'How Assad Wooed the American Right'

[Popular Front of Judea]

Strange days. Stalinists and reactionary Republicans together at last.

Assad supporters' claims have repeatedly been republished unquestioningly by right-wing commentators in the United States, who share their hostility toward both Sunni Islamists and the Obama administration. It's a strange alliance between American conservatives and a regime that was one of America's first designated state sponsors of terror, and continues to work closely with Iran and Hezbollah.

"There is evidence -- mounting evidence -- that the rebels in Syria did indeed frame Assad for the chemical attack," conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh told his audience on Sept. 3. "But not only that, but Obama, the regime, may have been complicit in it. Mounting evidence that the White House knew and possibly helped plan the Syrian chemical weapon attack by the opposition!"

Limbaugh's cited an article by Yossef Bodansky on Global Research, a [leftish] conspiracy website that has advanced a pro-Assad message during the current crisis. "How can the Obama administration continue to support and seek to empower the opposition which had just intentionally killed some 1,300 innocent civilians?" Bodansky asked.

How Assad Wooed the American Right, and Won the Syria Propaganda War | Foreign Policy (http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/09/10/how_assad_wooed_the_american_right_and_won_the_syr ia_propaganda_war)

[synthesis]

By what definition is the Assad regime "Stalinist"?

[Stalinist Speaker]

"Strange days. Stalinists and reactionary Republicans together at last."
Dont understand what does this have to do with stalinists?

[Popular Front of Judea]

The Assad regime of course is Baathist. I was referring to the regimes supporters in the United States. 'Stalinist' is being used in the colloquial sense.


By what definition is the Assad regime "Stalinist"?

[Sasha]

Here its strasserist/solidarist Nazis being the loudest Assad supporters, esp in Belgium it seems there was no attempt by the "left" to drive them from anti-war and pro-palestine demonstrations, even allowing them to speech. Really disgraceful.

[synthesis]

The Assad regime of course is Baathist. I was referring to the regimes supporters in the United States. 'Stalinist' is being used in the colloquial sense.

Okay, but is it really accurate to say that Stop the War and Rush Limbaugh are "together at last"? It seems more like they're just saying similar things for very different reasons. I mean, based on the article, it would make just as much sense to say "reactionary Methodists and Catholic Carmelite nuns, together at last."

[Stalinist Speaker]

The Assad regime of course is Baathist. I was referring to the regimes supporters in the United States. 'Stalinist' is being used in the colloquial sense.

Since when was the assad regime supported by (only) stalinists? i dont fully support assads regime.

[Leo]

I don't in any way doubt that the Assad regime is quite capable of using chemical gas on civillians, yet the opposition is too and there is in fact evidence that the opposition at least has chemical weapons in their possession. Members of the Al Nusra Front were caught in Turkey with Sarin gas, and they were let go afterwards.

In any case, regarding what the parties in the US or elsewhere are saying, what can be said? Politics makes strange bedfellows, but only for the bourgeoisie. A bourgeois opposition to war might turn into supporting war, and vice versa. So why is the bourgeois radical left ending up in bed with the Republicans any more surprising than the bourgeois radical left ending up in bed with the Democrats?

[Rss]

The Assad regime of course is Baathist. I was referring to the regimes supporters in the United States. 'Stalinist' is being used in the colloquial sense.

So you just decided to consciously lie and slander?

[synthesis]

So you just decided to consciously lie and slander?

In the article it talks about support for Assad from "Stalinists" in the Stop the War Coalition. I think it's a completely spurious connection, but one that was made by the article's author, not PFJ.

[Popular Front of Judea]

Here is an authentic Stalinist in the Coalition: Stop the War’s vice-president is Kamal Majid, a veteran communist and founding member of the Stalin Society, created in 1991 to “defend Stalin and his work” and “refute capitalist, revisionist, opportunist and Trotskyist propaganda directed against him”.
Speaking at a meeting last year of the New Communist Party, Mr Majid described the Assad family as rulers “with a long history of resisting imperialism” who must be supported “because their defeat will pave the way for a pro-Western and pro-US regime”.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10293677/Ed-Milibands-friends-of-Assad.html

(Yes it is the 'Torygraph' but this is easily confirmable.)


In the article it talks about support for Assad from "Stalinists" in the Stop the War Coalition. I think it's a completely spurious connection, but one that was made by the article's author, not PFJ.

[Crux]

Here its strasserist/solidarist Nazis being the loudest Assad supporters, esp in Belgium it seems there was no attempt by the "left" to drive them from anti-war and pro-palestine demonstrations, even allowing them to speech. Really disgraceful.
I remember a few years ago the "strasserist" nazis tried to go to pro-palestine demos in Sweden. Didn't end so well for them.

