Left Out? The Syrian Revolution and the Crisis of the Left
"As Fredric Jameson writes: Villainy in mass culture has been reduced to two lone survivors of the category of evil: these two representations of the truly antisocial are, on the one hand, serial killers and, on the other, terrorists (mostly of the religious persuasion, as ethnicity has become identified with religion, and secular political protagonists like the communists and the anarchists no longer seem to be available).
The West is increasingly adhering to this concept in the way it sees events in Syria. While
Nusra Front, for example, is recognized as being the most organized and disciplined rebel group in the fight against Assad, it is also classified by the United States as a terrorist organization and is purported to have strong links with al-Qaeda in Iraq.
In generating a discourse that paints the struggle in Syria as one between two categories of evil—the Assad regime as the serial killer and the armed resistance to it as the terrorist—it essentially affirms the Assad regime’s narrative to the detriment of genuine revolutionary action against tyranny. We should not expect any less from the West."