Individualism and Violence| Who will side with the loser?

At the end of the film El-Hareef/The Street Player, Fares (played by Adel Imam) arrives at the soccer field. The match organizer asks him, “Which team will you play with?” He answers firmly, “I’ll side with the loser.”

That line later became a moral stance symbolizing solidarity with the disadvantaged. Fares doesn’t just declare support; he actually steps onto the pitch. He shoulders the burden of a rough start, collaborates with the losing team, and helps turn their defeat into victory. Strikingly, the phrase is often used today to project personal moral purity.

The transition from individual stance to collective action, from passive empathy to active partnership, is largely absent from today’s invocations of “siding with the loser.”

Many now cheer the loser from a distance, without sharing in the loss. They don’t actually “side with the loser;” they just watch from the sidelines, not because individualism is devoid of ethics, but because it has its own ethics and tactics.

This is evident in virtue signaling, where individuals present themselves as ethically superior to all others; they reject a “miserable reality” and patronize everyone else. Instead of contributing to change, such stances offer personal moral relief and detach the individual from any collective project or possibility for joint action.

On the other end of the spectrum, we find those who fully align themselves with the narratives of the powerful—as discussed in our earlier article on Gaza. This stems from a false sense of reality or a desire to belong to the dominant order, which ultimately leads to the justification of surrender and the rejection of resistance itself.

Between these two positions emerges a third group, seeking “rational” justifications for accepting the status quo—even when these rationales conflict with their own value system. They may express skepticism about grassroots solidarity convoys for Gaza, labeling them as “anarchic,” questioning the backgrounds of participants, or downplaying their significance.

Individualism thus relies on a complex psychological mechanism that offers each person a comfortable escape: through claims of moral superiority, alignment with the dominant order, or the veneer of being reasonable. All of these lead to the same result: the blocking of collective action and the deepening of political paralysis, which are reflected in how narratives around social justice are constructed.

Feminist differentiation

Gender issues and the fight for equality between the sexes were originally part of a broader sociopolitical project to correct historical imbalances in the distribution of resources and rights. This was rooted in ideas of equal citizenship and human rights.

But as the crises of global capitalism intensified and class disparities deepened. Today, the richest 1% own 45% of global wealth, according to the 2022 Credit Suisse report, even the feminist movement has not been spared the effects of these cleavages. A divide has emerged between elite feminism that represents the interests of the “1%,” and another strain trying to reconnect feminism to its broader class and political context.

In “Feminism for the 99%” (2019), the authors argue that a feminism concerned only with helping a few women rise to positions of power within an unjust system ultimately serves that very system rather than challenging it.

This form of “feminist segregation” has worsened amid economic disparity, with the global gender wage gap hovering around 20%. The issues of the poorest, most marginalized women have been sidelined. This segregation has, in turn, fostered a sense of alienation among working-class communities, who increasingly perceive some feminist discourses as threats to their identities or cultures.

On a global level, the divide appears as a rift between an isolated North and an alienated South. In the North, conservative nationalist rhetoric is used to restrict reproductive rights and attack progressive curricula—as Trump has done.

In the South, the alienation takes more severe forms, such as the Iraqi government’s ban on the term “gender” in official and educational discourse; a move that reflects the state’s detachment from modern rights-based language and its desire to confine debates to narrow cultural identity frames.

As a result of this fragmentation, identity-based feminist movements have proliferated. Examples include Islamic feminism, which in Indonesia seeks to reconcile religious identity with rights-based demands, and race or culture-specific feminisms such as Black feminism in Brazil.

In some cases, these movements offer alternative frameworks to counter the dual marginalization imposed by capitalism and Western cultural dominance. However, they can also reinforce the logic of differentiation rather than produce a unifying feminist discourse.

Religion without solidarity

In the neoliberal capitalist era, religion is no longer a collective belief system. It’s been commodified. It’s now a product bought and sold, with its practices turned into individual identity markers measured by external appearance: a specific style of hijab, a carefully trimmed beard, an oversized, visible cross.

Even acts of worship have become consumer goods: religious TV channels compete for viewers; apps remind users of prayer times; platforms sell “Sharia courses” at competitive prices. In this context, religion no longer expresses a shared spiritual relationship. It becomes a vehicle for individualism cloaked in sanctity.

The paradox is that this religious individualism has evolved into closed sectarian identities. In Lebanon, sects have become de facto corporations offering services in exchange for absolute loyalty. In the Gulf, Salafism has become a brand defined more by external appearances than ethical substance.

The 1990s in Egypt saw the rise of what Patrick Haenni calls “market Islam” in his book of the same name—a phenomenon that turned religion into fashion via cassette tapes and a uniform dress code. These new sectarian identities aren’t based on shared faith as much as exclusion: if you’re not with us you’re against us, if you don’t display faith like us you’re a heretic, a deviant, or a nonbeliever.

The biggest victims of this logic are always the most vulnerable: religious minorities facing marginalization and women burdened with “defending identity” through their clothing and behavior. What’s striking is that when these victims gain any degree of power, they often reproduce the same logic.

We see veiled women criticizing unveiled women, religious minorities openly refusing coexistence, poor laborers denying their coworkers the right to practice their faith. In identity conflicts, the ugliest paradoxes emerge: marginalized groups that have suffered oppression -due to gender, race, or belief- sometimes become replicas of their oppressors once they gain a sliver of power.

This isn’t a moral indictment, but the inevitable outcome of the culture of individualism that everyone has absorbed. Oppression doesn’t necessarily generate liberatory consciousness, it often reproduces the same tools used against the oppressed.

In Egypt, some Christians who’ve faced sectarian discrimination adopt exclusionary rhetoric towards Baha’is or atheists. In Lebanon, activists who long protested religious dominance of politics have turned fiercely against refugee rights. Even in the West, some who’ve fled persecution in their home countries express blatant racism towards Arab or African refugees, as though their own suffering taught them nothing about the pain of others.

The most painful irony is that this dynamic appears even within the same group: some women who’ve suffered male oppression become ardent defenders of patriarchy when confronting others “beneath” them on the social ladder. In Iran, veiled women criticize the unveiled. In Saudi Arabia, women once abused by the morality police now attack those who question mandatory hijab laws.

When we say “we are all victims,” it doesn’t mean we are all innocent. It means we all —to varying degrees— carry the same virus. This isn’t hypocrisy; it’s the inevitable outcome of a system that has turned religion into a commodity and replaced spiritual solidarity with individual competition over moral capital.

The real problem isn’t religion itself. Religion remains a vital cultural force in shaping identity. Its impact depends on the surrounding political and economic structure—an infrastructure now shaped by capitalism, which sells us faith as a personalized care package: individual salvation, moral superiority, ready-made identity.

In this equation, the mosque or church is no longer a community locus but a stop on the individual’s quest for spiritual self-fulfillment. Even religious conflicts have become outlets for social rage instead of confrontations with injustice. The result: religion without solidarity, identities without belonging, societies seeking spiritual certainty but finding it packaged as consumer goods.

In summary, capitalism has infected movements resisting marginalization and discrimination with the virus of individualism. Some pro-justice initiatives have been reduced to narrow factional demands, while the most vulnerable groups remained alienated from the discourse and excluded from policy. This compels us to rebuild social movements on the basis of a comprehensive vision of liberation—one that understands the intersections of gender, class, race, and identity, and strives for genuine justice that extends not only to the top, but to the base as well.