Balkanize

Balkanize (pronounced bawl-kuh-nahyz)

(1) To divide a country, political entity or other geographical territory into small, quarrelsome, ineffectual states (can be initial upper or lower case depending on context of use).

(2) To divide groups or other constructs into contending and usually ineffectual factions (should always be initial lower case).

Circa 1920: A compound word balkan + ize.  Balkan is (1) the descriptor of the geographical Balkan Peninsula and (2) a general term of description for all or some of the countries within and beyond that geographical space.  Word is of Turkic origin, related to the Turkish balkan (wooded mountain range).  The ize suffix is from the Middle English isen (ise, ize), from the Old French iser (ize) from the Latin izāre (ize), derived from the Ancient Greek ίζειν (ízein), the ultimate root being the primitive Indo-European verbal suffix idyé.  It was cognate with other verbal suffixes, the Gothic itjan, the Old High German izzen and the Old English ettan.  It’s often used in conjunction with the suffix ation to produce the suffix forming nouns denoting the act, process, or result of doing something, or of making something, ie a noun of action (eg balkanization).  It’s from the Middle English acioun & acion, from the Old French acion & ation, derived from the Latin ātiō, an alternative form of tiō (from whence tion).  The alternative spelling is balkanise, a mostly British form.

Geopolitics: The Balkans.

Balkanize was coined to describe the turmoil on the Balkan Peninsula circa 1878-1913 when the nominally European section of the Ottoman Empire fragmented into small, warring nations.  There’s no consensus among etymologists regarding the author, most preferring, on the basis of documentary evidence, the English writer James Louis Garvin (1868-1947) while other suggests earlier Germanic sources. The geographical concept of the Balkan Peninsula dates from 1808 which conveniently aligned with the European provinces of the Ottoman Empire although the first known use of the word appears in a fourteenth century Arab map which named the Haemus Mountains and Balkan and Ottoman diplomats used the word in the 1560s.  Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898; Chancellor of the German Empire 1871-1890), Chancellor of Germany during the early decades of the Second Reich, well understood the instability of the Balkans and the threat its squabbles posed to European civilization.  While he affected a complete uninterest in the place, once saying the Balkans wasn’t worth “…the bones of one German soldier” and claimed never to bother opening the diplomatic bag from Constantinople, the troubles of the place often absorbed much of his time.  Although the quote "…the great European War would come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans" attributed to him may be apocryphal, he may have predicted the origins of World War I (1914-1918), many sources documenting his prophecy “…it will start in the east” although, much of what he wrote in his memoirs may be retrospective foresight.  Some though recorded their thoughts on the Balkans when memory was fresh.  While working at the UK Foreign Office in 1915, the future politician Duff Cooper (1890–1954) was dealing with the seemingly intractable disputes between Serbia and Bulgaria while managing the effects on Macedonia and Roumania (sic),  He noted in his diary: "If only all those damned little states could be persuaded to pull together."  In the hundred-odd years since, that must have been a sentiment felt by many foreign ministers.  

Geography: The Balkan Peninsula.

To geographers, the Balkans is the peninsula south of Eastern Europe, surrounded by the Adriatic, the Ionian, the Aegean and the Black Sea; to the east lies Asia Minor.  Although there's little dispute among geographers, there have been many disputes about which states should be thought of as "Balkan".  Scholars have their reasons for their particular construct of what makes a geopolitical entity characteristically "Balkan" while others have their own agenda.  At the moment, the closest to a consensus is that eleven nations constitute (politically) the Balkans: (1) Albania, (2) Bosnia and Herzegovina, (3) Bulgaria, (4) Croatia, (5) Kosovo, (6) Moldova, (7) Montenegro, (8) North Macedonia, (9) Romania, (10) Serbia & (11) Slovenia.  It’s because of the historic construct of Greece as a cradle of Western civilization that, despite the geography, it’s not considered Balkan.  A different reservation is applied to the small portion of Türkiye (formerly Turkey) that lies northwest of the Sea of Marmara; because most of the Turkish land-mass lies in Asia-Minor, it’s thought part of West Asia although historically, when it constituted the core of the Old Ottoman Empire, it wasn’t unusual for it to be spoken of as “European”, Nicholas I’s (1796–1855; Tsar of Russia 1825-1855) the memorable phrase describing Turkey as the “sick man of Europe” ever since recycled when criticizing whichever European country was most obviously in economic decline.  In one form or another, Türkiye's application for membership of the EU has languished in various in-trays since 1959 (it was then seeking associate membership of the EEC (European Economic Community)) so the moment of it being thought European may have passed; even Ankara seems to have lost hope.

