Al Jazeera Roundtable: Analysts discuss propaganda employed by the Syrian regime and opponents, as the war for international support rages on.
Each side in the Syrian conflict portrays the struggle as black and white, which inevitably leaves no room for human reality.
The Syrian uprising didn't start out as a terror operation, and there are plenty of non-terroristic reasons to oppose Bashar al-Assad, but the armed opposition is now dominated by self-proclaimed jihadists - a fact that won't disappear no matter how many billions of times the West swears by "moderate" rebels.
Of course, the black-and-white approach is nothing new in propaganda wars. Take other contemporary nemeses of our self-appointed civilisation, like the Soviet Union and Saddam Hussein, cast as unmitigated evils in Western discourse.
The reductionism makes sense: If you're seeking to rally the public to a cause, better not to make it too complex. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.
The Syrian uprising didn't start out as a terror operation, and there are plenty of non-terroristic reasons to oppose Bashar al-Assad, but the armed opposition is now dominated by self-proclaimed jihadists - a fact that won't disappear no matter how many billions of times the West swears by "moderate" rebels.
Of course, the black-and-white approach is nothing new in propaganda wars. Take other contemporary nemeses of our self-appointed civilisation, like the Soviet Union and Saddam Hussein, cast as unmitigated evils in Western discourse.
The reductionism makes sense: If you're seeking to rally the public to a cause, better not to make it too complex. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.