Rethinking the Syrian Revolution
How the Left Misread Syria
September 2, 2025
The Syrian Revolution began in the context of the Arab Spring. While there were many reasons for protest, people took to the streets after the arrest and torture of schoolboys who had spray-painted antigovernment graffiti.1Dominic Evans and Suleiman Al-Khalidi, “From Teenage Graffiti to a Country in Ruins: Syria’s Two Years of Rebellion,” Reuters, March 17, 2013, https://reuters.com/article/world/uk/from-teenage-graffiti-to-a-country-in-ruins-syrias-two-years-of-rebellion-idUSBRE92G067. The Bashar al-Assad regime responded with a brutal crackdown resulting in a long and complicated war. These events were met with skepticism by some of the Western left who focused on US imperialism as opposed to the demands of the Syrian protesters.
This interpretation of the events is rooted in the imposition of a generalized understanding of imperialism that overemphasizes the agency of the United States—the unquestionably dominant imperial hegemon—at the expense of a more textured analysis of Syrians. Mainstream US coverage often depicted the Syrian opposition with sympathy but simultaneously framed them as instruments of US policy, reducing them to an extension of US strategy. That framing connects to a deeper pattern in how many in the West, including the left, have come to think about global events. Significant movements like the anti-Vietnam War protests and the fight against apartheid in South Africa helped form this outlook. In both cases, Western powers opposed movements that fought colonial rule. That history, along with the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan shaped a view that focused on Western imperialism. Whether these sentiments were explicitly stated matters less than the narrative they created. Western interpretations of anticolonialism tend to focus solely on anti-interventionism or a “hands off” approach, shaping an anti-imperialism that focuses its critique solely on Western interventionism. The problem with beginning the analysis of the Syrian Revolution from this viewpoint is that Syrians were not waging a traditional anticolonial struggle. Instead of an anticolonial or postindependence struggle, the Syrian Revolution reflects what Sahar Amarir calls post-postcolonialism. Amarir’s term marks a shift where liberation is redefined to confront domestic repression as much as foreign domination.
The Syrian Revolution was not a fight against foreign rule, but part of the Arab Spring—a wave of protests across the region against authoritarian systems that came out of the postindependence period. For Syria, this meant the Assad regime. Western media skepticism regarding the Syrian Revolution created tensions within the political left and complicated efforts at solidarity with those on the ground; paradoxically, some on the left seemed to view Assad’s regime as a necessary component of an international anti-imperial resistance. Nevertheless, there is more than one version of anti-imperialism. This article focuses on three interpretive traditions—the Propaganda Model, postcolonial perspectives, and continuing Cold War narratives—that shaped this media skepticism toward the Syrian Revolution. All three frameworks viewed the revolution mainly through the lens of Western power and intervention, and treated Syrians as objects of US strategy rather than as political actors in their own right. By challenging these models, and the specific conception of anti-imperialism they encourage, I hope to help articulate the space for a principled internationalism that centers transnational anti-imperial solidarity, rather than a blinkered focus on Western imperial hegemony.
Media Skepticism and the Collapse of Complexity: The Propaganda Model and Its Limits
When Barack Obama declared that “Assad must go,” media coverage of protests and repression was quickly entangled with assumptions about US intentions.2Colleen Nelson, “Obama Says Syrian Leader Bashar al-Assad Must Go,” Wall Street Journal, November 19, 2015, https://wsj.com/articles/obama-says-syrian-leader-bashar-al-assad-must-go-1447925671. News reports at the time focused on the regime’s violence and the scale of the protests. For example, ABC News ran a story in December 2011 under the headline “Report: Syrian Soldiers Ordered to ‘Shoot and Kill’ Protesters,” describing how defectors revealed that Assad’s commanders had ordered demonstrators stopped “by all means necessary.”3ABC News, “Report: Syrian Soldiers Ordered to ‘Shoot and Kill’ Protesters,” ABC News, December 15, 2011, https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/report-syrian-soldiers-ordered-shoot-kill-protesters/story?id=15163622.
