Requiem for a Heel

I. Mourning and celebration

Who is celebrating the assassination of Qasem Soleimani? Who is commiserating?

In the first group - the celebrants - we find the opponents of Hezbollah and the aging Mullah regime in Tehran: Israel; the Syrians who are against Assad; the Lebanese protesting against the Lebanese government and Hezbollah in recent months; the Iraqis protesting against Iranian influence in Iraq in the past few weeks; Saudi Arabia and any other Arab nations in the Gulf who regard themselves as enemies of Iran. Outside the Middle East - and in the West - it is mostly the 'Ziocons' (Zionist conservatives) who number among those who are crowing and exulting. Many of the 'Ziocons' openly displaying their bloodlust are 'burgers' (that is, Americans, to use 4Chan parlance), although a few are British.

(Over the years, 'Ziocon burgers' have steadily infiltrated the dissident Right - which is surprising, given that the Far Right, especially in America, has been anti-Semitic for the past eighty or so years. Aficionados of Israel and admirers of the Jewish people have never been made welcome on the American Far Right, but they are now trying to turn the tables and make the anti-Semites unwelcome - see the comments thread at this article by Steve Sailer on the assassination. If I'm to make a prediction for the coming decade, it is that the Ziocons will increase their attempts to infiltrate the Far Right - and purge it of anti-Semites - as they make the Far Right their new home: they will abandon the Center-Right, which, as it becomes less and less credible, will continue to lose popularity).

But most on the dissident Right are mourning Soleimani's death or wondering anxiously what it portends for the future. The majority of the dissident Right is made up of what I call the 'anti-imperials'. This faction - by far the largest - sees the Mullahs and the rulers of all the other aging, kleptocratic and despotic regimes in the Third World as 'anti-imperialist' by dint of their anti-Americanism. The anti-imperials feel vaguely sympathetic to the Left, but they rarely characterise themselves as National Bolshevik ('Naz Bol'); rather, they prefer to call themselves 'populist' or 'anti-war'. On this side of the ledger stand mainstream political figures such as Tucker Carlson and Tulsi Gabbard, and also fringe libertarian individuals and groups - LewRockwell.Com, AntiWar.Com, Keith Preston's AttackTheSystem.Com - and a plethora of 'conservative' pundits: Stephen F. Cohen, Pat Buchanan, Saker in His Vineyard, Moon of Alabama, Philip Giraldi, Eric Margolis... On the fringes of the Right, a few prominent white nationalists have migrated over to anti-imperial country, among them Richard Spencer, Hunter Wallace, Mike Enoch, David Duke.

Many of the aforementioned pundits began with one ideology in their early years and subtly shifted away from it in their later. David Duke and Pat Buchanan moved away from racialism and immigration-restrictionism; the writers at AntiWar.Com and LewRockwell.Com, free-market liberalism. The newfound appreciation for Iran and Russia, 'anti-war' and 'anti-interventionist' American foreign policy, necessitates the throwing of one's original ideology overboard. One can then set sail to the land of Red and Brown, of 'Neither Left nor Right', of Naz Bollery. The Red Brown ideology does entail some radical contradictions, but these hardly seems to bother the anti-imperials. A conservative ought to oppose Muammar Gaddafi for his long-time bank-rolling of leftist terrorism; a socialist, Gaddafi's staggering wealth (Gaddafi was worth $USD200 billion at the time of his death). But the inconsistencies were shunted aside during Gaddafi's ouster, and Gaddafi ascended to the pantheon of anti-imperial demi-gods.

II. The last decade summed up

In retrospect, the two most important events for the Far Right in the last decade were the Arab Spring of 2010-11 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, both of which set the Far Right on a new path.

At the start of the decade, despots held sway in countries dominated by an ideology which was either left over from the Cold War (countries such as Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Iran, Syria, Zimbabwe) or which could be described as post-Marxist (Venezuela, Bolivia, Ukraine, Russia). The former group of despots never won an election which could be described as 'free and fair' in the best Jimmy Carter-approved manner; the latter group did win elections initially, but as time went on, they wanted to stay in power past their mandate, and so came increasingly to rely upon state repression.

