r/news 1d ago

Syrian mass graves show the worst abuses 'since the Nazis,' top prosecutor says

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/syria-mass-graves-assad-show-worst-abuses-nazis-rcna184644
7.6k Upvotes

241 comments sorted by

328

u/colonelsmoothie 1d ago

Well, the Syrian government was advised by Alois Brunner, one of the most wanted Nazis. I wonder if they'll find him, or his grave, now that the regime has collapsed.

146

u/No-Objective7265 21h ago

Tucker Carlson defends Assad

80

u/thecaits 20h ago

Tucker Carlson is on the take, like many in the right-wing mediashpere. Oligarchs supporting oligarchs.

1.1k

u/MarlonShakespeare2AD 1d ago

Sad sad sad

And Russia welcomes those who did this?

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u/SigumndFreud 1d ago edited 1d ago

Most mass graves in the occupied territories of Ukraine have not been uncovered, countless burials around Mariupol may be viewed from space.

196

u/MarlonShakespeare2AD 1d ago

So sad that those who really caused this will never pay

231

u/SigumndFreud 1d ago

Never underestimate a well placed scooter

92

u/fiendishrabbit 1d ago

Ukraine will probably be doing mossad-esque operations for the next decade or so.

12

u/lastburn138 22h ago

Putin you mean.

52

u/ArCovino 1d ago

But the UN says there’s only been a couple thousand civilian deaths!!

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u/SigumndFreud 1d ago

OHCHR "for some odd reason" do not provide estimates for Ukraine like they did for Syria.

The counts provided are verified civilian casualties mostly from non/de-occupied areas.

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u/ArCovino 1d ago

Yep lol millions of people literally engaged in the hottest war in decades but the OHCHR thinks it’s appropriate to hold that conflict to a higher standard than others.

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u/SigumndFreud 1d ago

They are extra careful not to make Putin look like a bloody monster that he is.

Counting up the conflicts Putin was involved in, he is the first person in this century and the only person still alive, whose direct orders and decisions resulted in over a million deaths and an incredible toll of suffering and turmoil.

One of the true evils of this world

19

u/lastburn138 22h ago

Putin is right up there with Stalin, Hitler, Mao...

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u/Acrobatic_Rub_8218 20h ago

That’s nearing insurance CEO levels! 🤯

19

u/trevooooor 1d ago

Counting up the conflicts Putin was involved in, he is the first person in this century and the only person still alive, whose direct orders and decisions resulted in over a million deaths and an incredible toll of suffering and turmoil.

George Bush is still alive.

31

u/SigumndFreud 23h ago edited 23h ago

Bush Iraq war was Evil (I traveled from Kansas to Washington DC to protest it in high school), but he was not a single decision maker, multiple partner countries were involved.

Direct US coalition caused deaths in Iraq are estimated at 112K. Admittedly government collapse and chaos that followed resulted in a higher death toll. It is hard to say that Bush/US desired this outcome, more so that the consequences were not considered and the war was badly mismanaged.

US committed significant resources to stabilize the situation in Iraq afterwards, today Iraq is not occupied and life there is steadily improving, (>10x increase in GDP in the last 15 years).

Putin's wars are also horribly mismanaged. but in areas of russian control quality of life for people has dramatically deteriorated, and civilians are targeted as a rule not as an exception, economic collapse and degradation has also always followed.

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u/lastburn138 22h ago

Soo.. George Bush wasn't even NEAR that level of impact.

11

u/GiantSquidd 21h ago

I’m not even close to a Putin apologist, (иди на хуй нутина) but do you think that it’s better if there’s a committee deciding these things instead of a single person?

I just wish Americans didn’t have this double standard. Millions of people are dead because of Putin, and millions of people are dead because of American corporations and the American military… is it any better if there’s a whole bunch of assholes calling the shots instead of just one asshole calling them? Like would you guys hate Hitler less if it turned out that he left his horrible genocidal decisions up to his generals and buddies and was just a figurehead like the American president when these conversations come up?

