Gino's Podcast

I’ve been in the United States for almost six years now. I’ve spent most of it in New York City and Washington, DC. Living here after growing up witnessing the slow-motion collapse of Lebanon, gave me a very specific kind of peripheral vision. I see the gears of the system grinding everywhere, and what scares me is that capitalism has become so dominant that we literally cannot imagine an alternative. That’s exactly the premise of Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism. This week’s newsletter is gonna be delving into some of his ideas and how I witnessed or experienced them in my new life, and the old one.The “Entrepreneurs” and The 7arboo2sA big part of my career has been fighting against the Free Patriotic Movement, the “Aounists.” After a brief moment in my teenage years when I was mesmerized by their “progressive” orange plan in the 2005 elections, I quickly got disenchanted when Michel Aoun sold his soul to Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah in 2006, right after the first elections following the end of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, five years after Israel’s occupation. Many in the anti-Syrian occupation camp allied themselves with Hezbollah and other Syrian occupation collaborators. As someone who went down to protest on March 14, 2005 with my family, and even my beloved late dog Titan, it felt like a betrayal. Only days before, Hezbollah and other Syrian assets had staged their own protest to “thank” the Assad regime for 29 years of brutal, humiliating occupation, rivaled only by Israel’s.The Aounists were the only ones who hadn’t allied themselves with Hezbollah, and I was excited about them. I was born after Michel Aoun ran away to France and abandoned his supporters and family, who were subsequently crushed by the Assad regime, so I didn’t know enough about the man’s failures and damage. To me, he was just the only one who seemed not to have betrayed what had motivated an entire people on March 14, 2005, when enough pressure was built to eject the foreign army whose checkpoint I had to pass every Sunday on the way to my hometown in Ehden.On February 6, 2006, the Mar Mikhail “Maronite wedding” between Aoun and Nasrallah took place, not even a year after the election in which Aoun had run against the so-called elite sectarian parties aligned with Hezbollah. Those elites, mind-bogglingly, included Saad Hariri, whose father had been assassinated by Hezbollah and Assad months before he capitulated to Hezbollah and effectively anointed them the successor to the security state the Syrian occupation had left behind. That assassination was the moment the regime had clearly crossed a line and pushed so many of us into the streets. Not out of personal devotion to Hariri, but because a car bomb cannot be the way our lives are governed. Enough.That betrayal by what was called March 14, followed by the betrayal of the FPM, cemented my political beliefs. I realized none of what was on offer represented me, not even remotely, and I knew I wasn’t the only one. Looking back, these were all small steps on the road to October 17, 2019. But I digress. When the FPM got into power on Hezbollah’s back, they proved to be just as bad, if not worse, than the rest. It became painfully clear how blatantly corrupt, incompetent, and most importantly, cruel they were.One of my relatives, whom I am no longer in contact with, remained a die-hard Aounist. Even when I was being illegally detained, she still supported the disgraced and reviled Gebran Bassil. In one heated conversation, she let the mask slip, and I finally understood the mindset behind supporting someone who had demonstrably made all our lives worse. She said something along the lines of, “Berri and Junblat and Hariri have been stealing for decades. Now it’s our turn.”That statement was problematic on so many levels. The most obvious was the sectarian angle. Christians in Lebanon were largely left out of the post–Civil War spoils. After being the pre-war elites, the resentment never really subsided. You can see it in the obsession with Bashir Gemayel to this day, the “if only” refrain that many right-wing Christians use to explain why the country is helpless and unreformable because of one assassination among so many. To her, the naked corruption of the Aounists was payback, or at least finally getting a piece of the cake after years of operating in the shadows of the Syrian occupation and its local collaborators. Electricity was coming on for fewer hours. The country was collapsing. Yet she was happy that Gebran Bassil could buy tailored suits and shoes with lifted soles, even as her life savings vanished.It’s a zero-sum mindset I keep seeing in both Lebanon and the United States: when a once-privileged group feels that a once-oppressed group doing better is a threat to them, instead of something that could make society better for everyone.Then the word “7arboo2” (حربوق) popped into my head and started flashing. It’s a Levantine Arabic term used in Lebanon and Syria to describe someone exceptionally clever, sharp-witted, and street-smart. It often carries the sense of someone mischievous or sneaky, always one step ahead, blending intelligence with a sly edge. Looking back, it connects closely to the “Ma T3isha” idea I wrote about last year. A problematic idea in our society, where the slyness and shamelessness of ripping people off is framed as a positive trait, even an admirable one.That’s when you realize how deeply naked, unchecked capitalism dominates our psyches, to the point that someone who can extract capital from a captive population and then flaunt the wealth hoarded from other people’s labor is seen as aspirational. It’s not that different from the United States’ obsession with billionaires who spend fortunes building bunkers for an apocalypse they believe is coming, instead of using even a fraction of that wealth to address the very conditions that make them feel the need for private islands and underground shelters when late-stage capitalism finally buckles.That relative couldn’t even imagine a world where Bassil might have actually done something in the public interest instead of building his entire identity around “protecting the sect’s rights,” when in reality it was only his offshore bank accounts getting protection. Meanwhile, his tayfeh declined even further under his father-in-law’s presidency, just like every other tayfeh, except for the tiny circle of elites from each sect who continued to thrive. It was the worst blend of capitalism and feudalism, the za3ims and their peasants, repackaged as “sect survival” while the country hollowed out around them.Seen through Mark Fisher’s lens, what we were living was not just corruption or sectarianism, but a failure of imagination carefully cultivated over decades. Capitalist realism shrinks