It’s one thing for professional propagandists like Eva Bartlett & Vanessa Beeley to write panegyrics to Assad & the Syrian army. They get paid big bucks to do so. Fascist political circles are their natural habitat. But it’s another story altogether when long-time antiwar activists & erstwhile socialists like Jeff Mackler from Socialist Action write the same rubbish honoring the Assad dictatorship & crowing about how Syria & its military allies are defending Syria’s self-determination against US imperialism. Unconcerned about his political associations with dictatorship, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, & fascism, he wrote a nearly 1,500 word article of Assad apologetics without one word about the massive bombing of civilians by Syria, Russia, or the US coalition. Antiwar activists & socialists like him are rotted to the core, beyond political redemption, when they engage only with power politics & not with the human toll of war.

There was a time I grieved at the political corruption former allies express. But grief has long since been replaced with outrage at their betrayals of antiwar principles, betrayals that have made the US antiwar movement complicit in aiding & abetting counterrevolution in Syria. May they rot in hell. The historic mission now is to rebuild the international antiwar movement on the principles of solidarity & anti-militarism.

Photo is the aftermath of Syrian & Russian bombing in Ghouta. Rescue workers are trying to recover bodies from the rubble.

(Photo from White Helmets)