Most of these despots used their position to enrich themselves, some of them becoming as rich as Croesus. Their rule produced - over the long term - economic, social, intellectual, and cultural stagnation, but it was widely assumed (by observers in the West) that these men would stay in power forever, as their subjects were passive, apathetic, and disorganised. The Arab Spring put paid to that notion. (But the Arab Spring should have been anticipated, as the Arabs, by nature, are a disputatious people given to great emotional excitement). A few years later came Maidan Square and the ouster of Yanukovych in Ukraine, as the Ukrainians sought, once again, to emancipate themselves from Russia.

Yanukovych and the Arab despots responded to the uprising with varying degrees of force, Gaddafi and Assad being the worst. At this point we saw the appearance of what I call the Gaddafi doctrine. At the beginning of the Libyan uprising, Gaddafi responded to his opponents with disproportionate violence: at one anti-Gaddafi protest outside an army barracks, Gaddafi's son ordered soldiers to fire on the crowd with anti-aircraft guns (!) (see Paul Kenyon's Dictatorland: The Men Who Stole Africa (2019)).
Under the Gaddafi doctrine, any opponent of the anti-imperial despots becomes what Yockey calls an Inner Enemy. He is to be stripped of any rights as a consequence, and can be starved, kidnapped, tortured, raped, killed, his house and city leveled and turned into rubble, his family pauperised... 

In the past few months, we have seen a fresh round of protests by the Arab (and Persian) masses in Lebanon, Iraq, Iran; against both Assad's forces and the Kurds' in Deir Yezzor, Syria; against the Islamist HTS militia which holds sway in the rebel enclave of Idlib, Syria (which has been the recipient of a ferocious aerial bombardment and shelling by Putin and Assad, an attack which has killed hundreds and caused over 500,000 refugees to flee). Ideologically, these protests take neither ideological shape nor form - they cannot be classified as liberal or communist or Islamist - and it is not exactly clear what the protestors want; but the question is, do the protestors deserve to be punished, and punished as per the harsh strictures of the Gaddafi doctrine. 

The answer of the anti-imperials seems to be - yes, whereas mine is no.

By any stretch of the imagination, I cannot be considered a humanist or liberal or Arab-lover. I certainly do not want Syrian refugees in my country any more than the Turks or Saudis want them in theirs, and I do not want to take up a collection for the good people of Idlib. All the same, I wouldn't wish Assad on a dog.

This view of mine - a 'normie' view - sets me at odds with the vast majority of the dissident Right, as does my acceptance of information from 'normie' news sources - AFP, Reuters, BBC, Al Jazeera - on the Middle East. (I recommend this excellent summary of the Syrian War, from the Council on Foreign Relations, as the best guide to the war).

I look at Syria or Venezuela or Yemen as I would a horrific car accident. And what is the 'normie' response (I won't say the moral or Christian response, although I'm tempted to) when you pass by a car accident with wreckage and bodies strewn everywhere? It is this. You shake your head in sorrow, say a prayer for the injured or dead, stay out of the way of the emergency service workers, walk on, and go on about your business - thinking, 'There but for the Grace of God...' - and that's about it.

My attitude strikes me as being normal, and that of the anti-imperials, abnormal. During the 2010s, I stopped understanding them. Venezuela under Maduro has been plunged into misery - a misery which has inconvenienced Venezuela's neighbours, who have been forced into take in hundreds of thousands of refugees - and I agree with the 'normie' view (a truism, really) that Venezuela would be better off were Maduro to be removed. But we can't have that, according to the anti-imperials, as that would be 'regime change', a 'CIA Guaidó coup'. Fighting 'regime change', for the Carlsons and Gabbards, has become a principle which is sacred and one which has been elevated above all others.

