While most see the collapse of Syria as just another Middle East country thrown into chaos by the American government, it is a good lesson in the dangers that come when a distinct minority rules over the majority. The ISIS rebels get the credit, but the real blame lies with the way in which the Syria state was structured. Until now, Syria was ruled by one of the many minorities in the region. That minority is a mysterious ethnoreligious group called the Alawites.
The place to start is with the people. Syria has some of the oldest communities in the world, dating back to the ancient world. Maaloula, a village in western Syria, is one of the last remaining places where Aramaic is spoken. There are Christian communities that date back to Rome. Of course, Islam has been in the area now called Syria since the time of Mohamed. There is also the ethnoreligious group called the Alawites, which split from Shia Islam at some unknown point in the past.
The origins and identity of the Alawites are a mystery. There are roughly four million of them in the region. Their legends say they are descendants of the followers of the eleventh Imam, Hasan al-Askari. The reason he is called the eleventh Iman is because he was one of the twelve imams who claimed to be the spiritual and biological successors of the Mohamed. These are the founders of Shia Islam. Exactly how they became this distinct subgroup within Islam remains a mystery.
Now, Shia Islam is itself a minority within Islam. Roughly ten percent of all Muslim belong to a sect within the Shia designation. The vast majority of Muslims, especially in the Arab world, are Sunnis. Unsurprisingly, the relations between the Sunnis and Shia have never been good. One result of this enmity between the two camps is that the Sunnis, who make up seventy percent of Syria, claim the Alawites are not just heretics and non-believers, but not even Arabs.
That last claim is not without some merit. There has been a great deal of effort to gloss over the ethnic realities in that part of the world. Western experts are sure that there is no such thing as biological reality, so differences in people, even genetic differences, are explained as cultural differences. The locals, however, understand that the Levant has been the land of invaders, and they left behind more than just their buildings and some of their cultural practices.
That aside, the Alawites have been a highly clannish and resourceful group, often creating problems for the local rulers. The Ottomans tried to suppress them on multiple occasions, but also found them useful in roles requiring skill, like tax farming and managing the empire’s finances. When the Europeans came to dominate the region in the 19th century, the Alawites proved useful to their new rulers. It turns out that every ruler needs smart and clever people.
It is this ability to run complex systems that eventually allowed the Alawites to take control of Syria. That and their clannishness. Under the French, the Alawites played a key role, which gave them access to power and resources. After independence, their resourcefulness and understanding of the systems left by the Europeans allowed Hafez al-Assad and his Ba’ath Party to seize power. The Alawites, despite their numbers, were smarter than their rivals.
As an aside, one of the many claims about the Alawites by the Muslim majority is that they supported Israeli independence and had a long working relationship with the Jews in the region. This is generally considered a smear, but it is clear that the Alawites were willing to work with other minority groups in the region. The Assad family famously protected the Christian communities in Syria, for example. Minorities have a funny habit of sticking together against the majority.
That aside, a country run by a distinct and distrusted minority is never going to be stable, especially when the minority is tiny. This is why the Assad government had been ruthless at times when dealing with the Sunni majority. To keep the peace, the government had to make clear to anyone thinking otherwise that the government would use maximum force to maintain the peace. Minority rule is always made worse by the tactics necessary to maintain it.
Of course, the Assad led Syria had been useful to the West for a long time, so they got the support they needed to maintain themselves. Until now, it had been assumed that chaos in Syria would be bad for the region and bad for Israel. As a rule, confident countries seek stability in their diplomacy. Now that the official policy of the United States is to spread chaos around the world, Assad was an easy target for the now familiar regime change operation.
Regime change was possible in Syria because it was a minority government ruling a hostile majority. Western sanctions starved Syria of the cash it needed to bribe enough of the majority into supporting them. Turkish and American terror groups operating within Syria put constant pressure on the government. The reason Assad fell so quickly to this hodgepodge of ISIS radicals is the Alawite system collapsed. The ISIS mob was simply the straw that broke the camel’s back.
This is what makes Syria a timeless lesson. No society run by a distinct minority can be stable, as the majority will always distrust that minority. Even when minority rule results in good times, as in the case of colonial Africa, the majority will find reasons to resent that minority. In fact, the good times allows that resentment to slowly build under the surface of apparent tranquility. As soon as bad times come, the majority revolts and the laws of large numbers takes its course.