NBC also ran a photo feature titled Who Are the Syrian Rebels, which portrayed fighters as teachers, farmers, and other ordinary Syrians who took up arms to survive brutal repression.4Ghazi Balkiz, “Who Are the Syrian Rebels,” NBC News, October 8, 2012, https://nbcnews.com/news/photo/who-are-syrian-rebels-flna879857. While this helped illustrate the Assad regime’s crackdown and the Syrians who became involved in the opposition, it also drew skepticism from some on the Western left. Put simply, some on the left viewed such sympathetic portrayals of Syrians as mere propaganda put forward by a media apparatus thoroughly captured by US interests. More crucially, their skepticism about the media extended to the anti-Assad cause in general.
Applying the Propaganda Model to US news coverage about Syria leads viewers to question whether foreign policy objectives overly influenced coverage. Some might extend this legitimate premise to infer that media depictions representing these protesters as noble freedom fighters are meant to manufacture a narrative for military intervention. In other words, an approach grounded solely in domestic skepticism automatically positions Syrians “or other global actors” under suspicion, rather than in solidarity.
Developed by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, the Propaganda Model became a touchstone for understanding structural bias in media. It formalized what many already felt about the influence of ownership, political, and advertising pressure. However, the Propaganda Model does not account for cases like Syria, where genuine popular movements may align with US foreign policy objectives despite having independent origins and aims.
Applying the Propaganda Model to US news coverage about Syria leads viewers to question whether foreign policy objectives overly influenced coverage. Some might extend this legitimate premise to infer that media depictions representing these protesters as noble freedom fighters are meant to manufacture a narrative for military intervention. In other words, an approach grounded solely in domestic skepticism automatically positions Syrians “or other global actors” under suspicion, rather than in solidarity. Thus, uncritical reliance on the Propaganda Model, along with broader skepticism toward the media led some to treat all Western reporting as propaganda. This reflexive distrust encouraged conspiratorial rejections of Syrian protesters.
Designed to critique centralized, elite-driven news production, the Propaganda Model’s explanatory power is limited when applied to today’s decentralized, algorithm-driven platforms like YouTube and Facebook. Algorithms favor viral content, and creators follow engagement metrics instead of editors. The internet, and specifically social media, has created a very different media landscape than the one Chomsky and Herman wrote about.
Instead of challenging flawed narratives, social media often boosts them through algorithms that reward engagement, often generated by the more outrageous stories. This pushes content creators to focus on controversial ideas that attract more attention. Collapse in critical reflection has given way to a new kind of media distortion, driven not by mainstream consensus but by contrarian spins amplified through algorithmic engagement. In some cases, it even portrayed Assad as the victim, inverting the realities on the ground.
Emmi Bevensee discussed this “red-brown” media space in their series of articles published by the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right. They often mixed leftist, antiwar, and authoritarian views, helping to legitimize reactionary forces through anti-imperialist language.5Emmi Bevensee, “How COVID and Syria Conspiracies Introduce Fascism to the Left. Part I: The Red-Brown Media Spectrum,” Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right, September 9, 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20211104043929/https://www.radicalrightanalysis.com/2020/09/09/spectrum/. These outlets attracted skeptical audiences who were disillusioned with boilerplate US coverage and searching for what felt like authentic or independent reporting.
Digital media thus operates in ways that differ fundamentally from traditional systems. Social media platforms promote content through algorithms and user engagement, producing dynamics outside the Propaganda Model’s filter-based framework. For many users, shaped by decades of traditional media, these new dynamics are not immediately apparent.
At the same time, it is often traditional newsrooms that investigate and expose disinformation emerging from these platforms. In 2017, ABC News reported that the viral #SyriaHoax campaign was part of a coordinated Russian disinformation effort to deny Assad’s chemical weapons attack. Many who distrusted mainstream outlets ignored this reporting and relied on unverified claims instead, creating a feedback loop.6ABC News, “Behind #SyriaHoax and the Russian Propaganda Onslaught,” ABC News, April 13, 2017, https://abcnews.go.com/International/analysts-identify-syriahoax-russian-fueled-propaganda/story?id=46787674. Deep skepticism of mainstream media led some to dismiss evidence of disinformation and even embrace falsehoods as credible. For example, a Guardian investigation revealed that Kremlin-backed networks pushed pro-Assad conspiracy theorists in Western media.7Mark Townsend, “Network of Syria Conspiracy Theorists Identified – Study,” Guardian, June 19, 2022, https://theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/19/russia-backed-network-of-syria-conspiracy-theorists-identified. They often framed Assad as a barrier to Western imperialism. While this propaganda is transparent in isolation, it can take on a contrarian appeal within the context of US media.