The Tulsi Gabbard, 'anti-war', 'anti-regime' change doctrine is not built on solid foundations, and even a lackluster personality such as Shay Khatiri - an Iranian liberal activist who writes for neoconservative and anti-Trump publications - can tear it apart with ease. Perhaps it is the extreme incoherence, inconsistency, illogicality of the anti-imperials bothers me more than anything else.

Added to that is the enormous amount of time and energy expended on, for example, propping up the regime of Assad: how many videos and essays by dissident Rightists have been devoted to 'proving' that the April 2018 Douma gas attack was 'staged'? (According to the anti-imperials, the gas attack was either a) faked or b) actually carried out - more self-contradiction! - but by Syrian rebels who sought to frame Assad. The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, went as far as to say that British intelligence did the gassing. My assessment is that Lavrov is not telling the truth or is the victim of a delusion. But that opinion puts me in the minority: the amount of adulation of the Putin regime in the American dissident Right media - as opposed to lack of it in the mainstream Russian media itself - boggles the mind). 

The anti-imperials claim to be 'against war', but of course want the wars in Syria and Ukraine to continue - to a successful conclusion for Russia. Assad has become since 2015 a puppet of the Russians, and seeing as the Assads have been in power in Syria for fifty years (!) this year, the Russians are working towards another fifty. But why do the anti-imperials laud this goal? Why do they want the Assads, Putins and Maduros to stay in power in perpetuity? Why are they investing so much energy in this cause? Why are they neglecting the program of Yockey, as outlined in the last chapters of Imperium (1948) - Yockey, the original Naz Bol?













 

How Yockey refutes non-interventionism and justifies Trump

The US did the right thing about toppling Ghaddafi in 2011, but was remiss in foregoing the opportunity to throw Assad that same year: that is, it neglected its responsibilities as a great power. I have tried to explain this to some of my nationalist friends, but they don't really understand this at all, being unaccustomed to thinking like Bismarck, Hitler, Frederick the Great - in terms of realpolitik and machtpolitik.

Yockey illustrates my point better in his chapter 'The Law of Protection and Obedience' in Imperium (1947). Yockey defines the Law as 'To him who supplies protection also goes obedience... It will go either voluntarily, as the result of persuasion, or as the result of force'. In other words: Syria belongs to America or to some other great power and forms part of a political organism, and unless it descends into anarchy, cannot not be part of a political organism. If it is to exist, it must be ruled by someone. That someone - the sovereign ruler - demands obedience, and in exchange for that obedience, he protects that territory and its people from incorporation into rival states.

Yockey gives a concrete application of this: Europe - and Germany - in the immediate aftermath of the war, with the two halves under the occupation of the Americans and the Russians respectively:

Once more the words protection and obedience have also been used with an entire absence of any moral content. Thus “protection” can mean unlimited terror by military means, and “obedience” may be a reflection of the alternative of the concentration camp. The condition of occupied Europe under extra-European armies is protection within the meaning of this organic law. Even though these extra-European armies are starving and torturing the populace, nevertheless they are protecting that part of Europe from incorporation by another political unit. America protects its half from Russia and Russia protects its half from America. Thus the word is neutral vis-à-vis the disjunction of altruism-egoism. Protection is not kindliness, it is acquisition of power. Obedience is not gratitude, it is political submission from whatever motive.

Other examples of the law in action: feudalism, 'Western protectorates' and federalism:

This Law describes Western feudalism, for instance. Feudalism is the strongest political system that can arise. It is integrated inwardly and outwardly... The basic formulation of the feudal Idea is nothing but Protection and Obedience.

Protectorates such as Western international law recognizes are examples of the law. It also describes any federal units that arise. The central government is the only political one, for it protects and thus receives political obedience.

What happens if the rulers of a State don't pay attention to this law? The weakness of the political organism and possibly its death:

Looking at the organism inwardly, the amount of protection and the amount of obedience, and the quality of these things, describes the inner strength of the unit. A high degree of protection and a high degree of obedience constitute an integrated organism that can stand the test of politics. Such an organism can often prevail against great odds. A low degree of the protection-obedience relationship describes a unit that is inwardly weak. It cannot stand a real hard struggle, and will often succumb in a test even to an organism with fewer material means and numbers.

