A Crooke from the Establishment

The American journalist Michael Weiss wrote recently, “Tony Blair can’t be a war criminal. If he were, George Galloway would support him.”  The joke works on the assumption that the backers of despots in the West are always from the Dostoevskian dregs of extremist politics: wild and frothing men, far from the polite and sensible mainstream in which the British establishment resides.

With Bashar al-Assad committing war crimes against his own people, ask yourself what kind of man wrote this article in that eminently respectable journal of international affairs, Foreign Policy.

As the Arab spring reached Syria at the beginning of April, he began the piece by warning readers that they must not show their lack of sophistication by falling for Western stereotypes. ‘Assad’s situation is indeed so very different to that of a Mubarak or a Ben Ali – which [has] become the unique lens through which his response was being judged –particularly in the West.’ Assad is not a tyrant of the same kind. In a televised address he showed that he was a ‘young leader, one who was not ossified by time and convention.’ The writer cannot ignore state terror, but he distances the dictator from the dictatorship. Most Syrians ‘believe that the President did not order the security forces to use live fire, but forbade it,’ he says. ‘This is the difference between Syria and, say, Egypt. There, everyone knew Mubarak would never, ever reform. Most Syrians however believe that Assad instinctively is reformist.’

The author pre-empts the obvious objection that Assad must control his own forces by blaming overzealous servants. ‘Even in Daraa, the site of the biggest demonstrations and the site of the gratuitous use of live fire against the protesters, inhabitants believe they know the identity of the official who ordered the firing and also the prominent personage to whom he is linked. They are deeply angry to be sure, but their anger is not primarily channelled at the president.’

Read the whole piece and you will recognise an astute work of propaganda that plays subtle tricks with considerable skill. The author seduces the reader by offering entrance to a privileged world of insider knowledge. He manipulates the belief, common among intelligent people, that events are more complicated than they appear. The simple-minded may hear of the troops of a dictatorship massacring civilians and think the dictator an evil man. We, by flattering contrast, know that the world is not black and white but coloured in shades of grey. Naïve westerners believe that Assad is just another vicious dictator, but he allows us to see that Assad is not a monster but a man who recognises the need for reform, who is admired around the region for his foreign policy and so on.

Naturally, the author fails to mention that Syria is an Apartheid-style state in which the minority Alawite sect hog the power. Nor does he allow the reader to be bothered by the knowledge that the ordinary Syrians, whose opinions he quotes so boldly, cannot speak freely to foreigners for fear of the consequences. What is fascinating about the effort is that it comes from Alastair Crooke, a former MI6 agent, who has worked for the EU and assisted Senator George Mitchell’s inquiry into the causes of the second intifada rather than a Galloway, Griffin or Livingstone. He runs an organisation called Conflicts Forum, which aims to promote the Islamist cause. (His commitment to religious reactionaries, incidentally, probably explains his enthusiasm for the Syrian Baathists. Although they are nominally secular, they give logistical and financial support to Hamas and Hezbollah.)

Again what it is noticeable about lobbying techniques is how shrewd they are. Here is a section from a debate Conflicts Forum held on how to persuade European left wingers to overlook the violence, misogyny, homophobia and racism of radical Islam that leftists once opposed.

‘The added value of this group of participants and how it can contribute to the wider aims of the project is essentially the same as the focus of Conflict Forum’s work – listening to political Islam, recognising resistance and developing a common discourse and ‘ideology’ between Islamist movements and activist and social movement leaders and others in the West – essentially the beginning of an attempt to understand the phenomena that is emerging, and the importance of explaining and articulating this in the West. This group’s aim is essentially to contribute ideas, critical thinking, tools and resources for activist groups and social movements to use in their wider mobilisation and activism. The challenge is how to bring the language of mainstream Islamist movements like Hizbullah and Hamas to a new context in the West where, even amongst the Left, they do not have legitimacy because they are viewed as hostile to secularism. The principle underlying this approach should be one of democracy – people need to recognize Hamas and Hizbullah in the same was as the PLO was recognised in the past. Participants underlined the importance of attempting to reposition Islamists in the ‘centre ground’ of politics.’

He may be an extreme case, but the ideology he represents lies deep in Establishment thinking. When Theresa May decides to stop giving taxpayers’ money to Islamists, the strongest opposition she faces comes from the Home Office civil service. When entirely mainstream western journalists report the Syrian uprising, notice how reluctant they are to say that the Syrian opposition is peaceful and being persecuted by a monstrous and illegitimate regime. It’s too simple a story, not complicated enough for them, even though it happens to be true.