THE USEFUL IDIOTS OF THE IMPERIAL RECONQUEST

If wars always serve the powerful and feed capitalism, it is surprising to note how they often obtain a form of unanimity as to their necessity, from the right to the left. Jean-Pierre Garnier analyses at length the way in which anarchists, libertarians, alternatives, autonomists and other antifas in France have supported the wars in the Middle East.

We know how little the French ultra-left of the new generations likes geopolitical questions and the relations of power on an international scale. We are really no longer in the era when the political socialization of its activists and sympathizers went through anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism and Third Worldism. As the ideological trend that has become dominant on the left and beyond for some time now, the desire for change is more about the social than the social, especially when the social concerns territories beyond the limits of the hexagon. Certainly, a part of the « left » remains faithful to the Palestinian cause and is interested from time to time in the Zapatista experience in Mexican Chiapas, taken as a new model of emancipation. She also denounces the exactions of the American police against black citizens, the working conditions of overexploited workers in Bangladesh or the disintegration of rural societies in Latin America due to the imposition of export crops for the benefit of multinationals. But it is obvious that foreign policy, both diplomatic and military, starting with that of the French rulers, has become the least of his worries.

Only the submission of the economic policies conducted by the European States to the  » The « diktats of the Troika  » continues to be of serious concern to the extreme left, as evidenced by the active part it has taken, alongside the social-democratic left (PCF, Parti de Gauche, Attac, Le Monde Diplomatique…), in the campaign against the European constitution project. Likewise, it vigorously denounces the clandestine negotiations between it and the United States to create a transatlantic free trade zone (TTIP or TAFTA) opening the way to an increased hold of the large American companies and globalized finance. It must be said that all the economic policies resulting from the implementation of a capitalism without borders rhyme with austerity and that the intellectual petty bourgeoisie of which the anarcho-libertarians are a part, even if at a lower rank, will inevitably be affected.

On the other hand, our « leftists » of the new wave seemed, until not too long ago, to be little concerned by the confrontations taking place on the international scene. The last mobilization of its meager troops dates back to the war launched in 2003 by the U.S. government to end the Iraqi « regime ». While joining their voices to those of the supporters of the invasion to castigate the misdeeds of the dictator Saddam Hussein, our anarcho-libertarians, shocked by the massacres of civilian populations by the bombs and missiles of the US Air Force, judged that the « allies » had gone a bit too far. Since then, there has been radio silence from the radical left in France on what is happening on the other side of the Mediterranean, except for the revolutionary delirium that took hold of it again at the time of the ephemeral and mythical Arab Spring, to which I will return. This silence, however, is beginning to be broken, but in a way that might surprise people who claim to be in the anti-capitalist and anti-statist tradition.

First of all, let us note that there is a general silence on the warlike expeditions led by our governments, whether in Libya under Sarkozy or in sub-Saharan Africa under Hollande. No doubt it was considered, including on the left of the official left, that it was for the good cause, as recommended by the media more than ever enslaved to the powers that be: to bring down a despised tyrant, in one case, to fight hateful terrorists in another. This without asking, in view of the aftermath of the second war led by US imperialism in Iraq, whether the situation of the population in Libya would improve once the destruction of Muammar Gaddafi’s « regime » and the physical elimination of its leader had been accomplished, or wondering about the reasons for the progression of jihadism in the lands of Françafrique.

Recently, however, the « alternative » press and radio stations have been opening their columns or airwaves to witnesses of events or analysts of the situation in Syria. But, far from proposing a vision of the conflicts that are devastating the country that breaks with the one broadcast in continuous streams by the dominant media, themselves subservient to the Western powers working to dismember this state, our anarcho-libertarians are content to outbid each other in the brainwashing and brainwashing that serves to justify that this country be, after some others, put to fire and blood in the name of safeguarding freedoms and promoting democracy.

LIBERTARIAN REBELS?

