WHY WHITE NATIONALISTS LOVE BASHAR AL-ASSAD

The Intercept

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IT SHOULDN’T BE surprising that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has become an idol among white nationalists in the United States.

During the white nationalist “Unite the Right” rally several weeks ago in Charlottesville, Virginia, Baked Alaska, an infamous far-right YouTuber, livestreamed an encounter with a demonstrator wearing a T-shirt that read “Bashar’s Barrel Delivery Co.” The shirt alluded to the Assad regime’s frequent, horrific use of barrel bombs — weapons employed to indiscriminately target rebel-held areas of Syria.

That rally-goer shouted, “Support the Syrian Arab Army!” and “Assad did nothing wrong!” They gloated over how Assad can “solve this whole ISIS problem” with just two chemical bombs. James Fields, the 20-year-old white supremacist who allegedly rammed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing Heather Heyer, posted a portrait of Assad, in military regalia and aviator sunglasses to Facebook. A superimposed caption read: “UNDEFEATED.”

There’s a simple explanation for how the American far-right became curiously infatuated with the Arab totalitarian leader: Their hearts were won over by the Assad family’s years-old propaganda campaign at home in Syria. Assad’s authoritarianism uses the same buzzwords as the far-right to describe the society he’s trying to build in his own country — a pure, monolithic society of devotees to his own power. American neo-Nazis see Assad as a hero.

As the chaos of Charlottesville and its aftermath was unfolding, Assad addressed a group of diplomats in Damascus about the ongoing war in Syria. “We lost many of our youth and infrastructure,” he said, “but we gained a healthier and more homogenous society.”

Whereas white nationalists aim to create a healthy and homogeneous society through racial purity, for Assad it means a society free of any kind of political dissent, excluding any Syrian living outside the territory his regime controls. Anyone who does not fit Assad’s specific definition of what it means to be Syrian is up for execution.

Alexander Reid Ross, a lecturer of geography at Portland State University and author of the new book, “Against the Fascist Creep,” said Assad is a figure that is central to a realization of “Eurasianism.” The notion “holds that Russia will lead the world out of a dark age of materialism and toward an ultranationalist rebirth of homogenous ethno-states federated under a heterogeneous spiritual empire,” Reid Ross said.

In other words, the Assad dynasty, with the strong backing of Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian state in Russia, is the Middle East’s leading force toward creating a society that is spiritually, socially, and politically “pure.” Cosmopolitanism, with diversity in political thought and social identity, is an obstacle for those aiming to realize this vision.

Assad is a key figure in confirming the white nationalist worldview. “Holding on to Syria,” Reid Ross said, “marks for them a crucial foothold in a larger geopolitical mission — one that has everything to do with that spiritual purity associated with family, tradition, and nation.” To the far right, Assad is at the front lines in the fight against the Islamic State and, more broadly, the forces of “Islamic terrorism” in the Middle East under a nationalist banner that looks very much like their own.

And the admiration doesn’t run in only one direction. The Assad regime has cultivated relationships with far-right white nationalists for decades. One of these was allegedly Alois Brunner, who actually died in Damascus in 2010. There is reason to believe that Brunner advised Bashar’s father Hafez al-Assad on torture techniques used in Syria’s infamous prison system, even as the regime has denied ever harboring Bruner.

Syrian children hold portraits of President Bashar al-Assad during a gathering in support of the ruling Ba’ath party at a school in the government-held side of the northern city of Aleppo on Nov. 17, 2014.

Photo: Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty Images

IN SPITE OF the Assad regime’s track record of being the primary perpetrators of escalating Syria’s civil war — which has likely left half a million dead and spurred a massive exodus of refugees — the United Nations, the United States, and certainly Russia are all looking for solutions to the Syrian crisis that keep Assad in power. Assad’s relationship-building and connections with fringe politicians in the West has contributed to creating international legitimacy for his continued rule, as well as fueling a propaganda machine that paints the dictator as one of the final Arab leaders standing up against American imperialism and “Islamic extremism.”

Radwan Ziadeh, a fellow at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, and a prolific, longtime Syrian dissident, said that the Assad dynasty’s central strategy in forging international legitimacy was to cultivate an image as a guardian of Christians in Syria and the wider region.

This mythos he built around himself has worked well in garnering support for the Assad family from outside Syria. Aside from Brunner and other Nazis taking shelter in Syria, former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke visited Damascus in 2005, addressing a “demonstration” in support of Assad’s fight against Zionism, propping up Assad’s image as an anti-imperialist. (Palestinian refugees within Syria have suffered greatly under Assad’s sieges.)

Even more recently, as journalist Alex Rowell recently pointed out, far-right politicians from the French National Front, Golden Dawn in Greece, and Vlaams Belang in Belgium, among many others, met with Syrian government officials in Damascus over the past few years. The meetings came as the regime began to gain momentum against opposition forces with the help of Russian military intervention and support.