Lindsay Lohan on the cover of the Croatian edition of Cosmopolitan, May 2006.  Hearst also publishes a Serbian edition.

For centuries, wars, conquest and population movements have meant cross-cutting cleavages have beset the Balkan Peninsula, the bloody break-up in 1992 of the former Yugoslavia (formed at the end of World War II (1939-1945)) the most recent major event and some Balkan states are also considered "Slavic states" as they are typically defined as Slavic-speaking communities (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia), something which influences their relations with nations to the east.  The other regional phrase of note is “Western Balkans”, used to refer to the countries on the western edge, along the Adriatic coast (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia).  The ripples of the convulsions of the last round of balkanization, triggered by the wars of 1991-1995 which followed the breakup of Yugoslavia, may have played out with the constructs of North Macedonia, Kosovo and Montenegro now formalized (although Kosovo remains a work in political progress).  Although there remains the hope the gradual integration of the Balkan states into the EU may impose a permanent peace, the history of the region does suggest it’s one of those places best managed by competing spheres of influence which can administer rolling truces punctuated by occasional, small ethnic wars to effect minor adjustments to borders.  One hopeful sign however is that whatever the antagonistic bellicosity of Balkan politicians, the countries do tend to vote for each other in the Eurovision Song Contest.

Weimar

Weimar (pronounced vahy-mahr, wahy-mahr, veye-mahr or weye-mahr)

(1) A city in Thuringia, in central Germany, the scene (in 1919) of the adoption of the constitution of the German state which came (retrospectively) to be known as the Weimar Republic.

(2) A German surname (of habitational origin).

(3) As Weimar Republic, The sovereign German republic (1918-1933), successor state to the German Empire (1871-1918 and now sometimes referred to as the “Second Reich”) and predecessor to the Nazi regime (the “Third Reich”, 1933-1945).

Pre 1100: The construct was the Old High German wīh (holy; sacred) + meri (sea; lake; pond; standing water, swamp).  The name can therefore be analysed as something like “holy pond” or “sacred lake” but what religious significance this had or which aquatic feature was involved is not known.  A settlement in the area of what is now Weimar has existed since at least the early Middle Ages and there is a document dated 999 which makes reference to the town as Wimaresburg but how long this, or some related form had be in use is unknown.  Over time, the changes presumably reflected as desire for convenience and simplification (not an imperative always noted in evolution of the German language) and during the early centuries of the second millennium the place seems to have been known as Wimares, Wimari & Wimar before finally becoming Weimar.  In a manner not unusual in the Holy Roman Empire (800-1806), it was the seat of the County of Weimar, one of the administrative and commercial centres of Thuringia but in 1062 merged with the County of Orlamünde to form Weimar-Orlamünde, which existed until 1346 when the Thuringian Counts' War (a squabble between several local barons) erupted.  In the settlement which followed, Weimar was taken by the Wettin clan as an agreed fief and over time developed into a major city.  Weimar is a proper noun, Weimarization & Weimarize are nouns and Weimarian is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is Weimars.