Syria is why the Israelis have no interest in ruling over Arabs. They could take control of Gaza and the West Bank, for example, but they would be viewed as a minority ruling a hostile majority, so expulsion is their preferred option. In the oldest part of the world, the people still understand the oldest lessons. One of those is that a minority ruling a majority must always be a temporary condition. In the end, numbers always matter more than even human capital. The majority wins in the end.
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That aside, a country run by a distinct and distrusted minority is never going to be stable, especially when the minority is tiny.
Unless that minority can pretend to be a part of the majority. Neat trick.
Yes. But recent events with Buh-Buh-Buh-Buh Benjamin’s Buh-Buh-Buh-Buh foreign media star and reservation gatekeeper agent show that the enlisted minorities are hip to the game. Even if the fading and as yet cowed majority will not dare say things much less even dare to claim they are a distinct ethnic/racial group, these enlisted minority coalition partners smell blood and they are setting fires in the bushes to flush out the game. As enraging as it is that the still majority doesn’t have a single person with the moral courage to explicitly declare themselves a champion of a distinct ethnic/racial group,… Read more »
The internet has helped awaken a lot of people. It doesn’t take a lot to show the deception, and there’s not really a response to prove otherwise. It’s why the gatekeepers have such a hard time and do everything that they can to change the subject rather refute the claim.
There’s also the rise of other minorities. The Indians are coming, indeed have arrived. They know who they’re deal with. Heck, they use them as role model. There’s already tension. King Cobra doesn’t want to be some lawn jockey.
Where would we be without the internet, along with the portable video camera everyone carries in their pocket? Sharing copies of the Culture of Critique I guess!
Ha! What is today’s meme?
“Breaking:
In a highly usual event, a Penny escapes from a Jew.”
Another notes that in the side-by-side of Daniel and Dafna, Daniel even looks like a Greek god.
Brilliant. Forwarded to friends & family with a quickness.
Yes. And even though he was shut up and forced to change his tune to ascend and consolidate a position of political power, that doesn’t mean he has changed his mind. It probably means he has given extra notice and has a seething resentment for being put in his place.
He isn’t the first, he isn’t the last. Whack-a-mole will only lead to more noticing by more and more powerful people who are ascendent.
Once they go mask off even the dumbest of white normies is gonna figure the game out, and its curtins for them.
Schrodingstein’s White.
I doubt a very high percentage of AINO residents could answer with any accuracy the question of who rules over them. Certainly a ridiculously high percentage would say the president, or congress, or something stupid like that. Even the ones who know it is not those entities (including me) still have a tough time pinning it down with any specificity. Thus it is somewhat superfluous that they pretend to be part of the majority, since nobody knows they (or which of them) are in charge anyway.
https://youtu.be/35DSdw7dHjs
That’s a great scene. If one looks at let’s call it the globalist impulse, then things like corporations, fiat money, mass media, and now AI are just tools to further degrade the self-integrity of each person on the planet. Maybe AI is the final tool to complete the job of making the entirety of humanity into a mindless hive and the globalists will succeed in their dream of a universal government.
On second thought, nah.
Okay, I’ll look.
Please give us a header with random vids, Mr. House.
Update: Ah. A scene from ‘Network’, the “We’re mad as hell” movie. Never seen it, so thanks, will watch.
People cannot identify it because it’s not really a single ethnic group (minority) that is ruling over us. This is where I part ways with the antisemites who are sure the ruling ethnicity is the small hats. They have disproportionate power, but they are only part of it. It’s a coalition of freaks, various minorities and traitorous White people. When we win, our modern Sobibor will be a utopia couse it will be a very diverse place.
The anti-Israel protests on our campuses certainly demonstrate your point that no one group exerts decisive control on all issues.
It’s interesting to try to watch the internal conflicts between these groups to determine their relative strengths. Black women supported OJ, to the surprise of white feminists, for example.
Is there a single cause that makes these disparate groups allies? It seems like there must be. I submit that the cause that binds them is hatred of traditional whites.
They make no secret of their binding glue. Read their (endless) screeds, articles and dissertations. Note their targets in the workplaces, schools, courts.
They are organized around a seething resentment of, and hatred for, straight white males . . . though in general they hate masculinity across-the-board.
Especially they hate Christian white males, because these are the remnant representatives of Hateful Oppressor Patriarchy. Which exists exactly nowhere in New Amerika. But that’s the straw man they keep burning down.
White women are under the gun, too. The clitoris is no amulet to ward off the capital charge of whiteness.
