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Maram Susli

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Maram Susli
Personal information
Born
Damascus, Syria
Websitesyriangirlpartisan.blogspot.com
YouTube information
Channel
Subscribers94.1 thousand[1]
Total views4.56 million[1]
Last updated: 11 November 2023

Maram Susli (Arabic: مرام سوسلي), also known as Mimi al-Laham, PartisanGirl, Syrian Girl and Syrian Sister,[2][3][4] is a Syrian Australian conspiracy theorist,[3][5][6] YouTube content creator, and political commentator who prepares videos on the Syrian Civil War, United States foreign policy in the Middle East, and the Gamergate controversy.[7]

Media outlets she has contributed to include RT, Press TV and Al Mayadeen. She has defended the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad,[2][8][9] and criticised ISIS and Syrian rebels.[10]

Early life

Susli was born in Damascus; her family moved to Australia when she was a child.[7][10] She studied chemistry at the University of Western Australia and has a science degree in biophysics and chemistry.[10][11]

Career

Susli's series of video and social media commentaries on her YouTube channel had over 30,000 subscribers and close to 2.5 million views in 2014.[12]

She has contributed to New Eastern Outlook,[13] which is an online pseudo-academic SVR-run disinformation and propaganda journal,[14][15] as well as the conspiracy website InfoWars,[3][4][16] and Russian and Iranian government propaganda outlets RT and Press TV,[7] and occasionally contributed to the Hezbollah-aligned Al Mayadeen. She was interviewed by white supremacist Richard Spencer.[17][18]

Views, conspiracy theories and misinformation

Susli began writing and speaking on the Syrian Civil War in 2012.[12] Susli said she speaks out against Syrian rebels, the Islamic State, and the United States after becoming dismayed at seeing her country destroyed. One of her YouTube videos, If Syria Disarms Chemical Weapons We Lose the War, was viewed 44,720 times by October 2014.[12] Jordanian news outlet Al Bawaba described Maram as fighting for the future of her country towards what she believes as the best case scenario, saying "Susli's conviction that the best and only future for the Syrian people can exist with Bashar Al Assad at the helm, flanked by his Russian and Iranian allies, is dispiriting."[8] In a 2013 interview on RT with Abby Martin in 2013 as Mimi al Laham, Susli said that it would be a "grave mistake" for Assad to renounce chemical weapons.[16] In addition to RT, Susli is a contributor to the Iranian Press TV,[7] and New Eastern Outlook.[13] She is a supporter of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party,[19] has denied the use of chemical weapons by Assad’s forces in the Syrian Civil War, and, according to Bellingcat, "promoted pro-regime propaganda".[9]

According to The Daily Beast, Susli has a positive opinion of Hezbollah. Over the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, she said "I don't even believe in a two-state solution", instead suggesting there should be "a one-state solution".[7] In Susli's opinion, the New World Order opposes the Syrian government.[2] She has said that the Freemasons and the Illuminati collaborate with the governments of the United States and Israel, as well as NATO, in international events; that Al-Qaeda and ISIS are a single front organisation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); that 9/11 was an inside job;[7] that ebola is possibly part of the United States biological weapons program; and that the United States Department of Defense secretly manipulated the Gamergate controversy.[7] Via her Twitter account in June 2021, she linked to an article suggesting 9/11 was the responsibility of "Zionists".[20]

In 2014, News Corp Australia Network said Susli was a "self-described News Personality" whose Facebook page is "filled with video posts on the current conflict, criticising IS and Syrian rebels".[21] She has denied the allegations of atrocities and war crimes against the Assad government.[4][22] That same year, Susli told MailOnline: "People are dying, and I have a duty as a human being and as someone of Syrian origin to expose the truth about why."[23]

In 2017, along with Theodore Postol, Susli rejected claims that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons in 2017 at Khan Shaykhun.[4] In a YouTube video, she referred to evidence posted by Postol, suggesting that Khan Shaykhun chemical attack, alleged to have killed 74 people, was not the work of the Assad regime.[4][22] While interviewing Seymour Hersh for Prospect, Steve Bloomfield said that Postol "spoke about how he relies for his work on Syria on ... Susli", to which Hersh replied: "He talked to her once on one thing."[24] In an article for InfoWars, Susli said the White Helmets, the first responder group, had been responsible for the Khan Shaykhun attack.[4] Postol's reliance on Susli's reputed expertise has been found to be seriously flawed by Cheryl Rofer, a chemical weapons expert consulted by Bellingcat.[25]

After the Skripal poisonings in Salisbury, England, in March 2018, Susli's Twitter account posted 2,300 times over a 12-day period, accessed by 61 million users.[26] Analysts from the British government briefed selected journalists that they had concluded Susli's twitter account (@partisangirl) was "suspicious and part of a broader disinformation campaign".[27] The Guardian then described her account as being a "Russian bot"; it subsequently changed its article by substituting "account" for "bot".[26] In response, Susli said: "I am not a robot; I am a human being."[27] A fact check by Channel 4 concluded that Susli is a "real individual", remarking that Twitter had issued her account with a verification tick confirming the account is authentic and that the claim that her account is a bot "controlled directly by the Kremlin, appears to be false".[27]