the political horizon until extraction feels inevitable. The “7arboo2” becomes aspirational, the za3im becomes unavoidable, and the idea of public good starts to sound like a children’s fantasy. When people say “at least it’s our turn,” they are not defending obvious theft as much as admitting they cannot picture a system that doesn’t revolve around it.Even after decades of blaming Israel and Syria as the reason nothing works and why we “can’t have nice things,” the Aounists and the rest of the sectarian elite never dared to deviate from that exploitative occupier mindset. They kept it exactly the same, just without the occupation excuse to soften the blow anymore. That is the real damage. Not just our stolen money or crumbled institutions, but a collective surrender to the idea that this is the only way things can function. And once that belief settled in, decline stopped feeling like a policy choice that can change, but instead like a fate we’re all doomed to.ConclusionBut if capitalist realism is a failure of imagination, then resistance has to begin there too.Mark Fisher didn’t argue that capitalism is literally unbeatable. He argued that it convinces us it is. T… Get full access to Gino's Blog at ginoraidy.substack.com/subscribe

Hezbollah has shown us exactly who it is, over and over again. While Lebanese homes lie in ruins and lives are lost, the militia rushes to defend Iran’s regime, kill Iranian protesters, and drag Lebanon into wars it never chose. This is not resistance. It is foreign domination, and it is long past time Lebanon reins it in. Get full access to Gino's Blog at ginoraidy.substack.com/subscribe

Papal visits to Lebanon have always been moments when the country pauses (briefly) to look at itself through an external moral lens. In a region where political positions are often treated as existential identities, the Pope’s presence carries symbolic weight. It forces competing factions to recalibrate how they present themselves, both internally and to the world. If you don’t believe me, read this Washington Post piece from 28 years ago. It’s as if it was written today.This time was no different, except instead of a civil war, it was a war Hezbollah launched, and lost, against Israel. Israel is preparing another assault on Lebanon. That’s perhaps one of the things people were most grateful about the Pope’s visit: it would make Israel hold off from its daily bombing raids.Hezbollah is under pressure internationally, regionally, and domestically over its military role and the growing perception that its decisions no longer reflect Lebanese consensus, as if they ever did.Into this moment walked Pope Leo XIV. And Hezbollah tried to scramble.The Attempt to Attach Itself to the VisitFrom the moment the visit was announced, Hezbollah moved quickly to ensure it would not be symbolically sidelined. Scouts appeared in strategic locations. Party-adjacent media figures began packaging the visit as an implicit validation of “Lebanese resilience.” Influencers aligned with Hezbollah attempted to weave the event into a narrative of coexistence, national unity, and mutual respect that goes against how Hezbollah treats its own supporters, much less those it disagrees with.The motivation was obvious: At a time when the party faces increasing isolation politically, diplomatically, and within large swathes of Lebanese society, it could not afford for the Pope’s presence to appear as anything other than inclusive of all Lebanese spheres, including its own.But the moment, and the Pope, didn’t play along. Just like he shut down Queen Rania of Jordan’s shameful comment caught on a hot mic, trying to discourage him from visiting Lebanon.The Pope’s Message Was UnambiguousWhen Pope Leo XIV explicitly called on all armed actors, including Hezbollah, to put their weapons down and return authority to the state, it punctured the party’s attempt to appropriate the visit.It was not framed as an attack, nor as a sectarian statement. It was framed as a simple principle: a functional country cannot have competing armies.It is the same message repeated by every international body, every constitutional scholar in Lebanon, and every person not aligned with Hezbollah. But coming from the Pope, on Lebanese soil, during a moment of acute regional tension, it carried a moral clarity that Hezbollah could not easily absorb or ignore. It meant that they can’t stop skirting what they agreed to after losing a battle they instigated. And so, the failed counter-narrative began almost instantly.The Disingenuous CounterargumentWithin hours, Hezbollah-affiliated influencers launched a coordinated line of reasoning: If Catholics can follow the Pope, why can’t Hezbollah follow Ali Khamenei?Presented as a question of religious freedom, it was a textbook reframing tactic, shifting the conversation away from military decision-making and national sovereignty toward cultural and sectarian equivalence.But the equivalence breaks down immediately.Catholics following the Pope concerns doctrine, faith, and personal belief.Hezbollah following Khamenei concerns decisions of war, peace, and national security, matters that directly affect the entire Lebanese population, regardless of sect, belief, or political position.Lebanon does not pay the price of alleged Catholic obedience to the Vatican (I say alleged because remember, the Lebanese church and right wing mouthpieces still defend convicted child molester priest Mansur Labaki, even after the Vatican convicted him and defrocked him, along with the French courts).However, Lebanon does repeatedly pay the price of Hezbollah’s military obedience to a foreign state and the Ayatollah’s wishes for better negotiating positions.Attempting to merge the two is not only inaccurate, it is a deliberate attempt to obscure the core issue, and not even Hezbollah’s influencers take it seriously because of how disingenuous it is.Lebanon’s Structural RealityLebanon’s crisis is not about religious authority or coexistence. Despite Hezbollah’s constant and aggressive attempts to reduce the entire Shia community to just Hezb, the reality is that that is not true, not by a longshot, especially after Hezbollah’s defeat and its decision to stand against the October 17, 2019 uprising that started in areas and neighborhoods Hezb claims to own.The current crisis is about monopoly of force.It is about whether a state can function when an armed group retains the ability to unilaterally start or end conflicts with a neighboring entity.And it is about the democratic impossibility of a political system in which one actor is not accountable to the institutions the rest of the population must live under.The Pope’s statement, then, was not an attack but a reiteration of a principle that any sovereign country requires: a single, unified authority over weapons and war that is democratically controlled, not