Thierry Meyssan and Syria: The Far-right and Assad.

Far Right Tries to Attract Anti-Imperialists.

On Voltaire Net we read, “Thierry Meyssan French intellectual, founder and chairman of Voltaire Network and the Axis for Peace Conference. His columns specializing in international relations feature in daily newspapers and weekly magazines in Arabic, Spanish and Russian. His last two books published in English : 9/11 the Big Lie and Pentagate.

He is not content with conspiracy theories about 9/11 in New York and the claim that the  “Pentagon was the target of a guided missile, fired on as the result of a right-wing conspiracy within the United States.”

Currently Meyssan’s defence of the Syrian regime is being widely broadcast.

On Meyssan’s own site he has taken upon himself to defend the Syrian regime.

What has been happening in Syria for the past three years? According to NATO and GCC* media reports, the “regime” has shed blood to suppress a democratic revolution. However this version is contradicted by the current support for the government estimated at, according to sources, between 60 and 90 % of the population. The truth is quite different: NATO and the GCC have successively lost a war of succession and a fourth generation Nicaraguan-type war. It is they, and they alone, who organized and financed the death of 120,000 Syrians.

Meyssan is currently (according to the weekly Le Point) cited on Wikipedia) , “professeur de relations internationales au Centre d’études stratégiques de Damas », qu’il « signe des éditos dans al-Watan » et qu’il est « conseiller particulier de Bachar el-Assad »” – Professor of international relations at the Strategic Studies Centre of Damas, and a special adviser of Assad.

In October Le Monde Diplomatique published an article, Les embrouilles idéologiques de l’extrême droite, (the deliberate confusions of the far-right) largely about Alain Soral. (1)

It drew attention to the mixture of “anti-imperialism”, conspiracy theory, and (barely disguised) anti-Semitism peddled by a fringe of extreme-right ideologists.

They are designed to attract a ‘left’ audience, with anti-globalisation, anti-imperialist themes, and the ‘right’ with an appeal to (French) nationalism.

Meyssan participates the site Egalite et Réconciliation founded by Soral. (2)

It does just that.

It is devoted to promoting this ideology.

Equality and Reconciliation advocates the union of the “Labour left” (Marxist) and the “Moral Right” (Nationalism and Patriotism) in response to capitalist globalisation Many consider that it takes as its model the pre-great War Proudhon Circle, which brought together syndicalists (not, despite the legend, Georges Sorel himself) , and Maurrassians (followers of the Action Française, the French ‘Royalist’ party of the extreme right).

It would be a great mistake if the left, in its justified hatred of the jihadist killers in Syria,  their international recruits and backers, working in Syria, forgets that Assad has attracted people of Meyssan’s stripe.

(* GCC: Cooperation Council of Arab States in the Gulf)
(1) Wikipedia.

 Soral defined himself as a Marxist, and was a member of the French Communist Party in the early 90’s. He left the PCF because of his opposition to the party’s renunciation of revolutionary content^{[citation needed]}. Soral supported left-wing dissident candidate Jean-Pierre Chevènement during the 2002 presidential election^{[citation needed]}.

In 2005, Soral turned to the far-right, joining the National Front‘s campaign committee; he was given responsibility for social issues and for the suburbs under the authority of Marine Le Pen. Soral’s personal journey has led some to compare him with Jacques Doriot, one of the neo-socialists in the early 1930s and Collaborationist under Pétain.^[8] He supported the Bloc identitaire‘s distribution of food in January 2006.^[8]

Since 18 November 2007, Soral has been a member of the central committee of the National Front which he left in early 2009 because of some ideas he was in conflict with (especially the menace of Islam which is not an actual threat for him).

In 2007, he founded the group “Egalité et Réconciliation”,^[9] a think tank led by the ideas he developed in his books and his several interviews (an innovative mix between social and economic ideas from Left, and Values like Nation or morality from Right).

(2) Interestingly Meyssan is described as a “personal friend” of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a recent post on this site, criticising Iran for giving way to the West over its nuclear programme.