School Days

Journalistic pretensions to dispassion and disinterest aside, the authorial voice in articles like this one about Hezbollah--at least in American publications--habitually reveals a depraved sort of bewilderment, a vague sense of mystification. This is not so much a failure to apprehend the Other as it is a failure of self-reflection. If you were to suggest to the reporter that his own education was indoctrination, he would likewise be mildly incredulous. Americans learn readin' writin' 'rithematic, not Koranic recitation and veneration of the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Of course, I hardly approve of the religious and millenarian aspects of such parochial education, but then again, I disapprove of glorifying bloody Andrew Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt and pretending that the United States won the Second World War with a little help from the plucky Brits. Hezbollah's success at attracting young people (in a nation and region swarming with youth) isn't hard to fathom: they provide a network of social support that far outstrips anything corrupt, subverted national governments are able to provide; they provide an appealing narrative of national rebirth, cultural unity, and social self-reliance. No wonder the movement is so popular.