What are Holla Forums's thoughts on the Arab Spring?

I know this, but in other Arab Spring areas most of the rebels were Sunni fighting an oppressive Sunni government
Citizens of Saudi Arabia are mostly Sunni, and their government is way more oppressive than most of the other Arab Spring countries, so where was their liberal revolt?

I think because most Sunni Saudis love the government and its adherence to shariah, and also because seeing as Saudi is is so rich, most Sunni citizens in Saudi had a far better standard of living than those in, say, Egypt and thus had less reason to revolt.

I don't think you know the first thing about Saudi Arabia tbh

educate me

The House of Saud were the moderates when the nation was born. There's a spooky one for you.

1: "sunnis love sharia" is a racist assumption frequently parroted by imperialist media to justify their support for terrorist governments and groups.
2: the ruling class are probably the least adherent to sharia in the entire country.
3: Saudi Arabia has a massive population of people living in poverty and terrible economic conditions, not to mention authoritarianism of a much greater degree than any other country affected by the """"Arab Spring""""".
4: Saudi Arabia didn't have a colour revolution because it's government is a lapdog of US imperialism and so doesn't need to be overthrown by Hillary and co.
If Saudi Arabia was left to its own devices, there is no way that it would be a sustainable country.

There wasn't an embryo or an underground movement at the time to actually break whatever brand of tyranny that specific Arab leader instituted on their country. The only alternative opposition that had a semblance of rallying itself up was the Islamic alternative, which really says a lot about the mindset in the region. Maybe these countries have to go through their own Lebanon phase to get it into their heads.

But the US has been buying less of Saudi's oil over the years with the shale production at home, so they're less dependent on each other economically than ever, other than the Gulf states buying overpriced American arms.

aside from making a pact with the Wahhab-ist clerics so they carve out their own country of Saudi Arabia.

It was their own seedbed that they plowed, and now after a century they're reaping it. Their population is credulous and over-fecund, I'm not surprised in the least at how high the unemployment levels are in Saudi Arabia.

So? The arab world is full of nationalist and progressive movements that need crushing.

The "everything was instigated by the US" reading of the Arab spring is so hackneyed and lame.

Were the devastating droughts in rural areas in Syria which caused huge migration into urban areas and thus left massive swathes of urban youth unemployed, disenfranchised and angry, and agitating for a revolt, was this done by the CIA?

Undoubtedly America started meddling when the war broke out but in general these revolutions were too unstable and unpredictable for America to fully support them.

Absolute nonsense. The war in Syria is entirely a result of foreign jihadists and their backers. Drought doesn't suddenly turn people into Salafists.

Sunnism isn't a race.

True. I knew Saudis at uni. I can tell you the wealthy ones are largely irreligious and they are notorious smokers and drinkers.

It also doesn't have a color revolution b/c the government gives handouts and $ like crazy.

Genuine grievances of the people eventually finding an outlet in backwards religious doctrine.

They were nothing to be happy about, but probably a historical necessity. Too bad western meddling fucked up the uprisings and the entire world even further.

For some reason everyone seems quick to forget that it was instigated by the leak of US diplomatic cables.

You know exactly what I mean. Making the assumption that Arabic/muslim/whatever people are fundamentally predisposed to violence and oppression is incredibly bigoted. You don't have to look far for this idea to completely fall on its face.

Yet poverty rates are almost identical to Egypt. And people in Libya certainly lived much better lives than the majority of Saudis. US support or lack thereof is absolutely the critical factor.

Islam is fundamentally predisposed to violence and oppression when taken to its logical conclusions

The massive problem is that there's barely any well thought-out genuine alternatives. Whatever social democratic thinkers or leaders are shunned, and their ideas barely tread water within their own society.

The only alternatives that the Arab world thought up were Nasserism and Ba'athism, which are both really nothing and a product of their time.

hello Holla Forums

The Arab world is not vastly different from the rest of the world. The people are driven by the exact same desires and needs that every human is. And just like everyone else, they have had one progressive movement after another systematically crushed by imperialism.

Don't be the retard who tries to quell discussion around Islam because it might offend brown people. It's not helpful to anyone, especially our comrades in the Middle East.

You are an idiot. Wahhabism, i.e the terroristic arm of Islam would be a tiny obscure sect today without the wholehearted, decades long backing of western imperialists. Most fighting in Syria are foreign mercenaries, while the local, Muslim population wants peace and secularism. The proportion of people in secular Europe who hold fascistic views is much higher than that of jihadists within Islam.

There's a difference between ideological opposition to religion and bigotry practiced by Holla Forumsbabies such as yourself.

stop using imperialism as the only scapegoat as a cover-up of their own incompetent governments.