[synthesis]

Here is an authentic Stalinist in the Coalition: Stop the War’s vice-president is Kamal Majid, a veteran communist and founding member of the Stalin Society, created in 1991 to “defend Stalin and his work” and “refute capitalist, revisionist, opportunist and Trotskyist propaganda directed against him”.
Speaking at a meeting last year of the New Communist Party, Mr Majid described the Assad family as rulers “with a long history of resisting imperialism” who must be supported “because their defeat will pave the way for a pro-Western and pro-US regime”.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10293677/Ed-Milibands-friends-of-Assad.html

(Yes it is the 'Torygraph' but this is easily confirmable.)

Right, I get that; what I'm saying is a spurious connection is mentioning the defense of Assad by members of Stop the War immediately after mentioning the American right's opposition to military action in Syria as if they are connected in any way. It reminds me as a more intellectual version of Glenn Beck's conflation of "fascism" with "communism."

[Popular Front of Judea]

No they are not organizationally connected. Although clearly they read each others web sites. :grin:


Right, I get that; what I'm saying is a spurious connection is mentioning the defense of Assad by members of Stop the War immediately after mentioning the American right's opposition to military action in Syria as if they are connected in any way. It reminds me as a more intellectual version of Glenn Beck's conflation of "fascism" with "communism."

[Red Commissar]

The article points this out, but I think it's been more because of the case of the al-Nusra and ISIS thugs has helped them find common ground with the islamophobia of the American right (doesn't help when those groups target Christians in the country, that's a gold mine for islamophobe rants). There's fertile PR ground there for them to cultivate ties with and it's there they pretty much run off with. I don't think there was a concerted effort in this direction but it just happened to develop as this civil war dragged out longer and the Islamists gained clout, both the MB flavors and the al-Qaeda types. I think it doesn't help either that people forget the US isn't the only place in the world where you have news stories blown out of proportion for what ever effect without checking its veracity.

There's been a conspiracy for sometime among right-wing circles that Obama's state department was infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood and they use this to explain why Obama didn't "do much" after Mubarak got overthrown and let Islamist parties come into power. They often focused on Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton's aide, who was of Indian descent that they said was a MB plant manipulating US foreign policy. Of course, this wasn't the case but this didn't stop some legislators from causing a manufactroversy around her. It didn't matter that she was married to Anthony Wiener, one of the most pro-Israeli legislators before he resigned, this was merely part of her taqiyya!

When Morsi was removed and the military assumed control, you had some protests by some Egyptians in the US which echoed this same claim, only because the US basically told the military to not make a PR mess. Never mind the US didn't refer to the event as a coup or really do much of anything, that was enough to cast them as an MB stooge. So there are some who probably take this seriously, along side the deep-seated conception that Obama is intentionally trying to spread anti-American sentiment intentionally because he just hates the country that much. Or as 2016L Obama's America basically said, had an unfulfilled relationship with his father.

That being said if it was a Republican in the White House leading the charge, you wouldn't see this too much. It'd still be there but not as large as the article is attributing it now. I didn't see too many among the right for instance trying to defend Saddam Hussein as a friend of the Christians there, even though much as it is now, several pro-Saddam Christian groups were in overdrive making the case that they were in danger, and even afterward there wasn't much attention to the exodus of Iraqi Christians or attacks on them.

I believe it may also indicate that neo-con thought in the right-wing camp has probably lost a lot of ground. Isolationist trends are growing within the GOP alongside that screwy set of ideals they refer to as "libertarianism" but is just a repainted angry conservative mindset.

Moral of the story- ideology can be thrown out the door if it suits your immediate goals. It wasn't too long ago when Assad was trying to kiss up to the west and the same crowd right now accused the White House of being weak against the "Axis of Evil". Now it's a different tune.

It might be useful to post the entire article here though in spoiler tags. FP is paywalled now so some people might not be able to view it if they've seen other articles in the month.

edit: I should also add that it's an unfair swipe at "stalinists" in this regard. There's nothing wrong with opposing intervention.

[Popular Front of Judea]

It might be useful to post the entire article here though in spoiler tags. FP is paywalled now so some people might not be able to view it if they've seen other articles in the month.

Done.

Even before President Barack Obama put his plans to strike the Syrian regime on hold, he was losing the battle of public opinion about military intervention. Part of the credit, no doubt, goes to a successful media blitz by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime and its supporters. In an interview aired on Monday night, Assad himself advanced his government's case to Charlie Rose, saying that the United States had not presented "a single shred of evidence" proving the Syrian military had used chemical weapons.