One native to or an inhabitant of Weimar is a Weimarer (strong, genitive Weimarers, plural Weimarer, feminine Weimarerin).  The adjective Weimarian (of or relating to the Weimar period (1918-1933) in German can be used in any context but is most often applied to the art & culture associated with the era rather than politics or economics.  The comparative is “more Weimarian”, the superlative “most Weimarian”).  The noun Weimarization (a state of economic crisis leading to political upheaval and extremism) is used exclusively to describe the political and financial turmoil of the Weimar years.  The verb Weimarize (to cause to undergo Weimarization) is the companion term and is applied in much the same was as a word like “Balkanize” as a convenient word which encapsulates much in a way no other can.  The Weimaraner is a breed of dog, bred originally in the region as a hunting dog, the construct being Weimar + the German suffix -aner (denoting “of this place”).

In a constitutional sense, the Weimar Republic came into existence on 11 August 1919 when the national assembly of the German state met in the city to adopt the new Weimar Constitution.  Despite that, many historians use the label to cover the whole period between abdication on 9 November 1918 by Wilhelm II (1859 1941; German emperor (Kaiser) & King of Prussia 1888-1918) and the Nazis taking office on 30 January 1933.  The constitution created what structurally was a fairly conventional federal republic (known officially as the Deutsches Reich (German Reich)), the constituent parts of which were the historic Länder (analogous with the states in systems like the US or Australia though the details of the power sharing differed), each with their own governments, assemblies and constitutions.  Historians regards the inherent weakness of the structure as one of the factors which contributed to the political instability, economic turmoil and social unrest for which the era is remembered but the external forces are thought to have been a greater influence, notably the harsh terms imposed by the Treaty of Versailles (1919) and the extraordinary level of war reparations, the latter particularly associated with the hyper-inflation of 1923.  However, it was a time of unusual social & political freedom and there was an outpouring of innovative cultural creativity.  One thing which tends to be obscured by what came later was that by 1928 the system had been stabilized and the economy was stable.  In the last election prior to the Wall Street Crash (1929), the Nazi vote has slumped to 3% and the party was an outlier with few prospects and it was only the depression of the early 1930s which doomed Weimar.

Lindsay Lohan in court, Los Angeles, 2011.

Actually, rather than the pleasant city in Thuringia which lent the constitution its name, it was Berlin, the national and Prussian capital which came most to be associated with the artistic and sexual experimentation of the republic.  Although most of went on in the place was little different than in other conservative German cities it was the small but highly visible numbers of those enjoying the excesses which attracted attention.  In his novel Down There on a Visit (1962) Christopher Isherwood (1904–1986) wrote of the sort of warning respectable folk would in the 1920s offer to anyone who seemed to need the advice:

“Christopher - in the whole of Thousand Nights and One Night, in the most shameless rituals of the Tantra, in the carvings on the Black Pagoda, in the Japanese brothel-pictures, in the vilest perversions of the oriental mind, you couldn’t find anything more nauseating than what goes on there, quite openly, every day. That city is doomed, more surely than Sodom ever was."  And then and there I made a decision - one that was to have a very important effect on the rest of my life. I decided that, no matter how, I would get to Berlin just as soon as ever I could and that I would stay there a long, long time.

Weimar art: Der Künstler mit zwei erhängten Frauen (The Artist with Two Hanged Women), watercolour and graphite on paper by Rudolf Schlichter (1890-1955).   

Isherwood left London by the afternoon train for Berlin on 14 March 1929, taking a room next to the Hirschfeld Institute for Sexual Science from which he explored the city’s “decadence and depravity” enjoying just about every minute and by his own account every gay bar and club, of which there were many.  That niche was only one of many to which the Berlin of Weimer catered, all fetishes seemingly there from morphine, cocaine and opium houses to a club at which membership was restricted to a “coven of coprophagists [who] gorged a prostitute on chocolate, gave her a laxative and settled down to a feast.”  Actually, at the time, there was plenty of depravity among the Nazis, however much the public platform of the party might stress traditional values and they were as condemnatory as the Pope of such as communists, homosexuals and Freemasons (The Roman Catholic Church among the institutions Hitler admired along with the British Empire and comrade Stalin (and Stalin really was a construct)).  Indeed, in his writings and the recollections of his contemporaries about his discussions, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) didn’t much dwell on moral matters but he would spend much effort condemning those aspects of German culture he believed the Weimar generation were corrupting including “modernist architecture, Dadaist art, Jewish psychoanalysis, experimental theatre, short shirts, lipstick, bobbed hair, dances like the foxtrot and jazz” (the last of which he derided as “a degenerate negroid sound”).

