In response to the Guardian exposé, Vanessa Beeley–the Leni Riefenstahl of the Assad dictatorship & a fascist who openly supports the Burmese junta in its genocide of the Rohingya people–is declaring herself “the direct voice of the Syrian people” & claiming that any attempts to smear her are attempts to smear & silence Syrian voices. On the contrary. Many of us, like the Guardian exposé, work assiduously to show that Beeley is a ventriloquist dummy for the Assad regime. Those are the Syrian voices she represents.
Bartlett & Beeley came out of nowhere only a few years ago to declare themselves independent journalists & experts on Syria. Some of us have spent decades longer trying to understand the politics of our own countries & would never presume to expertise on revolution & counter-revolution in Syria after only several months of blogging. As I wrote just one year ago: “It cannot go without protest that the promotion of two western women–who’ve spent a total of five or six weeks in Syria traveling by their own admission with Assad officials & Syrian military security–over the voices of Syrian journalists & activists is a parody of white supremacy.”
The truth of the matter is, Bartlett & Beeley did not come out of nowhere. As the Guardian article shows & their own articles repeatedly boast, they have contacts at the highest levels of the Syrian & Russian governments. They are not journalists; they are professional propagandists for the Assad dictatorship. The authentic voices of the Syrian revolution are in exile, in Assad’s gulag, dead, or under aerial bombardment by Syrian, Russian, & US-coalition warplanes.