All I can see in something like Syria or Egypt are despotic, self-serving leaders who only look upon their vast populace as pawns whose population doubles every 20 years, and whose rule depends on a bloated security or army and torpid or inertia of their people.

Most rebels are homegrown.

Where do you get that idea?

And yet we have the exact same type of people in charge, yet are not wracked by deadly conflict. Clearly there is a difference Either it might be due to external forces, like say, the US waging wars against half the countries in the regions while funding and arming the other half to wage war on their behalf. Or, as per your account, it is the natural expression of a savage, subhuman people.

From the fact that the majority of people in Syria support the SAA, which fights for a secular government and the end of war within their borders

But they are or were mercenaries, depending on how you define the term.

Assad continually does well in polls among Syrians. Even among Sunnis, he has substantial support.

do you have a source for this? You're trying to make it seem that Assad's regime was secular, and he and his father aren't despots.

You obviously know very little about the subject if you are disputing that. Syria's secularism and multiculturalism were second to none in the Arab world.

Assad has the support of upper class Sunnis in urban areas but he's pretty much despised by Sunnis across the whole Arab world (including Syria) outside that.

People always try go "b-but the SAA is majority Sunni!" to prove that he's loved by Sunnis too, but that's because they're conscripts and Syria is a majority Sunni country. Not to mention you see in how the SAA fight that they are not motivated by any love for Assad, as shown by how terrible they are at fighting and how frequently they abandon their positions.

usnews.com/news/articles/2015-12-18/poll-majority-of-syrians-iraqis-dont-support-obamas-anti-isis-war-believe-us-created-extremists

That speaks well of him, tbh.

Being bad at warfare is a long-standing Arab tradition apart from Hezbollah and some other rare exceptions I don't know if the recent video was posted here of found footage by someone from ISIS. It was like fucking comedy.

Also, who mentioned Assad? I certainly didn't. You probably don't realise it but you are using the classic imperialist propaganda technique of reducing a people and their struggle to a single man, then demonising that man and by association trying to discredit the entire struggle.

I said people in Syria support the SAA. Why? Because their brothers, fathers and sons are fighting in it to rid their once stable country of foreign backed jihadists.

ISIS' best fighters funnily enough are also not Arab, but Chechen.

he got 99.87% in the last election dontcha know

Ha ha, not surprised. Here is a long article on why Arabs are not good at warfare. A segment:

meforum.org/441/why-arabs-lose-wars

Why is Hezbollah an exception to the rule? What makes their military more successful than other Arab militaries?

Are you asking why they are considered such or what made them successful?

I don't know enough about their history or personalities involved that made them decide their course going forward should be to train with the discipline and know-how of special forces in Western countries.

Their transition from a more fundamentalist group to one that was more secular in the 2000s seems to have partly paralleled the period in which they were improving.

Here is a classic article from the NY Times. Israelis and others were kind of shocked at how good Hezbollah had gotten between 2000 and 2006.

There are claims that the Iranians training them made them so good, but there seems little question that Hezbollah has surpassed Iran.

nytimes.com/2006/08/07/world/middleeast/07hezbollah.html

I don't know where I heard it, but another thing that Hezbollah does is that they seek to stay in the pocket during combat, staying close enough to the Israelis that they can't call in air support, because they will get bombed too.

The other Arab guerilla fighters are more inclined to hit and run, which is of course the natural tendency when going up against a much more powerful force, but it can be suicidal when your enemy controls the air and has massive amounts of munitions.

Hezbollah have nigh unlimited funds and weapons access from Iran and also access to their revolutionary guard for training as well as spending most of their time fighting the IDF, which is one of the best in the world. The best way to improve is to fight the best.

Btw, one last thought is that Lebanese are a bit different from other Arabs, and some don't see themselves as ethnically Arab. Of all the peoples in the Middle East, their culture is arguably most like that of the West.

It's possible that it was easier for them to shed some of the cultural baggage of the Arabs, or perhaps they had didn't have it to begin with.

They haven't fought the IDF in over a decade. Whether or not the IDF is the best in the world, I'm not in a position to say, but Finkelstein and others regard the modern IDF a shadow of what it was 50 years ago.

As for unlimited funding, Saudi Arabia has massive amounts of money, and one of the worst armies anywhere.

Interesting, thanks.

Most likely orchestrated by the CIA, massive failure that just led to either dictators winning or being replaced by Islamic extremists.

Much like occupy wall street, the young people were protesting but didnt have any actual ideology to replace the dictatorship with. Or rather, they didnt have a plan besides protest and break shit, this opened up a hole for fascists or Islamic extremists to take over.

So now, assad won, russia won, putin pretty much moon walked all over obama for 8 years, reestablishing a post soviet russia as a global player not to be ignored and who all the anti american countries can ask for help.