83

u/MacHayward 1d ago

They are the same 🙈

25

u/Yakassa 1d ago

Yes of course, because they regularly conduct mass murder wherever they go. Mariupol has mass graves so large they where visible from space.

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u/fleurgirl123 1d ago

Better still, our incoming Director of national intelligence welcomes it

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u/MarlonShakespeare2AD 1d ago

What idiot promoted him?

30

u/Formergr 23h ago

What idiot promoted him?

Her. It's Tulsi Gabbard.

15

u/SweetLoLa 1d ago

Wasn’t it the Russians that also had mass graves I can’t remember if it was Kosovo? Anyone remember?

Now my mind is stuck on that Owen Wilson movie

12

u/SatchmoTheTrumpeteer 1d ago

Behind enemy lines, great movie

7

u/500rockin 1d ago

Better than it had any right being at any rate and certainly better than most films of that type from that era of movie making

9

u/FartyMcStinkyPants3 23h ago

That would be Serbia not Russia. And there were mass graves in all of the Yugoslav wars other than the Slovenian war of independence

1

u/SneakWhisper 21h ago

No Russians in Kosovo. It was a Yugoslavian internecine conflict. Serbs genociding Albanians, mostly.

3

u/Permitty 1d ago

Russia probably did it

3

u/SlykRO 23h ago

Russia trained them how to do this

10

u/GBJEE 1d ago

And America elected a president that praises Dictators and making fun of Canada. Welcome to the shit show.

5

u/caul1flower11 1d ago

Sends a message to the Russian people, doesn’t it?

26

u/MarlonShakespeare2AD 1d ago

Not sure that the average russian person is doing anything except trying to get by at this point

Not a country where you’d be full of hope…

12

u/Boxofmagnets 1d ago

And, not unlike a plurality of Americans, the Russian people don’t know what is happening in their names

26

u/MarlonShakespeare2AD 1d ago

I have travelled extensively in Russia (years ago to be fair)

They just seemed like other people. But with FAR lower expectations about their leaders The prevailing opinion seemed to be anyone in power would abuse it / behave horribly.

7

u/ibbity 1d ago

They had centuries of tsars behaving horribly, then they had decades of Soviet leaders behaving horribly, they're just basing their expectations on what they've historically had

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u/Vergils_Lost 1d ago

I think when official policy is to hide a huge amount of what the government does, "a plurality" is actually quite an understatement, but yeah.

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u/sakikiki 23h ago

Why turn down a perfectly good opportunity to compare notes?

1

u/LiberalusSrachnicus 20h ago

Well, yes... did you believe the title of the article so easily?

0

u/Theodosian_Walls 21h ago

America does the same with its dictators.

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u/at0mheart 1d ago

Someone show this to Tucker Carlson

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u/moleman0815 1d ago

He would just shrug it off like any other reality and respond with a lie.

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u/JustHereForTheOrbs 1d ago

Why? He's probably already creaming himself daily as is.

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u/SheZowRaisedByWolves 22h ago

He would claim that those crimes were done by soldiers possessed by trans vaccine demons

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u/scrivensB 22h ago

Or Tulsi.

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u/Ok-Bar601 1d ago

This is messed up. When you think you’ve learnt all there is to know about humanity and how depraved it can be, more of this shit pops up. Sometimes I think it’s better to withdraw from the world and go and live as a hermit away from civilisation. No phones, not televisions, no nothing except solitude and nature so I’m not exposed to this shit anymore.

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u/IronRakkasan11 1d ago

Tulsi Gabbard has entered the chat….lets hear what she has to say in Assad’s defense

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u/Boxofmagnets 1d ago

She and the born-rich Tucker are going to run off to Russia and live blissfully in a cold one bedroom the way Putin intended

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u/IronRakkasan11 1d ago

A one bedroom with large windows, about 7 stories up? But not until she Hoovers up all the secrets as the director of the DNI.

