Syrian President Bashar Al Assad has apparently joined the ranks of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and Confederate General Robert E. Lee in the White Supremacists' hall of fame.
During a large rally of White Supremacists in Virginia this weekend, several demonstrators were spotted wearing t-shirts cheering Assad and his barrel-bombing tactics.
A video of some of these individuals has been posted to Twitter, showing a White American man cheering Syria's president.
"Support the Syrian Arab army," the man can be heard saying, pointing at his t-shirt, which appears to promote barrel-bombing.
"Assad did nothing wrong," he says. Another man quickly jumps in to say "Assad's the man, brother!"
A third man concurs adamantly: "That's true, that's true. You're absolutely right."
The t-shirt wearing man then advocates for the use of chemical weapons.
"Two chemical bombs would have solved this whole ISIS problem," he says.
While only three men are seen cheering for the controversial Syrian leader, an article in The National points out that these men are not isolated cases.
The White terrorist James Alex Fields, who rammed his car into counter demonstrators over the weekend – killing one and injuring 19 others – had shared a social media post appearing to support Assad.
Fields' post featured a photo of the Syrian leader in an army uniform and sunglasses with the word "undefeated."
David Duke, the former leader of the White Supremacist terrorist group the Ku Klux Klan, has reportedly been a fan of Assad's for decades. He even visited Syria in 2009.
"There are three million Christians in Syria. I've been there. Without Assad, there will be a bloodbath, and the Israelis know it," Duke posted on Twitter in April.
“He was initially attracted to Assad mostly because of [the Syrian president's] opposition to Israel, more actively after the Iraq war [in 2003]. David Duke and some others thought this was a war for Israel," Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, told The National.
She explained that White supremacists' affinity for Assad relates to their deeply anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim beliefs, as well as their pro-Russian views.
