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Richie Allen, a leading candidate for best host in international talk radio, has returned from his sabbatical refreshed and well-informed. (He must not have been on a news fast!) Below is a transcript of our conversation. -KB

Richie Allen: What can you glean from people locally (in Morocco) in terms of how they view cataclysmic geopolitical events like what we've seen in Syria in the last week or days? ...In light of what happened in the last week or so, the the fleeing of Bashar al-Assad to Russia, the taking of Damascus by a conglomerate of so-called rebels... What's the mood, Kevin, as far as you can ascertain in your own town there in Morocco?

Kevin Barrett: Well, Richie, I think a lot of people in the West don't really understand how people in the MENA region—that's Middle East North Africa region—see these things. And it's a little more complicated than the alternative media narrative versus the mainstream narrative, where the Axis of Resistance, for people like me, is the good guys, right? The folks resisting genocide are the good guys, and that would have included the Assad government in Syria. And all of the other forces tend to be more nefarious.

But basically, people here seem to be both absolutely fed up, appalled, and at their wit's end by this genocide of Gaza, which is the central issue affecting the whole global south. But they're not so much attached to the Axis of Resistance. There's been a certain amount of success, I think, with the propaganda campaign that's been designed to sort of contain Islamic Iran, and convince people in the so-called Sunni Muslim world that Iran and its Axis of Resistance are not all they're cracked up to be.

So for that reason, a lot of people in Morocco, even while they appreciated to some extent the way that Iran and its allies have been trying to stop the genocide—and certainly everybody here has been cheering for the Houthis as they shut down shipping in the Red Sea, and cheering for Hezbollah and mourning the loss of these great resistance leaders. But at the same time, there's a feeling that some of the the Axis of Resistance, particularly the Assad government, is not really capable of taking on the Zionists.

And so there's a propaganda talking point that's out there. I don't really think it's a strong, true talking point, but a lot of people here kind of believe it, which is that we need to get rid of Assad so we can get rid of the Zionists. "Assad didn't really do anything to stop the slow motion genocide of Palestine. He talks a good game, but he and his Iranian friends, they haven't really been very successful. And now that the majority population of Syria is back in the driver's seat, backed by Turkey, which wants to restore the Ottoman Empire, which of course used to run that part of the world with consent and was viewed as legitimate by the people there, that now we actually may be seeing down the line a force that can actually stop Zionism.

And so people here are actually kind of happy about whats happening in Syria. I'm not. I was cheering for the Axis of Resistance. I thought Bashar al-Assad was one of the very few decent human beings in a leadership position. But maybe he was too decent to be a powerful leader.

A number of journalists I've been hearing from in recent days—these would be Western mainstream journalists. So immediately the starting point is you've got to take what they say, with a large dose of salt. But a number of them are reflecting on their knowledge of Bashar al-Assad pre-2011 and shortly after 2011. And the picture one or two of these old hacks are painting is that this guy was a fairly weak guy.

Now, one or two of these journalists have even sounded like they've been inclined to give him a bit of a pass in terms of separating him from the Syrian army. There was always a large body of Syrians, not necessarily backed by the West, by the United States or by Israel, or not necessarily backed by Turkey, but just Syrians who hated Hafez al-Assad, his father, and hated the notion that the Assad dynasty was going to continue when Bashar al-Assad came back from the UK in the mid-noughties to take the throne.

I suppose the point I'm making is, could it be that he didn't really have any control over, or didn't have as much or enough control over his own military? Is that a fair question, and could it be legitimate? I'm thinking in terms of, we all know the Arab Spring and the National Endowment for Democracy, and we all know there was an awful lot of outside interference and stirring up tension in Tunisia, in Egypt, and then Syria. Of course, I know that. But there were always large, large numbers of people who were fed up with the status quo, with that way of living. You kind of get what I'm getting at here, that Assad was kind of lost in the middle of all of that, really, and didn't really have any real power. What do you think of that when you hear that?

Yeah, I think that's true. I think that's why he was targeted. They look for weaknesses, and that situation probably was not really sustainable.

The background is that for the centuries in which Syria was part of the Ottoman Empire, the upper class part of the population, and indeed the majority of the population, were Sunni Muslims. And then you had a whole bunch of other kinds of groups, Christians and Alawites and Shia people and all of these other groups that were marginalized, and tended to be in the mountains and were not as wealthy. So there was kind of a wealthy Sunni bourgeoisie that ruled the country and cooperated with the Ottomans. Then the French invaded after World War One and Ottoman rule was overthrown and the French took over. And the french put the Christians, and to some extent the Alawites and the other religious minorities, in charge, and demoted the the former elite. And that really rankled on those people who were demoted. Later when when the French withdrew, the rulers who were from the minority communities found a new way to legitimize themselves, which was to adopt the Ba'athist ideology of secular socialist Arab nationalism.

And that never really took hold. I think Baathist Arab nationalism and the different varieties of Arab nationalism have never actually become a thing. And people in this part of the world have thought of themselves as a whole lot of things, but "the Arab nation"—it has really been just intellectuals who dreamed that up.

Here in Morocco, hardly anybody really thinks of themselves as Arab. The people who grew up speaking Arabic technically might be called Arabs as opposed to Berbers or Amazirs who speak that language. But nobody thinks of themselves that way.

So how do they?

Well, here people think of themselves as Moroccans or Maghribis, that is the Western Islamic people, and mostly identify as Muslims—not that the Jews and Christians here would be any less Moroccan, but Islam is really the first kind of identification.

And so I think that's kind of what's going on is that the majority population of Syria is part of this group that was basically demoted and overthrown and knocked out of power by the French. And they've been wanting to get back ever since. And the Muslim Brotherhood is one of the groups that represents that and sees it in terms of trying to restore a particular kind of Sunni Islam.

And so those are the forces that are taking over. And is this good for the West and the Israelis? The West and the Israelis have been trying to do this for decades and they finally got it done. I think they're maybe going to rue the day that they did this. In Rise and Kill First, Ronan Bergman, the Israeli Mossad stenographer, talks about how the Israelis have repeatedly neutralized one threat only to create an even bigger threat. They neutralized the secular Palestinian resistance of the PLO, and then they got the religious resistance of Hamas and Hezbollah and the Axis of Resistance. And now that they've screwed that up, guess who's coming to town now? A new resistance. Hamas is totally cheering for this new leadership in Syria, which is, of course, dedicated to liberating Palestine. And it'll have the backing of the vast majority of the world's Muslims who identify as Sunni Muslims. That's like 85 plus percent of the world's Muslim population is gonna be far more engaged with being dedicated to avenging this genocide and liberating Palestine. So I think the Zionists are once again going to rue the day...they think that they won a battle, but it's going to be the biggest Pyrrhic victory in the history of warfare.

And you think Hamas is certainly excited by, is thrilled by this development. I'll tell you—and you know when I speak, I speak for myself and I'm not reflecting on anybody else's thoughts or opinions or anybody else's agenda. I, like yourself, followed the events of Syria and the Arab Spring over the last years. What I can see independently, and I can't verify everything. But videos emerging from Syria, from Damascus an...