During the 2023 Israel-Hamas war, Susli claimed that footage showed Israeli military helicopters firing on Israelis escaping the October 7 massacre at the supernova festival carried by Hamas. However, the footage was actually from Israeli attacks on Hamas positions in Gaza three days later.[28] She posted a photograph of a woman carrying a child's toy car down the stairs of a largely destroyed building, suggesting it was Gaza after Israeli attacks. The picture was actually an award-winning photograph taken in Homs during the Syrian civil war ten years earlier.[29] Susli shared a screenshot, which she said was from the account of an "Israeli official". Fact-checkers determined that the screenshot originated from a fraudulent account.[30]

InfoWars, Vice, and The Daily Beast interviews

In an interview with Alex Jones on InfoWars, following the Ghouta chemical attack of August 2013, she implied the rebels were responsible for the massacre. Susli said the Syrian government was a corrupt dictatorship and that there was "a legitimate reason for people to want to create ... change". She stated that the United States and NATO used the anger of the Syrian people to serve their own agendas.[11][31] At the time she had thousands of subscribers, which weren't verified.[32]

In a 2014 Vice interview, she said she wanted Syria to "remain secular, united and strong" and did not "tolerate foreigners destroying our way of life, forcing us to live a certain way. Whether it's ISIS or the US government".[12] In an interview with The Daily Beast that same year, Susli said that she does not support President Bashar al-Assad or associates of the Syrian Ba'ath party. According to the website, she said this "[d]espite her trolling over Assad's enemies, despite her appearances on Assad-friendly media outlets, and despite her connections to pro-Assad hackers."[7] In one video, she said groups like the "New World Order" have targeted Assad's Syria because it does not allow genetically modified crops and lacks "a Rothschild central bank".[7] According to The Daily Beast, Susli said the Houla massacre in 2012 was the work of British intelligence. [7]