My first surprise, a bad surprise, came, almost 3 years ago, from a very popular program on Radio Libertaire, Chroniques rebelles, in which I often participated. Her host has been one of my best friends for years and I can assure you that she is above any suspicion of empathy with the powerful, be they public or private. However, despite the title of the interview, « Syria, another information… », we were treated to a chat with a Syrian guest, which was not out of line with what we usually hear or read about Syria⁽¹⁾. The usual vituperations against the cruelty of Bashar al-Assad’s « regime » alternated with the no less expected exaltation of the democratic gains of the  » revolution  » in the  » liberated zones « . The bloody misdeeds of the jihadists were not mentioned. Without doubt, they had regrettably lost out on an emancipation process whose reality was out of question. As for the role of foreign powers in the activation of ethnic-religious dissensions within Syrian society and their support to the various armed factions working for the partition of the country, one would have looked in vain for their traces in the words of the two interlocutors.

 » A criminal « regime » is murdering the Syrian people « . This was, in fact, the basic scenario underlying this program. The least we can say is that it did not suffer from an excess of nuance and originality. Between the Syrian guest and the hostess, it looked like a Bernard Kouchner-Christine Ockrent duo during the good old days of the Yugoslav civil war. On one side oppressors and mass murderers, on the other side  » THE revolution « . Nothing negative, of course, in the said revolution. On the one hand, therefore, terror and horror, on the other, the Resistance, heroic, it goes without saying. Moreover, to satisfy an audience fond of direct democracy, the guest praised the  » self-management experiments  » set up by elected councils in Syrian Kurdistan. Silence on the mass executions and tortures inflicted on other grounds by the « revolutionaries », especially on the chain of beheadings carried out by the jihadist group Al-Nosra on the Aleppo side of the city, « the beheadings », « the beheadings » and « the beheadings ». moderate Islamists  » linked to al-Qaeda, armed, it is true, by the petro-monarchies at the instigation of the United States and Israel, and who were  » a good job  » according to the infamous Fabius. Were not all the victims, Shiites, Christians, Alawites, real or virtual collaborators of the Syrian « regime », if only because of their non-alignment with the « revolution », and therefore had to be liquidated?

In the manner of the cosmetic surgeons of TF1, RTL or France 24 working hard to give an attractive face to the cutthroats, butchers and genocidaires massacring a part of the Syrian population with the endorsement of « advisors » from the CIA, the Turkish Islamist government, the obscurantist kingdoms of the Gulf and the European governments, the Radio Libertaire host and her guest were busy re-branding the Jihadists at work in Syria as Zapatista liberators!

Of course, to hear them tell it, the « revolutionaries » had no help in arms from outside. One wonders where their jeeps, machine guns and anti-aircraft missiles come from (soldiers of the disgraced « regime » who have moved to the « right side » with arms and baggage?) From the looting of Libyan arsenals after another liberating « revolution » supported by the NATO air force? No doubt, but not only. The key role played by Saudi Arabia, in cahoots with Israel and the United States, in convoying terrorist groups and their weapons via Turkey in order to destabilize and weaken the Syrian « regime », with the money coming from Qatar to make up the difference, not to mention the American « instructors » who are experts in counter-insurgency operating in the jihadist training camps in Jordan, has been kept quiet. Not to mention the French equipment (jeeps and light armored vehicles) delivered to Saudi Arabia before leaving for Syria. In short, nothing distinguished the words exchanged on this « alternative » channel from the media treatment that Bashar al-Assad, the latest Hitler of Western war propaganda after Slobodan Miloševic, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, was subjected to for months… Faced with  » the will of this clan the Assad family and its allies who want to screw up everything « , to repeat a peremptory formulation full of finesse of the host,  » the analyses are no longer appropriate « , decreed in echo his interlocutor. Indeed, in terms of analysis, we could go back to the beginning. Make way for good old-fashioned Manichaeism. We had returned once again to the good old days of selective indignation.

