Syria has overturned many of the assumptions that were once taken for granted about politics. While much of the left still clings to the legacy of the Iraq anti-war movement of the early 2000s, positions have warped and even become the opposite of what they once were. Whereas the Global War on Terror (GWOT) was shunned and protested against in the past, sections of the left have now accepted it as a policy and rhetorical device to be used against the West, not in service of it. Claims of being “anti-war” ring hollow when these same people openly support or refuse to condemn military action taken by non-Western countries (which is often more brutal), and the term anti-war comes to mean little more than “anti-Western intervention.” How is it that parts of the left have adopted views that are more akin to those of right-wing politics, and even views similar to those of neoconservativism and the alt-right? How is it that both the far-left and the far-right have converged on the subject of Syria to agree on so many issues, including open or tacit support of the dictatorship of Bashar Assad? Over the years, the debate in the West surrounding the Syrian Revolution descended into alternative media, state sponsored propaganda, internet bots, and conspiracy theories, yet as leftist Syrian intellectual Yassin al-Haj Saleh has stated, “it is no longer about Syria, not even about the Middle East — it is about the world, a progressively Syrianised one.”

It is my intention to explain what this new alt-left political movement is, which has come into existence in the wake of the Syrian Revolution. While discussion on the topic of Syria has focused on the issue of Islamic extremism, there exists a far greater yet largely ignored issue of secular political extremism revolving around the subject in the West. The alt-left — that is, the section of the left that is being referred to here — has often been used as a pejorative term by the right-wing and centrist liberals, and has rarely been defined by those outside of those groups. It is important to shed light upon the somewhat obscure overlapping themes and multiple subcultures related to the alt-left as well as lesser known connections to other radical/extreme political movements such as the alt-right, the neoreactionary movement, tankies, and syncretic third positionists such as Nazbols and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP). In addition to this, there exists an alternative media ecosystem (including podcasts) acting as a center of gravity for the alt-left, which is important for understanding how these political views evolved in the first place and continue to grow.

The alt-left

Origins

The alt-left movement began with the fierce struggle between Hilary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Party presidential primaries, before taking on a life of its own following the outcome of the 2016 United States presidential election (source)

The usage of the term alt-left is far less understood than its counterpart the alt-right, yet there is evidence to suggest that a broadly “alternative left” movement has been active since early internet adopters on Usenet groups in the 1990s found common cause with each other. Yet its popularization began in the same 2016 US presidential election cycle during which the alt-right movement reached the height of its power. The term alt-left has been used by fringe left figures in the US such as former Green Party leader Cynthia McKinney to self-identify as early as 2017, but as mentioned before it has mostly been used by moderate leftists, centrists and the right-wing to pejoratively refer to extremists on the far left. In fact, various definitions of the current usage of the term alt-left sprang up at around the same time in 2016, and arguments that the movement doesn’t exist hinge on the mostly pejorative use of the term. Despite the term alt-left coming to prominence after Trump used it in the wake of the August 2017 Charlottesville rally and counter protest, liberals and members of the Democratic Party had been using it previously to refer to the far-left, and even the most polemical members of the alt-left movement have admitted the term was already in use among the left in 2016. Therefore a key difference is that most alt-left figures shun the term applied to them, unlike the alt-right, who initially embraced the term before drifting away or turning to other related labels such as alt-lite. The movement began in America, yet there are many individuals and organizations who fit the category in the UK, with the alt-left riding on the coat-tails of Jeremy Corbyn in the 2017 general election much as the US alt-left had with Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries. The main factor that cannot be ignored is that the burgeoning alt-left movement emerged from the US Democratic Party’s Clinton/Sanders schism that resulted from the US presidential election of 2016 and the events leading up to it; centrist and center right liberals backed Clinton, while a growing movement of leftists backed Sanders. Wracked by the shock of what essentially became an ugly civil war within the US Democratic Party, the followers of Sanders who had lost and failed to get their candidate nominated refused to rally around Clinton, and this contributed to the Democrats faltering in the face of the conservative Republican Party under its unlikely yet also non-establishment presidential nominee, Donald Trump.