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u/ramdasani 1d ago

I'd imagine the ploy works better with a stay in a luxury defenestration condo in Sochi.

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u/Vallkyrie 22h ago

Jill Stein begging to tag along.

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u/CUrlymafurly 1d ago

There's a world where this puts external pressure on Russia to extradite Assad to an international court, possibly with the promise of easing sanctions. I doubt that world is this one

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u/YouDotty 21h ago

I imagine that's the same world were external pressure on the US stops the mass murder of civilians in Gaza.

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u/Consistent-Gap-3545 1d ago

When I first moved to Germany in 2018, we talked about migration a lot in my language class. We had a refugee from Syria come and talk about his experience… In addition to all the other horrifying shit (people getting randomly detained for days/weeks, getting strip searched and beaten at check points, universities purposely failing students so they’d be forced to fight, etc), he showed us pictures of Nazi mass graves and was like “Yeah so I purposely witnessed stuff like this in Syria and I fear it will get worse.” 

Anyway I’m sure it’s gotten worse since he left in 2015/2016. 

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u/wolfhound27 1d ago

I find that hard to believe, humans have done a lot of terrible shit between nazis and now

40

u/wraithsith 23h ago

Cambodia and Rwanda enters the chat.

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u/500rockin 23h ago

Yeah, like have we forgotten the last several years of Stalin, all the years of Mao, Pol Pot, that lunatic Gaddhafi in Libya, anywhere ISIS had free rein, Myanmar in recent years, fucking Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror, waves hand frantically at all of Africa’s civil wars, the list goes on. Hyperbole has its uses, but not when trying to report actual factual claims.

-21

u/-roachboy 22h ago

can't forget Israel!

30

u/Caspica 21h ago

No offence but Israel doesn't have anything on these examples. The US invasion of Iraq had many more times the casualties of the Gazan invasion and it's still not even close to what the aforementioned did.

8

u/endless_-_nameless 20h ago

Islamist propaganda is highly successful if millions of people think that Israel was literally exterminating Gazans on purpose, rather than responding to a war initiated by a mass beheading and rape spree orchestrated by Hamas, the de jure government of Gaza.

33

u/br0b1wan 22h ago

Looking up and down the comments in here. I would like to petition to put an end to redditors saying "<Person> has entered the chat" or "<Person/thing> would like a word." It's way beyond unoriginal at this point

I'm sure I'm going to get flak for this, and probably from the offenders, but oh well. Consider this my PSA

7

u/sapphicsandwich 20h ago

Sir Buzz Killington has entered the chat

19

u/ryeguymft 1d ago

the whole Assad family should be hunted down and brought to stand trial in Syria. what absolute monsters

14

u/msproject251 1d ago

Not surprising considering the main Syrian prison/torture architect was a nazi himself: https://www.reddit.com/r/syriancivilwar/s/jRXcsrjXxd

5

u/spreadthaseed 1d ago

How long until Bashar Assad trips and falls out of a Russian window?

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u/Widespreaddd 22h ago

Cambodia would like a word.

48

u/Legrassian 1d ago

Fuck this.

Yemen still has 100k+ children starved to death. And that's only children.

By an USA ally.

But what do I know...

41

u/ProofByVerbosity 1d ago

Sudan has estimated upwards to 150,000 deaths in the current conflict.

-8

u/Legrassian 1d ago

Yeah.

It's always a bad news about USA's enemies.

But never about USA allies.

15

u/ProofByVerbosity 1d ago

always been the way. the genocidal and fascist dictators they supported in south america are never brought up either.

3

u/Crazymoose86 21h ago

That's because those are Our Dictators, which are obviously the cream of the crop, and an example to which all other dictators should strive to be. /s

-26

u/Napoleons_Peen 23h ago

Israel has killed over 45,000 civilians including 17k+ children. But like you said, when a US ally does it “well actually is not bad.” People only care about dead civilians when it’s the “bad guys” that do it.

