I honestly can not say I have a deep knowledge of the Syrian civil war except for a few things.
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Multiple groups including Isis and the Syrian army are involved, some of which are US backed
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Rojava and the Kurds seem genuinely unproblematic and cool, and are currently being attacked by Syria and Turkey, and their support was withdrawn by trump.
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The resulting refugee crisis is a big deal, etc etc. I’ve actually been fortunate enough to talk with several refugees as my mother works in local government helping sponsor them, and one family threw a party and invited us. The food was delicious, but I felt like asking a family who had just been reunited with a family member after years about the civil war would not be a good idea. So I can’t say I learned much from the conversations I’ve had.
I see lots of Assad memes. Is it ironic? Is it unironic? Is it a big critical support deal like Kim Jong un? What’s the consensus? Can someone educate me or?
Thanks.
Sudden and radical changes of heart are entirely plausible within incredibly short amounts of time without resorting to hysterical accusations of foreign influence. Especially when you already work within a corrupt edifice. The propaganda offensive supporting the Syrian War was incredibly elaborate and overwhelming, Max probably realized he was acting as a cog in a massive, evil machine.
Like no joke I went from “Hillary stan” to the kind of liberal who unironically believed the best way to help minorities in the era of Trump was to join the local police, to a radicalized anarcho-socialist in the span of 7 months. Today I’m a hardline Marxist-Leninist.
I very much think this is a product of short-term cultural memory. 2012-2015 were very incoherent times in terms of ideological ferment. The far right was very much on the rise (for example, the Tea Party IRL and GamerGate online) while the “left” was in a big awful tent under the thrall of Obama. Occupy was a very recent memory, a memory that had been brutally crushed, and Occupy itself had been an event very much within the confines of liberal discourse. The resurgence of socialism, communism, and anti-imperialism was really not a thing until 2015 at the earliest.
