The objective was not merely physical elimination, but the ritualized display of slain bodies—transforming them into political and religious sacrifices. These bodies were instrumentalized to justify hatred: the dead were not simply political adversaries, but their annihilation was framed as a divine imperative. Their deaths became a theological statement, rendering the very possibility of coexistence with the “other” unacceptable. The massacres of Alawites were thus not only political acts—they were profoundly religious ones.
The current Syrian authority projects itself through two parallel narratives. The first is a promotional, rhetorical message that champions inclusivity under the slogan, “Syria for all and all its people.” It promotes a unitary, territorial discourse, eschewing revenge and endorsing the idea of a just system of accountability.
The second, far more influential and actionable, is a selective and exclusionary strategy. It supports non-partisan figures embedded in media, military, and social structures—loyalist journalists, social influencers, poets—some of whom have openly espoused sectarian narratives. This carefully curated public presence has not been free of sectarian incitement. A more overtly sectarian tone has crept into official discourse through these individuals, especially military commanders and media personalities, whose rhetoric has grown increasingly extreme.
This duality reveals an authoritarian schizophrenia: a veneer of tolerance in public discourse contrasts with radical narratives cultivated in closed circles. Meanwhile, the regime’s media landscape has been structured to permit, decriminalize, and occasionally even tacitly endorse sectarian speech. Hate speech, even when leading to arrests or convictions, has rarely been met with mechanisms to honor the dignity of victims or uphold their rights.
Repression has been reconfigured as spectacle. No longer merely a tool of control, it now serves as a performance that draws in the vengeful, the exhausted, the humiliated. Violence becomes catharsis, displacing other institutional or psychological outlets. This normalization of brutality has not been accidental—it has been sanctioned and facilitated by the regime, fostering an environment where violence is not only accepted but justified, even glamorized.
The regime has ignored legal and human rights protests against its agents’ repeated abuses. It has even absorbed bizarre, performative practices—forcing detainees to howl, crawl, or be trampled—as ritualized expressions of domination. Such theatrical displays of violence have become deeply shameful, especially as society itself excuses them under the logic: “It happened before.” Objections are thus neutralized. The regime, by its silence and inaction over the past three months, has tacitly endorsed these abuses—offering nothing more than verbal denunciations.
The Regime’s Struggle with Minorities: Alawites as a Case Study
The Alawites have been deeply entangled with the state—both as participants and as targets. The emerging regime’s base harbors enduring anxieties about their potential return to power, their role in the military, or any attempt to reclaim a privileged status. These fears have been framed rhetorically through depictions of Alawites as an organic extension of the former regime—conveniently ignoring their casualties, or the coerced complicity that led many into the machinery of violence. They were drawn in not by ideology but by fear—fear cultivated and exploited by Assad’s regime.
Through deliberate cognitive manipulation, the image of the Alawites has been constructed. Names of Alawite officers have been selectively publicized and criminalized, often without clear legal framework. Videos comparing their home regions to other devastated areas of Syria reinforce a collective narrative that they were not only regime loyalists, but architects of national ruin.
What has been obscured is that Alawites, simultaneously, were victims—caught in the crosshairs of Assad’s authoritarianism and a calculated sectarianization that pushed them into war. Their role was reduced to that of the regime’s guardians. Even fallen soldiers of the Syrian army were stripped of the title “martyrs”—a signal that their deaths were meaningless, their identities collapsed into a single monolithic guilt.
Symbolic violence against Alawites became a vessel for collective psychological release. It served as a lightning rod for the nation’s despair—over poverty, disenfranchisement, and the failures of the new regime to deliver democracy or national unity. The Alawites became a scapegoat for the revolution’s collapse and the post-regime chaos. The entire burden of the country’s suffering was projected onto them.
Historian Eric Hobsbawm wrote of “invented traditions” as tools by which modern regimes reshape identity and manufacture internal enemies. The current regime has mastered this tactic—selectively rewriting history to suit its political needs, reigniting sectarianism as a tool of governance and repression. This narrative is not merely an attempt to recast authority—it is an ideological apparatus that retools sectarian legacies into instruments of political engineering.
