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Syria has changed forever. The Syrian people have overthrown the al-Assad family's 53-year tyranny, which was supported by international and regional powers that were determined to maintain��the chains of pain and torture in prisons which crushed the bones of hundreds of thousands of Syrians, Palestinians, and Lebanese.

Syria now enters a period of uncertainty, producing a sense of collective anxiety amongst Syrians worried about the next few decades, remaining sceptical about the future and all that has occurred. But it has also produced an array of possibilities, destroying the status quo while maintaining structures of stability.��

To many in the world, this was merely a "conflict", a "clash" between "Syrians" of "different backgrounds". It was a "civil war".

To some others, it also embodied a "proxy war" between nations and peoples battling on Syrian grounds. To a specific subset of anti-imperialist intellectuals, it was an "external war against the Syrian people", launched by the United States, NATO, and other malicious actors "pulling the strings".

The world silenced the Syrian Revolution. The world erased the Syrian people. It subsequently downplayed the Assad regime’s psychopathic dungeons. Learning the lessons directly from the pro-Israel playbook, the world complicated the most uncomplicated sense of injustice and revival.��

But let’s decomplicate the deliberately complicated: What is the Assad regime? And what is the Great Syrian Revolution?

The Assad regime did not have "faults". It didn’t "commit mistakes". It didn’t "conduct strategic errors". It didn’t "not do enough for Palestine".

The Assad regime is a gang. It is a group of twisted, sadistic monsters. The Assad regime is a source which is not only pathological in of itself, it attempted to pathologise the Syrian people. It promoted psychopathy amongst its own henchmen and soldiers. It attempted to break the very moral system of Syrian society.��

Assad did not "not do enough for Palestine". He is the butcher of Yarmouk. His father was the butcher of the PLO. His family proclaims "love for Palestine", but despises the Palestinian people altogether.

The Baathists weren’t "Arab nationalists with a few sins"; they were outright traitors who sold out the Syrian and Palestinian people. In fact, they used the cause for national liberation to produce more creative, sadistic ways to crush the colonised. The Baathists weren’t a resistance band. They were occupiers in their own right, torturing, repressing, and violating the Lebanese people for decades. The Baathists are quite simply pathetic petite imperialists.��

What next for Syria post-Assad?

The Syrian Revolution is one of the most important and courageous social transformations of recent history. It takes the shape of a determined “superhero” of history, reviving itself following periods of social death and periodic episodes of agonising resilience.��

I say "transformation" and not "event" because what we witnessed was a revolutionary process and not simply a moment or instance. It is a climaxing transformation after cycles of disappointment, difficult pushing and building, torture, and hundreds of micro- and macro-lessons learned.��

The courage of the revolution is demonstrated not only by its capacity to challenge one of the most psychopathic and monstrous tyrants of our era but also by its capacity to let go of the idols of the opposition itself.

Hundreds of revolutionaries lost their lives protesting, challenging, and critiquing Islamist groups, stressing the need for pluralistic, democratic political alternatives.

Those same revolutionaries joined the ranks of or supported the rebels moving to liberate Assad’s torture dungeons and prisons. In other words, the Syrian people, as we speak, are crushing the same prisons that crushed them. The Syrians broke their chains when the entire world tried to rehabilitate the monster that tied them up. The revolution proved that no amount of coercion and psychopathic power can break a people.��

Those same revolutionaries today are simultaneously hopeful, worried, sceptical, and cautious. The courage of the Revolution revolves around its capacity to renew the lessons of war, institutions, governance, and mutual empathy.

The courage of Syria's revolution revolves around the thousands resisting the temptation of revenge. A courageous, bold, and hopeful Syrian public opinion is alive and breaking free today. It is the Great Syrian Revolution. It is the Great Syrian Revolution. It is the Great Syrian Revolution.

Karim Safieddine is a political writer based in Lebanon.

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