Far-right backers of US President Donald Trump on Friday rebelled after he ordered a missile strike to punish Syria for a suspected chemical weapons attack that killed 86 people.
Rallying with the hashtag #Syriahoax, leaders of the so-called “alt-right” white nationalist fringe lashed out at the president for abandoning his election campaign stances.
Some denied the suspected chemical attack took place. Others rejected the broadly accepted view that it was by the hand of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Instead, they blamed anti-Syrian government fighters such as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formerly al-Nusra Front, for a so-called “false flag” attack meant to be pinned on Damascus.
Still others said Trump had fallen victim to the US “deep state,” an ostensibly entrenched military-national security bureaucracy at odds with the new president’s anti-Washington views.
“Anyone who claimed Trump had blind loyalty had a wake-up call today,” said Mike Cernovich, one of the movement’s most prominent leaders and a popularizer of often unfounded conspiracy theories.
“We all know that Assad would not poison his own people,” he said in an online video. “We do know that the deep state does want war with Russia, and they are using the Syria gas attack, which is a hoax, to start World War III with Russia.”
Alex Jones — whose Infowars Web site is a hub for the far-right movement, but others allege is a wellspring of the “fake news” phenomenon — said that Tuesday’s attack was launched by the Syrian opposition.
“Why would Assad do that when he is winning?” he asked in a Webcast.
Jones said it was a ruse to force Trump into line with Washington’s more traditional conservatives.
“If he gives in to this anti-Syria thing to prove he’s not a Russian puppet, they’re not going to stop. They are already saying Syria is his fault,” Jones said.
Most mainstream conservatives endorsed Trump’s order to fire 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian military air base to punish and warn the al-Assad government.
However, the far-right was angered over what it sees is an abandonment of Trump’s nationalist and isolationist campaign positions.
Ann Coulter, a favorite pundit of conservatives, pointed to Trump’s 2013 tweets opposing any increase in US military involvement in the Middle East.
“We should stay the hell out of Syria,” said Trump, who was then a property tycoon mulling a White House bid.
On Thursday, Coulter said on Twitter: “Those who wanted us meddling in the Middle East voted for other candidates.”
“Trump campaigned on not getting involved in Mideast. Said it always helps our enemies & creates more refugees. Then he saw a picture on TV,” she said, referring to photographs of the 27 children killed in the chemical attack.
However, such anger did not extend to Breitbart, the news Web site formerly run by and still closely allied with Steve Bannon, Trump’s anti-globalist White House strategist. Breitbart took a neutral stance in coverage of the attack.
John Binder, a Breitbart writer, said on Twitter that Bannon was against the strikes.
“He’s the voice of #Americafirst voters in the administration,” Binder said, without offering evidence.
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