From 17 October 2019 until well into 2020, Lebanon witnessed massive popular protests that shook the country's political system to its core. The protests were precipitated by the government's plans to impose taxes on IP telephony, gasoline and tobacco, but the underlying issues were corruption, deteriorating living standards and a profound sense of political alienation. In a matter of days, the protests spread across the country and the protesters’ slogans expanded to become a denunciation of the entire political system and the elite, irrespective of religious affiliation. Demonstrators closed some of the main roads to and from Beirut and brandished placards reading: ‘All of them means all of them’ (thus condemning the whole political establishment regardless of religious identity) and ‘Down with sectarian rule’. Ordinary Lebanese across the country realised the extent of hardship and misery among their fellow citizens: Tripoli, a neglected city north of Beirut that was formerly notorious as a hotbed of militant Salafism, was bestowed with the honorary title ‘bride of the revolution’ on account of the vast, dignified demonstrations by its marginalised populace. Hundreds of thousands of people from all of the religious communities in Lebanon participated in the demonstrations, demanding the resignation of the entire government and a major overhaul of the political system (The Economist 2019). Despite the government's heavy-handed response, including beatings, tear gas, arrests and deployment of the army, the protests continued with remarkable force through 2019 and for much of 2020. They caused a protracted political crisis that included the resignation of an entire cabinet and some of the top bureaucrats in the country. Most importantly, however, the force and duration of the protests showed the shocking disconnect between ordinary Lebanese and the leaders who were supposed to represent them, but in reality, ruled them without accountability.

The ‘17 October Revolution’, as demonstrators called it, was a watershed event in Lebanon's recent history. In a brief but incisive analysis, Marwan Kraidy (2019) has compared the 2019 protests with the previously most recent mass mobilisation of the Lebanese streets: the 2005 demonstrations against the assassination of Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and the Syrian military presence in Lebanon. Kraidy notes that in 2005, ‘feuding sectarian leaders’ organised the protests, paid advertising executives to brand the demonstrations and employed their loyal and powerful media to full effect.