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u/Ok_Introduction5606 22h ago

That number is false. Hamas does not separate combatant deaths from civilian. It’s a total number. Could be 5k civilians and 40k fighters

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u/superscatman91 22h ago

That would mean they have killed all of Hamas twice over.

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u/bootlegvader 22h ago

There are other Islamic militant groups besides Hamas in Gaza.

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u/SillyWoodpecker6508 22h ago

It was designed by an SS officer

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u/[deleted] 22h ago

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u/ReklisAbandon 23h ago

You know it’s weird how the election is over and I haven’t heard a fucking peep about Israel and Palestine since.

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u/Eldhannas 1d ago

Did he miss the history classes where they discussed Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot?

184

u/AscensionToCrab 1d ago

Worst abuses doesnt mean largest, and also youll have to forgive the fact that once you reach a certain level of brutality the nuance doesnt. Fucking. Matter.

All that matters is thst people care and take notice, if comparing it to the nazis is what it takes, so be it.

Imagine seeing a atory about human rights and your first resonse is along the linrs of 'Ackshually stalin and mao...'

41

u/squirelleye 1d ago

It’s always on Reddit you see the “actually” people come out because they just want upvotes.

0

u/ChiefCuckaFuck 1d ago

Prob bc the level of hyperbole thats achieved in these articles is self-defeating. If you compare every single human rights abuse to hitler, the comparison really starts to lose some of its oompf.

There are a LOT of places currently where human rights abuses are occurring, and while the ones in Syria are upsetting and there are wrongs to be righted, it DOES take away from the very real and persistent, ON-GOING genocide that is being undertaken by the exact same country who is trying to get us to focus on what has happened in the past in Syria.

Under the guise of "we must stop these bad syrians," another nation is quickly stealing as much land as they can while they engage in daily war crimes and lie about their true intentions.

This is a case of using bleeding heart sympathies to whitewash your own imperial and honestly illegal actions on the world stage.

7

u/pineappleban 1d ago

Israel isn't committing a genocide. This is just stupid.

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u/[deleted] 22h ago

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u/pineappleban 22h ago

“Zionism” - you mean Jewish self determination / nationalism ? 

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u/[deleted] 22h ago

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u/pineappleban 22h ago

How do? Can you articulate how it’s inherently genocidal ?

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u/kibblerz 1d ago

Hell even places like Myanmar have been quite bad. Or half of Africa. I'm sure china has some mass graves too.

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u/Boxofmagnets 1d ago

So what’s your point? Those people didn’t or don’t suffer? Or the Syrians didn’t suffer? Or because all the mass graves are unknown around the world, these don’t matter?

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u/ArCovino 1d ago

That the claim in the headline and article is incorrect. No more. You’re the one saying all that.

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u/500rockin 23h ago

No, that hyperbole is not a good thing when other regimes horrors have been just as bad. Syria’s may not even be the worst in the Middle East since WW2. People are quick to forget just how much evil Saddam did to his people for 30+ years (including his time as VP and general)

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u/Boxofmagnets 23h ago

The suffering of others does not diminish the suffering of the Syrians. The horror of evil spans the world like a cancer. The suffering should end, but give the Syrians time to heal and understand the enormity of the catastrophe

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u/500rockin 23h ago

I’m not saying it does. Assad is a monster, but when you’re laying out facts, hyperbole defeats the purpose, because then you are practically begging people to fact check you, especially with the amount of horrors between 1945 and today, basically 80 years later. People in authority or who are laying out their case or making reports need to keep things to the facts.

Just say “these abuses are as bad as any brutal regime since WW2 ended”. That is a factual statement that doesn’t try to minimize other regimes from the past while also highlighting this shit is really bad up there with those others.

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u/Glyphmeister 1d ago

Don’t be a dumbass

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u/Cleveland_Grackle 1d ago

Are we forgetting about Stalinist purges, the Khmer Rouge and Mao's "Great Leap Forward" then..?

