Hezbollah is a Shiite Muslim political party and militant group based in Lebanon, where its extensive security apparatus, political organization, and social services network have fostered its reputation as “a state within a state.” Founded in the chaos of the fifteen-year Lebanese Civil War, the Shiite group is driven by its opposition to Israel and its resistance to Western influence in the Middle East.
Led since 1992 by its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. Hezbollah's paramilitary wing is the Jihad Council, and its political wing is the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc party in the Lebanese Parliament.
Hezbollah was established in the wake of the 1982 Lebanon War by Lebanese clerics who had studied in Najaf. It adopted the model set out by Ayatollah Khomeini after the Iranian Revolution in 1979, and the party's founders adopted "Hezbollah" as the name chosen by Khomeini. The organization was created with the support of 1,500 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps instructors, and aggregated a variety of Lebanese Shia groups into a unified organization to resist the Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon.
During the Lebanese Civil War, Hezbollah's 1985 manifesto listed its objectives as the expulsion of "the Americans, the French and their allies definitely from Lebanon, putting an end to any colonialist entity on our land". From 1985 to 2000, Hezbollah also participated in the 1985–2000 South Lebanon conflict against the South Lebanon Army (SLA) and Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and fought again with the IDF in the 2006 Lebanon War. During the 1990s, Hezbollah also organized volunteers to fight for the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Bosnian War.
Since 1990, Hezbollah has participated in Lebanese politics, in a process which is described as the Lebanonisation of Hezbollah, and it later participated in the government of Lebanon and joined political alliances. After the 2006–08 Lebanese protests and clashes, a national unity government was formed in 2008, with Hezbollah and its opposition allies obtaining 11 of 30 cabinet seats, enough to give them veto power. In August 2008, Lebanon's new cabinet unanimously approved a draft policy statement that recognizes Hezbollah's existence as an armed organization and guarantees its right to "liberate or recover occupied lands" (such as the Shebaa Farms). Hezbollah is part of Lebanon's March 8 Alliance, in opposition to the March 14 Alliance. It maintains strong support among Lebanese Shia Muslims, while Sunnis have disagreed with its agenda. Hezbollah also has support in some Christian areas of Lebanon.
Since 2012, Hezbollah involvement in the Syrian civil war has seen it join the Syrian government in its fight against the Syrian opposition. Between 2013 and 2015, the organisation deployed its militia in both Syria and Iraq to fight or train local militias to fight against the Islamic State.
From 2006, the group's military strength grew significantly, to the extent that its paramilitary wing became more powerful than the Lebanese Army. Hezbollah has been described as a "state within a state", and has grown into an organization with seats in the Lebanese government, a radio and a satellite TV station, social services and large-scale military deployment of fighters beyond Lebanon's borders.The group currently receives military training, weapons, and financial support from Iran and political support from Syria, although the sectarian nature of the Syrian war has damaged the group's legitimacy. In 2021, Nasrallah said the group had 100,000 fighters.
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I always return to those studies of how schizophrenic voices manifest in other parts of the world. It seems a little too "just-so" to be taken completely seriously but there is some evidence that in some places the "voices" can be less vicious, even benign or pleasant. But in America and the UK, the voices were all mean.
(I like to pretend it's the vengeful spirits of the victims of imperialism and expansion.)
Afaik it's legit. For folks who hear voices the voices are strongly influenced by culture. I think one of hte key differences was that cultures that had a tradition of helpful spirits or ancestors were more likely to experience helpful or positive voices, while the west, where people think hearing voices makes you dangerous and crazy, voices tend to be more violent and nasty. And there's the whole "Russian's are sending radio signals through my fillings thing, which afaik only verifiably happened a few times due to very specific atmospheric phenomena, so much people were hearing voices and not actual russian radio.
Afaik one of the theories on hearing voices is it's not an audio halucination per se, but rather the way your brain produces thoughts, usually the get flagged as coming from you, being part of your internal process, but for some people some thoughts get flagged as being from an external source and are perceived as being a voice talking to you. Apparently hearing voices at least once in a while isn't that uncommon, but mostly it's benign or people don't recognize what's happening so doesn't get reported.
It's got some studies backing it, so I suppose I can buy that it's an idea that's on to something. It just seemed to me like it was too uncomplicated an indictment of American society lol. I was waiting to find out it wasn't as direct as "American society creates minds perched atop a mountain of self doubt and assumptions of violence" but there you have it.