As the investigation continues into another alleged chemical attack in Syria, one group of influential online activists is busy spreading their version of events.
Inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) are attempting to access the previously rebel-held town of Douma, where medical organisations and rescue workers say President Bashar al-Assad's forces dropped bombs filled with toxic chemicals in an attack on 7 April, killing more than 40 people.
The Syrian government and its key ally, Russia, say the incident was staged. But the US, UK and France - who support the opposition to Mr Assad - say they are confident that chlorine and possibly a nerve agent were used.
Despite the uncertainty about what happened in Douma, a cluster of influential social media activists is certain that it knows what occurred on 7 April.
They've seized on a theory being floated by Russian officials and state-owned media outlets that the attacks were "staged" or were a "false flag" operation, carried out by jihadist groups or spies in order to put the blame on the Assad government and provide a justification for Western intervention.
The group includes activists and people who call themselves "independent journalists", and several have Twitter followings reaching into the tens or hundreds of thousands.
The activists call themselves "anti-war", but as they generally back the Syrian government's military operations against rebel forces seeking to overthrow Mr Assad and Russian air strikes carried out in support, it might be more accurate to describe them as "anti-Western intervention" or "pro-Syrian government".
According to their narrative, international media organisations across the political spectrum, along with human rights organisations, are somehow covertly aligned with Western governments, Saudi Arabia, the Islamic State group and al-Qaeda and taking part in a secretive plot to take over Syria.
The network of activists includes people like Vanessa Beeley. She has more than 30,000 Twitter followers and writes for a news outlet that the website Media Bias/Fact Check calls a "conspiracy and conjecture site" that has "an extreme right bias".
In response to a list of questions, she called BBC Trending's story a "blatant attempt" to "silence independent journalism" and repeated unsubstantiated claims about alleged chemical weapons attacks.
Beeley gives talks to fringe groups and makes appearances on media outlets including state-owned Russian channel RT.
But in the online conversation about Syria there are more influential activists, about whom much less is known.
Sarah Abdallah (@sahouraxo on Twitter) has more than 125,000 followers, among them more than 250 journalists from mainstream media outlets. Her follower count is comparable to BBC journalists who regularly report on Syria, such as BBC Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen (167,000) and BBC Chief International Correspondent Lyse Doucet (142,000).
In addition to pictures of herself, Sarah Abdallah tweets constant pro-Russia and pro-Assad messages, with a dollop of retweeting mostly aimed at attacking Barack Obama, other US Democrats and Saudi Arabia.
In her Twitter profile she describes herself as an "Independent Lebanese geopolitical commentator" but she has almost no online presence or published stories or writing away from social media platforms. A personal blog linked to by her account has no posts.
Her tweets have been quoted by mainstream news outlets, but a Google News search indicates that she has not written any articles in either English or Arabic.
She refused to comment several times when approached by BBC Trending and did not respond to specific requests to comment on this story in particular.
Syria war: The online activists pushing conspiracy theories
Other urls found in this thread:
en.wikipedia.org
syria.liveuamap.com
syriancivilwarmap.com
8ch.net
endchan.net
8ch.net
washingtontimes.com
twitter.com
Seriously?
Iv trolled my ass off and not a single person noticed?
I heard some troll saying that Assad gassed his own people for no reason even though hes winning the civil war comfortably.
Hilarious stuff.
mad dogs need no reason to bite
heres the thing there is no fucking reason to believe Russian state propaganda either
best thing to do is for you to find out what happened yourself
OK. BRB booking my tickets to Syria.
yeah, they are confident they used chlorine in their false flag
Haha what a loser you are
Look where you're at faggot. Hi pot, I'm kettle.