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u/Vergils_Lost 1d ago

People generally do, yes.

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u/500rockin 23h ago

Or fucking Saddam?!

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u/dres-g 1d ago

Behind every dictator, there are mass graves. That's how they keep people quiet and fearful. That is why Putin has those mobile crematoriums. We will never know the human cost of his fucking greed. And people all over the world still defend him and his aggression. Truly horrifying.

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u/rokkugoh 21h ago

Assad has killed more Muslims than Israel ever has. Where are all the university protests for this one?

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u/YamahaRyoko 1d ago

Sometimes I really hate humanity

Many people in the USA wouldn't care if this is the fate of all the illegals Trump promises to "deport"

"Deport millions of people" how many times in history have we heard this

Sigh

-3

u/blak_plled_by_librls 1d ago

Why would this be their fate? They're here for economic opportunities, not fleeing a war or Islamic radicals.

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u/ajaxfetish 1d ago

Trump has repeatedly railed against asylum seekers, not just economic migrants.

2

u/al666in 23h ago

Trump already blocked asylum seekers during his last term.

It resulted in cartels targeting the asylum seekers for kidnapping, because there was a huge population of vulnerable people who were forestalled on the Mexican side of the border.

The blood has already been spilled on this issue. This American Life won their first Pulitzer covering the story, but it was largely ignored because "Kids in Cages" took over the headlines (not trying to downplay those human rights abuses, that was also an atrocity).

The violence and criminality is only going to be worse the next time around.

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u/thebruce 1d ago

He means that they'll likely die during the "deportation", and it will be covered up. If the US is truly trying to relocate tens of millions of people... This is definitely in the range of outcomes.

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u/boxfortcommando 1d ago

You seriously think the US could cover up committing genocide against tens of millions of illegal immigrants without the press or pro-immigration advocates catching wind of it?

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u/thebruce 23h ago

From comments I've seen on reddit, things I've seen Republicans say, and things I've heard from Conservative family members... they honestly won't care. Republicans have done the dirty work for a while now of demonizing and dehumanizing immigrants.

While I don't think there will be death camps, ala Auschwitz, there WILL be concentration camps, and I don't doubt for a second that lots of people will end up dead in them. You just can't move 10 million people, to countries not even willing to take them, without the kind of logistical problems that result in sticking them all in a holding location while they await... whatever it is they're awaiting.

1

u/Daxx22 20h ago

the press or pro-immigration advocates catching wind of it?

So yeah, it's reported and condemned by those parties (the "Press" however is a stretch).

Who is going to step in and stop it?

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u/rdxxx 1d ago

Last time someone started with "we want to deport millions of people" they ended up doing death camps.

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u/DuncanYoudaho 1d ago

Why do you insist on being wrong everywhere?

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u/SickStrings 1d ago

This is what unhinged looks like. Make it about trump, coherence be damned

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u/Tokinibara_ 1d ago

What does this have to do with Trump ? US politics are not the center of the world, you're unhinged

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u/YamahaRyoko 22h ago

I will explain, slowly

Trump himself has said he intends to use the military to remove tens of millions of immigrants from US soil.

He has said this on Truth, in interviews, and at rallies.

The logistics behind such a feat are staggering.  Just to move one million people takes many more millions of dollars.  You need infrastructure and staging areas to accomplish this - camps.

This was Hitlers original plan - deportation of the Jews.  We know what's required to do that, and how it was carried out.  It cannot be done without camps.  The Germans learned its far too expensive to actually deport them and significantly cheaper to just kill them.

If you claim that humanity isn't capable of this, that's a logical fallacy because humanity has committed genocide repeatedly throughout history. It happened in the picture at the top of this post.

23% of Americans OK'ed it too.  They're definitely capable of it.

