In this episode of The Dugout, we’re joined by Lebanese writer, researcher, and podcast host Elia Ayoub, founder of The Fire These Times. Together we unpack Lebanon’s sectarian political system, the long shadow of the Lebanese Civil War, and the global political frameworks that shape how people interpret struggles in the Middle East today.

Elia reflects on growing up in post–civil war Lebanon and how events like the 2006 Israeli invasion and the 2019 October uprising shaped his political thinking. The conversation explores how sectarian governance, regional geopolitics, and foreign intervention—from the United States to Iran—intersect with grassroots organizing and everyday survival.

We also dive into campism, a political tendency that reduces global politics to simplistic “sides,” often erasing local movements and struggles. Elia explains why this framework has distorted how many Western audiences understand conflicts in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine.

Throughout the conversation, we discuss memory, nostalgia, and political “hauntings” in post-conflict societies—drawing on thinkers like James Baldwin and the concept of hauntology to understand how nations shape identity through the stories they tell about the past.

Finally, we explore the possibilities of international solidarity, asking how Black radical traditions, abolitionist politics, and anti-imperialist movement

Check out Elia's work

https://eliaayoub.com/about-2/

https://thefirethesetimes.com/

https://thefirethesetimes.com/lebanonclass/

Chapters

00:43 What is a Young Elia like

01:17 what were some formative experiences for you?

02:16 What is writing like for you

03:39 What languages were the book you were reading in?

04:26 what did expanding your writing and The Fire These Times into a media ecosystem look like? James Baldwin influence

06:08 how has your relationship to Baldwin changed over the years?

07:47 Back ground on Lebanese political order

10:38 Perspective of Lebanese grassroots

11:45 a breakdown of Hauntology's and nostalgia

23:18 How do you see memory being used in different communities when self identifying with or beyond oppressors?

37:47 What of Baldwin's pieces does Elia have an affinity for?

40:59 What about campism limits solidarity and engagement in international struggles

53:51 how do you engage with the "Axis of Resistance" labeling?

1:00:08 Has grassroots formations begun challenging Hezbollah's monopoly on resistance

1:02:50 how should people imagine organized armed actors in local civil society?

1:05:39 How do you root you anti-imperialism and what other frameworks has that led you to?

1:12:51 what are some roles of the diaspora in local struggles. what ways to they show up

1:20:17 What is the state of ecological conditions Lebanon is facing? especially with Israel ecocidal tendencies

1:24:26 Context on southern Lebanon

1:30:18 What is the impart of the war on migrant workers?

1:33:10 Some ways migrant workers are organizing themselves

1:36:10 What are the characteristic of the ruling classes and authorities?

1:40:15 How does non sectarian thought show up in resistance movement spaces

1:43:31 Elia's masterclasses on Lebanon

Mentioned Media:

BOOKS 

📚Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism – Benedict Anderson

📚Interlopers of Empire: The Lebanese Diaspora in Colonial French West Africa – Andrew Arsan

📚Anarchist Modernity: Cooperatism and Japanese-Russian Intellectual Relations in Modern Japan – Sho Konishi

📚The Mnemonic Imagination: Remembering as Creative Practice – Emily Keightley & Michael Pickering

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NEWS ARTICLES

🔗The Holocaust, the Nakba and Reparative Memory

🔗Condemned to Be an Optimist: Celebrating James Baldwin

OTHER MEDIA MEDIA

Sleepless Nights (2012)