But who was this guest of choice? A certain Omar Enayeh, presented as a member of Souria Houria (Syria Freedom). Obviously, my anarchist friend from Radio Libertaire was unaware that this association, formed in May 2011, is one of the organizations responsible for disseminating in France and elsewhere the official version of the conflicts in Syria developed by the think tanks linked to the State Department and the Pentagon, through conferences, interviews and debates. Debates in which any critical word, except of course those targeting the « regime », Iran, Hezbollah or Russia, is banned, the bold who dare to challenge the official version being ipso facto treated as  » negationists « , or even agents of the Kremlin. In addition to the speeches of its spokespersons, Souria Houria organizes demonstrations and actions in France to accelerate the fall of the « regime » of Bashar al-Assad, such as the White Wave for Syria, an international demonstration launched in March 2013 on the occasion of the two years of the « Syrian revolution » or the Train for the Freedom of the Syrian People, taking politicians from Paris to Strasbourg in December 2014 to meet with European parliamentarians, all of which is relayed by the usual organs of disinformation echoing the warmongering propaganda of the NATO (TV5 monde, Bfmtv, France 24, LCP, Le Nouvel Observateur, Libération, Mediapart, Rue89, Radio France). Or a demonstration of solidarity with the  » Syrian revolutionaries  » staged at the Place de la Bourse in Paris, during which a speaker from Souria Houria boasted at the podium that he was  » making millions « .

If we don’t know exactly where these millions came from, we know a little more, if we try to find out, about the identity of the founder of Houria Souria. Hala Kodmani, a French-Syrian journalist who has lived in France for some thirty years, created this association in

2011 and served as its president for over 2 years. Previously, she had been editor-in-chief of France 24, a non-stop neo-liberal and pro-imperialist propaganda channel, before taking over the « Syria » column in the liberal-libertarian tabloid Libération after the outbreak of the so-called Syrian revolution. But, as the essayist François Belliot notes, obviously classified  » revisionist  » to lead an Observatory of State Lies, the centrality of Hala Kodmani in the Syrian protest in France can be explained mainly by the influence of her sister Bassma Kodmani, who participated in the founding of the Syrian National Council in October 2011 in Istanbul. Supposed to represent the aspirations of the Syrian people, the latter was considered above all as the rather too conspicuous representative of the Western camp, which weakened its position within this organization, itself losing momentum in the face of competition from jihadist groups, less « moderate » than the ASL, on which the United States and France had now decided to bet. After leaving the CNS, Bassma Kodmani will nevertheless remain faithful to her initial project of « snurturing a democratic transition in Syria ‚ » the subtitle of a manifesto entitled The day after , in the writing of which she collaborated, as evidenced, for example, by an open letter to François Hollande calling for the establishment in Syria of a no-fly zone (except for NATO aircraft), « thethe diplomatic banning of the Syrian « regime «  » and  » substantial military assistance to the brigades of the Free Army « .

To sum up, one can still be surprised and find it quite funny that a libertarian radio station has found no other way to educate its listeners about the situation in Syria than to call upon an agent of influence paid by an association led by two sisters who share the roles of promoting in France a Syrian « rebellion » supported by the West, including Israel. To which one can always object that there is a certain semantic logic. Isn’t the program called « Chroniques Rebelles »?

A STORY FROM MARSEILLE

Without going through all the articles and broadcasts devoted to Syria that have followed one another since then in the anarcho-libertarian galaxy, we shall retain the Supplement Syria published in an issue of the alternative monthly magazine from Marseille CQFD, a perfect example of the pro-Western warmongering drift in which many « anarcho-autonomous » militants have engaged, without apparently realizing it ⁽²⁾. Also not very careful about the reliability of their sources of information, the journalists of CQFD have seen fit, in fact, to sound the alarm against  » The only head of state in the world called by his first name, which says a lot about the low esteem in which he is held by people, most of whom, between us, are not much better than him in many respects.

According to CQFD, the alternative is  » Bashar or Sharia « ,  » taken up in chorus by the far right and the far left  » who  » throw Syrian opponents into the bag of Salafist obscurantism « . A Manichaeism that authorizes the journalists of CQFD to lump Bashar and the jihadists together, with a clear preference, if one may say so, for the former since without him the latter would not have had the opportunity to act. Bashar is, in fact,  » the main responsible for the Syrian tragedy « , decrees the editorialist of the CQFD file.