with Hezb car bombs and militias ineffective against Israel, but very effective against unarmed Lebanese who don’t bend the knee.No rhetorical pivot can change that.Why Hezbollah’s Narrative Fell FlatHezbollah misread the room. Badly. It is so stuck in its past glory days, it is incapable of doing anything else.Lebanese exhaustion has reached a level where symbolic gestures no longer land. That includes segments of society Hezb considers “theirs”. The population has lived through a collapsed banking sector, a hollowed-out state, rolling blackouts, border clashes, drone strikes, and the constant threat of escalation and none of which they chose.So when the Pope called for disarmament, most Lebanese heard something they have long wanted themselves.And when Hezbollah tried to reframe the visit as an issue of religious double standards, the response, across the digital public sphere, was muted at best, dismissive at worst. Their pick-me energy that was more cringe than believable.There is a growing understanding that Lebanon can no longer carry the weight of a permanent militia structure that makes decisions on behalf of millions who did not consent to those decisions.What the Visit Ultimately RevealedThe Pope did not shift Lebanese political dynamics. He did not broker a new consensus. He did not break Hezbollah’s entrenched position.But his presence exposed something important: Hezbollah is increasingly sensitive to how it is perceived, increasingly isolated, and increasingly reliant on narrative management to justify its continued militarized role. I’d even say desperate. I don’t believe carrying the Vatican flag along with a Nasrallah photo is sincere, it’s just to say, “See?! Look how tolerant we are! Now, let’s forget we agreed to disarm after we lost the war we started, and give us some slack for this performative stuff to try to bask in the coverage the Pope’s visit brings.” In that sense, the Pope’s message landed exactly where it needed to. Not as a command. Not as a condemnation. But as a reminder.That Lebanon cannot survive indefinitely with its sovereignty held hostage to parallel structures, not even ones that portray themselves as guardians of national dignity, when that has never been the case.In that clarity, many Lebanese found something rare: An articulation of the obvious, delivered without fear and platitudes meant to waste time, hoping that some miracle that will never come, will help Hezbollah get back to its peak, which even they know is never gonna happen again.Gino's Blog is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Gino's Blog at ginoraidy.substack.com/subscribe

There is an ugly little theatre trick Hezbollah has been playing for years. Act one, they make sure the audience is petrified. Act two, when their stunt collapses, they step forward with a wet hand to the chest and expect applause. The trick relies on two things. First, the party’s monopoly of force inside Lebanon. Second, people’s habit of folding when power demands it. Now the trick has a new punchline. They start a war alone. It goes badly. Really badly. They make Hamas look like a titan in comparison to how quickly it all collapsed under the weight of their own failures and internal betrayals. Then they ask everyone else to pay for it and to mourn them and allow them to stay the sole entity calling the shots. And most importantly, to not face any form of accountability. That is not leadership. That is extortion. And we’ve had enough.Hezbollah got where it is by turning politics into a racket. They keep weapons and networks that answer one central authority in Tehran, never the Lebanese State. They trade alleged safety for coerced silence. They deliver services in areas where the state can barely show up, but those services come with conditions. Ask a politician or a journalist to push back and you see how the system closes around you. Or how a car bomb t-bones your car when Nasrallah ordered the hit. The message is constant and simple. Shut up, or you will be charred pieces, a message to anyone thinking of anything but kneeling at the feet of the Iranian commanded group.This is not theory. It is daily life in Lebanon. You hear it in cancelled meetings, in the sudden absence of a candidate, in a neighborhood that once had multitudes of ideas, but now has only empty slogans of obedience. You see it in the informal taxes, the jobs that only go to people who know which side to kneel to, the threats that arrive by silenced guns or by tire slashed at night. The vocabulary is not only violence. It is control. It is power exercised in the smallest interactions so you learn to preempt the risk of public friction. You force someone who dared speak out against injustice, to go on TV and apologize and grovel for forgiveness after the dreaded “sa7soo7”.When Hezbollah took its model across the border into Syria, it did not bring a different version of itself. It brought the same blueprint. Proximity to the state was used to justify intervention. Loyalty to an axis was used to excuse brutality. What looked like solidarity on paper translated into checkpoints, patrols, and forced displacement on the ground. The same ethic that says, “We defend the people” too often read as, “We decide what happens to people.”So now consider the recent episode. A decision is made, not by the state, not after debate, not with any clear mandate, but by a single actor who holds enough muscle to make choices for everyone when their handler in Iran wants a better bargaining chip with the West. That actor opens a front. The consequences are immediate and national. Homes are destroyed. Lives are shredded. Borders shift. The economy, already reduced to a husk under Hezbollah’s hegemony, takes another massive blow. Civilians bear the largest cost. Lebanon, already hollowed by corruption and mismanagement, takes another gut punch while it was already down.And then the rhetoric flips. The sounds you hear change from orders to laments. Suddenly the same people who shut down debate call for national unity. They claim victimhood. They ask to be exalted and refuse any self reflection or criticism by supposed partners. They expect the country to put aside the logic of accountability and reach for a shared blanket called solidarity. They do this while the country is still paying for the chaos they created.There are several angles to unpack here, and none of them are flattering to the party asking for sympathy. First, there is the ethical problem. If you impose catastrophe on people who never agreed to it, you owe them more than rhetoric. You owe them restitution. You owe them explanation and a political process that makes future unilateral choices impossible. Asking for sympathy without offering reparations is a moral failure.Second, there is the political problem. Forgiveness without change is permission. If the state and