Assad has always been able to skillfully parry Western journalists' criticisms of his regime -- and, at times, it has won him positive international coverage. Before the uprising, the U.S. media often described the Assad family as Westernized leaders who were trying to bring their country into the 21st century. The most infamous example was Vogue's profile of Asma al-Assad, which described Syria's first lady as "a thin, long-limbed beauty with a trained analytic mind ... [with] a killer IQ." But even experts in the field went along: Middle East historian David Lesch wrote a biography of Bashar describing the president as a modernizer, before changing his mind during the uprising.

The carnage over the past two and a half years put an end to much of this praise -- but now pro-Assad media outlets have found a new way to influence the American debate. Assad supporters' claims have repeatedly been republished unquestioningly by right-wing commentators in the United States, who share their hostility toward both Sunni Islamists and the Obama administration. It's a strange alliance between American conservatives and a regime that was one of America's first designated state sponsors of terror, and continues to work closely with Iran and Hezbollah.

"There is evidence -- mounting evidence -- that the rebels in Syria did indeed frame Assad for the chemical attack," conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh told his audience on Sept. 3. "But not only that, but Obama, the regime, may have been complicit in it. Mounting evidence that the White House knew and possibly helped plan the Syrian chemical weapon attack by the opposition!"

Limbaugh's cited an article by Yossef Bodansky on Global Research, a conspiracy website that has advanced a pro-Assad message during the current crisis. "How can the Obama administration continue to support and seek to empower the opposition which had just intentionally killed some 1,300 innocent civilians?" Bodansky asked.

Bodansky is an ally of Bashar's uncle, Rifaat al-Assad -- he pushed him as a potential leader of Syria in 2005. Rifaat is the black sheep of the Assad family: He spearheaded the Syrian regime's brutal crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood in the early 1980s, but then was forced into exile after he tried to seize power from his brother, President Hafez al-Assad, in 1983. Despite his ouster, however, Rifaat is just as hostile to a Sunni Islamist takeover as other members of the Assad family -- a position Bodansky appears to share. Ending Alawite rule in Syria, Bodansky wrote on another pro-Assad website, "will cause cataclysmic upheaval throughout the greater Middle East."

Pro-Assad voices have also helped shape the debate in Europe. The British organization Stop the War, which was instrumental in convincing Parliament to reject a strike on Syria, is not just made up of opponents of intervention -- it includes staunch supporters of the Syrian regime. The organization's vice president is a Stalinist who praised Assad for "a long history of resisting imperialism," and warned that his defeat "will pave the way for a pro-Western and pro-U.S. regime." Other top officials in the organization have also spoken publicly about the benefits of keeping Assad in power.

One of the most common ways for pro-Assad propaganda to find its way into reputable newspapers is through Christian news outlets. Arab Christians have many legitimate fears of how Islamist takeovers in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East could affect them -- but nonetheless, some of the outlets that cover their plight regularly trade fact for fiction.

The official Vatican news agency, Agenzia Fides, for example, was caught reproducing word-for-word a report on the alleged mass killing of Christians in the city of Homs from Syria Truth, a virulently pro-Assad website. The Agenzia Fides report was eventually picked up by the Los Angeles Times -- with no mention, of course, of the original source.

It's not only the LA Times that has been duped in this way. USA Today ran an article earlier this year saying Saudi Arabia had sent 1,200 inmates on death row to fight in Syria, sourcing the claim to the Assyrian International News Agency (AINA). The document, however, appears to be a hoax, and had been passed around frequently by pro-Hezbollah websites prior to appearing on AINA. In addition to relying on pro-Assad sources, AINA also looks to U.S. conservatives for inspiration -- it republished an article titled "The Myth of the Moderate Syrian Rebels" that first appeared in the far-right FrontPage Magazine.

One of the most prolific defenders of the Assad regime is Mother Agnes-Mariam de la Croix, who says she is a Carmelite nun born in Lebanon who converted to Christianity when she was 19. The National Review uncritically cited her claim last year that Syrian rebels had gathered Christian and Alawite hostages together in a building in the city of Homs, and proceeded to destroy the building with dynamite, killing them all. More recently, she has argued that the video evidence of the Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack were fabricated, writing that it was "staged and prepared in advance with the goal of framing the Syrian government as the perpetrator."

But right-wing Americans partisans have not been shy about simply copy-and-pasting claims made in pro-Assad media outlets when it suits their interests, no matter the source. For example, the website Jihad Watch, which is run by leading Islamophobe Robert Spencer, repeated a claim by the Arabic-language al-Hadath that Syrian rebels attacking the Syrian town of Maaloula "terrorized the Christians, threatening to be avenged on them after the triumph of the revolution."