NOBODY WITH 2 WORKING BRAINCELLS IS BEING FOOLED BY THIS
the man is a doctor of medicine and he studied his degree in Britain
mans met the Queen in person and had tea with the royal family and that was only 13 years ago
it's not about being fooled, it's a convenient excuse to 'do as you're told'
Russia said they could trace the chlorine gas to a makeshift chemical weapons facility being used by the rebels in an attempt to manufacture mustard gas
who's more likely to use gas?
the no longer desperate dictator who relinquished his known chemical weapons stockpiles under UN supervision at the start of all this shite and then went on to with Russian aid win a conventional war against the islamist rebels
or the CIA/Mossad backed rebels who have lost nearly all territory gained and have been backed into a corner
I've heard some goyi- I mean, troll - saying that Israel may be behind these terrible gas attacks. How dare these filthy antisemite goyim suggest that US's greates ally would do something like that?! Shut it down, I say, shut it all down!
ps. I'm not Jewish.
But Jews would never gas anyone, they've felt in their own 6 trillion skins how terrible being gassed is. Checkmate, goyim.
I see nothing wrong with this at all. I wonder what the soulless hypocrites in western countries would say if it was their countries being bombed and blown to bits for years on end? Fuck the Bbc. No one buys your shit any more.
Even if you are against Assad and his treatment of Syrian rebels, I still can't see how you can be in favor of intervening in Syria, when all other Western interventions on Middle East were abject failures.
Well, of course, that only applies if you aren't (((America's greatest ally))).
To fight the jew, you must become a jew. Use the jew's tactics of blending in to white society. Everyone convert to Judaism as their religion and then cry anti-semite whenever you are opposed.
It's a conspiracy theory that Israel gave sarin to terrorists.
See what happened was, what happened, Assad waited until the exact moment that was about to be defeated and Trump said he would pull out of Syria, and then Assad launched a single chemical mortar shell at an apartment building full of his supporters.
Ignore the fact that there were sixteen sarin attacks in 2013, all attributed to peaceful terrorists by the UN.
Assad, no doubt with the help of his terrorist buddies in Iran, gassed 6 million Syrian jews and I for one have the courage to say #NeverAgain. No matter how many American lives it takes, it's worth it to preserve our most sacred ally :^)
You haven't got a clue about warfare and keep repeating retarded memes I see.
Chemical weapons have 2 big advantages over more conventional weapons, which is why they exist in the first place and why both Assad and the ragheads have and will probably continue using them.
Can you name these 2 advantages?
And that's an outright lie. I mean for fucks' sake, the SAA controls about half of Syria after 7 years of fighting.
BIG
BLACK
COCK
The defenders of truth, justice and the zionist way!
What about the depleted uranium used by the west to make bullets?
You are right, the mad dog isreal needs to be put down with no stragglers.
So was Josef Mengele
The pix is accurate!
the avg burger does look like the avg Israeli
Whataboutism, don't try changing the subject. Make another thread about DU and I'll tell you what I think about it there.
What are you trying to slide Chaim?
so what you're saying is that he's heavily-invested in the status quo?
fuck off faggot
Imblying
When you honestly don't care either way
When you're happy with misery
When you're miserable with happiness
When nothing really matters
And you don't believe anything you hear
Either way, not believing a thing
………………………. It's beautiful outside
…..today is an absolutely beautiful day
I couldn't give less of a fuck about this
Syria, Russia, America… blah blah blah
This is the view looking out outside of my window right now, and as far as I can tell, everything is just fine.
Everybody's got their own problems….
And I couldn't care any less about someone else's perspective, because mine is just fine
Translation:
Who is paying you people?
I wonder who could be behind these posts. Lets play shill bingo.
Look as far as I can tell Assad did nothing wrong but Putin is trying to male him gas kids and fake gas attacks so he can start ww3
Salisbury probably was joint coordinated by the UK and Russia so war for Israel can happen
i was told neptune made jim agree to let him insult jim as part of the arrangement to get paid for insulting Zig Forums and Zig Forums
why does this meme keep coming up on 8ch? assad killed innocent protesters, which is what started the entire syria mess. he's the reason any of this is even a thing.
And the other half is just empty sand.
wew lad, I hope you're all just roleplaying shitposting
...
"Whataboutism" is a perfectly legitimate argument. Nobody who engages in a crime has a honest motive for decrying it in the case of others.