society make a habit of absolving destructive unilateralism, then we fossilize the pattern. That’s what got us in the mess we’re currently in. The next time the calculus tips toward confrontation, the incentives are there. The apparatus that produced this war will be free to try again because the political cost is low and the social price is manageable for them. That is the opposite of deterrence.Third, there is the practical problem. Who carries the bill? The families who must move. The farmers who cannot get their crops to market. The small business that counted on a summer season and lost it. The country’s public finances, already fragile, will be called upon to rebuild roads, fix electricity, and support displaced people. The social contract is being taxed to pay for decisions not made collectively. That is not solidarity. It is socialization of a private militia’s failure.Now the group layers on performative grief. You see the speeches. You see the tents. You see appeals to identity and ancient wounds. There is a grammar to this performance. It translates failure into martyrdom, error into sacrifice. The old tactic works on audiences that lack the luxury of distance. When your neighbor is sleeping on a mattress in a hall because their house is gone, compassion is immediate and necessary. But compassion should not be confused with political amnesty.We have to be precise about what we ask of society. Compassion is an individual choice, private and immediate. Political responsibility is public and durable. If Lebanese society is to rebuild, it must do both things without confusing them. We must care for victims and we must demand changes to the structures that created the victims. We must rebuild neighborhoods and we must dismantle the conditions that allowed a single armed group to impose disaster on millions.There is a more uncomfortable point here that must be addressed. The party asking for sympathy is not a monolith of pure evil. It remains a social and political actor with clients, with municipal reach, with people who depended on it when the state was absent. That makes the problem harder. People will say, “But we cannot simply cut them off. Doing so risks civil conflict.” True. That is why blunt calls for eradication are naive. But the proper answer is not to accept unilateralism. The proper answer is to rebuild political institutions so that no group can choose war by itself, and so that the social dependencies that make people tolerate coercion are reduced.Policy must do the things politics cannot. The Lebanese state, and the international actors that care about this country, must knit together a set of guarantees. End the parallel command. Strengthen institutions. Offer economic alternatives where patronage once ruled. Protect free speech. Make political life livable without a Hezbollah car bomb exploding whenever their leader feels inconvenienced. That means the state must be capable of defending its citizens, not least from factions that claim to defend them as well as Israeli aggression.Meanwhile, the moral grammar of blame has to be clear. Accountability is not vengeance. Accountability is the mechanism by which societies learn what is permissible. Call it justice. Call it responsibility. Call it necessary pain. If you bomb a bridge and the people who used it lose their livelihoods, you should not be on your knees asking to be forgiven while the people who suffered fix the bridge out of their pockets, and you complain that your smuggling routes from Iran are being intercepted.The trick of asking for fear and for empathy at the same time can only work if we allow it to work. We have let it work for too long. The choice now is whether Lebanon will continue to absorb the private bets of armed actors or whether it will make a different bargain. The bargain we need is simple. You can be part of the political community. You can hold power. You cannot be both a state inside the state and a national savior. If you choose to act like an army without public authorization, you accept the costs along with the consequences, like an army that lost a war would.Hezbollah wants both fear and grace. That is a convenient posture for them and an unsustainable one for Lebanon. We can keep making their bill our bill. Or we can insist that those who decide for everyone else also carry the price. Sympathy does not have to be withheld from anybody, but forgiveness cannot be cheap. If we want resilience and a future for this country, the path is to care for victims, to insist on accountability, and to make sure that the people who decide wars do not get to decide the terms of the aftermath by fiat.And here is where many will jump in with the usual “but Israel!” deflection. Fine. Let’s actually look at Hezbollah’s track record there. The last two major wars were triggered by Nasrallah, acting on Iran’s timetable, not Lebanon’s. After 2006 he said, “if I had known, I wouldn’t have done it.” Well, this time he did know. He knew exactly what Israel would do, and he still went ahead. The militia he leads is no longer the disciplined force it once claimed to be. Years of fighting for Bashar al-Assad and participating in atrocities hollowed it out from the inside. That rot showed. They crumbled faster than the bargain-bin drones they bragged would “liberate Palestine.”So let’s be honest. Hezbollah’s only consistent talent is provoking Israeli brutality, not deterring it, and definitely not protecting Lebanon from it. You can see that in the surrender terms they accepted once it became obvious they had no way out. And now they are trying to wriggle out of those same commitments as Israel prepares another escalation, all because Hezbollah spent months refusing to do the very things it agreed to after its latest disastrous miscalculation.In the end, Lebanon cannot keep absorbing the fallout of one group’s unchecked impulses. A country this battered does not have the luxury of pretending that unilateral war-making is some kind of noble tradition. It is a burden. It is a death sentence for every family, every business, every generation trying to build a future here. And it is something imposed without our consent.Hezbollah wants to be feared when it is strong and pitied when it is cornered. It wants total freedom to act and total forgiveness when the consequences arrive. It wants to decide the war and outsource the suffering. That model has hollowed the country out. It has turned national life into a recurring cycle of crisis, paralysis and cleanup.Lebanon deserves better than a political physics where one actor supplies all the decisions and everyone else supplies all the damage control. Sympathy cannot be demanded. Legitimacy cannot be fabricated. Unity cannot grow in soil fertilized by coercion and car bombs.A normal country cannot exist as long as its fate is decided in opaque meetings