Weimar art: Sonnenfinsternis (Eclipse of the Sun (1926)), oil on canvas by George Grosz (1893-1959).  Weimar was not untouched by surrealism.

The lurid tales of Weimar Berlin from the diaries of Christopher Isherwood et al now entertain rather than shock as once they would have managed but the expressionist art which flourished at the time remains striking.  A stridently experimental fork of the European avant-garde, the Weimar artists chose to ignore traditional aesthetic conventions and according to some critics the painters were fascinated by ugliness, the composers by atonal dissonance.  They were also artists who were predominately urban and focused upon the city, its decadence and corrosive influence upon the individual.  The Weimar period was the time also when the phrase magischer Realismus (magic realism) was coined, more accurately to describe what had come to be known as the Neue Sachlichkeit (new objectivity).  Magic realism is now thought of as a literary genre in which fantastical elements are interpolated into life-like depictions of the world but the first use was in 1925 by German art historian Franz Roh (1890–1965) who observed many artists in the Weimar Republic were rejecting (or at least ignoring) the idealistic style (fashionable before World War I (1914-1918) and which had combined naturalistic depiction with an amplification of beauty and virtue), in favor of something recognizably realistic yet blended with uncanny elements.  Roh’s understanding of magic realism was at least partially an acknowledgement of technology: the influence of photography and moving pictures (film).  Then as now, there was debate about whether there was some point at which realism stopped and surrealism began but the distinction was that magic realism was a distortion of the actual material world for some political or other didactic purpose whereas surrealism explored the abstractions which lurked in the subconscious mind. 

In the Weimar style: The Rt Hon Theresa May MP (2023), a portrait of (Lady May, b 1956; UK prime-minister 2016-2019) by Saied Dai (b 1958).

Painted by Tehran-born Saied Dai, it will hang in  Portcullis House, Parliament's office complex where many MPs have their offices and not since Graham Sutherland’s (1903–1980) portrait of Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) was unveiled in 1954 has a painting of one of the country’s prime-ministers attracted so much interest, the reception of such works not usually much more than perfunctory.  Sutherland was commissioned (as second choice; Sir Herbert Gunn's (1893–1964) fee deemed too high) by the ad hoc “Churchill Joint Houses of Parliament Gift Committee” to paint a portrait to mark the prime-minister’s eightieth birthday and on 30 November 1954, the members of the Commons & the Lords assembled in Westminster Hall to mark the occasion.  Paid for by parliamentary subscription (the idea of paying for such a thing from their own pockets would appal today’s politicians), it was intended the work would remain with Churchill until his death after which it would be gifted to the state to hang in the Palace of Westminster.

Winston Churchill (1954) by Graham Sutherland.

Things didn’t work out that way.  Churchill, not anyway much enjoying the aging process loathed the painting and felt betrayed by the artist, the preliminary sketches he’d been shown hinting at something rather different.  Initially, he sulked, first saying he wouldn’t attend the event, then that he’d turn up only if the painting wasn’t there but his moods often softened with a little coercion and he agreed to make a short speech of thanks at the unveiling, his most memorable lines being: “The portrait is a remarkable example of modern art. It certainly combines force and candour.”  It wasn’t hard to read between the lines and when delivered to Churchill’s country house, the painting was left in a storeroom, never unwrapped and never again to be seen, Lady Churchill (Clementine Churchill (Baroness Spencer-Churchill; 1885–1977) in 1956 incinerating it in what was described as “a huge bonfire”.  That she'd executed one of history’s most practical examples of art criticism wasn't revealed until 1979.  Curiously, when first she saw it in 1954 she admired the work, Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) who was with her at the time noting she “liked the portrait very much” and was much “moved and full of praise for it.”  Her view soon changed.

