Think Harder

I feel I have to start with a quote from Freddie’s first piece on Syria and the left because it is a peak into the alternate universe he is in:

That anyone who didn’t press for all-out war on terrorism – whatever that meant – was guilty of tacit support for Al Qaeda was a given.

This is in defense of Rania. This Rania:

The last one being a response to Anand Gopal, who has been to rebel held Syria before, not given a tour by a regime handler, who had pointed out there were groups besides al Qaeda in Idlib.

Now a new post from Freddie comes off as an attempt to rationalize his defense of the indefensible. See, it isn’t that a large section of the left has been at best indifferent to a protest movement turned revolution met with such criminal brutality it created the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II. No, we actually all agree, but some are too emotional about how vocal the rest need to be:

Well, there is a pro-Assad left, but they are tiny and lack influence even in the context of the radical left. The people who are accused of being the pro-Assad left are much more numerous, despite the fact that most of them explicitly will tell you they’re opposed to Assad.

If this is meant to only refer to the most devote of Assad followers, who hang his portrait on their wall, then sure. However, it is not a tiny section of the radical and anti-war left that considers Assad the democratically elected president, the head of a non-sectarian and anti-imperalist regime, who has been subjected to a regime-change operation from the West. And because the people spreading this nonsense are trusted by many on the left and published in trusted leftist publications, not simply the Infowars republisher globalresearch.ca, it is anything but an uncommon view of the revolution… errr “regime change”.

If you don’t see this, then you have your head up your ass. If you do see it but consider those stances no different from the left that stands in solidarity with those who rose up against tyranny, then you are a fool.

And what about Russian imperialism and intervention? According to Freddie we all agree there as well!

opposing both American imperialism and Russian imperialism alike

But the response to Russia’s crimes on the left has often been more like Adam Johnson’s, writer for FAIR media, the Nation and Alternet:

The real kicker:

Yes, I recognize that solidarity is important

Do you? Is it solidarity to engage in blanket declarations of “terrorist” and “Islamo-fascists” or mocking children trapped in a war zone? No, it is outright hostility.

Alternet ran a two part series on the White Helmets. If you think their attempts to make rescue workers out to be terrorists, and by extension legitimate targets of the armed forces, is not that different from the rest of us, you again are full of shit. And if you think it is an issue that is legitimately open for debate, you are still full of shit.