When Lord Robert Baden-Powell founded the scouting movement in 1910, he could not have imagined that his creation—meant to foster public service, friendship, and moral growth—would one day be hijacked to serve the cult of obedience and death. From Mussolini’s Italy to Hitler’s Germany, and from Baathist “vanguards” to the color-coded militias of our region, the noble idea of scouting has at times been corrupted into an instrument for manufacturing ideological soldiers instead of civic citizens.
Baden-Powell, the British officer who served in the Boer War, was certainly not present last Sunday at Beirut’s Camille Chamoun Sports City, where Hezbollah marked the 40th anniversary of its Mahdi Scouts in what it called a “Scout Festival.” In truth, it was no celebration of scouting—it was a political ritual glorifying submission and martyrdom.
Under the banner of “The Generation of the Sayyid,” more than 75,000 participants filled the stadium, celebrating both the founding of Hezbollah’s youth organization and the first anniversary of the death of its former Secretary-General, Hassan Nasrallah. The spectacle, choreographed with military precision, was designed to showcase a “generation vowed to martyrdom.” But what unfolded was not a scouting jamboree—it was a ceremony of allegiance. Thousands of children stood in identical uniforms, chanting for a fallen leader rather than a living nation.
Anyone who knows the history of Lebanon’s scouting movement understands how far this scene strayed from its original values. The true motto of the Lebanese Scout is simple: God, Country, and Family. Scouting was conceived as a school of citizenship and moral duty, not indoctrination. As someone who grew up in the Lebanese Scout Association, I know firsthand what it means to serve one’s nation with honor rather than to serve an ideology with blind devotion.
Our Scout oath is universal and noble: “In my honor, I promise to do my duty to God and my country, to help other people at all times, and to obey the Scout Law.”
The Scout Law teaches loyalty, service, honesty, and friendship. It urges us to see beauty in nature, brotherhood among people, and to live with a clean conscience and an open mind. What we witnessed in Beirut was the antithesis of that ideal—a replacement of the oath of honor with a pledge of political fealty, and of the national flag with sectarian banners.
This so-called “Generation of the Sayyid” is not a generation of Scouts or citizens, but rather one of potential child soldiers—raised to worship death instead of life, to see salvation in sacrifice rather than dignity. Humanity has seen this before: in Hitler Youth, Saddam’s Cubs, and now Hezbollah’s Mahdi Scouts. The result is always the same—children turned into ideological fuel.
Yet, despite the scale and spectacle, the truth is plain: these crowds no longer intimidate the Lebanese. The age of collective fear has passed. Hezbollah may fill stadiums and flood screens with images of uniformed youth, but it cannot conceal a harsher reality: that the very generations it claims to prepare for “resistance” are impoverished, displaced, and trapped in endless indoctrination.
Displays of force do not create legitimacy. A society that sanctifies death cannot build a nation anchored in life. An ideology that turns children into symbols of “martyrdom” does not inspire faith—it breeds fear. After decades of wars, the Lebanese no longer tremble before weapons or war drums. They have come to understand that the so-called “sacred arms” have liberated no land; they have only shackled a country.
The parade at Sports City was not an innocent show—it was a desperate attempt to prove relevance and control. But what it revealed was the opposite: paralysis, exhaustion, and a void of conviction. Crowds do not bestow legitimacy; even when tens of thousands gather for a pop concert by Amr Diab, no one mistakes that for political authority. A musical crowd at least celebrates life, while an ideological one parades toward death.
Mass rallies may create spectacle, but they cannot create a state. Those who raise their children to glorify weapons will never raise free citizens. Those who hoist the party’s flag above the nation’s are sowing division, not unity.
A true Scout believes that service to one’s country is the highest badge of honor, and that integrity lies in deeds, not slogans. What Hezbollah staged was the very opposite—an assassination of the Scout spirit and a perversion of its values. The party sought to borrow the moral aura of scouting to lend its project legitimacy, but morality cannot be borrowed.
The Lebanon we aspire to is one spacious enough for all its people—even for a fascist parade under the guise of a youth movement, or for those who believe aliens built Baalbek’s temples—so long as everything remains under the law and within the bounds of the republic. Lebanon is not a country of one voice, but of many; it is a homeland of freedom and responsibility.
Those who trust their people do not need to hide behind children in uniform. Those who believe in Lebanon raise their youth on liberty, not blind obedience; on service, not sacrifice; on honor, not submission.
No matter how high the anthems rise or how many banners wave, one truth endures: Lebanon is not a theater of obedience—it is a land of dignity. Hassan Nasrallah, with all his former stature, now belongs to the past. The so-called “generation of martyrs” lives in exile and disillusion, victims of a failed project and a state still waiting to be born.
This article originally appeared in Elaf
Makram Rabah is the managing editor at Now Lebanon and an Assistant Professor at the American University of Beirut, Department of History. His book Conflict on Mount Lebanon: The Druze, the Maronites and Collective Memory (Edinburgh University Press) covers collective identities and the Lebanese Civil War. He tweets at @makramrabah
