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The Syrian Social Nationalist Party (in Arabic: al-Hizb al-Suri al-Qaumi al-Ijtimai, often referred to in French as Parti Populaire Syrien) is a nationalist political party that advocates the establishment of a Greater Syrian national state. The party's vision of Greater Syria includes present Syria, Lebanon, Cilicia, Palestine, Cyprus, Jordan, Kuwait and Iraq. SSNP was founded in 1932 by Antun Saada, who was executed in 1949 after a failed coup in Lebanon. It is currently active in Lebanon and Syria.
Saada believed that Syria's greatness had been tarnished through a series of invasions, especially the invasion of Arab Muslims shortly after the founding of Islam. Saada in his writings often dismissed the Arabic influence on Syria as being "of the East". To him, Syria was a "Western" nation, and its people "Syrians", never "Arabs".
The Party was a product of the widespread uncertainty of the 1930s, and its ideology drew heavily on the European fascists of the period, especially Benito Mussolini. Many young men who joined the Party were of the poor working classes from the hill country or of the urban slums looking for a deeper meaning to their lives and for their country.
The party draws its support mainly from Orthodox Christians, Druze and Shia Muslims. Although Saada never explicitly decried Arabs or Muslims as being a problem in Syria, his projection of history largely alienated the vast majority of Syria's inhabitants, who were mostly Sunni Muslim and Arab. Neither were many Maronites drawn to its message. The Party's message sounded to many like a revival of a kind of secular Byzantine Empire. Without support of either Maronites or Sunni Muslims, the position of the party as a serious contender for central government power was short-lived. Many of the followers of the party gravitated towards Arab nationalism, particularly that of the Ba'ath Party and the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser.
During the Lebanese Civil War SSNP militias fought alongside the nationalist and leftist forces, against the Falangists and Israeli invadors. In Syria SSNP was initially suppressed by the Ba'ath government, but during the presidency of Bashar al-Assad the party has had something of a revival. SSNP is now working in legal conditions in Syria.
SSNP also has exile branches in a variety of countries, including Australia, USA and several Western European countries.
References
- Irwin, Robert "An Arab Surrealist". The Nation, January 3, 2005, 23–24, 37–38.