I don’t see it, amigo, but I appreciate your response. White women in America are the most privileged, empowered and entitled group — outside of ‘royalty’ — that has ever existed on Earth. Corporations and academia and the general workplace aren’t blacklisting them (like white males) but welcoming them with open arms. For fifty years and counting. In the second half of the 20th Century, white women ruled America and were the front lines of P.C., when it was called that. The heart ‘n soul of the Demoncrapic Party. White women were the giddy, joyfully dancing nurses during their beloved… Read more »
Blacks will only support other blacks if the political litmus test has been passed. Which tells me that blacks do as they’re told, by someone… it’s not like they are innately liberal Democrats, bound to suburban white shitlibs by some common view of life. When Larry Elder challenged Gavin Newsome in a recall referendum, the LA Times and other media outlets dubbed him “the black face of white supremacy.” Blacks voted overwhelmingly for the governor. At a guess, if instead of murdering two people, OJ decided to go into politics and run as a Republican, he’d have likewise been called… Read more »
‘The Jews’ don’t run the U.S. Those elements of Jewry that are organized generally behind Sabbatean Frankism and Talmudism exert influence in specific spheres, and most certainly are eschatological obsessives concerning their dogma. But the shots are called at the international or global level.
By Larry Fink at Blackrock.
$20 trillion in managed assets.
It’s like you didn’t read a single freakin word I wrote. What part of “This is where I part ways with the antisemites who are sure the ruling ethnicity is the small hats.” didn’t you understand?
Yes, I understood what you said the first time that I read it.
Yes and no. The best way to think of jews controlling the US is akin to a publicly traded company. Sure, Exxon may have 120,000,000 different shareholders. But if one shareholder holds 5% of the stock, and the next largest shareholder has 0.1% of the stock, guess who has effective control?
But whom are you not allowed to criticize?
we’re not rules by individuals but by a class. So its impossible to pick one of them out, point at them and say, its him officer. Its also why there have been no “great men” in the era of managerial rule, there are no individuals in this class who can BE great men.
Neat trick, and one the Jews have been famous for doing for literally thousands of years. Survival strategy and all that. Quit being coy, you sound dumb.
I disagree with this sentiment. They pretend to be part of the majority when it benefits them, and then pretend to be minorities when that benefits them. The real differences with America’s situation compared to Syria is two pronged. 1) The Alawites were in charge, and this wasn’t obfuscated or lied about. Everyone knew. In America, they’ve done a neat trick where they’ve largely convinced the majority that they’re actually the ones in control, and all the poor minorities are still brutally repressed. This is despite the fact that we see all the systemic discrimination against the majority in government… Read more »
“They pretend to be part of the majority when it benefits them, and then pretend to be minorities when that benefits them.”
cowardly conduct, most normally observed in females
The saddest thing about learning about American involvement in the Middle East, hell with Muslims generally, is that the Iranians may have a point with this “Great Satan” business.
At every chance, if the USG can fuck over the native Christians, that’s the option chosen. Always.
I was looking that up today – the decimation of Christian populations in places the (((United States))) creates chaos.
Syria’s Christian population has declined 75% since 2011
Iraq’s Christian population has declined from ~1.5MM to less than 250k since 2003
And of course, for (((OUR GREATEST ALLY))), Christian population was near 8% in 1948, now less than 2%
Yeah, one need not endorse the Muslim nutjobs and fanatics, of which there are many, to see that they have a point.
Exactly what does ZOG offer them? Feminism, pornography, promiscuity, homosexuality, consumerism, Zionism, usury, and financial swindles if they go along with the program and become “democratic,” and death from the ZOG military of they don’t.
ZOG also offers them the opportunity to import as many Hutus as possible. What’s not to love?!
I always thought it was tutsies.
Oh well who can tell the diferance anyway.
Oh, I’d much prefer to import them.
It’s similar to to how Saddam’s Tikriti clan, a minority within the Sunnis, who were a minority in majority-Shia Iraq, were put in power by the Brits. He then became a client of the Americans, who helped him in the Iraq-Iran War of the 1980s. When Washington got tired of him, he was lured by Ambassador April Glaspie into invading Kuwait, which sparked the 1990-91 Gulf War and all the rest.
