At a certain point last summer everyone from Turkish anarchists to Dutch bike gang members were signing up with the YPG to fight in Rojava, as the news of the battle for Kobani reached a fevered pitch. Jordan Matson was one of them. Matson, an American ex-army private (who never served a day overseas) hailed by the right wing media as a courageous volunteer fighter against the Islamic State in Syria (and who appears frequently on Fox News, including Sean Hannity’s show) is one of several westerners who have traveled to Syria and Iraq on their own accord to fight against the IS.
But according to Alex MacDonald at Mideast Eye, many of the western Christian soldiers have lost the love and are fleeing, either home or to more properly “Christian” units in Iraqi Kurdistan:
One Christian American volunteer, who called himself Brett, told Reuters that he had joined Dwekh Nawsha (which translates as “Self-sacrifice) in Iraq’s Ninevah province where Christian villages still held out against IS.
They’re leaving because they’re disgruntled with the fact that the YPG are pinko commie reds:
Another British volunteer named Alan Duncan also said he had left the YPG, who are based in the Syrian Kurdistan region also known as Rojava, because of their leftist views and said he knew a number of other people were planning to leave soon for the same reason.
Here we see a perfect example of the power of the western media environment. The YPG is hailed as a great vehicle for fighting against Islamic extremism, but the facts of what the YPG is, the background details, you know, the reality that the YPG comes of the PKK which is a revolutionary organization espousing communism, leftwing ideology, etc, is lost on these “internet cowboys” who see only a religious war and none of the context.
Fox news is at the forefront of this process as it’s a mouthpiece for intervention (read: more military expenditures and thus profits for the military industrial complex).