between a militia leader and a foreign patron. If Hezbollah wants to be part of a national project, it must act like it. If it wants sympathy, it must stop manufacturing disasters that leave millions bleeding for choices they never made.Until then, Lebanon’s only real path forward is clarity. No more emotional blackmail. No more forced solidarity. No more pretending this cycle is sustainable. The people who keep choosing war cannot keep sending the bill to the people who are simply trying to live.And at some point we have to admit a basic truth that everyone knows but few will say out loud. Diplomacy and deals, as imperfect and corrupt and compromised as they often are, have still delivered more stability and protection for Lebanon than Hezbollah’s entire mythology of “resistance.” Negotiations stopped wars. Agreements opened borders. Diplomacy brought relief, investment and breathing room. Hezbollah’s gambles brought car bombs, funerals, evacuations and rubble.If we want to move forward, we have to stop pretending the opposite is true. No country can rebuild its future on a fantasy. It is time to deal with the world as it is, not as Hezbollah’s slogans insist it must be.Only then do we stand a chance of escaping this cycle and claiming a normal life again. Get full access to Gino's Blog at ginoraidy.substack.com/subscribe

When I sat down with Dean Fuleihan, the Lebanese American public servant whom Mayor elect Zohran Mamdani has chosen as his first Deputy Mayor, the conversation immediately felt personal. The first thing he did was thank me for pronouncing his last name the way it is said in Lebanon. He smiled and said, “You pronounced my name the way it is pronounced in Lebanon. It is Fuleihan.” It was a small moment, but one that set the tone for the rest of our talk. It reminded both of us how identity follows you quietly across continents.Dean grew up in Syracuse, surrounded by Lebanese students from the American University of Beirut, my alma mater. His memories of that time are full of political debate at the dinner table and an unshakable sense of community. “They were all over the political spectrum,” he recalled. “Even two people from the same religion could be completely opposed. But we would fight about politics and then have a beautiful meal together. Our cultural identity held us together.” For him, Lebanon was never distant. It shaped the way he saw the world, and it shaped the way he speaks about public service today.When I asked what message he would give young Arabs and Lebanese in America who want to serve but rarely see people like them in senior government roles, he pointed to the moment we are living in. “The Zohran Mamdani campaign personifies what is possible,” he said. He spoke with pride about the immigrant communities that saw themselves reflected in the campaign and the unprecedented support that poured in. It was clear that this victory meant something far deeper than electoral politics, helping him decide to join the administration of a 34 year old, at 74.Dean first met Zohran in the winter before the primary. The outcome was still uncertain, but their conversations were not about poll numbers. They were about governing and the responsibilities of public office. “He asked thoughtful questions and wanted to understand what he did not know,” Dean told me. “It was hard not to say I will help you in any way I can.” That relationship eventually led to Zohran asking him to serve as First Deputy Mayor, a role that carries tremendous operational and political responsibility in a city of more than eight and a half million people.The transition period has been intense. The city has more than three hundred thousand employees, and in reality closer to three hundred and seventy thousand when you include the health system and housing agencies. Dean described the work ahead as both enormous and urgent, and he insisted that the movement that helped elect Zohran must remain engaged.“The movement did not stop on Election Day. We need the same excitement and energy,” he said.They have already received fifty thousand résumés from New Yorkers who want to serve.Throughout the interview, Dean returned again and again to the question of affordability. It is the heart of the agenda, and also the measure by which this administration wants to be judged. I asked him what he hopes a New Yorker will say one year from now after watching this conversation again. He answered simply. “That something has changed in a practical way. That their life feels more affordable. That they feel hope.” He spoke about childcare, housing, free buses, and a tax system that treats people fairly. These are the issues he believes can transform daily life in the city.There are many people who say these promises cannot be fulfilled. Holidays are approaching and families will sit around tables where political debates are as unavoidable as the food. Dean had a message for the skeptics. “People say these things cannot be done. And then three months later, they are done.” He pointed to the example of universal pre kindergarten, which was once considered impossible but became reality because government chose to act. “What part of this agenda is wrong,” he asked.“Childcare. Housing. Free buses. Equity in taxation. The argument is always that you cannot afford it. We will show that you can.”And because we are Lebanese, food naturally became part of the conversation. Fresh bread, hummus, and tabbouleh arrived at the table. Dean laughed when I told him I learned to make kibbeh the way my town in Zgharta prepares it. He responded with pride and familiarity. “You have to make that for me. And I make tabbouleh every week,” he said. It was a small detail that I felt revealed a lot about him.As the interview came to a close, Dean reflected on service with a sense of responsibility that felt genuine.“These jobs are a privilege,” he said. “Our obligation is to deliver hope and make this city affordable so people can stay.”It was a fitting final line. It captured the connection between heritage, community, and the work of making government serve ordinary people, instead of the wealthiest few.With New York’s political landscape reshaping, Dean Fuleihan offers a clear view of the work ahead. And watch the full conversation below.If you enjoyed this piece, consider subscribing or leaving a comment. It helps sustain independent journalism and keeps these conversations going. Get full access to Gino's Blog at ginoraidy.substack.com/subscribe