The Ba’ath Party, a multi-national party which was led by Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Hafez al-Assad in Syria, held meetings with international far-right parties. The Iraqi Ba’ath Party met with the National Front in France and Die Republikaner in Germany, both far-right parties in the E.U., according to Reid Ross. “The radical right and fascists see them as nationalists like them,” he told The Intercept.

Though Assad has also won some support from international political forces on the left, Reid Ross argued that the support from the right is crucial to Assad’s success. “The most important international support for Assad stems from a white supremacist base and a white supremacist administration in the U.S.,” he said.

Assad’s vision of creating a “healthy” and “homogenous” society is what white nationalists have aspired to create for themselves. We don’t need to look as far back as Hitler’s Third Reich to see what their world vision could be. We only need to look at Syria today.

“He destroyed Syria,” Ziadeh said. “The population of Syria dropped before 2011 from 23 million people to into 17 million and you have millions displaced inside the country. It’s a country in ruin.” What’s left, Assad hopes, is a society that uniformly supports his rule.

Correction: September 8, 2017, 2:36 p.m. 
An earlier version of this story incorrectly referred to the death toll of the Syrian civil war as being in the millions. Around half a million people have died in the war.

Why did they oust Mubarak and Ben Ali and leave Bashar Al-Assad?

Dr Faisal Al-Qasim

I don't know whether to laugh or cry as I hear Syrian media outlets pay lip service to Bashar Al-Assad for his steadfastness as he battles a so-called international conspiracy against him. These sources claim that Al-Assad managed to force the conspiracy towards the route of failure. So, if the failure of this international conspiracy led to the destruction of Syria and the displacement of its people, what would its success look like, God forbid? What would Syria look like? Perhaps with another victory of this nature the country would disappear from the map in its entirety.

To those of you who are applauding Bashar Al-Assad's steadfastness and the victory of the Syrian state, I say that if you only knew the truth, you would cry tears of blood. If only he had fallen just like Hosni Mubarak and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Syria would not have reached this state.

Bashar Al-Assad wanted nothing more than to see our enemies stay in Syria so that they could destroy our country for him and so that he would have a reason to stay. Those of you who insist on remaining ignorant should note that the fall of Ben Ali and Mubarak within a matter of weeks saved Tunisia and Egypt from a fate similar to Syria's. If they had stayed in power, God forbid, both Egypt and Tunisia would be in the same situation as Syria. Thus, I emphasise that Bashar Al-Assad is not steadfast and that his steadfastness is not a blessing but a curse on Syria and the Syrian people.

Syria's enemies, namely Russia and Iran, have swooped in and declared their support for Bashar Al-Assad since the very beginning. The real conspiracy here is that these foreign players have refused and prevented any of the regime's attempts to step down from power because Al-Assad's survival ensures more destruction and less distance in the face of Syria's enemies.

Al-Assad is a strategic treasure for countries like the US and Israel. He is the magnet that has attracted all bad things to Syria, ensuring its destruction into rubble. What could Syria's enemies want more than that? Thanks to Al-Assad's services, the entire region now finds itself on a tipping point. If his supporters had abandoned him at the beginning of the uprisings, he would not have succeeded in his chaotic project for the region, one that would encourage the likes of the US and Israel to make statues of Al-Assad in gold.

What confirms the veracity of what I have written above is a statement that was made at a conference on Syria recently, which was attended by numerous international and western officials. One of the participants asked a high-ranking western official why they did not interfere in Syria and he responded: "The situation in Syria is very ideal for us. We would like to see Bashar Al-Assad stay in Syria for a bit more time because he is like a magnet that attracts our enemies to the country and it is there that we can see them fall."

To those of you who are raving about Al-Assad's steadfastness: Do not be proud but cry over your destroyed homeland, which has been torn apart and whose population has been forced to leave because of your beloved Bashar. This is exactly what Syria's enemies want. This is an old game that has been going on for centuries. America calls on Al-Assad to step down and Russia refuses. One day you will all regret applauding the forces that made our people food for the fish in the sea and you will race one another to fill out asylum applications in places like Germany and others. Bashar's steadfastness is nothing more than an obscure cover-up for Syria's destruction. May the steadfastness that cost us our homeland be crushed! We used to have a homeland whose name was Syria!

Translated from Al-Sharq newspaper, 30 November, 2014

Assad’s hold on power looks shakier than ever as rebels advance in Syria

AN IMPORTANT PIECE

The Washington Post

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By Liz Sly April 26 at 9:38 PM  

BEIRUT — A surge of rebel gains in Syria is overturning long-held assumptions about the durability of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which now appears in greater peril than at any time in the past three years.

The capture Saturday of the town of Jisr al-Shughour in northern Idlib province was just the latest in a string of battlefield victories by rebel forces, which have made significant advances in both the north and the south of the country.

As was the case in the capital of Idlib province last month, government defenses in Jisr al-Shughour crumbled after just a few days of fighting, pointing as much to the growing weakness of regime forces as the revival of the opposition.

The battlefield shifts come at a time when the Obama administration has set aside the crisis in Syria to focus on its chief priorities: defeating the Islamic State militant group in Iraq and concluding a nuclear deal with Iran.