Also, Assad has no reason to use chemical weapons, because unlike the US, he can't act with impunity.
Not the point, the point was to show that the other half isn't "just empty sand" since this map gives a precise location of pretty much every city and every village in Syria.
As for maps which are updated multiple times per day (yet don't show every city and village), here you go:
syria.liveuamap.com
syriancivilwarmap.com
Btw have a look at the wikipedia map and compare it to the more recent ones I just linked to. Where does Assad have more clay, in 2017 or right now? So much for winning that war, let alone comfortably.
Whenever you retards mindlessly repeat this it just shows how you know nothing about warfare. He has every reason to use chemical weapons.
As I said before, chemical weapons have 2 big advantages over more conventional weapons. Anyone with a clue about warfare (which obviously excludes you and the other brainlets ITT) knows what these 2 advantages are.
These guys dont understand that when you use chemical weapons it is harder to trace them back to you. You can utilize them against more people while making less noise. While he may have hit a few people who were his supporters there is probably good reason to believe many who were amongst the victims were rebels working against him. There is nothing but advantages in this with the only downside being the small maybe of getting caught.
I mean think about it, Hitler had a chemical based method of killing his prisoners and because of the obscurity in his method people now question the validity of the event to this day.
might aswell go to alqaeda.com
they can ignore enemy cover and killleave infrastructure intact.
yet the only ones that ever used it were the terrorists. the syrian army on the other hand picked strategic warfare, peace talks and amnesty over petty warcrimes.
the only reason syria would use chemical weapons against terrorists is sparing some already demolished building, which does not make up for the conseqences of a american reatrd rampage in any way.
you dont have a fucking clue about warfare, chemical weapons, geopolitics, or anything else on the matter. this means youre either a complete fucking retard, or even worse, a payed troll for the fags in DC, tel aviv and londonistan
...
tl;dr
Fair enough, but it's hardly anything versus what Assad controls. The point still stands that the rebels don't control much tangible area, are fragmented across the country, infighting, and are only losing land. Assad has made gains in the past 9 months, but you'd actually have to look at the map to notice. Aleppo is better secured, and the smaller enclaves are being (or have been) cut into smaller enclaves. Meanwhile the rebels lost almost half their northern territory to the Turks, infighting in the rest of said northern territory, and have made no gains. The SDF & Turks hardly matter to Assad from a combat standpoint since he's on diplomatic terms with the Turks and the SDF just wants to get rid of Islamists. Or did you think they were all fighting each other as well just because they're separate colors on the map?
All Assad needs to do is chip away at the weaker southern enclaves (which he's been doing) in order to made concentrated pushes in stronger areas with little distraction. While he does so the rebels in the north are too busy killing themselves to advance, so Assad is just letting them do so instead of giving them a reason to team up against him again. Tell me, what can the rebels do that they have demonstrated themselves capable of doing to get an advantage on Assad so easily?
fake chemical attacks and say assad did it
Because that worked the past 30 times, right? Clearly Assad can't win with one of his airbases being down for a couples weeks and that building he abandoned before it was blown up days later. It really is all they've got at this point, but no one who has the means of doing anything about it actually cares (and is willing to fight Russia over it) or it would have escalated years ago. All they're doing by repeating it is crying wolf.
How's the weather in al-Tanf?
That's not the primary goal. The primary goal is to destabilize the region to slow the construction of the Russian-backed Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline, so that the US-backed Qatar-Turkey-Saudi pipeline will win out, to the profit of Genie Energy Ltd, which is owned by Israeli and American Jews.
Taking over Syria would just be a nice concession.
Neocons and liberals really love using this to dismiss their hypocrisy as quickly as possible.
You ousted yourself, inbreed retard. Fuck off.
well they are use to getting what they want and no one caring about evidence, it's not like they needed any evidence of nuclear weapons in iraq after 9/11 to invade
wrong you dumbfuck. the mere rarity of chem weapons makes them easy to trace unlike convenional munitions.
wrong yet again you monkey. how fucking stupid are you? "make less noise in a warzone"? or even more autisticly, "make less noise on the global scene"
no chemical weapons were even used you mongoloid
yeah, he used gas so that in 80 years after he loses the war people wont know what he did. thats the most retarded thing anyone has said about the holocaust.