I did an AI search on April Glaspie. Here is what came back… “Is April Glaspie Jewish? Based on the provided search results, there is no direct information indicating April Glaspie’s religious affiliation or ethnicity as Jewish. However, we can analyze the available information: The search results mention Paul Michael Glaser, an American actor and director, who is Jewish. However, there is no connection established between Paul Glaser and April Glaspie. April Glaspie’s biography does not mention her religious affiliation or ethnicity as Jewish. The search results do not provide any information suggesting a Jewish connection or heritage for April Glaspie. In… Read more »
Remember when publicly available “AI” hadn’t yet been “aligned” (retarded) and its gaydar was almost infallible—stronger than the strongest pervert’s? That was AI’s first real breakthrough into public consciousness, its first hit. (LOOK AT THESE FAGS, the headlines nearly shouted.) Now it can’t even look at pictures, because…
Well, the excuse was: It thinks black women are gorillas because photography is racist. Racism in, gorillas out.
You can still look at pictures, though. For now.
Image-searching little-known political figures is noted in your permanent record.
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_____ )
The US commenced Operation Timber Sycamore. Our CIA spent 1 billion on weapons arming rebels (AQ and later ISIS) to overthrow Assad. The Arabs assisted the rebs as did Israel and Turkey. Later, the US sent troops in , ostensibly to fight ISIS but we took control of their relatively small but still lucrative oil fields and deprived Assad of revenue. Of course Russia assisted and turned the tide but sanctions and loss of oil revenue prevented Assad from even paying his army at the end. Regardless of his minority status, Assad would still be in power in Syria if… Read more »
The US intervention was motivated by Israel’s desire to remove the pro-Hezbollah Assad regime. With Hezbollah isolated from their Iranian allies and thereby weakened, Israel would have an opportunity to seize southern Lebanon and its water resources, which Israel has long coveted. They might also get a slice of southern Syria in the bargain.
Yeah sure, but truth does not make a zman essay.
Also the entire trouble started, when the “high-IQ” white governor from the whitest state became US president and even got re-elected to implement the promise of “bringing democracy to middle east”. Still everything is the fault of low-IQ blacks/browns, Alawite minorities and mischievous Jews.
White Christian America needs to take responsibility for this entire middle-eastern mess. It was not created by Obama or blacks or Democrats. Alawites lost control because Europeans/Americans lost respect of the region.
You would have to look far and wide, probably in vain, to find another “majority” that hates each other as much as whites in AINO do. (Putting aside for the moment whether or not Luigi Mangione and I belong to the same ethnic group, he doesn’t look anything like me, not a similar name, but clown world says we are both “white,” whatever that’s supposed to mean). I’m not disagreeing with Zman when he says As soon as bad times come, the majority revolts. But here in AINO, it’s an open question if that applies, as I’m not sure that… Read more »
The Achilles heel of European-derived people (what most just call “Whites”), is that their identity is almost entirely constructed along class, religious, or ideological lines. Virtually every other large group has some sort of tribalism as their primary self-identity. Tribalism is simply a code for race+culture. You can quibble about this and point out that Whites tend to form families within their class but it’s a matter of what comes first. For most people on the planet, their identity is mostly in their genes. For Euros, it’s something in their heads. This is of course, a huge weakness, because all… Read more »
I take the White thing much like the Arab saying of “me against my brother, etc.”
It is somewhat defined by your opposition – Italian v. German, North Euro vs. South Euro (or East West), Euro v. Non-Euro. Sort of concentric circles.
Or blast radius.
Although its a footnote now, its also the end of Ba’athism in the Arab world.
“That aside, a country run by a distinct and distrusted minority is never going to be stable, especially when the minority is tiny.” Under Hafez Assad, there were some progressive reforms. For example state-subsidized electrification, made possible by the Euphrates dam. I got this nugget from Tariq Ali’s recent essay on Syria, who argues that these progressive reforms are what ensured the stability of the regime: https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/the-roads-to-damascus But for the last so many years, this carrot-and-stick approach has been off the table as sanctions have eliminated the possibility of any carrot. There’s another informative essay at RT: https://www.rt.com/news/609099-assad-syria-collapse-crisis/ And if… Read more »
I kinda seems like we’re ruled over, or at least heavily influenced by a minority or two in this place. Will the declining White majority ever rebel? Time is running out.
Good comment! Whites in the US are in the process of becoming a mere plurality. Whether the “minority group” that presently governs the US can continue to rule over a brown-black majority is an open question, but my guess is no. I have heard reports that Israeli tanks are rather close to Damascus and that the US and Israel continue to systematically bomb Syrian military assets. I’m not certain how these new “liberators of Syria” will fare against an Israeli offensive, backed by the US. And I’ve also heard there is already fighting between Turks and Kurds in Syria. Sometimes… Read more »
“Whether the “minority group” that presently governs the US can continue to rule over a brown-black majority is an open question, but my guess is no.” The president of Mexico is Claudia Sheinbaum.
