In this thesis I make use of interpretive methods within comparative political theory for a consideration of the idea of dignity (karama) in Syria’s revolution, began in 2011. The state and its ruling ideology is, of course, deeply contested in revolutions. But less attention has been paid to how this happens and to the kinds of new ideas—or established beliefs recovered and recast—which can rapidly emerge from the ideational periphery. The concept of karama acts, along with other adjacent and related ‘ideas in the wild’, to resist. It signifies important ‘belief challenges’ to the dominant order. I show the ways in which dignity is used and understood by recourse to the writing and the vernacular utterances of Syrian revolutionaries. I pursue two distinctive ideational exemplars from within the revolution: the progressive al-jumhuriya (The Republic) website; and, the armed fighters of the liwa al-tawhid (Unity Brigade). My research traces the ways in which divergent Syrian revolutionaries share important beliefs in common; ideas which cohere and are clarified, to an important extent, around the concept of karama—as it is used and acted upon in the revolution. I compare the broadly western and Arab conceptual trajectories for this idea, showing points of commonality and illuminate the particular instances and context for a distinctive dignity in resistance. I explore a historicised idea of and emergence of a deeply political and radical Fanonian dignity in resistance to oppression and tyranny. The centrality of dignity—as a core organising idea in Syrian ‘thought-practices’ of resistance—shows us how such ideas can take on a political bent and how powerful they are when harnessed and acted on in particular contexts. My analysis of revolutionary thinkers and fighters therefore sheds more light on the actions of people often neglected in state-centric and structuralist analyses.

This thesis analyses the problematic trajectory of the Syrian Revolution 2011, which was inspired by the Arab Spring. It first evaluates the causes of the revolution during Bashar al-Asad's era. An era was aimed to be a transition from authoritarianism to democracy and from suppression to fair openness. It second investigates the factors behind turning the Arab Spring into a Syrian winter, plunging the country into internal war and uncontrolled violence. The research is based on a qualitative approach that includes interviews as a source of information and analysis. Factors covered are the disintegration of Syrian society as the greatest challenge for the civil uprising and mass mobilization as well as the regime's coherent inner core accounting for the regime's violence and persistence. As violence breeds violence, the revolutionaries decided to react violently towards the regime brutality descending the country into an internal war. The formulation of the Free Syrian Army was formalized, but could not transform into a proper military formation, and so could not control the spread of violence in the country. The inclination towards Jihad was evident and common, and associated with resorting to violence because the revolutionaries are Muslims, and believed in Jihad as a way to defend themselves and their families. However, Jihad became more formalized with the arrival of global Jihadists to Syria, forming Jihadist groups and controlling parts of Syria. The stance of the international community was another big obstacle helped escalating, but not terminating the conflict. A conflict could develop into a devastating regional crisis changing the structure of the Middle East and changing the international politics of this vital region.

Nearly five years have passed since the political upheaval that swept through many Middle East and North African (MENA) countries began. Syria was caught in the grip of this revolutionary moment, one that drove the country to a civil war with no apparent way out. Analysts advanced a number of explanations for this event, which included the demographic profile of the younger generations and the economic difficulties they experienced, corruption of the government, the use of techniques from successful campaigns and the coordination of dissent through traditional/offline and new/online forms of contention. The employment of the new media by anti and pro-government groups has reached an unthinkable scale, to the point that the media have become instruments not limited to the purpose of informing, planning and coordinating the protest, but “performing” in the conflict, exacerbating the fight, instilling fear in the enemy and intimidating the adversary, while proselytising. By going beyond the dichotomy that frames the media as a deus ex machina of the uprising or, conversely, as a means of its expression, this thesis demonstrates how the new media did not simply play a crucial role at the time of the uprising and subsequent civil war, but an even more decisive role in the years that predated the uprising. The underlining argument of this research is that during the decade leading up to the uprising in Syria a (silent) form of mobilisation got underway as an effect of contextual factors (economic, institutional and social conditions), conditioned by people’s access to the new media. The new media became the mobilising structures of Syria’s pre-uprising social movement, the tools that changed people’s access to information and encouraged civic engagement in a period of structural friction and social ferment. The media are here contemplated as a microcosm, which affects and is affected by other different, hitherto unrelated (f)actors. Ultimately, in light of the growing popular mobilisations that are taking place around the globe and the leading role that the new media technologies are playing within these, the thesis offers perspectives of analysis on the role that the new media technologies are offering citizens to contest political authority as well as opposing social and economic inequalities worldwide.