The Termidorian Authority and the Fever of Influencers

The Termidorian authority inaugurated the 62nd Damascus International Fair on August 27th in a spectacle reminiscent of the exclusionary and formalistic National Dialogue Conference. This occurred amidst official media coverage promoting a “return to stability” and a “return to the international stage,” complete with Saudi and Turkish pavilions. Through this step and its media packaging, the authority managed to turn the event into a political public relations platform. It opted to invite influencers and carefully selected personalities representing a single viewpoint, instead of summoning genuine representatives of the Syrian people and its economic and industrial actors.

The choice of timing and the dense presence of influencers raised questions about the authority’s intentions, the value this group adds as a media intermediary, its role in this sensitive political phase, and how this leads to increased societal division and escalating sectarianism.

Analysis of the Influencer Phenomenon in Syria

The emergence of influencers is linked to the rapid development of technology and the spread of social media platforms, coupled with the capitalist system’s perpetual desire to increase consumption and offload surplus production. In the Syrian context, influencers have been used since 2022 in propaganda campaigns to beautify reality, market a image of normalization, and obscure social and humanitarian fissures through “touristic” or “celebratory” coverage.

Influencers often belong to the petty bourgeoisie, and their task boils down to promoting goods and products. However, what distinguishes them from traditional sales representatives is their role as a capitalist tool for reproducing the illusion of consumption. Thus, they represent a middle class with the ability to produce content that distorts reality. While most Syrians struggle to secure bread, water, and electricity, they find themselves in a world where a person’s value is measured by how much they consume, and their success by their ability to spend, regardless of their actual need for the commodity.

When influencers showcase their lavish weddings or luxury trips as a model of success, they reinforce class-based illusions that blur the lines between basic needs and artificial ones, deepening the feeling of alienation within the working class. Their daily lives become merely a backdrop for an unreal consumerist theater.

Thus, the role of influencers appears as part of the Termidorian authority’s strategy to distract society from its real interests.

The Political Function of Influencers

With the decline of traditional media—journalism, TV channels, news agencies—social media platforms have emerged as a primary source of news and information for youth. However, influencers are not transmitters of events or news; they are promoters of ideas and ideologies linked to capitalism and those who pay them for their services.

Following the fall of the Oligarchy, they played a prominent role in showcasing the quality and beauty of life in the “liberated” areas of Idlib compared to the newly liberated areas which were, until recently, under the Oligarchy’s control. They are provided with the necessary protection and funding to perform this task, with the full mobilization of public security forces and government institutions to facilitate their work.

In the context of generally rising sectarianism accompanying the authority’s sectarian massacres and calls for protection and self-administration in areas affected by these massacres, and the Termidorian authority’s choice of violence as its sole method of rule after neutralizing Syrian-Syrian dialogue, and since this authority has confiscated the national narrative and loaded it with sectarian and chauvinistic charge, influencers have become tools to justify violence and twist the popular movement’s arm. They do this by promoting the idea of the “return of life” and the economy, while hiding contradictions and the actual fragmentation, all while independent journalism is persecuted and opponents are silenced.

Examples from Syrian Reality

The massacres on the Syrian coast and in Suwayda were not committed in secrecy; they were openly documented by elements of the authority, and scenes of violence were displayed on platforms like Telegram for financial sums. How can these criminals be portrayed as heroes, and the acts of humiliation, killing, and kidnapping be presented as “holy” work?

Before every massacre, these mercenaries launch a systematic campaign to demonize the targeted party using sectarian language, offering advice to the killers on how to commit crimes. After the massacre ends, sectarian and political claims are promoted to justify the crimes, which fragments the struggle of the working class and turns internal conflicts into sectarian ones, serving the interests of the ruling bourgeois clique.

The International and Neoliberal Dimension

At the same fair, we see the authority’s rapprochement with foreign capitalists justified as “trade relations” and “investment,” with the participation of regional and international delegations. Normalization with the occupying entity (Israel) is also marketed as a strategic necessity to ensure the country’s prosperity, despite the ongoing and expanding Israeli occupation of southern Syria. Within this methodology, the relationship between influencers and the Syrian authority appears as part of a vast network of neoliberal digital and media marketing methods. These tools are used globally to reproduce cultural hegemony and “whitewash” the authority’s image and its march towards achieving consensus with regional and global powers.

This pattern is not merely local; Syrian influencers reflect the same logic implemented in Ukraine and Gaza: producing narratives that provide opportunities to execute media campaigns to distract the masses, manipulate public opinion, and reinforce the agendas of the ruling classes, at the expense of the deserved present of the neglected classes.

The Class Dimension

This phenomenon clarifies that any workers’ and popular struggle must be continuous and interconnected. From the perspective of permanent revolution, democratic tasks (justice, science, freedom of expression, and public freedoms…) cannot be separated from social tasks (livelihood, dignity, job opportunities, and a moving wage scale…). Class consciousness and the struggle against capitalist exploitation and against sectarianism are not achieved through illusory consumption or sectarian discourse, but through comprehensive mass organization that seeks to unite the working class around its real interests and transcend the illusions of consumption.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Syria’s political future is not written by influential media or glamorous snapshots. It is built through independent mass political and social organization, collective media that conveys the truth, and a militant vision and practice that links democratic and social tasks and anti-imperialism to socialism.
We must build unionized media, withdraw legitimacy from paid influencers, and link the struggle of workers, peasants, students, and all the oppressed in networks of real resistance, far from the media theater controlled by the Termidorian authority, through a continuous struggle that accumulates and focuses on the actual interests of the Syrian popular masses.