These limits echo those of postcolonial frameworks when applied to Syria. Both approaches reduce Western power to a single dominating force and treat events mainly as a struggle between the West and its opponents. The effect is a collapse of complexity that serves to create a simple narrative at the expense of accuracy. This simplistic narrative also obscures both the power dynamics on the ground and, ultimately, the voices of those directly involved.
Limitations of Postcolonial Frameworks
Many still rely on postcolonial ideas shaped around resistance to exterior colonial powers. The Syrian Revolution, however, confronted a domestic regime that presented itself as anti-imperialist while violently suppressing dissent. This kind of struggle calls for a different understanding of power.
Postcolonial theory has helped shape how the left interprets global events. Its critiques often present postindependence states as symbols of liberation, and sometimes this is true. But when the state itself becomes a stand-in for liberation, critiques of internal hierarchies, elite control, repression, and widespread exclusion can become obscured. This becomes especially evident the further those states move from the moment of independence, as revolutionary legitimacy gives way to entrenched power.
As Amarir defines post-postcolonialism, this changes the focus for formerly colonized peoples. The postcolonial period is a reaction to colonization. With the changes of independence, the formerly colonized face new challenges demanding different actions including expressing dissent against internal forms of repression.8Sahar Amarir, “Imperialism Is Multiple, So Should Be Our Solidarities: On the Need for Post-Post-Colonialism,” Funambulist, February 15, 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/questioning-our-solidarities/imperialism-is-multiple-so-should-be-our-solidarities-on-the-need-for-post-post-colonialism.
Thinkers such as Frantz Fanon and Yassin al-Haj Saleh each provide insight into regimes like Assad’s, which betrayed their revolutionary promises. Fanon described how postcolonial governments might reproduce the structures of their colonial oppressors while Antonio Gramsci differentiated power based on consent and power sustained through force. Saleh’s observations of how the Assad regime fused violence with the state depicted a later stage of development mirroring Amarir’s post-postcolonialism.9Yassin al-Haj Saleh, “Chomsky’s America-Centric Prism Distorts Reality,” New Lines Magazine, April 10, 2024, https://newlinesmag.com/review/chomskys-america-centric-prism-distorts-reality.
Fanon warned:
The national government, if it wants to be national, ought to govern by the people, for the people, for the outcasts, and by the outcasts. No leader, however valuable he may be, can substitute himself for the popular will, and the national government, before concerning itself with international prestige, ought first to give back its dignity to all citizens, fill their minds, and feast their eyes with human things, and create a prospect that is human because conscious and sovereign men dwell therein.10Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (New York: Grove Press, 1963), 205.
Syrians were struggling for precisely this vision of dignity and popular rule. Assad’s government, though decades removed from independence, embodied the very dangers Fanon described. In The Syrian Shabiha and Their State: Statehood & Participation, Saleh, a former political prisoner jailed for his involvement in the communist left, explains how the Assad regime maintained power through repression while adapting and deepening its authoritarian structures. Proregime militias, he writes, lived outside the law, moving in and out of view and using fear and violence to protect the regime and crush dissent.11Yassin al-Haj Salih, “The Syrian Shabiha and Their State – Statehood & Participation,” Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Perspectives, March 3, 2014, https://lb.boell.org/en/2014/03/03/syrian-shabiha-and-their-state-statehood-participation. Saleh argues that Assad’s regime pushed repression further, embedding militias and criminal networks into the state itself. Violence against citizens became routine, even as the regime continued to cloak itself in the language of anti-imperialism and liberation socialism.
