The problem is not that new people joined the cause, because no movement that intends to endure can afford to reject new entrants, nor can it survive if it mistakes longevity for legitimacy and begins to feed on its own past rather than renewing itself through those who arrive with sincerity, urgency, and a willingness to learn.

The problem, rather, is that many people now arrive through a structure that does not distinguish between encountering a cause and being formed by it, and in doing so produces a kind of premature authority in which certainty appears before grounding, and speech emerges before the discipline that is meant to govern it.

This is not simply a behavioural shift, nor is it reducible to individual intention, because what has changed is the architecture through which political consciousness is now produced, increasingly mediated through timelines, short-form posts, viral clips, and algorithmic circulation that fragment complex struggles into consumable sequences, where even resistance itself is often reduced to quotable fragments, stripped of their context and consequence, and recirculated as aesthetic markers of conviction.

Phrases about martyrdom, sacrifice, defiance, and victory are lifted, repeated, and stylised until they begin to function less as expressions of lived struggle and more as poetic embellishments of it, as though the language of resistance could be worn, displayed, and reproduced without the discipline, cost, and formation that originally gave it meaning.

Entire struggles that once required years of reading, observation, contradiction, and lived awareness are now encountered in fragments, absorbed rapidly, and reproduced as though exposure alone were sufficient to justify conviction, until the very distinction between recognition and understanding begins to collapse. But encountering a cause is not the same as being shaped by it, and the distance between those two states is precisely where responsibility, restraint, and seriousness are meant to take root.

How Resistance Was Actually Formed

To understand what has been lost, one must return, however briefly, to how resistance has historically taken shape, not as a romanticised past, but as a corrective to the illusion that conviction can be acquired instantly.

The Palestinian struggle did not emerge as a language before it became a reality, but as a lived condition of dispossession, exile, fragmentation, and return, within which movements such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Hamas developed not through rhetorical assertion but through ideological formation, organisational discipline, and prolonged confrontation, in which language was inseparable from consequence, and every word carried a weight shaped by sacrifice rather than performance.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah did not appear as a ready-made force, but was formed across years of occupation, clerical guidance, social embedding, military training, and communal responsibility, until resistance became not merely an act but a structure, and not merely a reaction but a sustained mode of existence that required intellectual coherence as much as it required operational capability.

In the Islamic Republic of Iran, what many, including myself, have always described as a “culture of resistance” was neither cultural in the superficial sense nor spontaneous in its emergence. It was forged through revolution, then tested and deepened through the eight-year war with Iraq (the Sacred Defence), during which endurance, sacrifice, and meaning were not abstract values but lived necessities that shaped how struggle itself would be understood across generations.

None of these formations were instantaneous, and none of them permitted language to detach itself from discipline, because language in such contexts was never ornamental, but structural.

What we are witnessing today is not simply an expansion of participation, but the acceleration of authority under conditions that reward its premature appearance.

The platforms through which most people now encounter political struggles – spaces where reaction is expected almost instantly, where commentary follows events in real time, and where silence is often treated as absence rather than discipline – are not neutral conduits of information, but environments structured to privilege immediacy, visibility, and confidence, while quietly marginalising hesitation, complexity, and restraint. Over time, this produces a subtle shift in which people begin to internalise the idea that what matters is not whether something is understood with depth, but whether it is expressed convincingly or loudly enough.

In such an environment, assertion begins to function as credibility, and credibility becomes detached from formation, which is precisely the point at which language begins to lose its discipline. No longer used to clarify, distinguish, and carry meaning, it becomes a mechanism for signalling position, performing moral pretence, and displaying alignment before an audience, until the distinction between speech and performance begins to dissolve.

The Illusion of Authority in Digital Resistance

This transformation becomes most visible in the way certain terms are now deployed, because words that once required precision, context, and an awareness of consequence are increasingly used with an ease that suggests they carry no weight beyond the moment in which they are spoken. Nowhere is this more evident than in digital spaces, where language is not only used to describe, but to police, to signal belonging, and to perform moral clarity before an audience that rewards escalation more than accuracy.

Terms such as “Zionist”, “normaliser”, “traitor”, “sellout”, or “collaborator” are not casual descriptors, but judgements that carry political and moral consequence, and historically demanded a degree of clarity regarding what was being said, why it was being said, and what followed from saying it. When such terms are applied without grounding, however, they cease to function as instruments of distinction and instead become tools of inflation, through which accusation begins to resemble proof, and intensity is mistaken for legitimacy.

But accusation does not, in itself, establish truth, and when judgement becomes detached from grounding, a movement gradually loses its ability to distinguish between what is serious and what is superficial, until that distinction begins to erode and everything collapses into a kind of undifferentiated noise in which even necessary critique or informed analysis loses its force.