Here again, the search for data and especially its verification should not have required excessive efforts. Already, CQFD had not bothered to find a title for one of the articles in this real charge file:  » Bashar, killer in Syria « . This laborious pun had already been used as a front page headline, with a close-up photo of the culprit, in the liberal-libertarian tabloid mentioned above, which, as usual, mobilized its boozy readers for the good cause of the moment. No longer the  » fight against terrorism  » as in the aftermath of the assassination of the journalists of Charlie Hebdo, but with the terrorists against the super-terrorist that would be the head of the Syrian state. In addition to Le Monde, the newspaper of reference which is usually treated with contempt by the anarchists, the inevitable Syrian Observatory for Human Rights was once again called upon. A massive disinformation and public opinion manipulation agency based in London, linked to the Cameron administration via MI6, the British military intelligence service, and run by a businessman, Osama Ali Souleimane, alias Rami Abdel Rahmane. However, completely out of touch for having jumped on the bandwagon of the anti-Bachar crusade, our « alternative » investigators were unaware that this propagator of horrific information on the atrocities attributed to the Syrian « regime » would in fact be working, according to the newspaper’s blog Le Monde itself, for… this same « regime ⁽³⁾ !

This reversal deserves to be considered insofar as it illustrates the contradictions in which the experts in smoke and mirrors responsible for intoxicating not only the « public opinion » but also the journalists paid to formulate it are mired. For those who have never been fooled by the media lies disseminated to legitimize imperialist interference and aggression against undesirable « regimes », this belated discovery that the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, for a long time the only source of information for the endless torrent of propaganda emanating from the Western media, was run by a charlatan or an impostor, is not really a scoop. Like a number of organizations, not « non-governmental » but « paragovernmental », closely involved in the offensives against dictatorships not friendly with the West, it was and is responsible for making « just » in the eyes or ears of the Western peoples the wars, civil or not, started at the instigation of imperialism. The funny thing about the affair is how a reputedly serious newspaper like Le Monde, which drew most of its information on the atrocities of the Syrian « regime » from the OSDH files, managed to get away with it.

 » Coverage, biased and oriented ‚ » dissemination of information as diverse as it is impossible to confirm « ,  » more or less discordant  » and based on  » contradictory figures « , « ibiased information « ,  » disguises of the truth « …⁽⁴⁾ At the time when the OSDH was an authority in the French press, WithLe Monde in the lead, when it comes to denouncing the human rights abuses committed by Bashar and his clique, such accusations earned those who made them the suspicion of indulgence or even guilty collusion with him. And today, the OSDH is presented as  » one of the components of the propaganda system developed by the Syrian intelligence services for Western public opinion « . And Le Monde deplores:  » Out of laziness, ideological convergence or convenience, since the Observatory also published its information in English, most Western media and press agencies, led by AFP, continued to make the organization they had vilified their preferred, if not sole, source of information . But why did they suddenly start vilifying her? The above-mentioned criticisms suggest that the  » The « loss of credibility  » of the OSDH risked reflecting on all the sources thanks to which the media can continue to provide their readers with more or less fanciful information confirming the ruthless and bloody nature of the « war on terror ». Syrian « dictatorship  » and therefore the need to bring it down. All that remained was to designate the OSDH as a black sheep infiltrated by order of Bashar through his secret services into the snow-white flock of virtuous NGOs and thus show that the character is even more diabolical than we thought. How can one believe in the statistics on the people his henchmen are supposed to have imprisoned, tortured, murdered or made disappear, if he himself manages to broadcast overvalued figures about his real or supposed victims in order to discredit other sources of information hostile to his « regime »?

Of course, Le Monde will try to reassure its readers by counting on  » specialists in media, information and propaganda in times of war  » to take an interest in the trajectory of the Observatory and, more broadly, in the reliability of organizations of the same ilk⁽⁵⁾. But we can bet that these specialists will not be recruited among those who, for several decades, have been fighting against the disinformation of  » just war  » propaganda, such as the Marxist animators of the Belgian site Investig’Action or the American anti-imperialist militants of Counterpunch.

The above will have taken us a bit away from the CQFD file. But it must be said that the argument deployed there unfortunately does not differ from the collection of lies that have been served for 4 years in length of pages or airwaves about the  » Syrian chaos « . With, nevertheless, a small significant difference: the proposed version takes into account the public to which it is addressed, namely the politico-ideological movement positioned very left on the French political scene. It is indeed vital, in order to please him, to call the process triggered in Syria in 2011 a « revolution ». But a revolution that was not successful because it was  » stolen « . By whom? By the Islamist extremists that the  » Syrian regime  » would not have been angry, of course, to see enter the dance, sometimes with its support, to discredit its opponents.