The misuse of Lenin’s concept of revolutionary defeatism, combined with a broad antihegemonic lens, turns criticism of Assad into both-sides thinking in which criticism of Assad is unfair in context to the crimes of the United States. Since Western imperialism is seen as the primary global threat, Assad’s brutality is treated as secondary, no matter the cost to Syrians.
The Ba’athist movement originally sought to build unity through ideology by using Arab nationalist and socialist language. Yet real political participation was minimal, especially after the 1966 intra-Ba’athist coup.12Lauren Lewis, “Remembering the 1966 Syrian Coup d’État,” Middle East Monitor, February 21, 2021, https://middleeastmonitor.com/20210221-remembering-the-1966-syrian-coup-detat/. Under the Assads—Hafez and later Bashar—governance hardened into a hereditary dictatorship. While the regime used the language of popular struggle, it failed to achieve what Gramsci called hegemony—the ability to rule through widespread consent rather than direct repression.13Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971), 556.
Despite maintaining a façade of legitimacy for some time, the ideological project gradually unraveled. By the 2000s, the Assad regime had abandoned even the appearance of supposed Ba’athist principles. Neoliberal reforms enriched a small elite while alienating much of the population. The regime also worked with Western powers during the US invasion of Iraq. Syria took part in the CIA’s rendition program that involved the use of torture during interrogations.14Tom Finn, “How Arab states helped the CIA with its torture-linked rendition program,” Middle East Eye, February 13, 2015, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/how-arab-states-helped-cia-its-torture-linked-rendition-program.
Focusing only on foreign domination misses domestic dynamics of power. This becomes clear when one attempts to frame the Syrian Revolution from a traditional postcolonial perspective that emphasizes outsider influence as opposed to internal repression. A similar pattern appears when uncritical use of the Propaganda Model displaces global voices in favor of domestic critique, turning critique into an end in itself and leaving those directly involved dismissed or even portrayed as complicit. Prevailing media skepticism can make such reductionist views unfalsifiable, since testimony from the repressed or contrary evidence is rationalized away to protect the narrative—even if that means recasting victims as pawns of empire. This kind of self-sealing logic can even invert victim and oppressor to fit a narrative, laying the groundwork for conspiratorial thinking. In both cases, the underlying problem is not in critique of the West or media analysis, but in pursuing these legitimate criticisms at the expense of those whose demands should be centered. In this context, genuine solidarity becomes nearly impossible.
When a regime like Assad’s relies on coercion rather than consent, defending it on anti-imperialist grounds cannot be justified. Bassam Haddad, a Syrian-American scholar and cofounder of Jadaliyya, put it bluntly: “The ‘resistance’ camp seems to want or expect hunted and gunned down individuals and families on Syrian streets to prioritize the regime’s anti-imperialist rhetoric over the instinct of self-preservation and their fight for freedom from authoritarianism.”15Bassam Haddad, “The Idiot’s Guide to Fighting Dictatorship in Syria While Opposing Military Intervention,” Jadaliyya, May 10, 2023, accessed July 22, 2025, https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/25147.
Haddad observes that some seem to believe solidarity with states should come before solidarity with people. Framing that puts state narratives above popular struggles repeats an older pattern rooted in Cold War logic. This view divided the world into two opposing blocs, making the stance of states more important than the struggles of their citizens. Ideas carried over from that era persist today, even though geopolitical realities have changed. These lingering frameworks continue to shape how parts of the left understand struggles like Syria.
Cold War Left Orthodoxy
While the world has changed, analysis has not always kept pace. Outdated frameworks weaken critiques of Western hegemony by forcing ill-suited historic comparisons onto new realities. Whether in the spread of free market capitalism into emerging sectors, NATO’s expansion into Eastern Europe, or military interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, such analysis produces distorted descriptions of modern events and rests on a dated worldview.16Campism represents a flattened framework within some left-wing analysis that breaks the world into opposing “camps” of Western imperialists and those who stand in opposition. It is criticized for oversimplifying global events and overlooking capitalist, imperialist, or authoritarian regimes simply because they oppose the West. See Rohini Hensman, Indefensible: Democracy, Counterrevolution, and the Rhetoric of Anti-Imperialism (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2018). Cold War binaries trained some on the left to view the world through a state-centered geopolitical lens. In the Syrian conflict, this framing carried over as some drew on V. I. Lenin to argue that solidarity required siding with Assad against the West.