Thus when in the 20th century an organism dare not conscript a population within its area, such an area is one of inner weakness; and cannot be counted part of the political body. Such a situation can only continue as long as such an area is not the focus of political tension.

Yockey more or less anticipates what happened to Syria following its disintegration in 2011:

The existential nature of the Law is also shown by the fact that if a State is unable to protect an area and population within its system, that area and population will pass into the system of another State that can protect and has the will to protect. The passing may be by revolt, it may be by war. It may be by negotiation, particularly if the protecting State allows a quasi-government to exist in the protected area, which can make a private understanding with other powers to deliver to them the population and territory.

In 2011, so far as Libya was concerned, the US was able to 'protect an area and population within its system' - i.e., it was able to protect the rebels; in Syria, it was unwilling to protect, and so allowed the area and population to 'pass into the system of another State that can protect and has the will to protect'. The US, the protecting power in this instance, did allow a 'quasi-government to exist in the protected area' - in fact, more than one quasi-government: the Assad rump regime, the Kurdish-held area, the rebel-held area, the Turkish-held area, and, after 2014, the ISIS-held area...

The consequences for Europe of that non-interventionism we all know: for one thing, it has triggered a massive Syrian refugee crisis, which could have been avoided. The US had a window of opportunity in 2011, and in that time had Assad been overthrown (like Ghaddafi) or forced to resign (like Mubarak), then the refugee crisis wouldn't have happened, and neither would the 2015 Cologne New Year's Eve sexual assaults...

The failure of the US to live up to its responsibilities as a power and to accede to weakness in this instance did hurt Europe, the West and the white man. A little 'hawkishness', a little 'liberal interventionism', a little 'neoconservatism', back then would have solved many of the problems afflicting us today; at the least, it wouldn't have hurt. As to why the Obama administration showed such passivity and inaction, one could blame their lack of courage - but one also must blame the poisonous, will-sapping atmosphere created by the isolationists and non-interventionists after the Ghaddafi ouster. In other words, one must blame the Ron Pauls. They, through their thoughts and actions, aided and abetted the rape of the women and girls of Cologne.

But now Trump enters the picture. The US has been bombing Syria for quite some time, often in co-operation with Russia and Assad, so as to prevent areas from falling into the hands of ISIS and the various 'bad' rebel groups. Now Trump has put the population Khan Sheikhoun under his wing and is protecting them from Assad (and, as a corollary, demanding obedience in return). In other words, he is expanding the sphere of US power in Syria. That has shocked the world, but it's something that should have been done long ago. From a political point of view, the more of the Syrian 'area and population' the US can enrol and conscript, the better.

None of this means that I am taking a pro-American position. Any statesman from any great power - Russia or China, for example - in Trump's shoes would be forced to act as he has done, and would be criminally negligent not to have done so. The laws Yockey describes apply universally.

A Song of Solidarity for the Alt Right's New Friends

One of the interesting thing about the Trump air strike is that it has drawn North Korea and Syria, and Iran and Russia and Syria, closer together: it's a case of united we stand, divided we fall.

In a tweet about the missile strikes, Rouhani said: "I call on the world to reject such policies, which bring only destruction and danger to the region and the globe."

"U.S. aggression against Shayrat (airbase) strengthens regional extremism and terror, and global lawlessness and instability, and must be condemned," Rouhani said.

The heads of the general staffs of Iran and Russia, a close ally of Assad, spoke by telephone on Saturday and condemned the U.S. strikes as "blatant aggression ... aimed at slowing a trend of victories by Syria's army and its allies and boosting the terrorists' morale", Iran's state news agency IRNA said.

Iran's Mohammad Baqeri and Russia's Valery Gerasimov "stressed that the two countries would continue their cooperation with the Syrian government until the full defeat of the terrorists and their backers in the country", IRNA added.

North Korea weighed in on Saturday, calling the U.S. strikes "an unforgivable act of aggression" that showed its own decision to develop nuclear weapons was "the right choice a million times over".

