Alex Jones' InfoWars And Their Anti-Free Syrian Army Propaganda

Alex Jones' Infowars is a popular conspiracy website that likes to reveal the "shocking truth" behind a variety of subjects, including the Syrian Uprising.  In their latest article, Shocking Videos Reveal Truth Behind Syrian “Freedom Fighters”,  they promise to reveal the truth behind "a minority of extremist Wahabi thugs who are anti-freedom, anti-Christian, anti-Shia, anti-Sunni and who will stop at nothing to entrench their ideologically fanatical power base."

The article starts poorly, by posting the video from the Russia Today article I've previously criticised, repeating the error I raised in my original blog post, that "In this video, family members of slain children accuse Syrian rebels of committing the atrocity."  Except, as I've pointed out before (and Russia Today corrected on their original article but not their Youtube posting), that at no point in the video does that family make that claim, and the updated Russia Today article now instead says "Sources say that opposition rebels committed the atrocity."

Another video shows a grieving woman talking to Syrian State TV, with the article stating "This woman’s son, Sari Saoud, was shot in Homs. While Al-Jazeera claimed it was the army that killed him, the woman insisted it was the insurgents.".  In this earlier video taken of the woman grieving over the body of her son you can hear her in the background at around 50 seconds in shouting "Fuck you, Bashar" in Arabic, which is an odd thing to say if you think the FSA killed your son

In a very graphic clip, described as "This disturbing clip shows rebels insulting an an Alawite Syrian civilian before decapitating him." what we're actually seeing is a Christian in Tunisia being killed.

Liberal talk show host Tawfiq Okasha recently appeared on "Egypt Today" airing a video of Muslims in Tunisia slicing a young man's head off for the crime of apostasy, in this case, the crime of converting to Christianity and refusing to renounce it.

Another clip from the InfoWars article claims to show opposition members faking wounds for propaganda purposes, but in fact it has been claimed that clip is from Bahrain, which this video in Arabic explains. In this video "“Eyewitnesses” are caught on camera coordinating how to lie about casualties.", at around 1:35 we see the activist in the video pointing, followed by a bang, with the clip claiming he is giving orders to fire.  This is an excellent example of crude propaganda, as you can see the original video on Bambuser, where it was originally live streamed, and at about 10 minutes you'll see exactly the same moment in the original clip, except when he points there's no bang.  So whoever made the video quoted on InfoWars has added their own sound effects for propaganda purposes. In this video, chants supporting Christian and Muslim unity are incorrectly subtitled to chants attacking Christians

Crude, but effective propaganda.  The post also links to another piece of anti-FSA propaganda also quoted in Russia Today, which claims Syrian rebels ransacked a church and attacked another, something I debunked at the bottom of this post. Another article by the same author linked in that post I've previously debunked is Al-Qaeda Rebel Pictured With UN Observers In Syria.  Apart from the usual mistake made by a number of sites, that the black flag always means al-Qaeda, when in fact it doesn't (but that's another story), the story claims to have a photo of a man dressed in an al-Qaeda uniform meeting UN observers.  As my blog post on the story explains the same man later appeared in a video after his defection from the Syrian Army, claiming

he was a member of the Republican Guard in the Syrian Army, displaying his ID, and was given the uniform to wear.

In the same article it's also claimed:

Meanwhile, a separate video clip leaked to the pro-Assad Truth Syria You Tube channel purports to show an anti-regime rebel being transported by UN observers in trucks bearing the distinctive UN text.

Except this video wasn't leaked to anyone, but posted on an activist channel is a very famous clip of activist Hadi al-Abdallah showing UN monitors a checkpoint in Qusair, driving in their own car, the UN telling them they would not protect them, and leaving them at the end.  It's been previously used by activists as an example of the UN failing to protect them. After that he adds a bit more information

At the end of the clip, the men in the UN vehicle break out in a spontaneous chant of “Allahu Akbar,” a phrase widely associated with fundamentalist Muslims who are engaged in jihad. 

Also widely associated with Muslims in general by anyone who knows anything about these countries, so just another way for the author of the article to tar the men in this video with the "jihadi" brush. Now all of this took about an hour of research, obviously something Paul Joseph Watson either chose not to do, or didn't care about doing, either making him a terrible journalist or propagandist.  I've not had time to examine all these videos, and I'm certainly not saying the Free Syrian Army are angels descended from Heaven, but it seems that for sites like InfoWars the truth is secondary to their agenda. If you have any more information about the videos in the InfoWars post, or other comments please contact me using the details below, or leave a comment.   You can contact the author on Twitter @brown_moses or by email at brownmoses@gmail.com