Within this structure, the regime invests in circulating discourses that divide society against itself, redirecting hostility away from the regime and toward other communities. In Damascus, regime supporters were mobilized against solidarity vigils for coastal regions. Public expressions of hatred against Alawites became common, evidence of the regime’s success in internalizing antagonism—no longer directed at the state, but now reproduced horizontally between communities.
Inclusion Through Exclusion
The regime has attempted to brand itself as non-sectarian, championing national unity through its official media. Yet in practice, it has supported policies that deepen internal fractures. It has excluded liberal and civic tendencies while adopting religiously militant postures. The public noticed the systematic avoidance of the word “democracy” in favor of invented terms like “legitimate civility.” This is not rhetorical carelessness—it is strategy. The regime seeks to build an internal colonialism, directing popular rage at vulnerable groups rather than itself, thus perpetuating conflict and societal exhaustion.
Its approach of inclusion through exclusion constructs internal threats. In the case of Alawites, the exclusion is geographical—pushing them toward the coast, or stripping them of employment, creating a peripheral class. They are citizens in name, but managed as outsiders, while the state peddles narratives of “civil peace.”
This exclusionary policy was paired with a systematic campaign of verbal and symbolic violence through both traditional and digital media. Coastal dialects became objects of ridicule. Former regime-affiliated media figures were recycled for public shaming, reinforcing the illusion that the conflict was sectarian in nature—when in fact it was a conflict over power.
Disowning the legacy of militancy required constructing a new internal enemy—minorities recognized only as extremists or anomalies, echoing how the Assad regime treated them. The same repressive logic was thus inverted and redeployed, not to dismantle authoritarianism, but to mask the new authority’s own failures in statecraft.
The Sahel Massacre and the Ideology of Inspirational Violence
As the Sahel massacres unfolded, the regime seized the opportunity to channel targeted brutality through a supportive yet internally conflicted apparatus. It juxtaposed revolutionary fervor with celebration of violence, exploiting the collective guilt projected onto the Alawite community. This was not merely to instill fear—but to reshape the social fabric through orchestrated bloodshed.
In these massacres, Alawites were cast as the explicit enemy. They were hunted, filmed in death, their homes and lands torched—even pursued into forests and valleys. More chilling was the inspirational killing—violence executed according to religious sanction against “Nusayris.” These atrocities carried a theological signature: the murdered bodies became political and sacred messages.
Some of these practices mirrored past regime crimes—the Bayda massacre, militia slogans in video clips, or the conduct of Shiite factions operating in Syria—all of which fused sacred duty with death. The violence was not just bizarre; it was theatrical. Clips circulated of fighters boasting while looting the homes of the dead, raising stolen belongings like trophies—pride in plunder. It was a reprise of the defunct regime’s military and paramilitary legacy.
Murdered Alawites became symbols of ideological triumph, their mutilated bodies markers of “sacred cleansing,” cast into the open to permanently inscribe their otherness—politically, religiously, and metaphysically. The commodification of Alawite suffering was not a mere act of vengeance, but a message: they were not only part of the regime, but the very stage upon which its authority performed. Their targeting became a symbolic liquidation of the regime’s legacy—through its own instruments.
The Logic of the Exception and the Fabrication of the Enemy
In this context, the killing of Alawites was never framed as a “crime.” It was rationalized—if not overtly celebrated—as the natural fate of people unworthy of life. Arrests were made against some perpetrators of violations, but their charges remain opaque, as do the legal processes surrounding them. All that is known is that they were detained.
This logic reflects what Carl Schmitt called the political theology of enmity. A regime defines itself by naming its enemies—those upon whom it pins responsibility for crisis, and through whom it consolidates control. In the past, the Assad regime cast Israel as the main enemy, and accused internal provinces of treason. The new authority, by contrast, confines its enemies within national borders, fragmenting society from within to preserve its hegemony—a perfect enactment of Schmitt’s “permanent political antagonism.”
What the massacre sought to ensure was that the regime would always have enemies—new ones to replace those Assad had avoided confronting. Thus, violence and extermination became not tools of necessity, but acts of sensorial and ideological affirmation—ritualized, purposeful, and reinforced by a complete infrastructure.
The goal, in the end, was not just killing—but the celebratory destruction of the body, the transformation of the corpse into an offering of faith and vengeance. The Alawite massacres were not simply political—they were doctrinal. The most insidious manipulation was not physical but cognitive: violence became inspirational, and killing became a creed.
This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
