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seem genuinely unproblematic and cool, and are currently being attacked by Syria and Turkey, and their support was withdrawn by trump.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.
friendly reminder that max blumenthal used to spam anti-assad stuff until he magically switched sides after the rt gala invitation
Does this dude not realize the war itself changed? The jihadists did take over as the dominant opposition. I also couldn’t find any instance there of Blumenthal being an “Assad apologist” like is claimed. Since he put in quite a lot of effort to compile his anti-Assad views but has none for this supposed praise of Assad, I’m going to continue to assume it’s a baseless smear.
H… hello? How can you possible perceive this as “a baseless smear”, this is evidently a crystal clear documentation of the switch in editorial stance, the discourse, the actors targeted, the objectives focused on etc.
Now the reason I posted this is because it seems like a lot of our fellows here are tightly devoted to the grayzone-network reportings, so it is very much needed to show that there is a questionable intransparancy at play here. Getting corrections on fake news is well and good, but one should never rely solely on this source for an opinion on Syria. That’s how you get upvoted comments on here praising “assads progressive government”.
Bruh that’s literally a Russiagate conspiracy theorist, they’re citing accounts named “#DroneAssad” and defending the fucking White Helmets, like come on.
I sincerely wonder what your thought process is here. Did you think the author faked 500 tweets for the medium article? Did you not bother to check it out properly?
meme for you: https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/100706368041914368
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.
The 2 Syrian communist parties are behind Assad and put out statements saying they have comrades in the Syrian Army
By 2012 the majority of the opposition went back to Assad as they saw Syria become a foreign proxy war
Assad has been leader during a time 42 armisa have had troops on Syrian soil
Assad has faced something akin to Stalingrad, the people are behind him and the 2 communist parties are behind him
Why wouldnt i support Assad
Edit: statements from the 2 main communist parties
When the Syrian Communist Party Unified or the Syrian Communist Party Bakdash are in a position to overthrow capitalism I willy rally behind those. However those 2 Communist parties have surveyed the local landscape of Syria and correctly identified the people are behind Bashar in a period where over 40 foreign armies have occupied Syrian soil in one of the bloodiest civil wars of the century so far
Statement from Syrian Communist Party Unified ( click for full statement I only copied the most pertinent bit )
Blood is still being shed in Syria, especially in the city of Aleppo, the second capital of the country. 75 percent of its territories were freed by the Syrian Arab Army and its allies. However, terrorists in Aleppo refused any truce to save the lives of civilians, whom they use as human shields.
The Syrian people, along with the government, Syrian army and progressive political forces of the country, has been bravely resisting this aggression since its beginning in 2011.
Terrorists who fulfill this attack on Syria have come from more than 80 countries, supported by the imperial powers of the world and their allies.
Comrades, our party is most interested in confirming the following facts:
It is not acceptable to put the offender and the victim on an equal footing.
International law does not allow any county to interfere in the internal affairs of any other country, which is what the terrorists and their supporters do in Syria. Demanding President Assad step down is an affair to be decided only by the Syrian people.
The aggressors are the only side who carry the full responsibility for the losses and damages in the country.
The aggression against Syria is going along with mass media/imperialist campaign, on which billions of dollars are spent by the USA and Saudi Arabia. Through this media facts about events in the country are falsified and this information is spread around the world.
Iraq is also under the same aggression and the Iraqi people are resisting it. It is the duty of all progressive forces of the world to supported the brave resistance of the Iraqi and Syrian peoples against the international terrorist aggressors.
Statement of Syrian Communist Party Bakdash
We support the national resistance against the aggressive policy of the reactionary regimes of Arab countries, USA, NATO and Turkey -putting aside the people of Turkey. In certain sensitive areas our comrades took up arms to defend themselves and their families. We also have comrades in the Syrian army.
Dear Comrades!
The target of these attacks is to beat Syria eventually. Because Syria is a front resisting imperialism. Syria is resisting with its people’s dedication, determination of its army for the independence and honour of the country. And of course with the solidarity of you, all the people of dignity. I thank you once again for your solidarity on behalf of the Communist Party of Syria and the Syrian people.
Like Ammar Bakdash, our leader said: “The only power which does not surrender to the invaders is the power of the people” To stand up is not only our duty but it is also possible.