A feminist, enviro-globalist Jewess running Mexico. Something for the Little Brown People to look up to.
In the Age of Derangement, is there anything more bizarre than a Jewess ruling the world’s leading mestizo patriarchy? There’s no way in Hell that “election” was on the up-and-up.
For most Whites in the US, “rebellion” means voting for Orange Man and cheering when Kid Rock shoots some Bud Light cans. Let’s hope there are some serious people somewhere in the bowels of MAGA.
Frankly, Kid Rock sounds like the name of Barney Rubble’s long lost grandson.
I regularly bring up the idea of balkanization/peaceable separation of the country to MAGA types and get little pushback. They’re not as repulsed by it as a republican white would have been 20 years ago. My feeling is that they have this hope that Trump can bring back the America they remember, but they’re open to other options if he fails or things keep declining.
Let’s see, Assad protected the Christian communities, and New Amerika is obsessed with spreading woke, feminism, and transgenderism around the globe. Not a match. D.C. and N.Y. hate hate hates! them some Christians, ooh baby. Old vet insurrectionists, gun-lovers, Bible imbibers ‘n church-goers is not Our Democracy. (Leaving aside that most Christians already converted to Progressivism quietly long ago. But anyways.) Who is New Amerika? Women, their ever-ally the homos, plus the banksters and the old money/occult elite families. Korporate Amerika, that handful of mega-corporations under which everything else is subsumed. The Left’s leaders are just SURE that a glorious… Read more »
That aside, a country run by a distinct and distrusted minority is never going to be stable, especially when the minority is tiny.
Unless it is backed up by a colonial empire: there’s a limit to the oppressive excesses a minority government will risk, while an empire-backed majority will often just wipe out the competition and start scheming against their Western benefactor.
That’s why colonial powers usually choose to empower a minor local tribe over the dominant, like in Syria and Saudi and Libya.
Of course, once the empire leaves, demographic realities will kick back in.
Ultimately, a ruling minority has one and only one strategy to maintain power- genocide. This can be accomplished either through subtraction or addition, or both.
Not when the minority is small enough to rely on the cooperation of the majority. Rule by ethnic minority is quite normal throughout history. Norman Britain, Macedon Egypt, Viking Rus, Visigothic Spain etc.
And until very, very recently, Castillian Mexico.
This is a good point. We did very well with the Shah of Iran and Mubarak in Egypt. Saddam Hussein was manageable until he was lured into Kuwait. Even Gaddafi was friendly at the end. After the U.S. tried to install democracy that no one wanted, look what we have in those countries now.
I find this somewhat ironic; the population of a certain group of peoples is estimated at 2.2%, yet this minority seeks eminence and authority of all world governments. Will they too fail?
Jews are 0.2% of the world population.
She may have meant in the US.
Yes, apparently the Russians got tired of supporting the Alawites and their corrupt generals, who were probably bribed to stand down against the head-choppers…According to Martynov, the Assad Regime treated the Russians and their journalists poorly, despite Putin having saved their bacon twice in the last 15 years…And it’s clearly true that a battalion or two of Russian (or Ukrainian) troops would have sent HTS and the other terrorist groups packing very quickly…
Seems obvious that the Syrian senior officers were bribed and / or blackmailed into standing down. Since Arab enlisted have zero initiative on their own, they took off running when they realized they’d been betrayed.
I think the Russians tried to make the best of things, but there was no saving Assad. The Syrian army was a mess and no amount of Russian military support would fix that problem. They will make the best of what comes next, which is most likely a regional war.
The Russian half assed it 5 years ago when they let the head choppers congregate in Idlib. The job undone ended up undoing Syria. Russia also did nothing and said nothing while the Israelis Air Force had their way with Syria for the last 5 or 6 years. After their initial rescue of Syria in 2015, the Russians have not covered themselves in glory. Hell , the US slaughtered a bunch of Wagner guys and they did nothing.
Simplicius provides a good, evidence-backed argument in his latest post as to why taking Idlib and wiping out the terrorists there would not have been so simple.
The short version is that the US and the Turks seemed to show they were ready to go to regional war over Idlib at that time.
Which factor is the most important, in your opinion — the Alawites as a cultural, genetic, or ideological minority? I think the best lens through which to view late-stage Soviet America is the lens of theocracy. They tried conversion through persuasion (the schools). They tried conversion by the sword (replacing the native population with foreigners). But they — the stupid, evil clowns who rule us — did seem to consciously realize that they’re a minority (of lunatics, in a majority of sane people). If that’s really the case, then AINO’s collapse will break along ideological lines. If it’s the other… Read more »
If you are right, and AINO’s collapse breaks along ideological lines, this implies that some significant proportion of non-whites will align with traditional whites instead of their racial tribes, because of the Christianity or conservatism that they share with whites.
