Robert Fisk, a once renowned and respected journalist (long before I was born), now a rambling conspiracy theorist penning apologias for the likes of Hezbollah, the Assad regime and the Putin regime in Russia all for the sake of his anti-Western ideological bias.
In his latest disingenous piece, he launched an attack on well renowned and respected Iraq/Syria terrorism expert Charles Lister. He essentially accuses Lister of being an Al-Qaeda apologist, he bases this view on Charles' recent article on Al Qaeda's Syrian afilliate Jabhat Al-Nusra in Foreign Policy. However, judging from the content of the article one wonders whether Fisk actually read it. Lister in his article clearly warns about the danger of Nusra creating an emirate in Northern Syria, whether or not you agree with Lister's policy recommendations no one who has actually read the article can say this is a puff piece on Nusra. How Fisk can claim after reading the article that Lister is trying to falsely portray Nusra as 'moderate' is pretty remarkable. More importantly, how the editors at The Independent didn't seem to fact check this dreadful article is even more worrying.
Not only is Fisks claim incorrect, offensive, libellous and actually laughable on its face, it also comes from a man who in the past few years has explicitly apologised for the Hizbollah and the Fascist Assad regime by for instance repeating the falsehood that "no moderate opposition exists" in Syria. Even popes get removed for insanity yet this pro-Fascist hack and conspiracy theorist Robert Fisk still has a job at The Independent.
These series of tweets by Lister showing his record from his work where he writes about Nusra as a threat thoroughly refutes the absurd accusations penned by Fisk that Lister is portraying Nusra as a moderate organisation.
The irony of this is Fisk once wrote a fawning piece giving a sympathetic portrayal of none other than Osama Bin Laden in 1993. The piece is so bad it is almost has to be satire.
It is not only this that makes Fisk a hypocrite. Fisk warns us to be careful of the word terrorist believing that it is a pretext used by Western governments to legitimise state sponsored violence, violate civil liberties and supress dissent domestically and oppress Middle Eastern societies. Yet, he has no qualms in falsely accusing people of being Al-Qaeda apologists when it suits his ideological thrills and his obsessive anti-Western agenda. Likewise, he doesn't have the moral authority to condemn 'Al-Qaeda supporters' when he has essentially become a mouthpiece for the Assad regime and Hizbollah who in conjuction with each other have killed nearly 300,000 Syrians in their brutal suppression of the Syrian revolution to help a totalitarian regime survive. In addition, he uncritically repeating their narrative of the Syrian civil war (this is what happens when you rely on corrupt government sources for your information). This is what makes him hypocrite.