I was asked recently what my politics are, and it unexpectedly made me pause.Like many of you, I assume my beliefs, hopes, and dreams are second nature. No need to restate them. No need to explain. It is obvious to my community what my politics are, right?But if I am honest, the journey that brought me here was messy, full of contradictions, heartbreak, and the occasional misplaced hope.Six years after the October 17 Revolution changed our lives forever, I have spent enough time reading, reflecting, and talking with people, both those who lived the Thawra and those who watched from afar, to start seeing our uprising with fresh eyes.One book, recommended by a friend, hit me like a ton of bricks: Vincent Bevins’ If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution.The book and the déjà vuIn Bevins’s telling, the 2010s were a decade of spectacular uprisings, from Cairo to Santiago to Hong Kong, that lit up the world and then fizzled out. His argument is brutally simple: movements that reject structure, leadership, and long-term strategy often win the streets but lose everything else.Sound familiar?I was disappointed that Lebanon’s uprising did not make it into the book, but I understood. Bevins’s expertise was Brazil and South America. Still, his pages felt like déjà vu. He was describing us: the speed of our mobilization, the brilliance of our improvisation, the moral energy that felt unstoppable.Back then, we celebrated being leaderless and horizontal. We wore it like armor. And honestly, in a country where one wrong speech can get you assassinated, just ask Lokman Slim or Mohamad Chatah, that armor made sense.But leadership is not just about one person standing in front of a crowd. It is about structure, about how people coordinate, make decisions, and protect themselves from chaos or co-option. That is the part we never built.1. Leaderless meant powerlessWe said we did not need leaders because everyone was the leader. That worked for the first few weeks. It made us uncrackable, unbribable, beautiful in our defiance. But when the tear gas cleared, there was no one with the mandate or mechanism to translate that energy into power.That is what Bevins calls “the missing revolution.”And it is exactly where Zohran Mamdani got it right.Mamdani’s campaign in New York was just as grassroots and just as viral as we were: TikToks, Reels, rallies, you name it. But underneath the spectacle was structure, data teams, neighborhood captains, volunteer coordinators.He showed that horizontal does not have to mean chaotic. You can keep power distributed while still being organized. We had fire. He had a furnace.2. We knew what we hated, not what we wantedWe were crystal clear about what we stood against: corruption, sectarianism, theft. But if you had asked ten of us what we wanted instead, you would have gotten eleven answers.Bevins calls that the “anti-power trap,” defining yourself by opposition instead of creation.Mamdani avoided that trap. He did not just say the system is broken. He ran on what to build: rent relief, public housing, climate justice, accountability. Every viral moment pointed to a policy, not just a posture.That is what we were missing. We had rage, but no roadmaps.3. The digital high and the organizational lowInstagram “Stories” had just launched, and my feed from the streets of Beirut became a sort of national bulletin board. The diaspora would tag me, I would repost, people would find each other through my stories, communities forming in real time. It was the most beautiful side of being horizontal, spontaneous connection, unfiltered solidarity.But there was a darker side. We mistook connection for coordination. The same digital platforms that made us powerful also made us scatter. Every rumor, every ego, every live stream pulled us in new directions.Zohran’s campaign went viral too, but his virality was a gateway, not a distraction. Every meme led to a meeting. Every post led to a signup sheet. That is the difference between a protest and a program.We performed revolution. He prepared to govern.4. The void always fills itselfWhen we left Martyrs’ Square, others filled the vacuum: the same warlords, the same clientelist networks, the same sectarian narratives. Power abhors a vacuum, and ours was wide open.Mamdani never left a vacuum. Every rally ended with a next step: phone banking, policy drafting, or block meetings. Every volunteer had a role. When opportunity came, they were ready to take it.We were not.We thought refusing to play their game would change the rules. It did not. It just meant they kept winning by default.5. Maybe failure is not the endBevins ends on a note of sober optimism: failure is not final, it is fertilizer. Every protest, even the ones that collapse, leaves behind people who have seen what power really looks like.Zohran’s victory did not come out of nowhere. It came from years of smaller losses, failed campaigns, half-empty meetings, quiet learning. The difference is that when the political window finally opened, he already had the machine ready to move.We had our window in 2019. We just did not have the machinery.The next time it opens, and it will, we cannot make the same mistake.So what now?If we burn again, and we might, we cannot just rely on rage and spontaneity.We need structure. We need strategy. We need the boring stuff: lists, spreadsheets, bylaws, budgets.Zohran’s story is not about America or Lebanon. It is about what happens when movements prepare for power before they get it. He shows that virality and discipline can coexist, that charisma means nothing without a calendar, and that democracy, at its best, is built like a campaign office, not a stage.And look, I know Lebanon is not New York City.Our obstacles are heavier, our risks deadlier, our rulers crueler. But it is also true that Lebanon is smaller. Our streets are denser, our networks tighter, and we do not need millions of dollars to get our message across.In a time when we are sandwiched between Iran and Israel’s geopolitical theater, we might not control the regional game, but we can control how we live inside it. We can organize locally, push for transparency, demand competence, and carve out small islands of sanity amid the chaos.Because improving our daily lives is political resistance.The street gives you a spark.Only organization gives you a future. Get full access to Gino's Blog at ginoraidy.substack.com/subscribe