THE IMPERIALIST NOVLANGUAGE

A few lines are needed here to decipher the ideology conveyed in the vocabulary used by the media to deal with the conflicts in the Middle East and, in particular, the situation in Syria. First of all, you will notice that I have systematically put quotation marks around the word « regime ». What is the reason for this? Simply because far from being a neutral signifier, as is taught at Sciences Po, it is most often used to designate a political or social system deemed unacceptable because it does not conform to the interests and therefore the wishes of the leaders of the capitalist West. This began in 1917 with the Russian October Revolution, where the coming to power of the Bolshevik party set the stage for decades of unremitting hostile propaganda against the institutions that emerged from that revolution. From Lenin to Gorbachev, they will be labeled  » communist regime « . The same will be true for the European  » satellites  » of the  » socialist camp  » and the  » communist  » or  » socialist  » states of China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia and Cuba.

The negative connotation of the term « regime » was definitively reinforced in the 1920s with the establishment in Italy of a state described as « fascist » by Mussolini, and then, a decade later, when Hitler renamed the German state  » Third Reich . We would then speak of a  » fascist regime  » and a  » Nazi regime  » (or  » Hitler regime »). To the list will soon be added the  » Franco regime  » in Spain. This change in language did not spare the government installed in 1940 in occupied France. The  » French State  » of Marshal Pétain was ipso facto called the « Vichy regime  » by the Resistance fighters. This term will come into vogue again among progressives around the world when U.S. imperialism delegates to dictatorships, military or otherwise, the task of fighting against the  » Communist subversion  » in its South American backyard or in some of the Far East’s preserve areas (Vietnam, South Korea, Cambodia, Indonesia, etc.). All of them will be lumped together with the repressive « regimes ».

It goes without saying that, apart from these regrettable exceptions, no government, no state of the « free world » or associated with this world, however corrupt and repressive, can be « put on a diet », so to speak, that is to say defined by such an infamous appellation. Moreover, the term « regime » connotes something that goes against the word « freedom » that our leaders have inscribed on their flag: regimentation. The terms most commonly used to designate the institutions they lead are « governments » and especially, as everyone knows, « democracies ». However, there is a temporary exception to the rule. An exception… French. For some years, it was fashionable, in fact, among the left and the extreme left to treat the Fifth Republic as a « regime, » not dictatorial, certainly, but authoritarian and technocratic. Born in 1958 from the rebellion of military officers and supporters of French Algeria, the said Republic had indeed a somewhat dubious origin from the democratic point of view, which was not erased by the referendum of 1962, qualified as a « plebiscite » by the opponents of the « Gaullist regime » in the process of being institutionalized. So much so that one of their leaders, and not the least, did not hesitate to castigate the new constitution in a polemical essay that caused a sensation at the time: The Permanent Coup d’Etat⁽⁶⁾. This did not prevent him from becoming head of the state, unchanged in its structure, 17 years later, thanks to this same Constitution.

Nowadays, that is, since the collapse of the « Soviet regime » and the subsequent announcement by US President George Bush of the advent of a « new The term « regime » is systematically applied to states whose governments are reluctant to submit to thisorder . This is how the accusing finger will be pointed at each other because of  » athreat to peace  » and human rights violations  » or even « human rights violations ». genocide « , the Afghan « regime » under Soviet influence, the « Yugoslav » and then « Serbian » regimes, the « Iranian regime », the « Iraqi regime », the « Libyan regime » and, most recently, the « Syrian regime ». However, no one in the hexagonal anarcho-libertarian movement has dared to identify the political-ideological meaning of this semantic fiddling. Nor to question the appalling information about the exactions of the Syrian « regime ».

Thus will be included in the file of CQFD the version of a sarin gas bombing of civilian populations by the « Syrian regime » in August 2013, while it was later learned that these munitions had been recovered by Islamic State jihadists from the military warehouses they had gotten their hands on. In the same way CQFD could not fail to evoke the  » horrific album of César « , pseudonym of a photographer of the  » military police of the dictator « having succeeded in exfiltrating several tens of thousands of photos showing corpses » with marks of chains, burns, lacerations and enucleations bychemicalweapons. The problem is that the book containing these pictures was not published at any time. Nor promoted by anyone.

