On Syria, the fall of Assad, and nationalism in the Middle-East.
Historian Djene Bajalan talks to Alex about a major rearrangement in the Levant. We discuss:
Who are Syria's new rulers HTS, and what is their vision – if any?
Did geopolitics really determine the fall of Assad and the Ba'ath Party?
How HTS's victory is so profoundly different from Islamism in Iran 1979
Why 2025 finally closes the book on the Arab Spring – and on secular Arab nationalism
Were the Kurds wrong to rely on US protection?
And in the full episode we continue by discussing...
Is Turkey the big winner of the decade?
What the Left gets wrong on nationalism
Civic versus ethnic nationalism, revisited
What was democratic, liberal and revolutionary about nationalism – and whether it can be again
How conservatives recuperate left-wing ideas, which were always conservative from the start
Links:
Djene's writing at Jacobin