I find it hard to imagine that many non-whites will side with traditional whites because of Christianity or liberty. Of course, there will be a few, but their proportions will be small, say, less than 5%. Maybe I’m wrong.
Do you envision lots of blacks, mestizos, or asians casting their lot with white Christians, for example, against their own tribes?
Which factor is the most important, in your opinion — the Alawites as a cultural, genetic, or ideological minority? How to disentangle the three in this case? The ideology flows directly from being a historically persecuted genetic and cultural minority since both Shia and Sunni consider Alawites heretical, the former to a far greater degree (Shia Iran allied with the Alawites more out of expediency than religious identity and its doctrinal disagreements pale in comparison to the Sunni House of Saud’s outright hatred). Ba’athism is an attempt to thread the needle with distinct ethnicities and cultures under the guise of… Read more »
“The Ottomans tried to suppress them on multiple occasions, but also found them useful in roles requiring skill, like tax farming and managing the empire’s finances.” Sounds like they had a similar role that the Jews had under the Ottomans. Maybe that’s why, as you hinted above, the two were on reasonably friendly terms, at least unofficially. —– “That aside, a country run by a distinct and distrusted minority is never going to be stable, especially when the minority is tiny. This is why the Assad government had been ruthless at times when dealing with the Sunni majority. To keep… Read more »
Here is a video on the Chinese perspective of the events in Syria, that I happen to agree with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPyzL7EnD9I
I don’t buy the argument that Russians got tired of supporting them. They are going to lose their military bases in Syria, if USrael succeeds in installing a US friendly government, which is now a real possibility.
Its really up to the Turks to decide how much US/Foreign interference they want in the new protectorate. We don’t have the greatest history managing stable regimes in that part of the world. The Israelis and the Turks will have to come to some sort of accommodation.
I doubt the US will get a friendly government based on our experience with Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
Tom Luongo this morning talking about how the Russians had been offering Assad a deal with stronger commitments, but he kept trying to play them off against the Arab League and others.
https://rumble.com/v5y5eh5-760-tom-luongo-and-dave-collum.html
Russian policy is to always make the most of the conditions that exist. There was not much they could do to change things. As to what happens next, just assume that whatever you want to happen, will not happen and whatever you fear will happen, will not happen. The Turks and the United States are about to learn it is never good to create chaos.
Apparently, the economic sanctions hurt Syria badly enough that Assad could no longer pay his soldiers. When the jihadis attacked, the Syrian army just went home.
There is a video from autumn 2019 where US spook Dana Sproul describes exactly how the illegal US occupation forces were explicitly sited to strangle Syria economically to destabilize the Assad regime.
Stroul?
What was true for millennia is now in doubt in the modern age of technology and mass indoctrination via mass media. Or, at least that is the working hypothesis. In the fictional novel Brave New World, the drug “soma” quelled the masses and facilitated peaceful authoritarian rule; and we know how that ended. Europe is now the petrie dish of this experiment and it will be instructive to see how things turn out. Methinks it won’t be merely words of woke persuasion that solve this problem. A bloody cauldron awaits.
Simplicius offers a fat reed: Israel may be creating two golems, and I say three. She has bought time and intends to be a power, but a rough justice will come. Nourishing the Turk and blockading the Shia is a temporary victory. Grown stronger, ambitious Ottomans and a consolidating Sunni caliphate will gang up on Israel’s Eretz designs. (Egypt will aid, nursing past grievances and fresh insults. And HTS is already talking about next year in Jerusalem.) Hamas and Hiz’b’allah are only branches while the trunk of Iran is still whole. Since Iran’s direct line to the Med is blocked,… Read more »
ISIS is the armed expression of Sunni resistance to the Shia rising to power in Iraq. One the U.S. declared democracy in Iraq, the majority Shia took their opportunity to get revenge on the Sunnis. The surge and its aftermath took a lot of the wind out of the Sunni resistance, but there was no way to stamp it out, so it metastisized into ISIS, and grew in Syria to eventually take over the place.
Maybe this is a more stable set-up in the long run, with the Shia running Iraq and the Sunnis running Syria.
[…] ZMan digs into history. […]
Excellent piece!
This really is, it is top-notch.