The better-received May portrait was commissioned this time by the Speaker's Advisory Committee on Works of Art at a cost of Stg£28,000 (in adjusted terms somewhat less than the 1,000 guineas paid in 1954; this time all from the tax payer) and Mrs May (she doesn’t use the title she gained in 2020 upon her husband being knighted (for “political service”) in Boris Johnson’s (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022) remarkable (and belated) Dissolution Honours List) was reported as saying she thought the portrait a “huge honour”.  When interviewed, the artist said his “…aim was to produce not just a convincing physical likeness, but also a psychological characterization, both individual and yet archetypal - imbued with symbolism and atmosphere.  A good painting needs to be a revelation and also paradoxically, an enigma. It should possess an indefinable quality - in short, a mystery.”

A work of careful composition, critics have found in it influences from the Renaissance and mannerism but it’s most obviously in the spirit of the German expressionists identified with the Weimar Republic and the addition of a convallaria majalis (the "lily of the valley" which flowers in May) was the sort of touch they would have admired.  Interestingly, Mr Dai expressed relief he’d not been asked to render Mr Johnson on canvas which is understandable because while an artist could permit their interpretative imagination free reign and produce something memorable, Mr Johnson over the decades has been a series of living, breathing caricatures and it would be challenge for anyone to capture his “psychological characterization”.  The Weimaresque May in oil on canvas works so well because it’s so at variance with the one-dimensional image of the subject which has so long been in the public mind.  Whether it will change the perception of Mrs May in the minds of many isn’t known but critics have mostly admired the work and views of her premiership do seem to have been revised in the light of the rare displays of ineptitude which have marked the time in office of her three successors.

After Weimar: Der Bannerträger (The Standard Bearer (circa 1936)) oil on plywood by Hubert Lanzinger (1880-1950).  The post card with the inscription Ob im Glück oder Unglück, ob in der Freiheit oder im Gefängnis, ich bin meiner Fahne, die heute des Deutschen Reiches Staatsflagge ist, treu geblieben (Whether in good fortune or misfortune, whether in freedom or in prison, I have remained loyal to my flag, which is now the state flag of the German Reich) was issued in 1939, one of many such uses of the image which depicts Hitler as a knight in shining armor on horseback, bearing a Swastika flag.  As he did whenever a  postage stamp with his image was sold, the Führer received a tiny fee as a royalty; multiplied by millions, he gleaned quite a income from his pictures.  In one of the many examples of the fakery which underpinned Nazism (and fascism in general), Hitler was “terrible on horseback".

Der Bannerträger was an example of the type of art which proliferated in both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, works intended to enforce the personality cult around Hitler and comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) and reinforce the messaging of both regimes.  Hitler, although he dutifully acknowledged them when they were presented, really did regard them as a kind of kitsch and although he understood their utility as propaganda pieces, they aroused in him little interest.  What he really liked in a painting was beauty as he defined it and in this his differentiation was something like his views on architecture where the standards imposed on the “functional” varied from his expectations of the “representational”.  Hitler would admire modern architecture rendered in steel & glass if it was being used for a factory or warehouse; there it was a matter of efficiency and improving working conditions but for the public buildings of the Reich, he insisted on classical motifs in granite.  In painting, he distinguished between what was essentially “advertising” and “real” art which the expressionism of the Weimar era certainly was not; the “…sky is not green, dogs are not blue and anyone who paints them as such has a sick mind” was his summary of thought on the Weimar art movement.  His preference was for (1) the Neoclassical which drew inspiration from the Greek and Roman art of Antiquity and his fondness extended not only to the voluptuous female nudes historians like to mention but also to the idealized, heroic figures representing nobility and heroism; with these he identified, (2) realistic landscapes, particularly those of the German countryside at its most lovely, (3) German Academic Realism which produced intricately detailed realistic representations of subjects, (4) depictions from Norse mythology which created a link between the legends and the idealized vision of the Nazi project and (5), traditional portraiture, if realistic and flattering (certainly demanded of the many painted of him).