DSA

Logo of the Democratic Socialists of America

In the wake of these events, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) became an organization for the recently galvanized American left to reify their new found interest in socialism — as well as replay the Clinton/Sanders drama ad infinitum, like some jaded and predictable pantomime. Unlike American parties on the far-left such as the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and the Workers World Party (WWP), which are both overtly Marx-Leninist, the DSA is a 501c4 (a tax-exempt social welfare organization, not an actual political party) and states that it is democratic socialist. On the leftist political spectrum, this would put them to the left of social democratic parties that are common in the rest of the world (e.g. Europe and South America) but to the right of communists. Another American Political Party on the left that should be mentioned is the Green Party of the United States, as not only has one of its former leaders Cynthia McKinney used “alt-left” at an early point in the term’s usage, but the Green Party’s current leader Jill Stein is a known alt-left figure (and is also being investigated due to dubious Russian connections). Important to note is that all of these aforementioned political organizations are marginal in the US, which is dominated by Democratic/Republican two party system. However, it is online social media where these organizations and their often semi-anonymous members make their presence disproportionately known, with DSA members in particular being identifiable on platforms such as Twitter by the use of the red rose emoji (🌹) in their username — a recognizable symbol of socialism which also appears prominently in the DSA logo. The DSA has condemned the “brutal Assad regime, a regime that has shown no hesitation to use massive force, including chemical weapons, to suppress its people,” yet it’s not clear if they represent the views of the rank and file members; an opinion piece published titled “The Case for Solidarity with the Syrian Revolution” was met with a backlash that included significant harassment of the authors by fellow DSA members. An initiative authorized by the DSA National Political Committee called the “Anti-War Think Tank” has sprung up which claims to be “committed to prioritizing principled opposition to imperialism,” yet has only ever issued a statement about Yemen.

@madsamarxist is a self declared Marx-Leninist that is Chair of the Northeast Georgia branch of the Metro Atlanta Chapter of the DSA (this was confirmed by Northeast Georgia DSA, who stated that he also organizes with PSL and WWP)

DSA members readily admit that it is in reality a big tent organization, and it is online where the lines between different political organizations and ideologies become especially blurred. It seems obvious to an outsider that the DSA tolerates many leftist ideologies and tenancies that are known to be incompatible or even mutually hostile (owing likely to the small number of leftists in the US). A recurring theme is that many DSA members seem to be far more radically left than the self declared “democratic socialist” platform of the DSA suggests. This includes members engaging in close cooperation with aforementioned Marx-Leninist political parties; according to DSA bylaws, members can be expelled if they are “under the discipline of any self-defined democratic-centralist organization,” yet it seems this national bylaw is often ignored and unenforced on a local level (this bylaw could apply to many far-left parties such as Marx-Leninists, Trotskyists, etc.). The decentralized nature of the DSA features an intricate chapter system for various locations in the United States, as well as various caucuses such as the DSA Communist caucus (which describes itself as “informed by 70’s Italian Marxisms, and current left-communist formations”). Often self described members can be seen espousing quite extremist views, such as revering the legacy of Libyan dictator Qaddafi and overtly supporting the Assad regime in Syria, the increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic Nicolás Maduro regime in Venezuela, and the Kim Jong-un regime in North Korea — like the rhetoric employed by Weird Twitter and leftist podcasts, much of this is often masked behind layers of “irony,” yet upon closer inspection and greater exposure to their views it is quite clear that they are in fact usually not joking. Regardless of the workings of the organization in real life, at least some of this radicalism can be attributed to the largely anonymous nature of communication online.

Cover photo of the DSA Communist Caucus Facebook page

Weird Twitter

This latter point regarding humor brings up another aspect that must be elaborated on, which is that much of the contemporary alt-left is essentially a synthesis of far-left political views and “Weird Twitter,” so it is important to understand this similarly rather obscure section of the internet that deliberately attempts to defy definition. Weird Twitter is a subculture that seems to have peaked in the mid-2000s, which sought to make Twitter jokes that were confusing, ironic and absurdist; some of the best known include @dril, @leyawn, @KrangTNelson, and @randygdub. As the prevailing “irony bro” aesthetic of the alt-left has been adopted wholesale from this Weird Twitter subculture, this relationship with Twitter clearly mirrors the alt-right’s long noted connection with 4Chan, where a lot of “the alt-right’s language and imagery is borrowed from.” It’s important to point out that not all Weird Twitter accounts are alt-left or even political at all for that matter. However some accounts are known to be in close proximity to the podcast left such as @leyawn, who stated they were on episode 18 of the now defunct The Flour Hour podcast, a podcast where other guests included @ByYourLogic and @cushbomb (who will become significant later on). Despite some Weird Twitter accounts being non-political for the most part, when certain accounts do make political “jokes,” it can expose widely held prejudices and biases — many deem it fine to joke dismissively about the suffering of Syrians, yet these same jokes will not be made about the plight of Palestinians or Yemenis.

Tankies