Beyond the Ideology of the Tyrannical Authority

The new authority, which assumed power through a regional and international deal at the end of 2024, continues to exercise the same exclusionary and tyrannical policies using the institutions of the previous regime. The difference is that the previous authority took decades to transform into a totalitarian system, whereas the new authority assumed power already primed and ready, in its class, political, and ideological nature, as a violent, tyrannical power.

Upon seizing power, the Thermidorian authority mobilized a fascist and sectarian-leaning base and committed a series of massacres against religious and national minorities. The panic from these slaughters affected broad sectors of the Syrian people, extending beyond minorities to include Sunni denominations and impoverished social strata.

Based on this persistent threat of massacres, which continue in narrower scopes and varied forms, the Thermidorian authority unleashed what it calls “Civil Peace”—a concept that “civil society” organizations have scrambled to adopt, either as a source of livelihood or out of a naive belief that they could thereby prevent the recurrence of massacres. Some on the Left mistakenly believed that working on “Civil Peace” would halt the sectarian drift and prevent massacres, perhaps even opening space for broader democracy. This is pure nonsense.

In reality, the “Civil Peace” campaign, within the framework of the existing violent authority, functions as an ideological framework in its service: it is based on the claim that the survival of this authority is the sole guarantor against the recurrence of massacres. It approaches the minorities that were subjected to massacres to persuade them to accept this authority—the very authority responsible for them—as a condition for their safety. On the other side, it approaches the authority’s own unbridled base, persuading them that as long as the existing authority is not threatened and the minorities have submitted to it, there is no need for further mass murder.

Thus, “Civil Peace” acts as an ideological tool to subject society to the existing authority, instead of the Left and democrats building popular organizations to confront racism, chauvinism, sectarianism, and fascism.

“Civil Peace,” therefore, is a malicious ideological lie and manipulation launched by the Thermidorian authority. It must be exposed, and a democratic alternative must be launched: bringing the criminals of the former and current regimes to justice, defending democracy and freedoms, fighting for social justice and national independence, confronting massacres in all their forms, and resisting racism, exclusion, chauvinism, discrimination, and fascism.

While the remnants of the middle-class elites and the followers of the authority are preoccupied with the ideological myth of “Civil Peace,” the social and class reality is far more powerful than such ideological nonsense. If the state is the “material condensation of social relations of production,” then ideology itself is determined by those prevailing relations. The country has been witnessing labor protests for weeks, within a context of months of daily social protests.

These organized labor protests, despite their spontaneity, represent a complete break with the decades-long stagnation of the Syrian labor movement under the Assad dynasty’s rule—especially since 1974, when the elder Assad decided to seize control of the General Federation of Workers under the pretext of transitioning from “economic unionism” to “political unionism.” Thus, the union aristocracy became an integral part of the Assad regime’s institutions of control and oppression.

Today, the working class is regaining some of its independence and struggle, accumulating new experiences despite the Thermidorian authority’s attempt to seize control of unions by appointing their councils. In contrast, it is a duty to work on rejecting the councils appointed by the authority and encouraging the formation of independent labor unions, especially since the new authority is still too weak to dominate all joints of society.

The rise of the young, new working class—a generation that participated in the revolution and protests for over a decade and a half—carries the potential for the emergence of a broad, bold, organized, and revolutionary working class. These labor protests, which pierced through ethnic and religious divisions with their boldness, formed a dam against sectarian and chauvinist incitement and placed direct class struggle on the agenda between workers and wage earners on one side, and the old-new bourgeoisie on the other. This qualifies the working class for its future historical role in radical social change and the comprehensive liberation of society.

Furthermore, in the areas of the Autonomous Administration, or what remains of them, a continuous process of dismantling is underway following the crushing defeat of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in January of this year. Without delving into the strategic failures that led to this defeat and the shifts in global power stances—including the US abandonment of support for the SDF and the growing Turkish influence in Syria, through which Turkey has become the guardian of the new authority—the process of dismantling the Autonomous Administration and wasting its gains, which were beneficial particularly for the Kurdish people and the democratic struggle of all Syrians, is not limited to the results of the military defeat. It has moved into a political process to dismantle the remnants under a deceptive and false slogan: “Democratic Integration.”

In reality, this means nothing but the swallowing of the Autonomous Administration’s institutions by the Thermidorian authority under humiliating conditions, such as a governor with limited powers, a deputy minister with nominal authority, and other undemocratic forms of absorption.

At the same time, as an expression of the feeling among some Autonomous Administration officials that this path will lead to the complete digestion of an experience for which the Kurdish people offered thousands of martyrs—and which was a source of hope for Syrian democratic forces—some are using the term “Democratic Integration” (complementarity) instead of “Democratic Integration” (merger), yet it remains within the framework of polishing the ugly face of what is happening.

In the face of the attempt by the authority supported by Turkey—which has become the party with the upper hand in the Kurdish file—sectors of the Kurdish and Syrian masses and political forces fully realize that the authority’s swallowing of the Autonomous Administration means a major defeat for the struggle of the Kurdish people and the democratic cause in Syria. This requires unifying the struggles of the Syrian masses and all the oppressed in all their locations with their leftist and democratic social and political forces in the face of the authority of massacres and discrimination, for the sake of a decentralized, democratic, republican Syria that recognizes and is enriched by ethnic and religious pluralism and protects it.

All Power and Wealth to the PeopleRevolutionary Left Current (Party)

June 2026