https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/03/11/conspiracy-proxy-war-and-the-ghost-of-stalinism/
So when a chemical weapons attack was launched against the rebel-occupied Ghouta, killing hundreds with the nerve agent sarin – though Ghouta at the time had been under fire by Assad’s forces, though the Assad regime had admitted possessing chemical weapons and chemicals discovered on the site of the massacre were linked through laboratory tests to the regime’s own stockpile – nevertheless a substantial portion of the left refused to draw the inevitable, logical conclusion.
Instead, prominent left-wing figures such as Max Blumenthal, Caitlin Johnson, Ben Norton, Gareth Porter and Aaron Maté all retreated into the nonsense fiction of the conspiracy theory, echoing the propaganda of the authoritarian regime itself by declaring that the attacks were a ‘false flag’ operation, perpetrated by the rebels so as to incriminate Assad.
In addition, many of the websites such as The Greyzone, Consortium News and Mint Press which hosted the writings of these prominent figures and others were part of a larger ecosystem whose backers were often drawn together in a murky synthesis of conspiracy theory advocates who’d developed a larger presence post-9-11, and those who had some financial or political affiliation with the Assad regime and its sponsors, and who inevitably towed the ‘anti-imperialist’ line.
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