The UN was then deciding on the situation in Syria, the planes of our glorious army were supposed to start bombing Daesh and Vladimir Putin was trying to bring back to the Russian state reason a  » anti-terrorist coalition  » that seemed to distinguish between good terrorists called « terrorists » and those who are « terrorists ». It spared them when it did not supply them with arms, medicine or even foodstuffs, bad people whom it assimilated to the forces of the « regime ». It was therefore only by the greatest of coincidences that a book against Bashar al-Assad came out at precisely this time. We can therefore easily conclude, » persisted one commentator,  » that the release of this book is nothing more than a media manipulation, since its content is so predictable and since the date of its publication is judiciously positioned in the UN war agenda … ». Predictable content, no doubt. Promoted by The Nouvel Observateur, a social-liberal weekly that has soared in the hate campaign against the « Syrian regime », this book was supposed, according to the journalist in charge of the interview with the so-called César, to show « thehe real face of Bashar, that of a dictator who has shed a lot of blood  » As if, for 4 years, a non-stop propaganda broadcast with a beautiful set by all the media had not already convinced our fellow citizens that Bashar was really a bad guy! In addition, and this should increase suspicion as to the authenticity of the pictures collected in this book, it would have been used as a basis, if we believe the same journalist, the Paris prosecutor to open a preliminary investigation for  » war crimes  » targeting the « regime » of Bashar al-Assad. However, for months Hollande and Valls, guided by Netanyahu, had been looking for a pretext to indict the Syrian head of state. The publication of this book of horrors was definitely timely!

Without going back to the pseudo-« incidents in Tonkin In addition to the 1964 « bombing, » a fabrication used to justify an escalation of the US Army’s intervention in the Vietnam War, recent history is rich with media manipulations designed to demonize a « regime » and its leader in order to legitimize the elimination of both. It is enough to evoke the so-called mass grave of Timisoara, supposed to confirm the perversity of the « Ceaucescu regime », the incubators cut out of a hospital in Kuwait City, during the first Gulf War, testifying to the sadism of the « regime » of Saddam Hussein, the fake photos of emaciated prisoners behind barbed wire to make people believe that Slobodan Miloševic’s « regime » was reviving the Nazi concentration camps, the vial of deadly gas brandished by Colin Powel in front of the UN assembly attesting to the possession of « deadly gas », and the photos of the « regime » of Sarkozy. weapons of mass destruction  » by the « Iraqi regime »…

In the fall of 2015, three years behind the non-NATO affiliated foreign media, Le Canard Enchaîné revealed what the few informed people in France, apart from our rulers and their « intelligence services, » had known for a long time⁽⁷⁾. Namely, the terrorists of the Al-Nosra Front group were highly regarded by Western « counter-terrorism » strategists. So much so that US pilots and « allies » of the virtuous « coalition » operating in Syria and Iraq had been ordered not only never to strike these « moderate Islamists, » but even to supply them with 50 tons of weapons at last count (October 2015) in the hope that they would put them to good use. Against Daech, officially; against the troops of the « regime », in fact. A preferential treatment perfectly justified if we believe Fabius the infamous for whom  » Bashar al-Assad does not deserve to be on earth . As if we should be happy to know that the ex-prime minister of contaminated blood, promoter of the « austerity » turn in 1983 when he was prime minister and unconditional defender of the Zionist state within the governing bodies of the PS, is still alive.

In March 2016, CQFD discovered the moon for its readers. Not the one shedding light on the Syrian landscape, which would be too much to ask of a newspaper whose « critical » vocation seems to exempt it from any obligation of self-criticism, despite the information that is beginning to filter out, revealing to the « general public » in France the (provisional) ins and outs of the  » popular uprising against the « Damascus » regime , but the moon, also veiled for a long time, in the eyes of « observers » of the Libyan terrain. Information taken from Le Monde⁽⁸⁾ from which it emerged, to the astonishment of the  » specialist in military issues at CQFD [sic] « that the Western powers supported the Libyan rebels and helped destroy Gaddafi’s « regime » as well as his leader, not to establish democracy in the country, but to advance the interests of capitalist firms and, in the case of the French government in particular, to counter the Libyan leader’s designs on Françafrique⁽⁹⁾.  » A naive scenario  » exclaims with heavy irony our military expert who can hardly believe it. No, just the usual scenario of « humanitarian wars ».

