Hassan at the Lebanese Bloggers Forum had this to say:
“Yet another play on the I Love Life Campaign is the I Heart Capitalism Campaign.
Not very funny for those who did not think that one aspect of the Cedar Revolution was a ‘Gucci Revolution’, or maybe just not very funny. Worth a look anyway”.
Well. That would be the whole point now, wouldn’t it?
There was a ‘Gucci Revolution’ aspect to the whole Cedar shebang, but I think it’s an oversimplification to claim that March 14ers are all middle to upper class and the opposition are all working class. To reduce these complex popular movements into a class issue obscures the ways in which class and sectarianism interact in Lebanon. Let’s not forget that the so-called cedar revolution had a large Sunni base, and that not all Sunnis are middle class (Akkar, anyone?), and the Lebanese Forces aren’t exactly Gucci people. Let’s also not forget that the opposition includes Aounists, a large number of which are of the Chrisitian middle class. The whole problem is that sectarianism makes class identification and class struggle impossible.
The “I Love Life” campaign is racist in that it implicitly claims that March 14 are “civilized” and adhere to a “culture of life” (I can still see the blood dripping from Ja’Ja’ and Jumblatt’s fangs – civilized my ass) in contradisctinction to the shi’a rabble, who apparently love death and have even created a whole culture of it. So.. good Arab, bad Arab, just like the Americans taught us. It serves the interest of the elite only by exacerbating sectarian tensions in the basest of ways and by indulging in the myth that “living” means being able to buy crap in downtown Beirut. How reminicent of post-9/11 America, when following the attacks on the two towers George Bush urged a terror-stricken but docile populace to prove their patriotism by going shopping. Because if they don’t, the terrorists will have won.
The "I Heart Capitalism" Campaign 
