Incredible minds at work over at .world. Chalking up U.S. (and other western) interests working as intended (but not presented as meekly as they hoped it would) as "corruption", but otherwise anything that happens outside "the garden" is fair play.
These "people" couldn't care less about the lives of those from the Global South, never mind West Asia.
What gets me is how wildly people in the thread blew it out of proportion. You had someone quoting "first they came for" as if lifting sanctions on a leader we installed is comparable to the Holocaust.
It's like everyone needs everyone to agree that every time Trump sneezes, it's the literal worst thing that has ever happened, and if you push back on anything ever you're the enemy. These same people fantasize that they can win elections by appealing to moderates.
But the thing that really grinds my gears is how they all default to hostile intervention in foreign countries despite knowing absolutely nothing about their situation. The "null" position should be leaving everyone alone, but instead, it's whatever the government or media tell them. Or in this case, whatever a random tweet from a crypto grifter tells them. And they will try to bring down the hammer of social condemnation and use things like this as a way to equate communists to fascists and kick us out of spaces, even when they aren't actually at all invested in the issue.
Buncha clowns.
It's the manufacturing of consent at work in real-time. To these loonies, history always resets at some "boomerang" event (9/11, oct 7th, etc..), which is used and abused as justifications to maintain status quo (western interventionism).
I think I've said this elsewhere but as long as they're not on the receiving end of forever wars/genocides, it'll never dawn on them how privileged they are to say whatever asinine bs without remorse or consequence (they get straight up rewarded for it).
Honestly I don't get why you engage with them, I would've lost my sanity the moment some Western chauvinist tried to sell people on Western-installed puppets with appeal to ahistorism. Props to you though for persevering.
It's very frustrating and the thread I linked made me feel like I was losing my mind. I try to seek out perspectives I disagree with but a lot of times I just end up concluding, "Damn, these people are even worse than I thought."
first I read "AI Qaida", but maybe there's something to that too
This is a shit take. Ahmed al-Sharaa renounced al Qaeda years ago and has demonstrated leadership as a moderate who protects ethnic minorities. He aligned with al Qaeda in Iraq in 2003 against the US invasion that most of us were protesting at home
Being a "moderate who protects ethnic minorities" by launching raids and threatening to fully invade their towns while ignoring Israels own occupation and bombardments against them.
has demonstrated leadership as a moderate who protects ethnic minorities
https://english.enabbaladi.net/archives/2025/05/syria-arrests-pflp-gc-secretary-general/
Next, you'll denounce these sources, which directly shatter that false eurolib, chauvinistic, ahistoric narrative, as "Assad-ist". If you're eager to to engage in Alternate History, do it in a D&D game or something.
Dude he was fighting the Kurds in Manbij and Efrin with Al-Nusra in like 2016. He founded Al-Nusra, an offshoot of Al-Quaeda, in 2012.
https://www.understandingwar.org/report/jabhat-al-nusra-syria
In January 2012, a group called Jabhat al-Nusra announced itself as al-Qaeda’s Syrian franchise, and the following month al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri called for Sunnis from around the region to join a jihad against the regime. Jabhat al-Nusra gained Syrian and foreign recruits as it scored greater battlefield successes than rival opposition groups.
In April 2013, a separate group formed from the remnants of al-Qaeda in Iraq that called itself the Islamic State of Iraq emerged and exceeded even Jabhat al-Nusra in its brutality
https://www.cfr.org/article/syrias-civil-war
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ras_al-Ayn_(2012%E2%80%9313)
Who were the "good guys" in the Syrian Civil War? Did you read beyond 2016?
Maybe not the guy who was and still to some degree practice sexual slavery in the regions he controls.
Overall probably the Kurds.
Certainly not the Salafist and jihadists.
Cool, so then, why did 1500 people just upvote a picture of a tweet calling him a terrorist, and criticizing the lifting of sanctions against him? Why did only like 40 people downvote it? That's what I'm calling out.
~~Where were you when in that thread, by the way? Why are you criticizing my take and not that one? Don't tell me you only saw the thread sitting at 7 upvotes and missed the one with 1500.~~ My bad.
I have the second most upvoted comment on that post: https://mander.xyz/comment/19100228
He's literally cozying up to Israel and the US and ignoring their occupation of/attacks on his lands, which ramped up when he overthrew the previous regime, weakening the country in the midst of extreme Zionist aggression.
I'd also love to know how he's "protecting ethnic minorities" by launching raids against them and threatening to invade them to seize their towns.
My apologies. I tried to control-F and apparently that doesn't work on usernames.
In any case, my take is essentially just, "Hands off Syria." I didn't think we should arm him, I don't think we should sanction him, etc. I don't really think that's a shit take, but it's certainly drawn some criticism over the years.