Syrian Communist Party stands shoulder to shoulder with the patriots in Syria against imperialists, Zionists and islamic reactionaries in order to empower the Syrian people. This is not only our patriotic but also internationalist duty.
We do not give up our class struggle while fighting the outsider enemies.
My comrades of the Communist Party, Turkey, forward to the Socialist Revolution!
The victory will belong to the Palestinian people struggling against Zionism.
The victory will belong to the people of Yemen against Saudi’s.
The victory will belong to the people of Iraq resisting invaders and terrorists.
Eternity is for our martyrs.
The victory belongs to all the people who resist.
Dear Comrades!
I repeat: Syria will not surrender!
Long live Communism!
Long live the internationalist movement of the working class"
Why wouldnt i support Assad
You have no need to, you just need to oppose US imperialism in the country
Being against the Iraq war doesnt mean you have to support Saddam Hussein, being against the Afghanistan war doesn’t mean you have to support the Taliban.
Na i dont believe in that
All that happens is you get shitlibs go
“Oh so you support a dictator”
And you end up giving out some trotty arguement like “hes shit and terrible and i dont support dictators blah blah”
Much better to say Assad is great death to America
Much better to say Assad is great death to America
So its about optics more than actual principles?
Well, I’d say the allegations of chemical warfare would be a start. Again, this is just based on what I have heard. I’m still making up my mind on critical support here.
Meh maybe you shouldn’t unironically critically support him, he’s not a leftist. It’s more like one should oppose US/nato intervention and advocate for better refugee treatment. It’s much more consistent position and easier to argue with libs, compared to “Assad done nothing wrong” thought termination.
Assad has a higher approval rating than the majority of US presidents
Assad has done nothing wrong except defend his country against one of the worst crimes the West has committed this century
Very high-level description of middle eastern politics (and also parts of Africa) is that basically the country borders are shite, so you get ethnic groups who hate each other going back hundreds/thousands of years in the same country. (Normally these reasons make a lot of sense; Northern Ireland is a Western example.) The only stable countries are those with strongman leaders. Trying to remove said strongman leaders just means the country collapses into civil war. Saddam Hussein was a terrible person but it’s hard to argue with a straight face that US intervention helped Iraq. Likewise for Afghanistan, etc.
You’ll see a lot of warhawks talking about how this one regime change war is a good idea. But unless they come up with some really solid reasons that taking out the handful of people holding a country together won’t explode into ethnic strife, war, famine, etc. and just go “mumble mumble we bring democracy, they’ll welcome us as liberators” then you can guarantee it will be a shitshow.
That’s why (imo) removing Assad is a bad idea. There’s no followup plan that has any chance of making things better.
The borders argument is a western favourite, because it absolves them of the fact that most of the strife is caused by imperialist meddling in the region.
There are ethnically diverse countries that are stable, look at Belgium or Spain for example. Yeah the borders arent ideal, but we want to abolish borders anyway.
idk much about movements in spain but isn’t catalan and basque independence pretty big?
The borders were drawn by Western imperialists specifically in order to destabilise the region. Hence four different countries getting a chunk of the ethnically Kurdish region, which has led to multiple attempts at ethnic cleansing, to take one very straightforward example. The ethnic diversity isn’t the sole cause of the various issues in the Middle East, of course – but it’s a key factor that no Western intervention is going to fix. And, historically, it’s been exploited by imperialist meddling via arming different religious & ethnic factions.
I’m not saying that different Middle Eastern ethnicities are forced to fight each other due to their backgrounds. I’m saying that, much like Northern Ireland/Catalonia/other Western conflicts along similar lines, there are a multitude of societal fault lines that coincide with the various ethnicities present in each country to a large degree.
(Somewhere to start reading for anyone with a cursory interest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes–Picot_Agreement)
Not to mention that the various Gulf micro-states like Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar were specifically fostered by the British, in combination with Saudi Arabia and Hashemite monarchist states such as Jordan and Iraq, to prevent a secular, nationalist pan-Arab state from gaining monopolistic control of the region’s oil.
Assad is a mega shitter, critically support in struggle against US imperialism etc because most of yall are in the US and that’s the most useful stance for radicalising people but be fucking careful not to alienate any comrades actually in Syria.