Diplomatically isolated North Korea considers Syria a key ally.

Trump or Assad? Trump or Putin? The Alt Right have chosen Assad, and Putin, over Trump. The Alt Right has some new friends: Iran, Syria, Russia, and North Korea. (Or perhaps these friends weren't new: it could be that the Alt Right was working for Putin, at least, all along).

Iran, Syria, Russia and North Korea make up a new coalition - a Gang of Four. The Alt Right must express their solidarity for the foursome. I've found just the perfect song, see below.

Never fear, Alt Right, the light is darkest before dawn.

Win or lose, sink or swim 

One thing is certain we'll never give in

Side by side, hand in hand

We all stand together

Play the game, fight the fight

But what's the point on a beautiful night?

Arm in arm, hand in hand

We all stand together

Keeping us warm in the night

La la la la

Walk in the night

You'll get it right

Win or lose, sink or swim

One thing is certain we'll never give in

Side by side, hand in hand

We all stand together

Praise Kek!

Assad and Hitler are not the same: why Holocaust Revisionists should believe the Sarin gas attack story

Assadists and Putinistas will fall into two groups: those who believe that Hitler gassed the Jews and those who don't. Both groups believe that either a) Assad has never used chemical weapons and that the April Sarin attack was a 'false flag' and never happened or b) that the gas attack happened, but it was the rebels who did it (this is now the official Kremlin line). Those Assadists and Putinistas who have doubts about the Holocaust tend to point out the resemblances between the Syrian gassing allegations and the Holocaust tale. Both Assad and Hitler have been accused of gassing innocent people, both are regarded as dictators, and both wear moustaches. On that basis, the Assadists argue that the anti-Assad atrocity propaganda is just as fabricated as the anti-Hitler was: because the Holocaust story was false, we should infer that the Assad chemical warfare allegations - and other allegations, such as the mass executions at Sednaya jail - are false. And both fabrications are said to be the work of the Jews (but never the Americans and the Russians, whose role in fomenting Holocaust propaganda is nearly always overlooked).

It was recently reported that forensic tests have been carried out on the victims of the Sarin gas attack:

Autopsies on victims of the Syrian poisoning gas attack have confirmed chemical weapons were used in the daybreak strike that led the United States to fire more than 50 missiles into Syrian territory. 

The autopsies, conducted on three victims by Turkish doctors, provide the most concrete evidence to date for why more than 80 civilians - including about 30 children - were killed. The chemical used was most likely the deadly nerve agent sarin, the Turkish Health Ministry said.

"According to the preliminary results, the findings suggest that the patients were exposed to a chemical substance [Sarin]," the statement said.

Sarin is 20 times as deadly as cyanide. Within seconds of exposure noses run, tears form, mouths drool and vomit. If exposed to a high concentration, victim will convulse, become paralysed and die within 10 minutes.

Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said that the World Health Organisation supervised the autopsies and that the results were sent to The Hague for further analysis.

Does this blow the thesis of the Mike Enochs - that the Sarin gas attacks never happened - out of the water? I think so. We can scoff at Turkey and point out that Turkey is hardly 'neutral' and 'objective', but at least Turkey is doing a forensic analysis (and so will the analysts at the Hague). The results of that analysis can be disputed all one likes, but at least it was carried out. Mike Enoch can carry out his own forensic analysis, or petition for 'neutral' and 'objective' nations such as Russia, Iran and North Korea to do their own. Even Iran has suggested that an 'impartial' enquiry should be held.

The fact that the Turks carried out autopsies illustrates the qualitative differences between the Syrian and German gassing allegations. In the seventy years since the end of the war, not one autopsy of any of the six million Jews killed by Hitler has been performed that shows death by gassing - not one. And hardly any forensic analysis of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor and other Holocaust murder sites has taken place: we simply haven't bothered - at least to the extent that the Turks have done in Syria.

