SK Tedeschi Profile picture
Aug 20, 2024 32 tweets 6 min read Read on X
🧵 Lebanon - another case study of the marriage between "the left" and Islamic takeovers.

I'm half Lebanese. And while a thread on the full history would go on for hours, I find this particular part very interesting...

/1
Like the whole area, Lebanon was colonised multiple times over and Islam swept over the country, and like everywhere else, the Christians, Jews and other minorities were made dhimmi. So the story of Arab imperialism is repeated.

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But unusually, there was much resistance to forced conversion so the Christian population rather uniquely remained a majority. The eventual move to a Muslim majority occurred for many reasons.

/3
Firstly, there was was a great deal of emigration of the non Muslim populations, who moved to South America and other places. Secondly the Muslim birth rate was much higher. And thirdly, there was war and inward Muslim migration.

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After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Lebanon and Syria came became French colonies: one country with a unified command. But by 1944 the decolonization era had begun and the French were preparing to leave the country.

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Similarly to the British mandate area of Palestine, the French Mandate of Syria was divided into two independent countries with Lebanon as the Christian majority country and Syria as the Muslim majority country. Lebanon was a democracy while Syria was a dictatorship.

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And as soon as Lebanon became independent, the neighboring Islamic countries set about a fairly long project to make Lebanon an Islamic country. And that process took just a few decades.

/7 Image
Palestinians flooded in with three major waves - firstly a lot after the 1948 Arab Israeli War, then again with the 1967 Arab Israeli war and finally with the expulsion of about 400k Palestinians from Jordan (after they tried a coup).

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There was a lot of fighting - including a civil war which resulted in 150k dead civilians and many key Christians expelled. By this time, Iran was already funding militia groups, as was Syria.

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Jordan and Syria pushed the refugees or disenfranchised of their Muslim populations towards Lebanon, the only non-Muslim majority country in the region except Israel, changing its delicate demography. 

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The Palestinian militias forked a base on the southern border and used this to attack Israel, which led to a war and was followed with a relatively brief partial occupation by Israel, who as usual didn't want to be attacked.

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It became a pretty long term mess and I've skipped out 99% of the story, but my point is that something very interesting happened which I think mirrors what occurred in Iran and also mirrors what goes on in the world today with Israel.

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The terrorists, who were working to simultaneously overthrow multicultural democracies in both Lebanon AND Israel to replace them with Islamic clerical rule, figured out what their angle would be: leftism.

/14
I think that occurred partially because Russia was supporting Iran and its mission because it wanted to destroy the US and Europe, or destroy freedom entirely (this was, and probably still is 'the cold War')

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But also, the terrorists latched on to the idea that in a world that had just recovered from a World War started by Nazi fascists, that the world would lap up anything and anyone going by the tag ‘leftist’. This is exactly what happened.

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Terrorist organisations (Shia & Sunni) encouraged Muslims to infiltrate key government institutions and start an agitation to take control but under the label of ‘Left’. Foot soldiers of Islamic terrorists in Lebanon became ‘leftist’, in name only.

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What I mean is - there is ostensibly fuck all "left-wing" about Islamic clerical rule: not in Lebanon, not in Iran and certainly not in Palestine either, and these groups represented absolutely NO left-wing values of any kind.

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Yet they successfully aligned with the left and spun a story that the world bought hook, line and sinker and by default, the hapless majority of Christians became ‘rightists’, for no reason either.

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Global media demonised the Christian ‘majority’ of Lebanon, calling them fascists who were usurping the rights of the Muslim leftist minority. It didn't matter that it was actually a Christian majority country, the die was kind of set.

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Muslims were depicted in terms designed to generate global sympathy, casting themselves as an opressed minority when the truth was that Lebanon had a pretty small pop of Christians and other minorities, surrounded by an ocean of 50 Islamic countries with millions of Muslims

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So a narrative developed of ‘rightist’ Christian ‘majority’ portrayed as the ‘oppressor’ against a rapidly increasing population of ‘leftist’ ‘oppressed’ Muslims. And so one by one, first western Beirut, then Sidon, then Tyre. 

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Left-wing historians spin a narrative on the ensuing Civil War saying that it is the Christians who started it, but the truth is that Muslim attacks on Christians had become so frequent that the Christians had no option but to defend what was left. 

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The Christians didn't do well: they were isolated militarily, geographically, and ideologically with the world media portraying them as aggressors, whereas the Muslims were surrounded with allies only too willing to provide them with arms and support.

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So by the time it was over, Lebanon was a Muslim majority country. A lot of Christians and other minorities left, and continue to leave and I imagine unless something changes those populations will be wiped out in time.

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I am not sure why the global left is so willing to align with Islamic terrorists, who are ostensibly far-right religious facists and murderers who defy every Liberal or left-wing principle, but this strategy has been effective multiple times.

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Russia is of course continually engaged in silent warfare to undermine the west, and the western left are themselves inclined to be in the thrall of (knowingly or unwittingly) with Russian propaganda.

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We see know the brightest youth from Harvard or our top organisations completely sucked into this idea of a vast army of Iran backed Islamic fundamentalists cast as the allies of the left seeking "freedom" of some kind.

