(This is an important, passionate Syrian left-internationalist critique
of some Western anti-impi writers'
/refusal to contend with the crimes of the Assad regime, or even to
acknowledge that a brutally repressed popular uprising against Assad
took place. These writers and outlets have mushroomed in recent
years, and have often positioned Syria at the forefront of their
criticisms of imperialism and interventionism, which they
characteristically restrict to the west; Russian and Iranian
involvement is generally ignored... The evidence that US power has
itself been appallingly destructive, especially during the Cold War,
is overwhelming: all across the globe, from Vietnam to Indonesia to
Iran to Congo to South and Central America and beyond, the record of
massive human rights abuses accumulated in the name of fighting
Communism is clear. And in the post-Cold War period of the so-called
“War on Terror,” American interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq have
done nothing to suggest a fundamental national change of heart. But,
America is not central to what has happened in Syria, despite what
these people claim. The idea that it somehow is, all evidence to the
contrary notwithstanding, is a by-product of a provincial political
culture which insists on both the centrality of US power globally as
well as the imperialist right to identify who the “good guys” and
the “bad guys” are in any given context. These defenders of Assad in
the name of “anti-imperialism” are not bravely independent
journalists and activists speaking truth to power. No, they are
themselves an expression of narcissistically-oriented domestic
political cultures eager to retain the imperial prerogative of
saying what is what and who is who, even as they express more
normatively left-wing views on domestic policies... //Those among us
who directly opposed the Assad regime, often at great cost, did not
do so because of some Western imperialist plot, but because decades
of abuse, brutality, and corruption were and remain intolerable. To
insist otherwise, and support Assad, is to attempt to strip Syrians
of all political agency and endorse the Assads’ longstanding policy
of domestic politicide, which has deprived Syrians of any meaningful
say in their government and circumstances. /
By tomorrow morning, if you want me to send your name to Gilbert Achcar
to support this statement, send to me offlist with ID as below, so I can
forward to Gilbert en masse: [email protected])
-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Fwd: Letter on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the
Syrian uprising
Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2021 20:41:53 +0000
From: Gilbert Achcar <[email protected]>
Dear Friends
/This Open Letter, prepared by Syrian and pro-Syrian people activists
from across the globe (including refugees, journalists, intellectuals,
academics, artists, and others) will be published on 15 March on the
occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Syrian popular uprising of 2011.
We urge you to join us in signing it, and invite potential signatories
among your contacts to do the same./
I am contributing to the collection of signatures.
Signatures should include:
* First name, last name
* profession/institutional affiliation
* country of residence
Those among you who are Syrians should please signal it as there will be
special mention of the Syrian signatories.
If you are willing to help gather signatures among your contacts, please
follow the same pattern and send them to me in batches, not one by one.
Best wishes
Gilbert Achcar
Professor of Development Studies and International Relations
SOAS - Thornhaugh Street - London WC1H 0XG – UK
Phone +44 20 7898 4557 / SOAS _webpage <https://bit.ly/1sZIeK2>_ /
Selected recent books:
/The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives/,
US <https://bit.ly/2ncDQfV>, UK <https://bit.ly/2M4lT1b>, Arabic
<https://bit.ly/3dfoL51>, French <https://bit.ly/30U2MxL>, German
<https://bit.ly/2vjChS0>, Spanish <https://bit.ly/2KsJLH7>, Hebrew
<https://bit.ly/2Mo0JIb>.
/The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising/,
_US <https://bit.ly/2AJKbcx>_, _UK <https://bit.ly/3dfpAL9>_, _Arabic
<https://bit.ly/3hGbO7G>_, _French <https://bit.ly/37G3YpR>_, _Turkish
<https://bit.ly/296H1ii>_, _Persian <https://bit.ly/2OM9Kg3>_, Spanish.
/Marxism, Orientalism, Cosmopolitanism/, _US <https://bit.ly/37DFCxa>_,
_UK <https://bit.ly/2Nbu6Q0>_, _Arabic <https://bit.ly/2Yey6Wc>_,
_French <https://bit.ly/2YL0vCp>_, _Spanish <https://bit.ly/2MlKSdf>_,
Turkish
<http://www.ayrintiyayinlari.com.tr/kitap/marksizm-oryantalizm-kozmopolitanizm/1432>.
/Morbid Symptoms: Relapse in the Arab Uprising/, _US
<https://bit.ly/2fRSQxy>_, _UK <https://bit.ly/2OedUw9>_, _Arabic
<https://bit.ly/2AFkUB7>_, _French <https://bit.ly/2BgwrXt>_, Japanese
<https://bit.ly/2AJKPXp>, Korean.
***
*Erasing People through Disinformation: Syria and the “Anti-Imperialism”
of Fools*
/Disreputable outlets, often operating under the aegis of “independent
journalism” with purportedly “leftwing” views, are spreading corrosive
propaganda and disinformation that aims to strip Syrians of political
agency/
The years since Russia intervened in Syria on behalf of Bashar al-Assad
have been marked by a curious and malign development: the emergence of
pro-Assad allegiances in the name of “anti-imperialism” among some who
otherwise generally identify as progressive or “left,” and the
consequent spread of manipulative disinformation that routinely deflects
attention away from the well-documented abuses of Assad and his allies.
Portraying themselves as “opponents” of imperialism, they routinely
exhibit a highly selective attention to matters of “intervention” and
human rights violations that often aligns with the governments of Russia
and China; those who disagree with their highly-policed views are
frequently (and falsely) branded as “regime change enthusiasts” or dupes
of western political interests.
