No, critics of the coup in Syria are not the same as supporters of the genocide in Gaza

It's propaganda to suggest they are...

The Al Qaida rebrand known as HTS has shocked everyone in Syria by doing exactly what Al Qaida has always done. It has gone around massacring civilians with the wrong political or religious views and driven many more out of their homes.

HTS terrorists fire on Alawite home in Homs

Harrowing footage is emerging of jihadists barrel-bombing neighbourhoods, unloading their guns into people’s homes and setting fire to tents, yet the western media is blaming ”pro-Assad elements” for the trouble, which is interesting given the prime targets are Alawites. Indeed, HTS fighters are talking about the extermination of the Alawite population. We could be about to see another genocide with western fingerprints all over it.

The HTS coup was supported by neoliberals who have taken the role of overthrowing any leader they don’t like and installing puppets. They have learned nothing from the so-called war on terror, of which the Syria coup was part. Yes, the war on terror is still ongoing, it’s just we’re siding with terror now!

Back in 2003, the empire told us it planned to follow up Afghanistan by conquering Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Lebanon, Syria and Iran. Today, only Iran is yet to receive one of our “well-meaning interventions”.

When the time comes, the same “anti-war” liberals who cheered for our other interventions will cheer for war with Iran. Sure, they will say war is not a good idea now, but the moment war starts, you will be the Ayatollah’s puppet or something…

I’m currently seeing liberals remorselessly washing their hands of the disaster in Syria. Some even have the gall to go on the offensive as their side commits atrocities. I don’t want to start a pointless spat, but I’m primarily thinking of one or two high-profile commentators who have got this badly wrong. They are building up a strawman and beating it hard to impress the gullible. I wanted to delve into this because it is a great example of how imperialist propaganda works.

First of all, neoliberal propagandists often present themselves as anti-imperialists, but they will switch the language from anti-imperialist to “anti-authoritarian”. Describing yourself as “anti-authoritarian” is perfectly fine (we should all be anti-authoritarian), but it’s often an indicator that something else is at play.

These people will say something like: “Yeah, our leaders are bad, but XXX leader is much worse. He’s an authoritarian.” They will then justify an imperialist coup and denounce anyone who opposes it of supporting a dictator. It’s a way of co-opting the language of anti-imperialists to further imperialist goals.

This strategy was employed when the West was taking down Gaddafi, for example. It has also been used against the likes of Maduro and Morales in Latin America. It was employed in Syria to justify something truly monstrous: an imperialist partnership with jihadists to take over a country in a catastrophic 14-year war.

A country that once enjoyed good living standards and protections for minorities now lies in ruins. The minorities face destitution and persecution. Living standards have fallen through the floor and imperialists are ensuring there will be no economic revival. They are carving up Syria and looting its resources while Israel bombs it back to the stone age. Nice liberation.

The gist of neoliberal propaganda has been that while HTS has done a few bad things since it came to power, this does not excuse Assad supporters (they mean those who called out their support for HTS).

We are told opponents of the coup are “scum” who cheer for war crimes, that they are morally equivalent to those who cheer for Netanyahu’s war crimes. We are told the situations in Gaza and Syria are identical because they are about people fighting for their liberation.

What they overlook is that both Palestine and Syria are victims of western imperialism, yet in one case, they are supporting the imperialism. Their manipulativeness leaves us with a lot to unpack, so let’s get to it.

First of all, there is the name calling. The people who opposed Al Qaida’s coup are not automatically Assad supporters in the same way those who opposed the Iraq war were not Saddam supporters. In most cases, they weren’t and aren’t. There are, however, those who genuinely don’t believe what the empire tells them about Assad. Their reasoning is that the empire always lies - and they’re right, it does. Yet we’re told scepticism of imperialist narratives is morally equivalent to cheering on Israel’s war crimes.

If a person is sincerely wrong, the correct position is to educate, not smear them. When you smear well-intentioned people, you are showing you have no intention of getting to the truth.

We are told those who doubt what happened in Douma are morally equivalent to those who laughed as Palestinians were raped with rifles at Sde Teiman. Yet there is no moral equivalence between someone who cheers on war crimes and someone who sincerely doubts if a war crime took place. It’s warped to pretend otherwise.

Did Assad commit war crimes? Absolutely yes. Did the empire lie about Assad committing war crimes? Also yes. Both of these things can be true, and this is where the waters get muddied. Propagandists will take advantage of the confusion to attack anyone who doesn’t fall in line.

Just know this, questioning an imperialist narrative is never the wrong thing to do. We should interrogate everything they tell us, whether that be Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, or Assad gasses his own people, or Putin is about to invade all of Europe. The moment we start blindly accepting their claims, and start attacking those who question them, we become imperialists ourselves.

Our leaders lie about every war and all of the leaders they want to bring down. Adopting the default position that the empire is probably lying is rational, yet self-described “anti-authoritarians” label us “scum” in a way they never do supporters of Biden or Starmer.

They know Biden and Starmer are war criminals, yet they see it as perfectly human for people to have voted for them. This is because ideologically, they are closer to neoliberal rulers than genuine liberation movements. Their role is to marginalise those who call out imperialism, to condition those who are less confident in geopolitics.

We are told in every conflict that XXX is a brutal dictator, so while we are anti-war, we must make an exception in this circumstance. This is how war propaganda works. The anti-war movement has been infiltrated to pull us into a pro-war position, or at least soften our anti-war stance. It’s important we see this bullshit for what it is and never fall for it.

Tens of thousands of jihadists poured into Syria from across Asia to be armed and trained by the US and Turkey, yet we were told this was an internal struggle, a fight for liberation. Even pro-imperialist analysts attributed half of the civilian deaths to rebel forces, yet the propagandists blamed the deaths entirely on Assad and used it to justify the coup.

Now whatever you think of Assad, and I’m no fan, he was fighting a war of survival against terrorists overrunning his country with our weapons. That is a massive piece of context that self-described anti-authoritarians omit.

The death and destruction we’ve seen in Syria was not just the result of HTS, it was not just the result of the NATO forces that armed and trained them, it was the result of propagandists attacking objectors who knew war would leave Syrians in a much worse position.

To know this, they simply had to look at every other western intervention to see what happened…

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