What intensifies this problem further is the way in which visibility has begun to function as a substitute for authority, creating the impression that those who are most present in a conversation, particularly as it begins to ‘trend’, are also those most qualified to define it, when in reality the structure itself produces a form of confidence that has not yet been tested by contradiction, time, lived experience, or deeper study.

It is not difficult to adopt the language of a cause, nor is it difficult to align oneself with it publicly, but there remains a decisive difference between alignment and formation, and it is that difference which determines whether speech carries weight or merely volume. Formation requires limits, and among those limits is the ability to recognise where one’s understanding ends, and to resist the urge to speak beyond it simply because the environment rewards those who do, particularly in digital spaces where constant expression is incentivised and restraint is rarely visible enough to be recognised as a form of discipline.

Jihad al Tabyeen: Clarification as Resistance

It is precisely here that the concept of jihad al tabyeen must be understood properly, not as a slogan, nor as an aesthetic posture, but as a disciplined mode of resistance rooted in both Qur’anic instruction and Shi‘i intellectual tradition.

Shaheed Sayyed Ali Khamenei repeatedly emphasised that the central strategy of the enemy in the contemporary era is not limited to military confrontation, but is fundamentally rooted in distortion, propaganda, and the production of doubt, and that the necessary response to this condition is a sustained effort of clarification, explanation, and truth-bearing, a form of struggle that demands intellectual responsibility no less than moral conviction.

This understanding is not new, but is deeply rooted in Qur’anic instruction itself, where the obligation to speak truthfully, responsibly, and with discernment is repeatedly emphasised. The Qur’an commands:

“Invite to the way of your Lord with wisdom and good instruction, and argue with them in a way that is best.” (Surah An-Nahl 16:125)

It also warns against the arrogance of pursuing what one does not know:

“And do not pursue that of which you have no knowledge. Indeed, the hearing, the sight and the heart, all of those will be questioned.” (Surah Al-Isra 17:36)

And it makes verification, tabayyun, a moral obligation:

“O you who believe, if a corrupt person comes to you with news, verify it, lest you harm a people in ignorance and become regretful for what you have done.” (Surah Al-Hujurat 49:6)

Taken together, these are not abstract ethical suggestions, but structural conditions for responsible speech, conditions that stand in direct contradiction to the current culture of unrestrained assertion and performative certainty that dominates much of online resistance discourse.

Within this framework, jihad al tabyeen is not fulfilled by repetition, nor by volume, nor by accusation, but by disciplined explanation, by the removal of doubt, by the careful use of language, and by a commitment to truth that is inseparable from responsibility. It is a form of struggle that does not require entry into the battlefield, but it does require entry into discipline, and in many ways demands more from the one who undertakes it, because it places upon them the burden of speaking in a way that clarifies rather than confuses, distinguishes rather than inflates, and strengthens rather than dilutes.

The Discipline That Resistance Requires

Not every contribution deepens a movement, and when language is used without care or precision, it does not remain merely expressive, but actively erodes the clarity upon which movements depend for their continuity.

When accusation becomes indiscriminate, language loses its ability to distinguish between what is grave and what is trivial, between what is true and what merely appears convincing, and in that collapse even legitimate critique begins to blur into noise. What remains may still feel like conviction, but it lacks the discipline upon which conviction is meant to rest, and in that absence, resistance does not disappear, but begins to dissolve, not through defeat, but through dilution.

This is not an argument against participation, nor is it a call for silence, but it is a refusal of the idea that presence alone confers authority, or that speed can substitute for depth, particularly in digital spaces where speech is constant and silence is often penalised rather than understood.

Resistance is not something one enters through performance, nor something that can be carried through repetition alone, but something that forms people over time, often slowly and often through difficulty, and without that formation what remains is not clarity but noise that resembles conviction while lacking its substance.

The question, then, is not who has arrived, but who has understood what it is they have arrived into, and who has allowed that understanding to impose limits on the way they speak, rather than treating speech itself as proof of understanding. Not every voice that enters a cause strengthens it, and not every expression of conviction carries the discipline that conviction demands.

In an age defined by distortion, where truth is not only contested but systematically obscured, the jihad of clarification is not fulfilled by adding to the volume of speech, but by refusing to let speech become another form of distortion. And that refusal requires something that cannot be simulated through visibility or asserted through confidence alone, because it is formed slowly, often invisibly, and always under restraint.

Without that formation, what remains may still resemble resistance. It may still speak in its language and move within its spaces, but it begins, quietly and almost imperceptibly, to empty it of its meaning, until what remains is no longer a struggle carried with clarity, but a noise carried with arrogant certainty. A certainty that, having never been disciplined, can no longer distinguish between truth and the need to appear as its custodian.