THE ORIGINS OF ANARCHOID BLINDNESS

How can we explain this confinement of so-called alternative newspapers, radio stations or Internet sites to the role of auxiliaries for the State Department’s propaganda and the war smoke and mirrors that it echoes in France on the part of our leaders, our court intellectuals and our journalists who take orders without it even being necessary to give them any? Unlike media mainstream, one cannot suspect the paladins of anarcho-libertarian « counter-information » of being sold (or bought) like the journalists of Liberation, from World or the Figaro, dailies, not to mention weeklies such as Le Point, the Nouvel Obs or The Express is owned by the owners of press groups that can only peddle the rhetoric in favor of the established order, both global and national. Nor can we assume that they have more or less surreptitiously rallied to this order, as was the case in the 1970s with the soixante-huitards who  » went from the Mao collar to the Rotary Club « . On most of the other fronts of the struggle, they have not abandoned their protesting and even revolutionary positions if we take their proclamations at face value.

Certainly, as I pointed out at the beginning, the lack of interest shown by the alternative left in what is happening in other countries, and the ignorance that results from it, are not unrelated to the primacy given to the « societal », i.e. to individual fulfillment at the expense of the social, i.e. to collective emancipation. Since the middle of the 70’s, the air of time is to change one’s life rather than to change life. Whatever they say, our anarchoids do not escape it, and all the more so since they are mostly part of this intellectual petty bourgeoisie, even its lower fractions, whose political radicality, when it has not disappeared, has seriously dulled over the decades.

Let’s say it clearly, even if it means offending. There is a kind of Pavlovian and panurgic behavior among libertarians that consists in detecting with a nice set of revolutions all over the world. Like 1968, although to a lesser degree, 2011 has been a banner year for leftists seeking revolution. If in May 68 the air seemed red, the first months of 2011, marked by the Tunisian and Egyptian popular uprisings against the police and corrupt « regimes », made them believe that the revolution was again on the agenda. Especially since the occupation of the Spanish squares by the Indignados, followed by the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations and other places in the United States reinforced this impression. In short, in the eyes of the young activists eager to see an insurrection that was always coming, it had finally arrived. This will be confirmed, as was to be expected, in a new incendiary opuscule, by the famous and mysterious Invisible Committee⁽¹⁰⁾. In reality, it took only a few weeks for the most sensible people to discover that it was the revolution that was invisible. Unless we change the meaning of the word « revolution », as has long been done by advertisers and propagandists of the established order who discern a revolution in any technological, commercial, institutional or artistic innovation.

It must be admitted, however, that the popular movement in Tunisia and Egypt, which led to the removal of Ben Ali and Mubarak, did not overturn the capitalist order in these countries. It only resulted in a change of government team without a bright future. Not because of the fault of the Islamist parties who, in a second phase of the process, would have confiscated the « Arab Spring », but simply because it was in no way the bearer of a radical transformation of the relations of production, with socialism or communism as a horizon.

Stakeholders in the  » democratic reconfiguration of the Greater Middle East  » under the aegis of U.S. imperialism, two categories of strange actors that could be described as media zombies have appeared. On the one hand, born from the brains of the tireless propagandists of the new world order, the « moderate jihadists », the torturers and massacres of Al-Nosra in the lead, financed and armed by the West and supported by Israel, whose countless atrocities are viewed with a positive eye since they contribute to destabilizing the odious Syrian « regime ». On the other hand, straight out of the fevered imagination of the press, radios or « parallel » sites, improbable revolutionaries whose horizon is in fact limited to a change of « regime » in full compliance with the wishes of foreign powers and without any link with the socialist or communist ideals of yesteryear.

 » We share with Saudi Arabia a certain number of strategic visions, particularly with regard to Syria « , boasted Manuel Valls when questioned on a private channel to justify the good relations maintained with this petromonarchy which is not very commendable in terms of human rights⁽¹¹⁾. These visions can be summarized in three points: the destruction of the « Syrian regime », support for the rebel jihadists to achieve this end, and unwavering support for the Zionist state, the sworn enemy of governments or movements opposed to the occupation of Palestine and associated for this reason with Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the terrorist groups at work on the Golan Heights, whose wounded Israel treats in its hospitals. This agreement of views is not mentioned in the « alternative » media. Certainly, one could not suspect their leaders of sharing these views. But this silence about them amounts to consolidating one of the pillars of warmongering propaganda: the lie of omission.