A consistent materialist analysis shows that Assad’s dynastic rule and concentration of power had little in common with socialist governance or leftist principles. Nevertheless, some claimed that a Marxist-Leninist position required support for Syria. Lenin’s concept of revolutionary defeatism, which argued that socialists should oppose all sides in interimperialist wars like the First World War, has been applied to Syria Such an imposition of Lenin’s dictums misrepresents the dynamics of conflict within Syria by viewing them in terms of the rivalry of great powers.17Vladimir I. Lenin, “The Defeat of One’s Own Government in the Imperialist War,” Sotsial-Demokrat, No. 43 (July 26, 1915), reprinted in Collected Works, vol. 21 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1974), 275–80, availabke at https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/jul/26.htm.
But Lenin drew a firm line between wars of imperial conquest and struggles for national liberation. “Socialists,” he wrote, “cannot, without ceasing to be socialists, be opposed to all war,” and insisted they support genuine movements for self-determination.18Vladimir I. Lenin, “The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution,” written September 1916, first published in Jugend-Internationale, Nos. 9–10 (September–October 1917), reprinted in Collected Works, vol. 23 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964), 77–87, accessed via Marxists Internet Archive, available at https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/miliprog/i.htm. The Syrian Revolution aligned more with the latter than with Lenin’s critique of interimperialist wars. Unlike the great-power rivalries Lenin critiqued, the Syrian Revolution was first and foremost a domestic struggle against dictatorship.
The misuse of Lenin’s concept of revolutionary defeatism, combined with a broad antihegemonic lens, turns criticism of Assad into both-sides thinking in which criticism of Assad is unfair in context to the crimes of the United States. Since Western imperialism is seen as the primary global threat, Assad’s brutality is treated as secondary, no matter the cost to Syrians.
Like media skepticism that shifts blame to the West, or postcolonial arguments that push attention outward, this framing downplays internal repression and weakens the possibility of real solidarity. You cannot claim solidarity with people while simultaneously advocating for or tacitly supporting the source of their immediate oppression—that is, the Assad regime.
Many defenses of Assad rest on Marxist-Leninist arguments. However, such defenses contradict Lenin’s principled defense of solidarity with the oppressed and their struggles for self-determination and against oppression. This Marxist-Leninist argument leads one to either distort history or Lenin’s own writings.
Despite this misalignment, several parties, such as the Communist Party of Greece, Tudeh Party of Iran, Progressive Party of the Working People of Cyprus, and Communist Party of Turkey, still sided with the Assad regime.19“Communist Parties React to Developments in Syria and the Fall of al-Assad Government,” In Defense of Communism, December 10, 2024, https://www.idcommunism.com/2024/12/communist-parties-react-to-developments-in-syria-and-the-fall-of-al-assad-government.html. In doing so, they placed opposition to the West above core principles. Anti-Western hegemony became the priority, even when it meant backing repression.
The Danger of an Unprincipled Opposition to Empire
These models—the Propaganda Model, postcolonialism, and the Cold War orthodoxy—structure how many on the Western left understand the world, interpret global events, and position themselves in relation to struggles elsewhere. The case of Syria clearly shows their limits, as their conjunction collapses into an unprincipled anti-imperialism that puts opposition to the West above solidarity with those facing repression. Moreover, the conspiratorial thinking and unrestrained skepticism encouraged by these frameworks immures them to evidence-based arguments. Reassessing these frameworks is necessary for building a more grounded and principled approach to internationalism today.
When opposition to the West rather than solidarity becomes the central point, leftist and reactionary critiques can converge, blurring or rationalizing fundamental differences in favor of a targeted focus on the West. In this sense, the overlap is both a symptom and a danger. It arises from politics pursued without principles, but it also creates space for reactionary ideas to be normalized when distinctions are blurred.