Yet the pace of events in Syria may force the United States to refocus on the unresolved war, which remains at the heart of the turmoil engulfing the Middle East, analysts say. Iran backs ­Assad, Saudi Arabia backs the rebels, and a shift in the balance of power in Syria could have profound repercussions for the conflicts in Iraq and Yemen.

A man carries a child who survived after he was pulled from under rubble following what activists said was shelling by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad at Ain Tarma in eastern Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus, Syria April 26. (Reuters)

“We’re seeing a game changer right now in Syria,” said Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi journalist. “I think we are going to see an end to the Assad regime, and we have to think now about what will happen the day after, because the day after is near.”

[Graphic: Visualizing the 220,000 lives lost in Syria]

Other observers say the prospect of a government collapse in Damascus is still remote. The capital is well defended, and the rebels’ gains have come mostly on the periphery of the country, where the regime’s supply lines are stretched.

But perceptions that Assad will survive indefinitely or serve at least as an interim counterbalance to the Islamic State and its strongholds in northeastern Syria are in doubt, said Emile Hokayem of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The growing strains on Assad’s manpower and resources “are becoming extremely obvious, and the magnitude of his losses are now too big to hide,” Hokayem said.

“This destroys the narrative that he is winning, which he was counting on, and also the argument that he is the best option against ISIS,” the analyst added, using an alternative acronym for the Islamic State. “If he’s not able to take on or even defend against the rebels, he’s going to have a hard time presenting himself as able to fight ISIS.”

The revival of rebel fortunes is attributed to a large degree to the recent rapprochement between a newly assertive Saudi Arabia and its erstwhile rivals for influence over the rebels — Turkey and Qatar.

Assad warns latest U.N. peace move could fail(1:14)

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says the latest move by the U.N. to launch peace talks over Syria will fail if foreign states back “terrorists.” (Reuters)

Since inheriting the throne in January, Saudi King Salman has moved forcefully to challenge the expanding regional influence of Iran, Saudi Arabia’s biggest foe, most publicly by embarking on an air war against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. He has also acted to shore up the flagging and deeply divided rebels in Syria, in coordination with Qatar and Turkey, Khashoggi said.

The result has been an unexpectedly cohesive rebel coalition called the Army of Conquest that is made up of al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, an assortment of mostly Islamist brigades and a small number of more moderate battalions. The coalition, which launched last month, has proved more effective than expected.

After seizing most of Idlib province in recent weeks, the rebels are pressing south toward the government strongholds of Hama and Homs and are threatening the ­Assad family’s coastal heartland of Latakia. A separate, more moderate rebel coalition has been making swift advances in the south, challenging government control over the key provincial capital of Daraa and making progress north toward Damascus.

Just as significantly, government forces have been proving increasingly ineffective. The collapse of two much-trumpeted offensives earlier this year, in southern Syria and in Aleppo, presaged the success of the recent rebel offensives, suggesting that even if the government can remain in control in Damascus, its chances of regaining the rest of the country are slipping.

There are signs that the regime itself is fraying under the strain of the four-year-old war. On Friday, pro-government news outlets reported the death of political security director Rustom Ghazaleh, a longtime Assad stalwart, after months of rumors that he had fallen out with the regime, had been badly beaten up by a rival and was languishing in a hospital.

The reports followed the firing last month of the military intelligence chief, Rafiq Shehadeh, another inner-circle loyalist. Western diplomats monitoring events in Syria from Beirut say the two men appear to have clashed with the Assad family over the growing battlefield role played by Iran.

[Map: How the flow of foreign fighters to Iraq and Syria has surged since October]

The tensions are reaching into the heart of the Assad family, whose four-decade-old rule had seemed unshakeable until the revolt erupted in 2011.

Hafez Makhlouf, Assad’s cousin, was fired late last year as head of security in the province of Damascus and has since fled the country, the diplomats say. Another cousin, Munzer al-Assad, was detained this month amid rumors that he had been plotting a coup.

“It looks like there are major rifts going on inside the Assad regime,” one of the diplomats said. “A military collapse on the regime side is not impossible.”

Much will depend on Iran, which has stepped up in the past to dispatch men, money and arms whenever Assad seemed to be faltering. But Iran is stretched, too, by the economic effects of continued international sanctions and by the competing demands of the war next door in Iraq, which has diverted some of the Iraqi Shiite militias that had been fighting for the regime in Syria.

In a commentary for the Middle East Institute in the past week, Robert S. Ford, a former U.S. envoy to Syria, said a regime collapse cannot be ruled out. The regime’s schisms, its battlefield setbacks and its manpower shortages “are all signs of weakness,” he wrote. “We may be seeing signs of the beginning of their end.”

Read more:

Kerry’s comments on Assad create uproar in the Middle East

Al-Qaeda group’s gains in Syria undermine U.S. strategy

Desperate for soldiers, Assad’s government imposes harsh recruitment measures

Liz Sly is the Post’s Beirut bureau chief. She has spent more than 15 years covering the Middle East, including the Iraq war. Other postings include Africa, China and Afghanistan.