Bashar al-Assad recently gave a speech where he denied the Holocaust as well as promoted the idea that Jewish people in Israel are “Khazars”. Widely also reported was Assad’s claim that the US had enabled the Nazis.
Western editorial reactions to the speech primarily focused on Assad’s Holocaust denialism, and the denialism of the ethnicity of Israeli Jews via the Khazar conspiracy theory — and therefore a denial of the Israeli people’s Biblical right to Israel.
However, my primary reactions to the speech were to note Assad’s clear invocation of Russia’s cult of WW2 and ideology of victory as well as continued parrotting of Russian nationalist ideas within a ‘narrative warfare’ context in general.
Another strong takeaway I had was that despite his argumentation that his narrative was the truth, Assad seems to feel that this war for “truth” does not necessarily correspond to the true and the false. In this sense, that is much like the historical antisemitism which is represented by people who believe in forgeries like The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion despite all evidence they are inauthentic documents.
I imagined how funny it must have sounded when he said it:
“….whoever winth the truth… Of courthe, the truth, regardleth of whether it is real or falthe, ith the one who winth the war and the battle.” – Bashar al-Assad (sloppy lisp emphasis added by the author)
The Syrian government state news site SANA (Syrian Arab News Agency) summarized this speech in a clear context which references narrative warfare:
“President Bashar al-Assad affirmed that the war today is a war of truth, and what happened in Palestine broke the dominance of the Zionist narrative globally, and that adhering to the issues protects the homelands and the Palestinian people succeeded in adhering to their cause, indicating that the attack by Western officials to support “Israel” is the attack of a mother to protect her son and “Israel” is the legitimate child of colonialism.” [1]
As discussed in my peer-reviewed paper on 9/11 conspiracy theories and their links to Russian nationalism, it was clear that even in September 2001, that it had been the Syrian government provably responsible for the “4000 Jews Stayed Home” conspiracy theory of 9/11. According to the US State Department, this conspiracy provably began in Assad-funded media in Lebanon before spreading to the rest of the world. It also appeared credulously in Russia’s “Pravda” within 24 hours of the attacks. It later appeared as an addendum in copies of (the Tsarist Okhrana-produced forgery) The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion which were directly sponsored for publication by the Syrian Ministry of Information [2].
All of this brought to mind that Bashar al-Assad has been a consistent puppet of Russia for decades. And much like my “bullying attitude” towards fat Russian dupe Steven Seagal, I feel ethically OK making fun of Assad too and his stupid lisp as part of the package here. Not like I am the first.
He sounds like the Swedish Chef from the Muppets to me. So if we’re talking about narrative warfare, leth not forgeth about al-Athad’th lithp [3], or the fact Putin has his hand up his ass.
There is no horror in Gaza on a level of what Assad has done to his own people with Russia’s military suport in Syria. Remember, this bombing of Syrians has killed nearly a half a million people and displaced millions more. These displaced migrants were fed into Europe in a “weaponized” fashion by Russia. Once they arrived, the migrants were encountered by highly propagandized right wing xenophobic political elements, who in many cases had been directly funded or otherwise enabled by Russia. In addition to the fact that many of the migrants probably represent real security threats, this has created an “engine” of regional destabilization which is directly linked to the Russian hybrid warfare agenda.
And here is also where it is worth talking about where should the Palestinians finally be settled so they can have autonomy and peace?
Assad argued in his speech that they would wind up as migrants in Jordan or Egypt. I would argue this is a form of narrative warfare Assad is waging to split Egypt and Jordan from cooperation with Israel in any way.
To me, it always seemed with the vacancy he created, that Assad’s Syria is the just place to create a New Palestine state. Wouldn’t that be poetic justice? It sounds like a good truth to me. It wouldn’t surprise me though if Assad never lived to see it.
Where is Team America World Police when you need them most?
References
[1] Bashar al-Assad, “President al-Assad during a meeting of the Central Committee of the Baath Party: Adherence to issues is what protects peoples and homelands” [Chrome translation from Arabic], Syrian Arab News Agency, December 18 2023, https://www.sana.sy/?p=2018933
[2] Michael Hotchkiss, 2019, “Russian Information Warfare and 9/11 Conspiracism: When Fake News meets False Prophecy“, Developments in Information Security and Cybernetic Wars (M. Sarfraz, editor), p. 236-266, IGI Global.
[3] Faisal al Yafai, “Songs about the letter S and Assad’s hold on power“, August 19 2011, The National, https://www.thenationalnews.com/songs-about-the-letter-s-and-assad-s-hold-on-power-1.414290