What has neocon and saudi meddling gotten us in the middle east bedsides endless destruction and a rising iran, and a russia with its swag back.

We all know all the wars are about oil, and regional dominance, and other stupid shit while they talk about "hurrr rbudddur democraqcy dbdbdbd"

it's time comrades

In Syria young men are forced to join Assad's army. Thus why so many young men either fled the country or joined the rebels when war broke out.

It was a success in Tunisia.

You are dumb as shit.

My god, you mean they have a draft? What a monster, I can't imagine any country ever doing this.

The draft sucks, but time to come back to reality.

Syrian prisons aren't as relaxing as US prisons. Especially if you are an opponent of the regime.

Assad's regime is secular ,yes. But that doesn't mean it's nicer than ISIS. It's merely more efficient than ISIS, because it doesn't torture to please Allah, but for rational utilitarian secular reason.

To those who claim the arab spring was instigated by the CIA.
The arab spring began in Tunisia. Tunisia's former dictator Ben Ali was entirely pro western. So how would it be in the interest of US empire that enact a regime change in Tunisia and possibly risk that anti-western jihadis take over and establish an islamic state that is anti-western as in Iran?

Egypt's dictator Mubarak was also pro-western.

It’s better to say that the Arab Spring emerged from multiple sources, some local and some foreign, some progressive and some reactionary, and that the U.S. and its allies exploited the situation to reassert regional hegemony and settle old scores.

It's best to not claim things for which there is zero evidence.

You see, they say you cant defeat Islamic extremism because you cant kill an idea.
But you can totally kill an idea, just find a better idea.
Its the reason we dont live in fucking feudalism anymore.

Hey young people of the middle east who dont want to be ruled over by dictators or extremists, ever hear of this guy called kurhul markz?

I know you have kurds, i know you have.

That's not how ideology works unless of course you honestly believe in idealist bullshit.

Seeing the libtards back in 2011 desperately try and spin it as some sort of advent of LGBT, feminism, human rights etc across the Arab World was hilarious.

Anyone who actually knows Arabs, real Arabs, not the odd liberal "reformist" talking head they trot out on MSNBC or BBC, knows this was never, ever going to happen.

It was always going to be about Islamism.

How would it be in their interests to fund terrorism?

The people running the show are fucking morons

No, you kill religious ideas by destroying the faith of the adherents in them through sheer, merciless violence until their very psyche is annihilated.

Yeah that worked real well in Ancient Rome when that strange jewish death cult started gaining traction back in the day.

lol

No wonder your an internationalist.

It doesn't work like that.
There was this guy who studied doomsday cults, you know the kind that say the rapture is coming, and you want to know what happens when the day comes and Jesus doesn't come back?
They double down.
Religion is based on magical thinking not reality or the material.

It doesnt work on logic.

Alls im trying to say is that if the young people of the middle east want success they needed an ideology of their own, the extremists have Islam, and the dictator has fascism, totalitarianism, etc

The protesters needed their own flag, their own ideology to rally around, something that would replace all the bad, stuff.

The US only supported the Syrian Kurds.
Saudi Arabia supported al-nusra.
Iran Hisbollah.
And Putin used the opportunity to test out his 150+ new weapon systems on the Syrian people.

You're referring to comparatively soft levels of enforcement.

Christianity was driven underground and more or less wiped out by the Bakufu Japs until much later, when they made the laws more permissive.

Harsh as fuck punishment WORKS.

Imwithher too bro.

I mean, think, why the kurds are so successful, they have a basis in communism, and the idea of creating their own country.
This superseded any of them that are muslim, although a few kurds have actually been caught in isis or whatever, the majority of them have something else to rally around.

Atheists do not understand how the religious mind works, its not logical, it is not rational, it is spiritual, any Charity a Muslim does is to benefit its own religion, and to try and get converts, not out of the kindness of their own hearts.

And well, it doesn't help that the saudis and Qataris and other gulf fuckers fund this shit, you always follow the money, always, you think guns and training grow on trees?

I mean, you ever think about who funded the nazis? People dont talk about that much.

torture doesnt work, persecution doesnt work, especially in the modern world.
If you torture me i will tell you anything to make it stop, if you persecute me i will fight you back and publish info on the tv and internet about what a faggot you are

smug-goon.png

and the peasant regularly revolted and killed the king and emperor.
It doesn't work.
Ruling by fear doesnt work.
You have to make everyone like americans, fat docile happy piggies who never want for anything and are too lazy to do anything beyond impotent protests which can be destroyed by agent provocateurs anyways

…What relevance does this have?

Naked assertion.

Demonstrably false (it's how successful deterrent effect strict liability laws work - e.g. Singapore's laws on drug trafficking and the capital punishment meted out for it).