It would be easy enough to do, one would think. Scientists have detected the cosmic background radiation that appeared during the Big Bang; surely they could detect residues of the poison gas at Auschwitz which killed 1.5 million people? After all, the gassings at Auschwitz took place over seventy years ago, the Big Bang, thirteen billion.

The Holocaust story, when it first appeared, was a huge dump of unsubstantiated and unsupported information, as in this British Daily Telegraph article from June 1942:

If you read it, you'll all see that it depends one man's say-so. No forensic evidence was provided. The British didn't take the story seriously at the time, which is why they buried it on page five of a six-page newspaper.

The Soviets, after the liberation of Treblinka, did attempt to provide some forensic evidence: piles of shoes, eyeglasses and human hair. The perfectly innocent explanation for these was that the camps doubled as textile factories. At any rate, piles of glasses don't prove that a mass extermination - with or without poison gas - took place.

The second difference that arises after a comparison between the Holocaust and Assad stories is that the former seem wildly implausible, the latter do not. Anyone who has read the wartime and Nuremberg trial accounts of German atrocities - killing Jews with poison gas and electrocution, chasing Jews into pools of acid, forcing Jews to climb up trees which are then cut down - is struck by their Kafkaesque absurdity and unreality (but then Kafka was a Jewish writer, and wild stories of persecution and violence by Gentiles form part of the Jewish folk literary tradition). The figures, too, seem wildly inflated: 35,000 to 80,000 Jews - which is two to three infantry divisions worth - were shot dead in the ravine of Babi Yar in the space of a few days. Whereas the allegation that Assad hanged 5000 to 13,000 people in the jail at Sednaya over the course of four years seems perfectly plausible. At the least, if and when the regime falls, the story can be verified through forensics. As for chemical weapons, Libya under Ghaddafi developed them, and Iran and Iraq used them against each other in the war in the early eighties (some have speculated that Russia transported Iraq's stockpile of chemical weapons to Syria in the weeks prior to the 2003 American invasion); there's no reason why Syria shouldn't be using them as well.

To pull back now and look at the big picture. The US and Russia - and Jewry - are engaged in a new Cold War. All sides loathe anti-Semitism, and National Socialist Germany, with a fanatic intensity. Shouldn't we in the movement take a position of 'a pox in both your houses'? Why favour one over the other? Why go to bat for Assad, an Arab and a Muslim, and Putin, who despises National Socialism, bans Holocaust denial, encourages Muslim and non-white immigration into Russia... Assad may look white, but he is not; Putin is nominally white, but, being a Russian revanchist, hates the West, the white man, Europe.

Here's the other argument. Why should we associate ourselves with brutal regimes such as Syria, North Korea and Iran - the three of which are now aligned - when the three have perfectly verifiable and well documented human rights abuses which are appalling enough make Israel look good? It goes without saying that Hitler has a bad reputation and that the task of refuting the Holocaust story burdens us (as it was designed to do); so why add to that burden by carrying the flag for the Assads, Jong Uns and Rouhanis?

Finally, many on the Alt Right are angry with Trump and are doing their best to whip up hatred towards Trump. But, while they may be anti-Semitic, the Hunter Wallaces, the Kevin MacDonalds, the Mike Enochs, the Richard Spencers, were never on our side - the Holocaust Revisionist side - anyway. They were, however, on the side of Putin, who believes in the Holocaust, uses it to justify the 'Great Patriotic War', bans Holocaust denial in Russia, and accuses the Ukrainians of being Nazis (as if being a Nazi was a bad thing).

'All the hallmarks of a false flag': How the Alt Right was manipulated

When listening to Mike Enoch's hilarious on-air meltdown on the Daily Shoah during Trump's bombing of the Syrian airfields, I was struck by one thing: the absolute certainty with which Enoch believed that the Sarin gas attack was a false flag. He seemed convinced that it had never taken place. After the attack, the false flag meme had swept the Alt Right - and the Far Left - like wildfire, and, at a political meeting I went to on the Friday of the Trump air strike, I was regaled with accounts of how the gas attacks were faked.