I remember the day like it was yesterday. I had landed in New York City’s JFK just a few months before, after being forced to leave Lebanon after four illegal detentions, multiple assaults in the streets of Beirut and two outstanding military court summons. Israeli settlers were stealing Palestinian homes, and a bunch of people in Brooklyn decided to meet up near Grand Army Plaza to show solidarity with Palestinians and voice their disapproval at the state’s senators shamelessly funding and supporting ethnic cleansing.Back then, wasn’t like now. Being at those protests was risky. The Israeli chokehold on free speech in the US was still ironclad. You could be punished for being against indigenous people being kicked out of their grandparents’ home so a “Jacob” from Williamsburg could move in, and instead of paying taxes here, have our taxes bankroll his life built on the ruins of Palestinians. After two years of genocide still being committed by Israel in Gaza, most Americans now see the Israeli occupation for what it is. And that brings me to the reason of this post: Zohran Mamdani’s victory despite zionist billionaires throwing tens of millions of dollars to try to smear him as an antisemite for being for equal human rights for all.That day, Zohran spoke at that protest. I took a video that day of part of his address, as he had particularly captivated me. He had just been elected as a NY State Assemblyman for Queens and parts of Brooklyn. He left an impression. This is the video I took:Even back then, Zohran Mamdani always reminded people that antisemitism was a scourge that had no place in the movement for Palestinian liberation. If anything, Zohran is consistent, and it’s one of the many things I respect and admire about him. Since that day, we would stay in touch and Instagram via DMs, and I constantly told him he should run for mayor. In October, he replied “loading” and I flipped. It was his time. It was our time. Now, a year later, I woke up in Sunnyside in Queens, and ran to get the NY Post with its hilariously offensive cover announcing his win.In today’s podcast, I speak with my friend Russ Finkelstein, who was the person I went to that protest to with in 2021. After all, I’ve spent countless hours talking politics with him, arguing even, but after we spent weeks huffing and puffing up flights of stairs to knock on doors for Zohran, along with 999,998 other New Yorkers, there’s no one I’d rather unpack what this means, what we can learn and where we’re headed with a New York City with a leftist mayor, a progressive that refuses to throw immigrants, trans people, queer folks and women under the bus while trying to become Diet Republicans like so many racist, octogenarian Democratic leaders who not only refused to support their party’s nominee, but conspired against him in things that were reminiscent of the dark times before the US invaded Iraq, the mass hysteria and hatred towards Muslim and brown people that caused so many deaths in so many places around the world.Zohran, make us proud! And we are all supporting your administration. Get full access to Gino's Blog at ginoraidy.substack.com/subscribe

This is my endorsement for the Beirut Madinati coalition running in the 2025 Beirut Municipality elections this Sunday, May 18.Let me take you back to 2016. That was long before the Thawra and probably the first time many of you heard of me or the work I do. It was during the garbage crisis, when Lebanon became a global punchline. Rivers of trash flowed through our streets, forests, and actual rivers. The world saw it. We lived it.Out of that mess came Beirut Madinati. A group of young, progressive, non-sectarian Lebanese who refused to play the March 14 versus March 8 game. A game that served one purpose only: to distract from the fact that Hezbollah had taken full control of the state, while the rest of the sectarian parties lined up under its umbrella to loot the country and our bank accounts.Beirut Madinati shook things up. So much that all the traditional parties panicked. Even as Hezbollah was still busy assassinating some of their so-called rivals, all these parties magically found unity. They pulled together one sectarian, xenophobic, completely unqualified list and sold it to Beirut. The same list that left the people of Beirut to fend themselves after Hezbollah’s explosives stored at the Beirut Port decimated Beirut, with the municipality busy getting salaries for not doing anything.Here’s what they won’t say out loud: we got more votes than any single one of those parties. But because of our Syrian-occupation days, winner-takes-all municipal law, they managed to scrape through. They had to fuse into some Frankenstein political list just to block a group of independents who had nothing but ideas, transparency, and actual plans.Imagine being that scared of change. Now, imagine even after Hezbollah’s been neutralized, the sectarian parties salivating that they don’t need to share with them anymore, went back to the 2016 Power Rangers villain assembly, and joined them in one list, backed by the remnants of the Hezb and Assad regime and their cronies.A lot’s changed since 2016, and the same tired tricks shouldn’t work anymore. If you’re a Beirut voter, you already know what to do this Sunday. If you live in Beirut but can’t vote, show up and help out by volunteering on the ground. Make sure the sectarian list of has-beens and clueless puppets doesn’t get away with cheating or scamming voters. And if you’re in the diaspora and believe in what Beirut Madinati stands for, chip in and help fund the campaign. Every bit counts.The other lists have money, corrupt sectarian “media” like Corrupt Banker MTV and Hezbollah’s favorite toilet paper, Al Akhbar. We’ve just got each other. And honestly, that’s more than enough. We already beat their guy, Makhzoumi, a few months ago, despite the full-force lies and disinformation campaign from the Hezb-MTV alliance. We can do it again. We will do it again. Till we take Lebanon back from the thieves and war lords hiding behind hired pens and washed-up TV personalities. Get full access to Gino's Blog at ginoraidy.substack.com/subscribe

The saddest thing about the failed smear campaign against change MPs and independent media outlets like Megaphone and Daraj is how lazy it was. For the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to wrap my head around why the elites who enriched themselves before the Thawra chose to just copy-paste a right-wing conspiracy theory from the 2010s about George Soros. Then, it finally made sense, and in today’s episode, I’ll break it down with you.The Bankerjiyyeh’s Mindset Post-HezbollahThere’s one concept (I know how much Lebanese love this word) that is very apt to start things off with: the Mafia-Militia analogy. Its premise is that Lebanon, in the past few decades, has been ruled by a coalition between Hezbollah (the militia) and the Mafia (the corrupt politicians, bankers, and warlords), united by their hatred of anything that could threaten their ill-gotten gains and their domination of the Lebanese population they’ve been robbing for generations.Nasrallah’s last misguided intervention, dragging Lebanon into a full-on war with Israel that Hezbollah was hopelessly ill-prepared and ill-equipped for, neutralized the Militia part.The one thing I’d say here is that the militia thought it was an equal partner in the self-proclaimed “Axis of Resistance.” Meaning, it was one leg of a four-legged chair with the Iranian regime, the now-fallen Assad regime, and groups like the Houthis and Hamas. The October 8, 2023 war Nasrallah launched led to the painful realization by Hezbollah that they weren’t