Slogans Condemned: Syrians Discover Hate on State TV
The New Arab dutifully notes that Syrians are distraught over sectarian and ethnic hatred spouted at state-backed demonstrations. (One might call it 'propaganda' if they weren't so committed to neutrality.) This 'condemnation' appears only when the words are too explicit for plausible deniability. The Assad regime, famous for its iron-fisted control over public discourse and assembly, somehow
'allows' these rallies to feature slogans it doesn't explicitly sanction? Or perhaps, these slogans are a feature, not a bug, of a state that weaponizes sectarianism to maintain power. It's almost adorable how these outlets frame this as a 'Syrian' condemnation, as if the Syrian government isn't the primary architect and beneficiary of the very divisions on display. To suggest Assad's regime would
permit any public gathering or message it didn't benefit from is to ignore a decade of brutal civil war fueled by these exact ethnic and sectarian fault lines. No, the real news isn't the 'condemnation' of hate speech, it's the continued normalization of regimes that *use* hate speech to justify their existence and atrocities.