"Robin Yassin-Kassab examines the axis of useful idiocy that responds to the rise of torch wielding fascism in the U.S. with whatabout-Hillaryisms, that defends British chauvinism as a tactic to combat globalism, and that defends the genocidal Syrian Regime as a hedge against 'Zio-Wahhabi' imperialism.
"It isn’t surprising that the right sees every Syrian refugee as a potential terorist when the left has spent years opining that the Syrian revolution is run by al-Qaida (or American imperialism, or Zionism). These beasts feed each other. The greatest threats today are rising authoritarianism, whether it calls itself leftist or rightist, and the preference for ideology over human reality, for simplistic conspiracism over complicated facts.
This is going to get a lot more messy. We need answers to the politics of austerity and the undoubted tensions of a globalised and increasingly technologised economy. Nostalgia for the social compositions of earlier decades, and the era when national borders were impermeable, is by no means an answer. Yassin argues that democracy “retreats everywhere as soon as it stops progressing anywhere”. He speaks of a progressively “Syrianized” world.
It’s no suprise that today Western ‘realists’ think the regime which started the Syrian war should remain in power for the sake of stability; or that a childish and bullying reality-TV star is president of the world’s most powerful state; or that fascists are again gathering for torch-lit rallies. That’s what happens when you ignore human suffering in favour of stirring grand narratives." — Jonathan Hendrixson
A Syrianized world
"It isn’t surprising that the right sees every Syrian refugee as a potential terorist when the left has spent years opining that the Syrian revolution is run by al-Qaida (or American imperialism, or Zionism). These beasts feed each other. The greatest threats today are rising authoritarianism, whether it calls itself leftist or rightist, and the preference for ideology over human reality, for simplistic conspiracism over complicated facts.
This is going to get a lot more messy. We need answers to the politics of austerity and the undoubted tensions of a globalised and increasingly technologised economy. Nostalgia for the social compositions of earlier decades, and the era when national borders were impermeable, is by no means an answer. Yassin argues that democracy “retreats everywhere as soon as it stops progressing anywhere”. He speaks of a progressively “Syrianized” world.
It’s no suprise that today Western ‘realists’ think the regime which started the Syrian war should remain in power for the sake of stability; or that a childish and bullying reality-TV star is president of the world’s most powerful state; or that fascists are again gathering for torch-lit rallies. That’s what happens when you ignore human suffering in favour of stirring grand narratives." — Jonathan Hendrixson
A Syrianized world
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