Women in Weimer art: Margot (1924), oil on canvas by Rudolf Schlichter (1890-1955) (left), Porträt der Tänzerin Anita Berber (Portrait of the Dancer Anita Berber (1925)), oil and tempera on plywood by Otto Dix (1891–1969) (centre) and Bean Ingram (1928), oil on canvas by Herbert Gurschner (1901-1975) (right). 

Books of which the Nazis didn’t approve could be burned and the proscribed music not played but the practical public servants in the finance ministry knew much of the Entartete Kunst (degenerate art) removed from German (and later Austrian) galleries was highly sought by collectors in other countries and valuable foreign exchange was obtained from these sales (some of which in the post-war years proved controversial because of the provenance of some pieces sold then and later; they turned out to have been “obtained” from occupied territories or Jews).  Hitler despised Dadaism, Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism and expected others in the Reich to share his view but an exhibition of Entartete Kunst in Munich in 1937 proved an embarrassing one-off for the regime because people from around the country travelled to see it and it was the most attended art show of the Third Reich.  It was Weimar’s revenge.

Hezbollah

Hezbollah (pronounced hez-buh-lah or khes-bah-lah (Arabic))

A Shiʿite Muslim political and military organization (though genuinely with cross-denomination support), based in Lebanon but involved also in various regional operations.

1985: From the Persian hezbollah and the Arabic حِزْبُ اللّٰه‎ (ḥizbu llāh) (literally "Party of God"), the alternative spellings being Hizbullah, Hizballah & Hizb Allah, the construct being hezb (hizb) (party) + Allah (God); an adherent is styled a Hezbollahi although in Western commentaries that term seems to be applied more loosely.  Hezbollah is a proper noun.  Hezbollahzation & Hezbollahization are non-standard nouns used only in political science although, like balkanize etc, if use spreads they may enter general use.

The Hezbollah

Flag of the Hezbollah (right), the public display of which is banned in some jurisdictions where both the organization's political & military wings are listed as "terrorist organizations".  The national flag of Mozambique (left) also includes a depiction of a Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle although the Africans fixed a bayonet to the barrel which was a nice touch.  Mozambique gained independence from Portugal in 1975 although the flag wasn’t officially adopted until 1983 as a modified version of what was essentially the battle flag of the Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (FRELIMO, the Mozambique Liberation Front, the Marxist (later styled “democratic socialist”) resistance movement which fought a war of liberation (1964-1974) against the Portuguese colonial forces).

Although the Hezbollah began to coalesce in 1982-1983 (in the wake of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon), it wasn’t until 1985 it assumed the familiar structural arrangement with both military and political wings.  Unlike many organizations with similar pasts, although the personnel structures don't (wholly) overlap, the Hezbollah has never made any attempt to suggest there is any functional or philosophical separation between their political & military wings.  Despite that, during periods when regional tensions are more subdued, they do receive invitations usually restricted to the respectable and a Hezbollah delegation attended the coronation of Pope Benedict XVI (1927–2022; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus 2013-2022).

Like the Hezbollah, Hamas, a militant Palestinian resistance movement also operates as an apparatus with military, political and administrative divisions but the distinctions are less defined than those of the Lebanese operation and the name of Hamas comes from a similar linguistic tradition.  Formed in 1987 after the outbreak of the First Intifada against the Israeli occupation, its roots lie in Muslim Brotherhood so, unlike the Hezbollah, it’s thus a Sunni group although the historical and theological differences haven’t prevented the two cooperating when the circumstances have appeared compelling.  The word Hamas is an acronym of the Arabic phrase حركة المقاومة الإسلامية (Ḥarakah al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah) (Islamic Resistance Movement), used originally as the initializsm HMS.  In 1988, when the The ميثاق حركة المقاومة الإسلامية حماس (Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement and better known in the West as the “Hamas Covenant” or “Hamas Charter”) was published, this was glossed by the adoption of the Arabic word (حماس) (hamās) (strength, zeal, bravery).

