 Bashar al-Assad, though imperfect, held Syria together and is far preferable to the Islamist alternative. Prior to his overthrow, prominent figures on both the Left and Right called anyone who said that an “Assadist.” Shortly after Assad’s fall, as Syria appeared to enter a period of nominal stability, those figures took a victory lap. They celebrated the coup as a win for freedom and democracy. Now, Syria is engulfed in widespread sectarian violence that has already killed thousands. At fault is the country’s new Islamist state, which has deployed shock troops to terrorize ethnic and religious minorities. The Scandinavian Institute for Human Rights found “[c]ompelling evidence [of] systemic… summary executions, torture, forced displacement… and [property] destruction.” Abuses targeted Syria’s Alawite minority — an offshoot of Shia Islam to which al-Assad belongs. The perpetrators are primarily “government forces, security personnel, [and] local… and foreign armed groups loyal to the new military.” With “clear intent to harm specific groups,” these actors are “preventing the burial of bodies… and publicly humiliating civilians.” The last few years of Assad’s rule, thanks largely to Western sanctions, were extremely painful for the Syrian populace. But hot conflict had basically vanished. Shortly after he left power, it returned with a bang. It seems the Assadists were right. Syria’s former president held the country together. Now, it is falling apart. Where is the mea culpa? Nowhere, unfortunately. On the Right, this is unsurprising. Rightists never admit when they are wrong. A particularly chilling manifestation of this is American conservatives celebrating the candidate they voted for, Donald Trump, crashing the economy. But, on Syria, liberals will not admit error either. This is due partly to them projecting Western dynamics onto the Middle East. In the West, Muslims — especially Sunnis — are a marginalized group. Within most Western nations, they are a relatively small numerical minority disproportionately subject to surveillance and other racialized abuse. The so-called War on Terror transformed hijabs and beards — even Sikh turbans — into regalia of the enemy from within. America is perhaps the best example of this otherization. But life as a Muslim in, say, France or the United Kingdom is no cakewalk either. Throughout most of the Middle East, however, Sunni Muslims are the absolute majority. In Syria, they comprise roughly three quarters of the population. So the assumption that they are a powerless and uniquely oppressed class — which, in the West, largely holds — is unhelpful. It would have, for example, counseled Western “radicals” to support the CIA-backed Islamist insurgency in 1980s Afghanistan. That insurgency, led by none other than Osama bin Laden, toppled the progressive secular government of Mohammad Najibullah. A direct line connects his ousting to the Taliban chucking acid in women’s faces for daring to read. Syria also shows the analytical pitfalls of imposing a Western lens onto the Middle East. Viewing Sunnis as inherent victims led many European and American leftists to back the anti-Assad rebels. The problem is that those rebels, like Osama bin Laden, were CIA-backed jihadists who routinely committed unspeakable crimes. Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria’s de facto president, is former ISIS and Al-Qaeda — groups that crucify apostates and strap bombs to children. They are utterly antithetical to everything the Left represents. Assad, his Russian and Iranian backers, and the Syrian state he commanded were all that stood in their way. The recent coup was therefore a crushing blow to the progressive cause. Yet far too many Western leftists celebrated it as a win. Some even saw a Syria free from Assad as a sign Palestinian liberation was nigh. Again, their poverty of geopolitical understanding was on full display. They would do well to heed the timeless words of America’s 16th and perhaps most revered president Abraham Lincoln. “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.” Indeed, Assad’s toppling was — in fact — a massive blow to the Palestinian cause. As the walls closed in, Assad fled to Moscow, taking a key prong of the Axis of Resistance with him. No one was happier than Israel. In October 2022, Assad had formally re-established ties with Hamas, sending them periodic material support. Benjamin Netanyahu and his genocidal cabinet now have one less adversary to worry about as Israel expands its terror operations. Syria’s new government is fully on board with the Zionist project. Al-Sharaa, who Western media is styling the Arab Zelensky, has already enabled Israel’s latest incursion into the Golan Heights. Other members of his Islamist are somehow even more servile. An officer in the Free Syrian Army, whose allies include al-Qaeda offshoots, said his group is “open to friendship with… Israel.” The Free Syrian Army’s stated goal is “full peace with Israel,” which is why it’s never even “made critical comments against” it. A pro-Zionist regime now runs Syria. Western leftists have surprisingly little to say about it given their remarkable moral clarity on the Palestine question. Israel’s genocide catalyzed a truly remarkable outpouring of support for the Palestinian cause. Western metropolises like London and New York City were the sites of historically large solidarity protests. Demonstrators were moved by scenes of “defensive” Israeli strikes incinerating toddlers and burying entire bloodlines under rubble with unprecedented regularity. Thanks in large part to social media capturing these atrocities, Zionist criminality became clearer than ever before. Unfortunately, the political awakening that followed was far from comprehensive. Well-meaning Westerners reduced Israel-Palestine to a familiar dualism of secular oppressors and Muslim victims, respectively. Assuming this binary explained all of Middle Eastern politics, these Westerners lost the plot when it came to Syria. But now the truth is clear as day. Syria is unraveling following the fall of Assad. Its new Islamist leaders have rekindled dying sectarian embers, leading to renewed mass death and destruction. For years, “Assadists” warned that a power vacuum would inevitably lead to this, and were roundly slandered for it. I think we owe them an apology. Author Youhanna Haddad is a North American Marxist of the Arab diaspora. Through his writing, he seeks to combat the Western liberal dogmas that uphold racial capitalism. You can contact him at [email protected]. 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