The divisive and sectarianizing role played by this group is
unmistakable: in their simplistic view, all pro-democracy and
pro-dignity movements that go against Russian or Chinese state interests
are routinely portrayed as the top-down work of Western interference:
none are autochthonous, none are of a piece with decades of independent
domestic struggle against brutal dictatorship (as in Syria), and none
truly represent the desires of people demanding the right to lives of
dignity rather than oppression and abuse. Among others, this group
includes the American writers at the mysteriously-funded The Grayzone
(Max Blumenthal, Rania Khalek, Ben Norton, Aaron Maté), Australian
academic Tim Anderson and blogger Caitlin Johnstone, and Working Group
on Syria Propaganda and Media (SPM) members Tim Hayward, Vanessa Beeley,
and Piers Robinson in the UK, as well as various writers at Mint Press
News, Consortium News, ZeroHedge, Antiwar.com, GlobalResearch.ca, Moon
of Alabama, and Voltaire.net. Some, like Jimmy Dore and Kim Iversen, are
contemporary “media personalities.” A number of political activist and
advocacy organizations - including the US “Peace Council”, Veterans for
Peace (VFP), Workers World Party (WWP), United National Antiwar
Coalition (UNAC), Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) - have
espoused similar views. But what unites them all is a refusal to contend
with the crimes of the Assad regime, or even to acknowledge that a
brutally repressed popular uprising against Assad took place.
These writers and outlets have mushroomed in recent years, and have
often positioned Syria at the forefront of their criticisms of
imperialism and interventionism, which they characteristically restrict
to the west; Russian and Iranian involvement is generally ignored. In
doing so, they have sought to align themselves with a long and venerable
tradition of internal domestic opposition to the abuses of imperial
power abroad, not only but quite often issuing from the left.
But they do not rightfully belong in that company. No one who explicitly
or implicitly aligns themselves with the malignant Assad government
does. No one who selectively and opportunistically deploys charges of
“imperialism” for reasons of their particular version of “left” politics
rather than opposing it consistently in principle across the globe -
thereby acknowledging the imperialist interventionism of Russia, Iran,
and China - does.
Often under the guise of practicing “independent journalism,” these
various writers and outlets have functioned as chief sources of
misinformation and propaganda about the ongoing global disaster that
Syria has become. Their reactionary, inverted Realpolitik is as fixated
on top-down, anti-democratic “power politics” as that of Henry Kissinger
or Samuel Huntington, just with the valence reversed. But this
maddeningly oversimplifying rhetorical move (“flipping the script” as
one of them once put it), as appealing as it might be to those eager to
identify who the “good guys” and “bad guys” are at any given place on
the planet, is really an instrument of tailored flattery for their
audiences about the “true workings of power” that serves to reinforce a
dysfunctional status quo and impede the development of a truly
progressive and international approach to global politics, one that we
so desperately need, given the planetary challenges of responding to
global warming.
The evidence that US power has itself been appallingly destructive,
especially during the Cold War, is overwhelming: all across the globe,
from Vietnam to Indonesia to Iran to Congo to South and Central America
and beyond, the record of massive human rights abuses accumulated in the
name of fighting Communism is clear. And in the post-Cold War period of
the so-called “War on Terror,” American interventions in Afghanistan and
Iraq have done nothing to suggest a fundamental national change of heart.
But, America is not central to what has happened in Syria, despite what
these people claim. The idea that it somehow is, all evidence to the
contrary notwithstanding, is a by-product of a provincial political
culture which insists on both the centrality of US power globally as
well as the imperialist right to identify who the “good guys” and the
“bad guys” are in any given context. These defenders of Assad in the
name of “anti-imperialism” are not bravely independent journalists and
activists speaking truth to power. No, they are themselves an expression
of narcissistically-oriented domestic political cultures eager to retain
the imperial prerogative of saying what is what and who is who, even as
they express more normatively left-wing views on domestic policies.
The ideological alignment of rightwing admirers of Assad with this kind
of authoritarian-friendly “leftism” is symptomatic of this, and
indicates that the very real and very serious problem lies elsewhere:
what to do when a people is as abused by their government as the Syrian
people have been, held captive by those who think nothing of torturing,
disappearing, and murdering people for even the slightest hint of
political opposition to their authority. As many countries move closer
and closer to authoritarianism and away from democracy, this seems to us
a profoundly urgent political question to which there is yet no answer;
and because there is no answer, all across the globe there is growing
impunity on the part of the powerful, and growing vulnerability for the
powerless. About this, these “anti-imperialists” have no helpful words.
About the profound political violence visited upon the Syrian people by
the Assads, the Iranians, the Russians? No words. Forgive us for
pointing out that this erasure of Syrian lives and experiences appears
to us to embody the very essence of imperialist (and racist) privilege.
Those of us who have risked our lives, been incarcerated in the Assads’
torture prisons (some of us for many years), lost loved ones, had
friends and family disappeared, fled our country? These writers and
bloggers have shown no awareness of our existence, which we
unfortunately do not find surprising, despite the fact that many of us
have spoken and written at length about these events and their meaning
for years now.
Collectively, Syrian experiences from the Revolution to the present pose
a fundamental challenge to the world as it appears to these people.
Those among us who directly opposed the Assad regime, often at great
cost, did not do so because of some Western imperialist plot, but
because decades of abuse, brutality, and corruption were and remain
intolerable. To insist otherwise, and support Assad, is to attempt to
strip Syrians of all political agency and endorse the Assads’
longstanding policy of domestic politicide, which has deprived Syrians
of any meaningful say in their government and circumstances.
We take these attempts to “disappear” Syrians from the world of
politics, solidarity, and partnership as quite consistent with the
character of the regimes these people so evidently admire. This is the
“anti-imperialism” and “leftism” of the unprincipled, the lazy, and of
fools, and only reinforces the dysfunctional international gridlock
exhibited in the UN Security Council. We hope that readers of this piece
will join us in opposing it.
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