Assad has become the poster boy for the far-right ‘useful idiots’ in Charlottesville
More than 9,000 kilometres from Damascus, Bashar Al Assad might have found himself a rejuvenated US fan base in the Virginia city of Charlottesville.
Nazi chants and anti-Semitic slogans have always been part of white supremacist marches, but T-shirts celebrating the Syrian dictator and his barrel-bomb tactics are a new phenomenon.
Even the 20-year-old man arrested for driving into opposition protesters, killing one and injuring 19, is an Assad fan.
Among the many posts of Nazi flags, alt-right cartoons and swastikas on James Field’s Facebook page was one featuring a photo of the Syrian president in a military outfit and the word “undefeated”.
The affinity for Mr Al Assad among American white supremacists can be explained by deep anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim and pro-Russian sentiments, experts say.
Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, said that the link between the Syrian president and white supremacists was not new.
Outspoken far-right figure David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, “has been a fan of the Assad regime for decades”, Prof Telhami said.
“He was initially attracted to Assad mostly because of his opposition to Israel, more actively after the Iraq war in 2003. David Duke and some others thought this was a war for Israel.”
Mr Duke visited Syria in 2009, three years after travelling to Iran to take part in a Holocaust denial conference.
“We are both occupied by Zionists” is the message that Mr Duke propagated and one that could be inspiring his supporters right now, Mr Telhami explained.
Another reason for their support of Mr Al Assad could be the perception that he is battling extremism in a war supported by Russia, said Noah Rothman, assistant online editor at Commentary magazine.
“These are Vladimir Putin’s useful idiots and Bashar Al Assad is Moscow’s vassal despot,” Mr Rothman said.
Mr Rothman and Mr Telhami said that although American white supremacists might know little about Syria or might not realise they were echoing Russian propaganda, this did not make them any less useful to political opportunists in the US and the Middle East.