It doesn't take much time reading al-Hadath to realize that this is a site staunchly loyal to the Syrian regime and its allies -- and therefore inclined to dramatize stories of rebel crimes. The website contains an editorial by the editor-in-chief lauding Hezbollah, and another article reports that a kidnapped European writer said that the rebels launched the Aug. 21 chemical attack (the writer has denied making such claims).

Other stories in such publications, of course, would never see the light of day in the U.S. media. Al-Hadath, for example, features a section dedicated to news about Israel titled "Know Your Enemy" -- a strange match for the American right-wing, to say the least.

[Misericordia]

When the far-right is taking a principled stand against NATO imperialism in the Levant, and most of the far-left is sycophantically capitulating to NATO imperialism in the Levant, you can only throw your hands in the air and wonder "what the fuck is this, opposite world?".

[synthesis]

I'd also argue that it's disingenuous to say that Kamal Majid (who I've never heard of before this, mind you) is a "supporter of Assad" based on the quotes in the article. (Of course, you're just repeating what the media analysts are saying; it's still problematic.)

To me, if you're a Marxist and you "support" a government leader, it implies that you think their domestic political agenda is in line with your own. Majid's defense of Assad seems to be based entirely on anti-imperialist grounds, not because he thinks Assad is a socialist. Saying that defending someone against imperialist/bourgeois rhetoric means you're "supporting them" is a really nasty way to dismiss the criticism of the popular narrative about the subject.

[Paul Pott]

When the far-right is taking a principled stand against NATO imperialism in the Levant, and most of the far-left is sycophantically capitulating to NATO imperialism in the Levant, you can only throw your hands in the air and wonder "what the fuck is this, opposite world?".

Oddly enough, that's what it looks like at first glance. They are not anti-imperialists, though, most being either libertarian isolationists or neo-Nazis who believe capital's modern wars are set up by ZOG.

[goalkeeper]

I'd also argue that it's disingenuous to say that Kamal Majid (who I've never heard of before this, mind you) is a "supporter of Assad" based on the quotes in the article. (Of course, you're just repeating what the media analysts are saying; it's still problematic.)

To me, if you're a Marxist and you "support" a government leader, it implies that you think their domestic political agenda is in line with your own. Majid's defense of Assad seems to be based entirely on anti-imperialist grounds, not because he thinks Assad is a socialist. Saying that defending someone against imperialist/bourgeois rhetoric means you're "supporting them" is a really nasty way to dismiss the criticism of the popular narrative about the subject.

Sorry but anyone familiar with the politics of the New Communist Party of Britain should know that supporting Assad's rule domestically is not unlike them.

[khad]

Aren't Obama supporters grand?

[Rusty Shackleford]

to be honest, i was not surprised by the right in the US opposing intervention. In order to show conservatives and liberals are 'opposites' and 'different' besides just moral issues, they tend to just act as contrarians on everything. Mean while liberals at the same time saw a lot of collar pulling and hand wringing.

then you have mixed lines like 'no to intervention yes to revolution'

lots of veterans were posting things about how useless a war would be and shit like that. though ive seen one or two shift farther to the right in recent weeks :glare:


but yeah, the anti-war left is mostly dead. as for nazis at demos, its mostly just cops that ive seen infiltrating.

[synthesis]

Sorry but anyone familiar with the politics of the New Communist Party of Britain should know that supporting Assad's rule domestically is not unlike them.

I'm sure this is a possibility, but it's not indicated by the article or any other data I can find relating to Stop the War. And I'm not sure how the New Communist Party relates to Kamal Majid or this subject in general. I got here (http://ml-review.ca/aml/BLAND/BLAND_reSectarianism.htm) through Google, which details the animosity between Majid and the New Communist Party (#7) - apparently Majid thinks the NCP are "traitors to Marxism-Leninism" or something like that.

[Sasha]

I remember a few years ago the "strasserist" nazis tried to go to pro-palestine demos in Sweden. Didn't end so well for them.


thats good to hear, here it seems the "anti-imperialist" left have less qualms about united fronting with fascists, pretty ironic actually that some of the people who slag the trots the most for critical collaboration with reformists dive into bed with neo-nazi's...

[TaylorS]

Your first line is a straw man, I oppose American Imperialist intervention in Syria because it WILL make things worse because of the Islamist fanatics being supported and armed by the US and Saudi Arabia.

[Popular Front of Judea]

FYI: Revleft will be glad to know that LaRouche has come out against intervention. http://larouchepac.com/node/27916

[el mosquito]

thats good to hear, here it seems the "anti-imperialist" left have less qualms about united fronting with fascists, pretty ironic actually that some of the people who slag the trots the most for critical collaboration with reformists dive into bed with neo-nazi's...


while the trotskyists are cheerleading NATO as they bomb their way from one sovereign country to another. Imperialism has found a new type of apologists