In the middle of this generalized anarcho-libertarian cretinism, the members of the Longo Maï agricultural cooperative, located near Forcalquier, are an exception. No doubt because since its foundation in the early 1970s, many of them, neo-rural activists guided by a resolutely anti-neocolonialist and anti-imperialist stance, have followed with meticulous and critical attention the unfolding of events on the international scene but also behind the scenes. Also, unlike the « radicals » of paper or « alternative » sandboxes, they are not fooled by the false narratives intended to sell or hide the interventions of all kinds of imperial armies aiming, under humanitarian pretexts, to reshape the world according to capitalist interests. So in several October 2015 issues of their weekly gazette, The first of the oak groves, a truly contradictory debate has been opened on the so-called « Syrian chaos », a syntagm used and abused by stipendiated observers to make people believe that the « Syrian chaos » is not a problem. Thesituation is more complex than we imagine « , before giving us explanations whose inspiration seems to be drawn from comic books. It is necessary to reject, advises the author of a first article,  » the simplistic, infantilizing and dishonest vision of this drama which very quickly became the theater of a major and globalized geopolitical confrontation  » ⁽¹²⁾. This is the case for the  » The « Western narrative of governments and the media  » which is authoritative, as we have seen, in anarchist or « radical » circles that  » the initial, essential, and almost exclusive matrix of the Syrian drama is the nature of the « regime » and its demonized president . As if, in the era of transnationalized capitalism, even more than in the past when it was only international, contradictions and internal conflicts could be analyzed and interpreted without taking into account the over-determining character of imperialist interference, more numerous than ever.

Let’s summarize to avoid any misunderstanding. Does the Syrian « regime » fall into the category of police dictatorships at the priority service of a ruling clique, in the same way as those that had been established in Iraq and Libya before the armed interventions of imperialism, directly or through jihadists, put an end to them? Without a doubt. Were they or are they not for the one that the capitalist West and its allies (petromonarchies, Turkey and Israel) seek to bring down after the others? Certainly not. Only on the societal level which fascinates so much, nowadays, our hexagonal anarchoids, they had at least the merit, on the one hand, to guarantee to the woman not to be institutionally treated as an inferior and submissive being, on the other hand, to be secular « regimes » i.e. concerned not to let religion interfere in the political life On the social level, which the same anarchoids seem to neglect somewhat, or even forget when it is not a question of their own society, the so-called « regimes » had nevertheless managed to ensure the working classes a minimum of well-being in terms of education, health, housing and collective facilities. All this is known to any Westerner, in addition to foreign intelligence agents, who has been able to live, even if only for a short time, in societies under the influence of these « regimes », or, failing that, has taken the trouble to read the works of Middle Eastern academics (economists, historians, sociologists…) who are not affiliated with the powers that be, either locally or outside the countries concerned⁽¹³⁾.

In a more general way, a secular allergy, therefore rooted to the historical materialism and to the dialectic, to any approach of a political conjuncture, conflictual or not, in terms of class relations, and, let’s say it, to the Marxian thought, confused with the Marxist falsifications (Stalinist, Trotskyist or Maoist), incites our anarchoids to renounce to any  » concrete analysis of a concrete situation  » when it bothers them… or suits them. So they prefer, according to a Manichean vision not very conducive to lucidity, to focus not only their attention, but also their hostility or even their hatred on personalized incarnations of Evil. Thus, they have come to join forces with the worst minions of the imperialist order to demonize the leaders who stand in the way of its expansion: Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad and, of course, the Russian leader promoted as the new  » Great Satan  » of the West, Vladimir Putin⁽¹⁴⁾. It is therefore easy to understand why, obsessed with the removal of the « tyrant », the simultaneous annihilation of a population and a civilization in a country set on fire « for a good cause » can only appear to them, in the end, as an immense and, admittedly regrettable, but inevitable « collateral damage ».

Jean-Pierre Garnier

This article is taken from the book  » Le grandguignol de la gauche radicale « . Chronicle Marxist-Burlonist, Critical Editions, 2017.