The Syrian Dictator. A Regular Guy Who Wears Blue Jeans

I just read one of the most bizarre portrayals of what's going on in Syria by a Western journalist in recent memory, courtesy of the Telegraph's Andrew Gilligan.

First up, we have the Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad presented as a modest, easygoing kind of guy who wears blue jeans. Gilligan notes the lack of heavy security he personally saw before meeting Assad and seems to imply the Syrian regime isn't really a totalitarian security state it's said to be -- without bothering too much to point out that Assad's vast security apparatus may indeed have other things to occupy its time, such as machine-gunning villages or pulling the fingernails out of dissidents. They've got bigger priorities than assiging gun-toting thugs to shake down friendly Telegraph journalists.

Next, we get to the situation on the ground in Syria's capital -- evidently, a great place to hang out on a weekend. It's a diverse, boozy, funky kind of town:

On Thursday night, the beginning of the Muslim weekend, Damascus’s Old City was heaving with people having a good time. Men and women were mixing freely. Alcohol was widely available. A pair of Christian Orthodox priests, in their long cassocks, walked through the crowded alleys, and small Christian shrines were tucked away in the corners. The regime is successfully pushing the message that all this is at risk. “I don’t like Assad, but I am worried that what follows could be worse,” said one of the partygoers. On Wednesday, Damascus witnessed a large pro-Assad demonstration: Western journalists who observed it say that the participants did not appear to have been coerced.

How precisely would foreign journalists know that the participants were not coerced?

Further into Gilligan's time with Assad, he gets quite friendly:

Comparing Syria’s leadership with that of a Western country, he said, was like comparing a Mac with a PC. “Both computers do the same job, but they don’t understand each other,” he said. “You need to translate. If you want to analyse me as the East, you cannot analyse me through the Western operating system, or culture. You have to translate according to my operating system, or culture.” That’s the inner nerd in you speaking, I said, and he laughed out loud. I can’t imagine too many other Arab leaders you could get away with calling a nerd.

Assad channelling the ghost and allure of Steve Jobs? Oh, and dictatorship and democracy are basically just the same kind of thing, though one just has better branding and you have to pay a premium for it. This guy is a nerd. A geek. A likeable technical wonk, just like your buddy who builds websites or works for an IT firm.

And of course, anyone in Syria can call Assad a nerd to his face -- they're really only risking a beating with a thick cable in a dank underground dungeon. Otherwise, he's a swell, likeable guy... who wears blue jeans.

Jonathon Narvey is the Editor of The Propagandist