When Antun Saadeh looked upon the condition of the Syrian nation at the dawn of the twentieth century, he saw a tragic landscape—an exhausted people torn apart by fragmentation, subjugation, disintegration, and a collapse of morale. Yet Saadeh did not stop at diagnosing the disease. Instead, he launched a comprehensive renaissance project embodied in the founding of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party. This founding was not a mere reaction to an ailing reality; it was the proclamation of a new history—the birth of a new era—the beginning of a liberating march aimed at rebuilding the human being, society, and the state.

The Founding: A Transformative Popular Movement

The founding of the Party was not simply a political event—it was a sweeping popular movement that gathered the energies of youth into a single crucible, melting down disparate mentalities to forge a unified national consciousness. It was not a quiet movement; it was, in Saadeh’s words, “an offensive movement of struggle,” attacking with thought and action every manifestation of chaos, selfishness, sectarianism, feudalism, predatory capitalism, and hardened mentalities.

It was the launching of a civilizational project aimed at restoring the nation’s stolen personality and reclaiming its free will and sovereignty over its own destiny.