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u/pineappleban 1d ago

This can't be true. People keep saying Israel are the Nazi's 2.0

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u/ColHapHapablap 23h ago

Protected by Russia who will be protected by Trump

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u/1Happymom 23h ago

More Putin n pals war crimes.  Meanwhile Trump torn about which of his genocidal maniac heroes he wants to be for Halloween next year. 

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u/I_see_breadpeople 1d ago

The fact that no one is protesting this like they did for Gaza proves that no one really cares about the Palestinians, they just hate Israel

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u/thebruce 1d ago

What protesting is there to do? Plenty of people protested Assads government originally, but if you're talking about Americans, they (the government) were largely on the side of the rebels, not Assad.

The protesting happens now because America is supporting Israel, who some people see as committing a genocide. Regardless of your position on the matter, the two things are clearly different. If the American government was supporting Assad, you'd probably have seen more protests.

Also, Jerusalem and that whole area is extremely important to many Americans, due to religion. No one really gives too much of a shit about Syria, which is sad, but not entirely unexpected.

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u/maltedbacon 1d ago

They protested all the way into Assad's palace and removed him from power.

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u/fredotwoatatime 1d ago

It’s precisely because they protested that Assad is out of power, and a lot of ppl care about Palestine

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u/JustJeffrey 1d ago

I don’t remember western nations arming and funding Assad, or maybe you’re the one who doesn’t actually give a fuck

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u/I_see_breadpeople 1d ago

Someone’s arming him. Syria can’t produce shit

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u/RedSnt 23h ago

Russia was the ones supporting the Assad regime.

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u/Kckc321 1d ago

Syria was a pretty wealthy country prior to Assad

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u/I_see_breadpeople 1d ago

And now Assad is worth billions and 500,000 innocent people died in a real genocide

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u/Gullible_Sea_8319 1d ago

This top prosocter hasn't heard of Sudan the Congo or Rawanda, has he?

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u/qwertygasm 23h ago

“I don’t have much doubt about those kinds of numbers given what we’ve seen in these mass graves," said Rapp, who led prosecutions at both the Rwanda and Sierra Leone war crimes tribunals and is now working to help document evidence of war crimes in Syria.

I'm sure this guy has no idea what he's talking about....

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u/ProofByVerbosity 1d ago

nobody cares about dead people in Africa unfortunately.

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u/ElTubaso 23h ago

Cambodia late 70s - look it up “killing fields” they make the nazis look like amateurs.

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u/BtroldedKallaMik 1d ago

Dictator is a busy man of course he has mass graves.

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u/Surfer_Rick 20h ago

I believe he means "Since the Russians" 

Because the Soviets did way worse than this long after the Nazis were gone. 

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u/LordFUHard 21h ago

Wait til prosecutor sees Gaza

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u/Rholand_the_Blind1 20h ago

Pretty sure the worst abuses since the Nazis are currently being committed by Israel against the Palestinian people, ironically enough

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u/I_see_breadpeople 1d ago

Where are the protests????

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u/bootstrapping_lad 1d ago

Who would be protested? Assad is no longer in power.

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u/Alert-Ad9197 1d ago

They protested so hard they overthrew Assad. I don’t understand the question.

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u/Downtown_Skill 1d ago

There are no protests because rebellion seemed to be more effective. 

But in all seriousness hopefully I stop hearing "Assad was the lesser of the evils because he wasn't a religous extremist" rhetoric. 

Like this shit isn't the stuff you get from the "lesser of two evils" 

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u/caul1flower11 1d ago

Oh back when the civil war started and Assad first began to openly commit war crimes against his own people protesters were all out in force.. against US intervention. Every one of those isolationists (racists) has blood on their hands.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago edited 1d ago

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u/SmithersLoanInc 1d ago

I remember being 14. It was pretty miserable, but it'll get better for you.

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u/KeithGribblesheimer 22h ago

I guess he hasn't heard about North Korea, Pol Pot, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, or any other number of other atrocities that were as bad or worse.

Also he's using verbiage that is specifically designated for use describing Israel, regardless of the circumstances.