Eva Bartlett, Vanessa Beeley, Tim Anderson, & all of Russian state media have been harping on the White Helmets since their formal organization three years ago, since they were trained in methods of rescue, elementary medical care, setting up field hospitals.

According to Assad’s stable of propagandists, the White Helmets are the master orchestrators of chaos & conflict in Syria, even resorting to killing children to make snuff movies, faking sarin gas attacks & blaming it on Assad, stealing baby corpses from morgues, & luring children with crackers in the suicide bomb attack on buses of civilians that Assad was forcibly relocating without protection.

But if the real problem in Syria, to their minds, is US regime change operations, why do they spend absolutely no time elaborating on how the US is operating to bring down Assad? Except for vague assertions about US-backed “jihadi head-choppers”? How did rescue workers pulling people out of cement rubble become much more treacherous in Assadist polemics than US bombers & special forces?

There’s a demented, obscurantist quality to Assadist propaganda, not unlike the Nazis against Jews, Roma, socialists, the disabled. That should be a red alert to critical minds but it appears to be the attraction. Does an understanding of this phenomenon lie in willful ignorance, the appeal of demon politics, or the mass psychology of fascism?