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Those with a brain know the only "freedom" they want is freedom to kill, take, opress and control everyone and everything in the name of their religious extremist ideology under which nobody is ever free.

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Yet many are still deeply indoctrinated with the anti-west PR campaign that tells them a minority, indigenous,liberal and tiny community are somehow "opressing" the terrorists who attack them daily and have vowed their annihilation. Wake up world.

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@GhostOfLalime This one of quite funny! Referring to Assads forces - who've been funding the coup, agitating and firing artillery from the golan heights as "peacekeepers"

nytimes.com/1976/11/16/arc…
@GhostOfLalime There's also heaps of interesting minor media that's obvious propaganda. For example MERIP was founded in 1971 by "activists for peace and social justice to bring to the U.S. public critical analysis of Middle Eastern political economy and US policy toward the region".
@GhostOfLalime They published an award-winning magazine, Middle East Report, that was nothing short of Iranian propaganda tripe. Full of articles calling Christian Lebanese "facists" - which they obviously weren't. This is an example of an article marrying left-wing students with PLO! Image

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More from @skedeschi

Mar 26
🧵 Autism & PIP

There's many posts today from seemingly well meaning people discussing that they can't really see how autism or ADHD are real disabilities, so as the only neurotypical in my household, I'd like to give a short education.

/1
My husband is autistic. He's very high functioning and has never claimed a penny in benefits, but here's how his autism affected his life. I won't go into too much detail, but as an 18 year old despite being a scholar and exceptionally intelligent, he simply could not cope.

/1
Be ended up reaching autistic burnout extremely quickly, which is a state quite similar to a full blown nervous breakdown which can take months if not years to recover from. He had to drop out of university in his second term but back then no help was available.

/2
Read 20 tweets
Mar 26
🧵 - Racism, hatred and the failure of the western left.

In the West, racism is condemed as the worst imaginable sin. Because the west's worst historical crimes (slavery, colonialism, the Holocaust) were justified by white supremacist ideology.

/1
That idea formed the basis of so much of the progressive ideology post WWII and understandably so. Horrific injustices took place where people were persecuted, horrendously subjugated and murdered... based on their racial identity. The west rightly feels great shame.

/2
Everything in our education and legal systems centres on righting this wrong. And while certainly not perfect, by comparison of other societies globally, they've done a pretty good job. At the very least, we have universal human rights accepted as a norm.

/3
Read 19 tweets
Mar 8
Opression🧵

Picture this: you wake up tomorrow and you're denied the right to vote anymore. Ever. Your leaders are now dictators and if you don't agree with their policies you can do nothing about it.

/1
High-ranking officials and their families will live in luxury - travelling, palatial homes, private jets, some will even be billionares from public money, while ordinary people like you will struggle with poverty and unemployment.

/2
If you say anything, object or complain your voices are silenced – journalists, activists, and critics will be arrested or harassed. Peers who speak out against the government corruption will be tortured or even beaten to death.

/3
Read 20 tweets
Mar 3
🧵 The radicalisation of the left

There's a photo on my office wall of Harold Wilson. I was looking at it last night, wondering how we got from a Labour Prime Minister who loved Britain, valued democracy, and declared himself as the best friend of Israel to where we are now

/1
Wilson was a proud socialist, but he wasn’t anti-West. He saw Israel as a fellow democracy was close friends with Golda Meir. He admired kibbutzim, and defended Israel against its enemies. I wonder how worried he'd be about the Oct 7 attack and the reaction from the world.

/2
He opposed antisemitism and saw Zionism as a just cause. His Labour Party was full of pro-Israel socialists who saw the Jewish state as an ally of Western democracy, not an enemy. I wonder what he'd think if he saw posters of child hostages being ripped down.

/3
Read 21 tweets
Feb 24
🧵 What made the Nazis Nazis? A thread on why modern comparisons are often ignorant, misleading, and minimize the horror of what they actually did in order to score points with needless hyperbole...
1/ The Nazis were defined by racial supremacy, genocidal intent, totalitarian dictatorship, militaristic expansionism, and mass political persecution. Their central goal was not just war or nationalism, but the systematic extermination of "undesirable" groups entirely.
2/ Their ideology was based on ethnic purity, eugenics, and lebensraum (living space), justifying the Holocaust, the murder of 6 million Jews, and the killing of millions more - Roma, disabled people, political dissidents, as well as forced sterilisation, slavery and torture.
Read 26 tweets
Feb 11
🧵 As the world reacts in horror to even the idea of evacuating Gaza, I'm struck again by the ignorance of the regions history. I am not going back thousands of years, but even to go back to the magic number of 1948 on, which all concepts of right and wrong seem to rest..

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~850,000 Jews were forcibly expelled from Arab lands in the 20th century. They were peaceful, posed no threat, and yet were ethnically cleansed—stripped of homes, businesses & citizenship quietly and with almost no international support or words said.

/2
Where did they go?
🔹 75% went to Israel
🔹 11% France
🔹 6% USA
🔹 Others: Canada, UK, Latin America

My family ended up in the UK.

/3
Read 12 tweets

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