Regarding their politics, in your book you described Hezbollah as being neoliberal and charitable at the same time, how do these go together?

In various religious fundamentalist movements across the world there is this coalition between moral conservatism and neoliberalism. And if you think about it, it makes complete sense. When you have a strong state providing social services to large sections of the popular classes, a political party has less space to building a clientelist basis based on the provision of their own services. That’s why they demand privatizations and other neo- liberal policies. Charity gives them a channel to transmit their ideology and build a mass popular basis. Because, if you want to receive certain services, most of the time you must follow the norms, laws and practices of the provider. That’s exactly what Hezbollah is doing in Lebanon.

As you mentioned, there is a debate, whether you could define Islamist groups as fascist. In your book, as you just described, you would render them differently. You have mentioned Marvin Olasky, who has been a close advisor of George W. Bush, as being the “Western” and Christian counterpart of Hezbollah. Could you further elaborate on this?

I think we must be very careful with the term fascism. Fascism is a specific phenomenon in history that can repeat itself, obviously. But when you analyse fascism, it was, at first, a mass movement of the petty bourgeoisie that followed an important crisis. The main objective was taking over the state and crushing the labour movement. All of this within an imperialist state. Religious fundamentalist movements have not been created in this kind of processes at all. If you go back to history, the Muslim Brotherhood was founded in the 1920s to re-establish the caliphate in response to the end of the Ottoman Empire, British occupation, and the development of secular ideologies, ideas, and movements.

Besides, there are completely different dynamics. Fascist movements want to create the “new man”. The religious fundamentalist movements, on the other hand, want to take people back to a ‘Golden Period’, that is the Islamic caliphate as it was at the time of the prophet Mohammed. This is not very similar.

In addition, you should be careful because often the term is simply used to criminalize an organisation and to imply that we can fight them just by outlawing them. An example would be some sections that came out of the Stalinist left that justified their alliance with authoritarian regimes in the fight against the “fascist” Muslim Brotherhood. The result was that the democratic space was shut down for everyone. The Islamic fundamentalist forces suffered a lot from the repression, but in the end the left as well. More recently we saw this with Egyptian President al-Sisi. Some sections of the left supported the Egyptian dictator against the Muslim Brotherhood and afterwards al-Sisi repressed everyone.

In addition, you had the bourgeoisification of what I call the ‘gradualist’ fundamentalist forces. Meaning, that you have an increasing number of capitalists playing a role in this organisation. So, there are a lot of differences between the two phenomena. And if you don’t do the right analysis, you can’t fight them. This also means that you should defend the right of everyone to organise, except the fascists. And it also means, we should defend the rights of the Muslim Brotherhood’s members being imprisoned in Egypt today. We should demand the liberation of all political prisoners.

Lebanese politics are still very much shaped by sectarianism (iii). Could you briefly describe what it means and what Hezbollah’s position is on that?

The current Lebanese sectarian system has its origins in the middle of the 19th century. It was a consensus between the local elite and imperialist forces. Sectarianism is very important to be understood as a product of modern times, not as something that has always been in the region or that people from certain denominations are necessarily affiliated with a certain party. Hezbollah’s position towards the sectarian system has evolved over time. In the 80s, it was condemning it, saying it was Maronite (iv) dominated. As a solution, they wanted to establish an Islamic state. This they uphold until today. But, they say, they won’t impose it on the people, very well knowing that due to the demography of Lebanon it won’t be possible without force. One third of the population is Christian, one third is Sunni, and one third is Shiite. And not all the Shiites want to live in an Islamic republic modeled on Iran.