shows that societies in crisis tend to displace their internal tension onto a substitute victim, who is made to bear responsibility for the chaos. What we are witnessing today is a gradual shift: from a clearly identified external enemy to an internal enemy of multiple faces, encompassing the media, opponents, and even anxious citizens.

This shift is not incidental: it is a symptom of a profound crisis in the structure of legitimacy, where the maintenance of internal cohesion becomes conditional on the production of an “internal enemy.”

The Spiral of Violence as a Self-Regenerating Mechanism

Jeanne-Henriette Louis, in her work L’engrenage de la violence, offers a complementary framework, illuminating how violence transforms into a closed system that reproduces itself: violence generates fear, fear generates silence, and silence permits more violence.

In the Lebanese case, this loop manifests clearly: a war that drains society without end, a discourse that justifies it and forecloses all questioning of it, social and media pressure to silence dissenting voices. The result is not merely the perpetuation of violence, but its consolidation as the norm.

Adaptation to Violence

Some read society’s adaptation to this violence as a positive sign — which is precisely what Boris Cyrulnik’s writings contradict, through his analysis of the phenomenon of “adaptation to trauma.” Societies subjected to repeated traumatic events may develop defensive mechanisms that lead them to accept what was previously considered unacceptable. In Lebanon, this adaptation manifests in: the normalization of the mass displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, the acceptance of destruction as a given, and silence in the face of a discourse of internal threat.

This adaptation does not signify recovery; it indicates, on the contrary, a profound dysfunction in the perception of reality, where trauma is absorbed rather than addressed.

The most striking mutation in Hezbollah’s current discourse remains its shift from expression to imposition. The discourse no longer seeks to persuade; it aims to impose a particular definition of patriotism, to monopolize the designation of the enemy, to intimidate those who disagree.

This translates concretely into the emergence of an illegitimate parallel power: one capable of making existential decisions (such as war), without being held accountable to any institution whatsoever.

Yet the paradox lies in the abyss between the narrative and reality: against the discourse of power and victory, Lebanon is confronted with an entirely different reality — the displacement of hundreds of thousands of citizens, the massive destruction of infrastructure, the deepening of economic collapse, the erosion of state institutions.

This gap between narrative and reality is not a mere contradiction: it is a constitutive element of the perpetuation of the crisis, insofar as it prevents any serious revision or genuine reckoning.

This leads us to the disintegration of the social contract itself: in any state, the decision to go to war is one of the most significant expressions of sovereignty, and is subject to the principle of accountability. But in the Lebanese case: the decision is made outside official frameworks, its consequences are imposed on society, and any debate around it is forbidden.

This reality leads to the disintegration of the social contract, where the citizen loses his role as a partner in decision-making and is reduced to a passive recipient of its effects.

Lebanon today stands at a decisive crossroads. The question is no longer solely that of an external confrontation, but of the nature of the internal system taking shape under the pressure of the war and the discourse accompanying it.

If the spiral of violence, as Girard describes it, continues unbroken, it will not lead to stability, but to further escalation and explosion. And if adaptation to trauma persists, as Cyrulnik warns, society will gradually lose its capacity to distinguish the normal from the abnormal.

The real danger lies not only in the war itself, but in its transformation into a permanent condition, remaking society on the basis of fear rather than citizenship.

Breaking this loop begins with returning to the fundamental questions:

Who holds the power to decide on war?

Who bears responsibility?

And where does the citizen stand in all of this?

Without that, Lebanon will not be a state, but an open arena for conflicts that exceed its capacity for endurance.