It's well known that Putin, as part of his disinformatsiya campaign against his opponents in the Ukraine and in the West, relies on 'savushkinas' - armies of paid Kremlin trolls. My suspicion was that the same 'savushkinas' were working overtime to disseminate the false flag meme on behalf of Russia and Iran's client regime in Damascus. It turns out my suspicions were correct. I've just found an amazing article, 'How the alt-right brought #SyriaHoax to America: Tracing the "false flag" claim back to a pro-Assad website' by the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), and after reading it, you won't be able to argue with its conclusions.

It contains a lot screenshots and graphics, and you should click on the link to view them.

Here's a summary of the piece:

A conspiracy alleging a chemical weapons attack carried out in northwestern Syria last week was a "false flag" operation orchestrated by "terrorists" opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad quickly made its way from a pro-Assad propaganda outlet to leading members of the far-right media in the US.

The trail leading directly from Al-Masdar News to far-right entities like the conspiracy-trafficking site InfoWars was documented by the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research (DFR) Lab, which uses open-source information to trace patterns of disinformation and hybrid warfare. Al-Masdar is run by Assad loyalist Leith Abou Fadel, who pushed a conspiracy theory in 2015 that a refugee tripped by a Hungarian camerawoman while holding his young son was a "supporter of Al Qaeda."

So how did the meme make its way from Syria to Australia, where my meeting took place?

The Al-Masdar piece was quickly "reproduced verbatim by at least three conspiracy sites: globalresearch.ca, informationclearinghouse.info and The Lifeboat News," according to DFR Lab. 

It was also quoted extensively in an article titled, "This is why CNN and all mainstream media must apologize for FAKE NEWS Syria chemical attack," which was published by the pro-Russia site The Duran.

On April 5, InfoWars, a far-right site known for peddling conspiracy theories, picked it up. It ran an article claiming the gas attack was a false-flag operation funded by the liberal business magnate George Soros and carried out by the White Helmets — a civil defense organization comprised of volunteer first responders that detractors have attempted to brand as a tool of Al Qaeda-aligned rebel forces.

The InfoWars article, DFR Lab wrote, "made the same claims, and used the same sources, as the al-Masdar story," merely "reversing their order."

Once the theory was in the crosshairs of one of the country's most notorious conspiracy theorists — InfoWars founder Alex Jones — it got help from one of Jones' biggest fans: Mike Cernovich, the self-described "new right" commentator whose work has been praised by the Trump administration.

"#SyriaHoax is hash tag of the day! Don't fall for #SyriaHoax!," Cernovich tweeted to his nearly 250,000 followers on April 6.

The hashtag was retweeted approximately 3,000 times by some 40-odd Twitter accounts — including fake accounts operated by Twitter "bots" programmed to aggressively pump out propaganda. DFR Lab suggested the idea for the hashtag may have originated with a month-old, pro-Russia account with 18 followers. 

Much of the hashtag's "initial viral appeal appears to have come from suspiciously hyperactive accounts that tweeted it dozens or hundreds of times in the space of a few hours," DFR Lab wrote...

The hashtag owed its success largely to Cernovich, who is an influential tweeter in his own right. However, part of that success was due to bots.

So the 'savushkinas' who spread this weren't even human. Here's an image:

Again, I urge my readers to click on the link and read the report all the way through.

The Business Insider story writes, 'That the alt-right would pick up on a hashtag aimed at villainizing forces opposed to Assad and Russia broadly aligns with its  crusade against establishment politics  and perception of the US as a globalist, imperialist power working on behalf of liberal elites'. So all of this done for politics. Keep in mind that Iran and Russia - and China - are global imperialist powers as well as the US. The Syrian conflict is a war, and in any war, all sides - and not just the 'globalist, imperialist power' the US - tell lies in order to influence public opinion. Evaluate your information - and the sources of that information - carefully, folks: don't accept any meme just because it's anti-US. Don't be a bot, and don't fall victim to the 'Trolls from Oligino'.

You've got to be joking

See here for source.

Assad fighting for 'secularism' against 'Islamism'? The Assadists need a new narrative.