The limits of radical flanks: bank heist as radical direct action in post-revolutionary Lebanon

Two years after the October revolution, Lebanese citizens are taking increasingly radical steps to resist financial exploitation and economic deprivation. Faced with an unprecedented financial crisis, a growing number of depositors, rather than taking to the streets, has resorted to bank heist to forcibly retrieve their rightfully owned savings. Hailed by some as an ingenious new form of popular resistance and scolded by others as counter-revolutionary and particularist acts of self-help, these bank heist have generated debates on the effect of disruptive and radical forms of direct action such as the bank holdups for broader social mobilisation in Lebanon’s post-revolutionary context. This article addresses this puzzle by exploring the motivations, tactical characteristics, social demographics, and competing interpretations of Lebanon’s bank heists through a combination of event data, interviews and media analyses. Ultimately, our analysis underscores the ambivalence of the radical flanking effect generated by the holdups: They became powerful signifiers for the collective struggle against a corrupt and oligarchic regime, providing reference points for solidarity protest and organizing in a context of fading revolutionary momentum. At the same time, their positive effect on mobilisation was constrained by their structural characteristics, hesitant support from veteran activists, and by the way they symbolically canalised public outrage and collective indignation. These findings inform our understanding of the challenges of remobilization in post-revolutionary settings where individual acts of resistance may reinvigorate revolutionary imaginaries yet fail to shock people into action. The metaphor of the bank heists as a projection screen captures this creative ambivalence.