The same is true for more philosophical critiques of Western hegemony. Some, like Chomsky, analyze how global power operates with the United States as the hegemon. While he has discussed possible alternatives in other works, his writing on hegemony tends to focus on what should be opposed, not what should be built. It offers little in the way of political direction beyond negation.
By contrast, figures like Aleksandr Dugin, a Russian far-right ideologue rooted in fascist and traditionalist ideas, serve as useful foils. Like Chomsky, he denounces Western hegemony and unipolarity, but he does so from a reactionary and authoritarian perspective. Dugin has approached critiques of US imperialism from both a programmatic and a philosophical perspective. In Foundations of Geopolitics (1997), his central theme is dismantling US dominance in favor of a multipolar order built around a new Russian empire, a vision that already included the partition of Ukraine. In The Fourth Political Theory (2009), he critiques Western hegemony from a civilizational and ideological standpoint, proposing instead a conservative reaction that seeks to replace liberal modernity with a traditionalist and authoritarian alternative.
Despite their very different commitments, both Chomsky and Dugin focus solely on unipolarity and liberalism as cover for imperialism and frame the world through geopolitics. The point of this comparison is not to identify both Chomsky’s and Dugin’s positions. Rather, the overlap between them shows that criticisms of the West span the political spectrum and can lead to very different political conclusions. Dugin’s arguments against Western hegemony may echo leftist critiques, but the goals are fundamentally different.20Aleksandr Dugin, The Fourth Political Theory, (Moscow: Eurasian Movement, 2012), trans. Mark Sleboda and Michael Millerman, available at https://somacles.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/alexander-dugin-fourth-political-theory.pdf. In both leftist frameworks and reactionary critiques, anti-Western opposition alone cannot ground internationalism. Anti-Westernism itself takes many forms, including those promoted by authoritarian states and the far right.
Opposition to Western imperialism is essential for internationalism, but it cannot be its sole horizon. Analysis must start from principles of solidarity. Otherwise, narratives can be flipped and open the door to syncretic politics built only on opposition. This was clear in the way some self-identified leftists defended Assad. But support for Assad did not just come from figures like Dugin or sections of the left.
White nationalist groups in both the United States and Europe cast Assad as a symbol of resistance to liberalism and globalism. For instance, during the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, figures like Baked Alaska praised him, while others carried “Assad did nothing wrong” signs or wore shirts glorifying his barrel bomb attacks on civilians. James Fields, the white supremacist who murdered Heather Heyer at the rally, had posted a photo of Assad captioned “UNDEFEATED.” In 2005, former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke visited Damascus to endorse Assad’s anti-Zionist stance. The regime also welcomed far-right parties such as France’s National Front, Greece’s Golden Dawn, and Belgium’s Vlaams Belang, which presented their opposition to the United States, NATO, and liberal institutions as a form of anti-imperialism.21Mariam Elba, “Why White Nationalists Love Bashar al-Assad,” Intercept, September 8, 2017, https://theintercept.com/2017/09/08/syria-why-white-nationalists-love-bashar-al-assad-charlottesville/.
Shared opposition without clear ethics can lead to unintentional overlap. When opposition to the West rather than solidarity becomes the central point, leftist and reactionary critiques can converge, blurring or rationalizing fundamental differences in favor of a targeted focus on the West. In this sense, the overlap is both a symptom and a danger. It arises from politics pursued without principles, but it also creates space for reactionary ideas to be normalized when distinctions are blurred. Those who absorb these ideas may not even recognize the underlying politics at work.
For example, this emphasis on opposition is central to Dugin’s Fourth Political Theory. Instead of an antihegemony grounded in liberation from oppression, Dugin proposes a coalition against Westernism that includes fascists and reactionary conservatives. While Dugin is a useful foil, he is also important because of his red-brown syncretic influence. Through his role in shaping the National Bolshevik milieu and similar movements, he promoted the blending of far-left and far-right currents, a pattern that became especially visible after 2014 with the conflict in Ukraine and Russia’s efforts to build crossideological alliances against the West.