Right now, are you retarded? 2017 was a year full of gains, and they keep going. Yarmuk camp is getting shredded, and East Qalamoun was just cut in two.
Where are you people coming from?
The Ronald Reagon Grace Comission report reveals that 100% of American taxes go to service the interest on the national debt which is one big huge scam. The main banking families own the Federal Reserve banks you dipshit.
This is a reply to this piece of trash poster here:
Evaluation of Trump Policies - Syria and over-seas.
...
▶ New amendment to the Constitution removes all your rights under the Constitution!!
>>>/thestorm/38380
Are you the autistic CIA sperg clown dude who entertained us all with his wacky antics on 2-9-2018? Are you the same schitzo who thinks Germany owes us a quadrillion dollars from the treaty of Versailles?
why is it so hard to think that they used chemical weapons to scare that terrorists group to surrender, leave infrastructure intact and end it quicker
It's like you want endchan to be plagued with crabs and propane.
We are 2 intelligent 4 u.
benis
he never killed anybody
you mean muslim brotherhood terrorists, alqaeda and CIA/mossad operatives with hired cannonfodder
the jews and americans started this mess over half a century ago
america wanting oil is the reason the middle east is even a thing
wrong
WHAT
that isnt an answer
who did he kill? what was the murder weapon? what was the crimescene? the motive?
heres an anwser:
syrian generals, not being complete fucking idiots like you, know that using a chemical weapon against terrorists is exactly what the US needs to use as an excuse for further attacks. they also know the syrian army can just either sit the terrorists out or defeat them with superior tactics. so really, anyone suggesting the syrian army used, uses or will use chemical weapons is utterly retarded or even worse; works for america
whoops, looks like america dun fucked again
washingtontimes.com
...
people get paid to do this
so if the syrian army didnt use chemical weapons in their worst times when they were overstreched and outgunned on every front, why would they use them now that theyve parctically won?
benis
No, but clearly YOU are a clown agent and a liar.
Excellent!
56%
also
great persuasion tactic infidel.
get with (somewhat old) current events. regular syrians were protesting him. (not brotherhood, etc., they hadn't stepped foot into syria until AFTER Asssad's shitstorm, to try to take over during the chaos, establish their caliphate, coming from Iraq) Assad's forces killed protesters in the streets. then syria happened. THEN the terrorists came in.
lrn2history
Zig Forums BO got pwn'd by JohnnyNeptune
The fact that you took to extreme measure of changing your board settings simply because one troll who used the name feature to trigger you so hard speaks volumes about how beta you truly are.
t. not JohnnyNeptune
CIA planning to overthrow hafez in the 60s and adapting their operation plans ever since isnt current
...
>I put (((parentheses))) around the thing I dislike so I don't have to make a real argument
The pro-interventionist guy also turns out to be a disgusting furfag and worse, a foot fetishist. Imagine my shock. These are the kind of freaks that want to send us off to die for Israel. I'm going to be smelling burnt fursuit when we dump your AIDS riddled corpse on the burning pyre.
Just in case.
Nobody really cares if it's true or if it's false or who believes what, or who's lying to who. All this postulation and theorizing is wasted talk. It's not like anything's going to change.
RE: dropping bombs or not dropping bombs that may or may not have killed only FOURTY PEOPLE? Really ??? Only 40 ?
shit… A half naked moron walking into a waffle house can do that easily, and I don't see anybody up in arms over it.
WHO CARES?…. life is quite beautiful from my point of view
that's how you get controlled. get fed so much misinformation you just choose to ignore it all and then before you know it you're looking back on the soviet union with nostalgia thinking those were great times or being one of those retards going "how could we have let this happen?"
im christian tho
anwser you faggot
Learn your place.