Syrian Social Nationalist Party

The Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) is a Syrian nationalist party operating in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine. It advocates the establishment of a Greater Syrian nation state spanning the Fertile Crescent, including present-day Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan, Palestine, Cyprus, Sinai, Hatay Province, and Cilicia, based on geographical boundaries and the common history people within the boundaries share. It has also been active in the Syrian and Lebanese diaspora, for example in South America, and is the second-largest political party in the pro-Assad National Progressive Front – Syrian Ba'ath Party.

Founded in Beirut in 1932 by the Lebanese intellectual Antoun Saadeh as an anticolonial political organization hostile to French colonial rule, the party played a significant role in Lebanese politics. It launched coups d'état attempts in 1949 and 1961, following which it was repressed in the country. SSNP was active in the fight against Israeli military during the 1982 Lebanon War and subsequent Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon until 2000, while simultaneously supporting the Syrian occupation of Lebanon due to its beliefs in Syrian irredentism.

In Syria, SSNP operated as an ultranationalist movement until the 1950s; advocating armed uprising to establish a one-party state. It participated in the 1949 Syrian coup d'etat, which overthrew the democratically elected government of Shukri al-Quwatli. SSNP continued to engage in violent activities throughout the country; and was banned in 1955 after its assassination of a Syrian Ba'athist military officer Adnan al-Malki. Despite its ban, the party remained organized, and by the late 1990s had allied itself with the Palestine Liberation Organisation and the Lebanese Communist Party, despite the ideological differences between them. The SSNP was legalized in Syria in 2005, and joined the Syrian Ba'ath Party-led National Progressive Front. From 2012 to 6 May 2014, the party was part of the Popular Front for Change and Liberation. The party would take the side of the Ba'athist government during the Syrian Civil War, where almost 12,000 fighters of its armed branch, the Eagles of the Whirlwind (dismantled in 2019), fought alongside the Syrian Armed Forces against the Syrian opposition and the Islamic State.