The very existence of the Hezbollah disturbs some but certainly not the structural-functionalists who note that for an institution to continue to exist, the niche it inhabits must remain.  Those whose fastidiousness in this & that lead them to suggest some alternative to Hezbollah would be preferable seem never to go into details and the reluctance is understandable.  There are many countries in which the substitution of one political party for another can be modelled and the implications pondered but it's scarcely possible to imagine Lebanese politics without the Hezbollah.  As far as can be foreseen, it seems something permanent and Lebanon has for decades been a troubled place, badly served by its elite; it is not going to become a liberal democratic state in the Nordic mode.  Just as the yakuza (the Japan-based transnational organized crime syndicates and usually in katakana as ヤクザ) deploy rapidly in the aftermath of disasters like the Kobe earthquake (1995) and the Fukushima “incident” (2011) to provide affected populations with food, shelter and medical aid, it was the Hezbollah’s well-resourced (compared with the Lebanese state) social welfare infrastructure which was mobilized to provide the first response after the explosion in the Port of Beirut (2020).

The Beirut Port explosion, 20 August 2020, viewed from the sea, showing the mushroom cloud and effect of the blast wave.  It was one of the most powerful non-nuclear, man-made explosions ever recorded.

Such comparisons are intriguing because the yakuza are an integral part of the Japanese nuclear industry and much money was paid to them by TEPCO (the Tokyo Electric Power Company which ran the Fukushima plant) to keep secret the existence of cracks in vital parts of the machinery.  Although much of the world seems to think the meltdown (TEPCO and the Japanese government preferred “incident”, a word with a long cultural tradition until the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) called a spade a spade) was something which “happened in 2011”, it’s an ongoing event and will be for the next 40-50 years because unless TEPCO continues to pump water into the “hot” reactor core, the meltdown will resume.  That water has to go somewhere and for those 40-50 years the plan is to continue to pump it into the Pacific Ocean; there is no immediate alternative.  The pumping project will likely demand increasing yakuza involvement because they are willing lucratively to be involved in projects others prefer to avoid.  Some allege the invaluable role fulfilled by the Hezbollah in responding to the explosion at the Port of Beirut in August 2020 has a similar quality of circularity because the triggering of some 2¾ tonnes of ammonium nitrate (an explosive equivalent in excess of 1 kiloton of TNT (similar to some small, tactical nuclear weapons)) because a Hezbollah weapons cache was held in the same facility.  No evidence has been produced to support that and most analysts believe the blast was the result of an enormous quantity of explosive being stored in a low security environment, welding work on the day said to have “lit the fuse”.  However, whether all will ever be known about the matter is unclear because the Hezbollah (and others with their own reasons) have managed to ensure investigations have been curtailed.

Lindsay Lohan's Instagram post of photographs taken while on holiday in Lebanon, June 2022. 

Hezbollah has been the name of various Islamic groups in the twentieth century, the first known reference in English being from 1960, describing an Indonesian guerilla battalion of 1945 that appears to have been either an off-shoot of or successor to Laskar Hizbullah, formed by the Japanese to give military training to young Muslims they had recruited to their cause (an aspect of which was the training to become a kamikaze (ie suicide bomber)).  Laskar Hizbullah was ostensibly national-wide but, unlike the Lebanese namesake, had little effective central organization and, given the circumstances of 1945, didn’t enjoy the ongoing support from Tokyo the Hezbollah has had from the ayatollahs in Tehran.  It was militarily ineffective but its idea (if not the actual structures) carried over to post-war anti-colonial forces and (debatably) the communist movement which in the mid-1960s the Indonesian government suppressed, the death-toll of that claimed to be close to half-a-million.