Dugin’s influence has extended internationally, shaping far-right and syncretic movements beyond Russia. In the United States, for example, Matthew Heimbach, founder of the Traditionalist Worker Party, has openly cited Dugin, at times calling himself the “American Dugin,” and later appeared at the “Rage Against the War Machine” rally with anti-imperialist literature, rebranding reactionary politics under opposition to the West.22Tweet by TheRightPodcast.bsky.social (@TheRightPodcast), X, April 11, 2023, 12:09 p.m., https://x.com/TheRightPodcast/status/1645821455316443137. US alt-right figure Richard Spencer also spread Dugin’s work, releasing “English translations of several of Dugin’s works, translated by his former partner Nina Kouprianova, including Martin Heidegger: The Philosophy of Another Beginning (2014)” through his Washington Summit Publishers.23Aleksandr Dugin, Martin Heidegger: The Philosophy of Another Beginning, trans. Nina Kouprianova (Whitefish, MT: Washington Summit Publishers, 2014). These connections ensured that Dugin’s Eurasianist ideas circulated directly in US white nationalist circles, complementing the ideological exchanges pursued by figures like Heimbach.24Natasha Bertrand, “‘A Model for Civilization’: Putin’s Russia Has Emerged as a ‘Beacon for Nationalists’ and the American Alt-Right,” Business Insider, December 10, 2016 available at https://web.archive.org/web/20180821191913/https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-connections-to-the-alt-right-2016-11.
Dugin, like Chomsky, is used here as representative of broader ideological tendencies. Other far-right or syncretic groups such as CasaPound in Italy, Golden Dawn in Greece, Jobbik in Hungary, and France’s Nouvelle Droite have taken parts of left critique but turned them toward nationalist or authoritarian ends.
This vulnerability echoes the earlier problem of opposition without principles: when solidarity isn’t centered, critiques converge with reactionary narratives. The problem is amplified on social media where memes and short text posts are used to convey complicated ideas. One of the best ways to break that cycle is centering the voices of those on the ground in such critiques.
Centering Syrian Agency
The Syrian conflict has often been framed through geopolitics and abstract theory, obscuring the local actors who were central to the revolution. That absence matters. What unfolded in Syria was not only shaped by outside powers but also people organizing locally, creating democratic structures, and confronting state violence at great personal risk. Their role is often ignored in conversations about the conflict.
If solidarity is to mean anything, it must begin with those who risk their lives for freedom.
Suheir al-Atassi and Mazen Darwish became prominent figures in the Syrian uprising. Al-Atassi helped lead the Jamal al-Atassi Forum, one of the last public spaces for political discussion before the regime shut it down. She joined the protests, was arrested, and later forced into exile. In 2012, she became co-vice president of the National Coalition, where she worked to connect activists inside Syria with political efforts abroad. She also became the first Arab woman to address the Arab League on behalf of the Syrian opposition.25“Who’s Who: Suheir Atassi,” The Syrian Observer,May 27, 2013, https://syrianobserver.com/who/whos_who_suheir_atassi.html. Mazen Darwish is a Syrian lawyer and journalist who founded the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression. He documented regime abuses, defended free speech, and reported on the uprising. In 2012, he was arrested and spent more than three years in detention, where he was tortured. After his release, he continued his work, refusing to be silenced.26International Refugee Assistance Project, “Mazen Darwish,” International Refugee Assistance Project, accessed July 24, 2025, https://refugeerights.org/people/mazen-darwish.
Revolutionary symbols like Suheir al-Atassi and Mazen Darwish exposed the brutality of the Assad regime and called for a democratic alternative. Others tried to reshape daily life under conditions of conflict. This is where the work of Omar Aziz matters. He was not focused on protest alone but also wanted to remake the foundations of social and political life. Aziz drew from anarchist traditions of mutual aid and self-organization to help articulate and encourage the creation of local councils. These councils were autonomous bodies that provided food, medicine, and basic services, while also coordinating protests and relief.27Javier Sethness, “Omar Aziz, ‘Abu Kamel,’ 1949–2013: Biography, Readings, Quotes,” Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation, September 27, 2018, https://www.blackrosefed.org/omar-aziz-biography-readings-quotes/. The councils didn’t just fill a gap. They pushed back against the regime and refused the idea that real freedom could be granted from above. Aziz saw them as the beginning of a different way of living grounded in mutual help and collective decision-making.