actually partners, but simply bodyguards. They were there to take a bullet for Khamenei, but the Islamic Revolution of Iran wasn’t coming to save them when they got themselves in trouble.It’s a difficult realization, tough to swallow, even though the rest of us could obviously tell. Now Hezbollah knows they weren’t really a partner. With Assad gone, Iran sitting with the US in Oman, and their entire Captagon empire crumbling along with their ability to smuggle Lebanese subsidized goods to fund their war machine in Syria, even their black-market illegal bank Qard El Hassan, are all gone now. Not even laundered Iranian cash via airplane is coming in anymore.Now, just like Iran’s regime turned out to be a fickle partner, so did the local Mafia in Lebanon. They couldn’t care less about Hezbollah’s decimation. All they saw was that they no longer needed to share the spoils with the subterranean Nasrallah. They no longer had to abide by the unspoken (but often spoken) omerta they had with Hezbollah.So the only obstacle left for the Mafia keeping their ill-gotten gains was a handful of our brave MPs and media outlets who don’t leave every interview with Mafia people carrying a wad of cash as a “tip.” The same group of people that pushed out Hezbollah’s PM choices and rustled up a loose coalition to get Lebanon Nawaf Salam as prime minister. That’s cause people like that, will not let the elites trying to keep their spoils and make us, the taxpayers, bail out the destruction they wrought while they remain untouched. Please.But why the Soros conspiracy?To understand this odd choice of smear, we need to understand why the reforms are actually happening. It’s because the Deputy United States Special Envoy to the Middle East, Morgan Ortagus, flies in whenever one of the Mafia tries to derail the reforms and gives them a little scolding. Like good little boys, they go down to Parliament and vote for reforms, with some extra protections too, thanks to our MPs’ coordinated pressure.It’s because, as in a recent interview I had about the banking secrecy amendment laws passed last week with Dr. Moe Farida, “ma byemsho gheir bel sermeyyeh.”But why does the US administration care about corruption in Lebanon so much? Why haven’t the Mafia been able to wiggle out of meaningful reform like they always did every single time Lebanon got money from foreign powers to keep the country going, while the Gebrans and Nabihs and Saads of the country milked it dry?The simple answer is Hezbollah finances. Hezbollah, like any terrorist group, cannot have bank accounts without allies like Riad Salameh in power, who helped them steal millions of our deposits via “Sayrafa” and by smuggling subsidized goods to fund their operations in Syria. Remember when some banks helped uncover Hezbollah money laundering, and Hezbollah blew up explosives in front of cooperating bank HQs?Cash Economy = Hezbollah Coming BackThe current, basically cash-only economy, means it’s just a matter of time before the group starts to replenish its ill-gotten funds to oppress Lebanese people first, and second, to put on a show every now and then by firing a few Soviet-era rockets and Temu-bought drones to maintain the lie to their shrinking base that they are actually “resisting” occupation.Understanding that the current situation of zero fiscal policy and an economy in the complete darkness of cash transactions means Hezbollah might be able to sustain itself , if not as the multinational private mercenary force it was for the past two decades, at least as an armed group able to destabilize and derail any meaningful change in Lebanon for the better.Now we get to why Soros. It’s not like he’s a household name in Lebanon, and in a country where most organizations, government agencies, and even media outlets need foreign donations and investments to stay afloat, it’s no surprise that even MTV, the spearhead of this lazy Mafia-bankerjiyyeh smear, also received a ton of money from Soros-funded initiatives.And unlike MTV and the Mafia mouthpieces, I brought receipts, instead of only insults and rants like toddlers in Assad’s nursery.The Lebanon Media Recovery Fund (2020–22) was a brilliant project to help support Lebanese media after the collapse and to support proper investigative journalism in Lebanon. A democracy without a free press that holds those in power accountable, at least in the court of public opinion, can never thrive. The total fund was USD 764,627 and wrapped up in 2022.The core funders were:The idea was that if TV stations were rewarded for doing good investigations, instead of the Thursday glazing sessions the Ghanem Brothers put on every week for whoever paid them the most, they might actually shift to real journalism. That means, instead of Marcel hosting wanted fugitives from the law like Ali Hassan Khalil because he might get a fancy watch out of it, they could, with some help and support, maybe do actual journalism for once. After all, why would anyone risk angering the Ghada Aoun-types of Mafia-Militia corrupt judges (thank goodness she’s gone) when they can easily fund their operations from the month before any election, when the Mafia-Militia shower TV stations with patronage money? I think that’s why Marcel is so butt-hurt he hosted them after their historic victory: they didn’t pay him to go on, like the rest normally do.Bki, bterte7. Say hi to your sugar daddy Riad Salameh next time you visit him in his jail cell.MTV, LBCI, and Al Jadeed were part of Pillar 5:This was the amount of money and support they were given:Now that that’s out of the way, and we’ve proven that Soros money made its way to MTV too, why would they do such a lazy, sloppy job when the one accusation they were hurling was one they were part of too? And it was never really an accusation in the first place, since anyone can submit a grant proposal and get one, all of this is publicly available information, not some scandalous thing MTV “uncovered.”That’s because, like we already discussed, it’s US pressure forcing reform now. And like we all know, being able to lobby the US for changes in policy is crucial. Given no one would believe freshly-minted MPs and news organizations caused the collapse, and not not the Patek Philippe-clad Mafia-Militia who were in power for decades, they needed to frame it as some ideological struggle between “globalists” and “extreme left” versus right-wing conservatives.This was such a sloppy attempt to dupe the Tr… Get full access to Gino's Blog at ginoraidy.substack.com/subscribe

I will be diving deeper into the smear campaigns and why they failed so spectacularly on Monday’s episode!In the meantime, Dr Mohamad Farida, from the Depositors Union, took a break from advocating for the amendment in ongoing parliamentary sessions, to give us all an update. Get full access to Gino's Blog at ginoraidy.substack.com/subscribe