The following parties were all more or less ideological:
CPL
The oldest political party in Lebanon is the Communist Party of Lebanon (CPL), founded in 1924 or 1925; however, it was illegal until 1970. In 1976 half the members were Shi’ites while Druze and Sunnis combined were 20% of the membership. It was led by George Hawi.
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More important however were two parties that had a following that consisted mainly of Christians: the Kataeb and the Syrian National Party (SNP, al-Hizb as-Suri al-Qawmi).
SSNP
The SNP was founded in 1932 by Antoun Saada and officially recognised in 1944. The ideology was based on Syrian nationalism - i.e. the pursuit of the unification of geographic Syria - secularism and the opposition of the patron-client system, combined with fascist ideas. The followers were mostly Greek Orthodox as Saada himself was. At the end of the 1940s the SNP changed its name to Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP, al-Hizb as-Suri al-Qawmi al-Ishtiraki). In 1958 they supported Chamoun and in 1961 the party was banned after an attempted coup against president Chehab. In 1967 it changed course and, under the leadership of Inaam Raad, it started cooperating with the left-wing and the Palestinian groups.
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Kataeb (Phalanges)
The Kataeb was founded in 1936 by Pierre Gemayel as a sports club for boys along the lines of the Hitler-Jugend and Franco’s youth movement. Kataeb is a translation of the original name Phalanges (Libanaises). In 1949 it was transformed into a political party but still retained its militia.
The members were mainly Catholics; that is, Maronites and Greek Catholics from the middle classes and lower middle classes. The Kataeb is a very controversial party, its opponents call it fascist and its origins point to that also (the same goes for the SSNP). Though I wouldn’t call them fascists myself (neither their party political program nor their behaviour during the war point to fascist ideology) and although they stress that they favour secularisation, they are the champions of the Maronite cause and Maronite domination.
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An-Narada
As a Sunni response to the Kataeb, an-Narada was founded in 1937 which was also a paramilitary youth club that had the renaissance of Arab/Muslim culture as a goal. An-Narada remained a splinter group however.
Harakat al-Mahrumin/Amal
In March 1974 the Movement of the Deprived (Harakat al-Mahrumin) was founded by Imam Musa al-Sadr. Al-Sadr was an Iranian religious scholar of Lebanese descent who became a Lebanese citizen in 1963. The movement’s goal was to improve the lives of all deprived Lebanese, but had a Shi’ite character from the start. An important reason for the founding of the Movement of the Deprived was the success of the left-wing parties (especially the communists) among the Shi’ites. In July 1975 a militia was founded named Afwaj al-Muqawama al-Lubnaniya (Lebanese Resistance Groups). This militia was the military branch of the Movement of the Deprived and became known under its acronym Amal (which means Hope). In 1978, Musa al-Sadr disappeared during a visit to Libya under mysterious circumstances.
PSP
One of the most important left-wing parties was the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP, al-Hizb at-Taqaddumi al-Ishtiraki), founded in 1949 by Kamal Jumblatt. This party is a good example of the mix of ideological and personal/sectarian ties. Though the party very strongly opposed the sectarian system, the followers were predominantly from the Shouf mountains where the Jumblatt family had been in charge of one of the Druze factions for centuries. Despite of the name, the PSP is a liberal rather than a socialist party. Petran calls him ‘an intelligent conservative’.
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Jumblatt supported the uprising against Camille Chamoun and Chehab’s reforms. At the end of the 1960s he started cooperating closely with the leftist parties. These were the only parties that wanted to get rid of the sectarian system; one of the most important points on Jumblatt’s agenda. It is important to realise here that Jumblatt was a Druze and under the sectarian system he could not be president, prime-minister or even speaker of parliament. The only way he could ever be was if the sectarian system would be scrapped. It is therefore hard to say how much his pursuit of an end to the sectarian system was motivated by self-interest and how much was motivated by idealism. After Kamal Jumblatt was killed in 1977, his son Walid succeeded him as leader of the PSP.