At the same time, local committees began forming to organize protests, document state violence, and support people in their neighborhoods. These groups eventually joined forces to form the Local Coordinating Committees of Syria.28“About the LCSS,” Local Coordination Committees, accessed July 24, 2025, available at https://web.archive.org/web/20120206181034/http://www.lccsyria.org/about. Razan Zaitouneh was an important figure in this process. Zaitouneh is a lawyer who helped form the Violations Documentation Center, working with activists across the country to track arrests, killings, and disappearances. In 2013, she was kidnapped in Douma and has not been seen since.29Birgitta Schülke, Wafaa Albadry, and Julia Bayer, “Razan Zaitouneh: The Missing Face of Syria’s Revolution,” Deutsche Welle, March 15, 2021, https://www.dw.com/en/razan-zaitouneh-the-missing-face-of-syrias-revolution/a-56846873.
Detention, threats, and exile could not stop the thoughts and ideas of the revolution. An example of this endurance and imagination is the Syrian Canteen in Montreuil, France. The Canteen was established by Syrian refugees and runs on a self-organized model. It provides food, and hosts gatherings and events focusing on mutual aid. As the Canteen states on its website: “Far from depoliticizing humanitarian or charitable approaches, we believe in mutual aid. For us, it is a way to respond to material difficulties while maintaining dignity, equality, and trust.”30“Qui sommes-nous ?” La Cantine Syrienne, accessed July 24, 2025, https://cantinesyrienne.fr/qui-sommes-nous.
The Canteen hosts annual gatherings called The People’s Want. These gatherings bring activists together from across the world to exchange ideas. They were inspired by the local councils and coordination committees created during the Syrian Revolution, with the goal of linking struggles in Syria to those in Palestine, Uganda, Georgia, and other places.31“Ressources: Les peuples veulent,” La Cantine Syrienne, accessed July 24, 2025, https://cantinesyrienne.fr/ressources/les-peuples-veulent.
In 2023, the network became independent from the Canteen, published a manifesto, and took on its own shape. This is not only a project of solidarity. It is a model born from the Syrian Revolution. It is one example that offers leftists a way to stand with those resisting oppression, rather than ending up aligned with the very regimes those people are fighting against.
Lessons from Syria for Global Solidarity
If solidarity is to mean anything, it must begin with those who risk their lives for freedom. The Syrian Revolution calls for a reckoning with how global struggles are understood and demands that principles come before alliances or inherited narratives. Critiquing aspects of the Western left is not meant to disavow or completely condemn it. Recognizing the limitations of some Western leftist analysis should not lead to ignoring or dismissing the very real issues and injustices rooted in Western power.
The left’s failure in Syria was not just moral but practical. It exposed a pattern of analysis that was both outdated and placed geopolitics above people. Syria showed that opposing US intervention was not enough. Real solidarity meant listening to people on the ground, defending their right to resist, and supporting their struggle for a future of their own. The left should have opposed both US imperialism and Assad’s violence.
Groups like the Local Coordination Committees created mutual aid systems, documented violence, and organized democratic councils in towns across the country. Their work offers a model. That model did not end when Assad’s regime collapsed, but lives on in concept and practice, such as The People’s Want. Groups like The People’s Want offer not only lessons, but partners in today’s global struggles.
Finding these groups, supporting what they do, learning from how they organize, and making their voices heard are practical ways to build real international solidarity. This means asking harder questions about the frameworks we use, breaking habits shaped by reflexive rather than critical thought, and thinking differently about our role in global struggles.
Future solidarity must start with those who are resisting, not with those who dominate. It must avoid framing every conflict as a choice between two powers. And it must treat people building alternatives as central to the story, not as a footnote.
The Syrian Revolution compels the left to confront how ideological rigidity has undermined international solidarity. Solidarity should be based on clear principles. These principles must be relational, material, critical, and universal. Moreover, they must be grounded in the dignity of those who struggle against repression on the ground. The Syrian Revolution is not just a past event to interpret, but a living warning and a resource. Future solidarity depends on whether we have listened.