References

  1. ^ a b "About SyrianGirlpartisan". YouTube.
  2. ^ a b c "The Best English-speaking Friend Assad Could". Haaretz. 19 October 2014. Retrieved 27 September 2017.
  3. ^ a b c "Tulsi Gabbard's Reports on Chemical Attacks in Syria - A Self-Contradictory Error Filled Mess". Bellingcat. 4 August 2019. Retrieved 20 October 2021.
  4. ^ a b c d e f Monbiot, George (15 November 2017). "A lesson from Syria: it's crucial not to fuel far-right conspiracy theories". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 May 2019. The story was then embellished on Infowars – the notorious far-right conspiracy forum. The Infowars article claimed that the attack was staged by the Syrian first responder group, the White Helmets. This is a reiteration of a repeatedly discredited conspiracy theory, casting these rescuers in the role of perpetrators. It suggested that the victims were people who had been kidnapped by al-Qaida from a nearby city, brought to Khan Shaykhun and murdered, perhaps with the help of the UK and French governments, 'to lay blame on the Syrian government'. The author of this article was Mimi Al-Laham, also known as Maram Susli.
  5. ^ "Conspiracy Theorists, Right-wing Politicians Fuel Nord Stream Disinformation". 17 October 2022.
  6. ^ Cullotty, Eileen (2020). "Conspiracy and the epistemological challenges of mediatized conflict". In O'Loughlin, Ben; Parry, Katy; Rousell, Laura; Maltby, Sarah (eds.). Spaces of War, War of Spaces. Bloomsbury.
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Schachtman, Noah; Kennedy, Michael (17 October 2014). "The Kardashian Look-Alike Trolling for Assad". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 25 October 2018. It's little wonder that Susli found her way into [Alex] Jones' orbit as conspiracies lie at the heart of her worldview, if her comments on social media are any indication. According to her, 9/11 was an 'inside job.' al Qaeda and ISIS, by her telling, don't exist in the form they've been presented to the global public. First off, they're one in the same. Second, they're a CIA front—hence the use of 'ALCIAda,' a favorite portmanteau.
  8. ^ a b "'Partisan Girl' & the Online Battle for Syria". Al Bawaba. Retrieved 3 September 2021.
  9. ^ a b Koltai, Kolina (8 December 2023). "Images of Syrian Civil War Take on a Second Life in Gaza Conflict". bellingcat. Retrieved 11 December 2023.
  10. ^ a b c "Australian blogger Syrian Girl posts views on ISIS, US airstrikes, Ebola". news.com.au. 22 October 2014. Retrieved 3 September 2021.
  11. ^ a b Hilsman, Patrick (29 December 2016). "Down the Alt-Right's Syrian Rabbit Hole". Pulse. Retrieved 17 September 2020. The Assad regime had a relationship with the American far-right long before Susli's appearances on InfoWars. ... [Speaking to Alex Jones, Susli said:] 'I'm not gonna come here and deny that the government wasn't a dictatorship, it wasn't corrupt, that, you know, that people weren't angry with it. I'm not gonna say that there wasn't a legitimate reason for people to want to create that change but the fact is that was totally exploited and even pre planned by the foreign agendas, the US, NATO, basically the global elite as you call them'. ... [Regarding the Ghouta chemical attack she said:] 'It's absolutely undeniable that little children died in Damascus three days ago and that the images are shocking and anyone cannot deny that ... and I also don't want to implicate the rebels as a whole. ... I don't want to implicate them directly because I'm sure some of them have families that live in that area and I believe that they themselves are pasties to a global game that they are cannon fodder for and the powers that be have managed to convince them that they are going to get armed that they are going to get no fly zones ...they want to divide Syria up into mini states and they wanna crush any rogue state'.
  12. ^ a b c d Valenzuela, Natalie (13 October 2014). "Meet the YouTube Sensation Who Predicts Syria's Future". Vice. Retrieved 1 September 2021.
  13. ^ a b "How Syrians Talk About Assad: Zaina Erhaim vs. Partisan Girl". Al Bawaba. Retrieved 1 September 2021.
  14. ^ Matthews, Miriam; Migacheva, Katya; Brown, Ryan Andrew (2021). Superspreaders of Malign and Subversive Information of COVID-19: Russian and Chinese Efforts Targeting the United States (PDF). RAND Corporation. ISBN 978-1-9774-0687-3. Retrieved 11 November 2022.
  15. ^ Press Release. "Treasury Sanctions Russians Bankrolling Putin and Russia-Backed Influence Actors". United States Department of the Treasury. Retrieved 11 November 2022.
  16. ^ a b Ahmad, Muhammad Idrees (13 March 2017). "For Russian TV, Syria isn't just a foreign country — it's a parallel universe". The Washington Post. Retrieved 23 August 2019.
  17. ^ Kennedy, Noah Shachtman (17 October 2014). "The Kardashian Look-Alike Trolling for Assad". The Daily Beast.
  18. ^ "Prominent white supremacists are still on YouTube in wake of ban | CNN Business". CNN. 11 June 2019.
  19. ^ Bevensee, Emmi (2021). "How COVID and Syria Conspiracies Introduce Fascism to the Left: The Red-Brown Media Spectrum". In Leidig, Eviane (ed.). The Radical Right During Crisis. Stuttgart, Germany: Ibidem Verlag. pp. 144–145. ISBN 9783838215761.
  20. ^ Silkoff, Shira (29 June 2021). "Former Democratic Congresswoman claims Jews caused 9/11 on Twitter". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 5 September 2021.
  21. ^ "Aussie internet sensation takes on IS". PerthNow. 22 October 2014. Retrieved 1 September 2021.
  22. ^ a b Ellis, Emma Fray (31 May 2017). "To Make Your Conspiracy Theory Legit, Just Find an 'Expert'". Wired. Retrieved 27 September 2017.
  23. ^ "Australian blogger Syrian Girl posts views on ISIS, US airstrikes, Ebola". NewsComAu. 22 October 2014. Retrieved 23 August 2021.
  24. ^ Bloomfield, Steve (17 July 2018). "Whatever happened to Seymour Hersh?". Prospect. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
  25. ^ Higgins, Eliot (4 April 2019). "Tulsi Gabbard's Reports on Chemical Attacks in Syria - A Self-Contradictory Error Filled Mess". Bellingcat. Retrieved 30 May 2021.
  26. ^ a b Stewart, Heather (19 April 2018). "Russia spread fake news via Twitter bots after Salisbury poisoning – analysis". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 May 2019.
  27. ^ a b c Williams, Martin (24 April 2018). "FactCheck: How Twitter users were wrongly labelled as Russian bots after a government briefing". Channel 4 News. London. Retrieved 27 July 2019.
  28. ^ "Fact Check: Does Video Show Israel Helicopter Shoot Festival Goers?". Newsweek. 13 November 2023.
  29. ^ "Distort and Deceive: One Pro-Assad Influencer's Disinfo War on Israel". polygraph.info. 15 November 2023.
  30. ^ Alba, Davey; Lu, Denise; Yin, Leon; Fan, Eric (21 November 2023). "How Musk's X Is Failing To Stem the Surge of Misinformation About Israel and Gaza". Bloomberg.com. Archived from the original on 21 November 2023. Retrieved 22 November 2023.
  31. ^ Higgins, Eliot (20 August 2014). "Attempts to Blame the Syrian Opposition for the August 21st Sarin Attacks Continue One Year On". bellingcat. Retrieved 1 August 2019. Maram has expressed the view that the Syrian government was not responsible for the August 21st Sarin attacks
  32. ^ "A group of online 'activists' are claiming Syria's chemical attacks were staged". News.com.au. 23 April 2018. Retrieved 1 November 2023.
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