By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 4 March 2023
Nazism: Origins and the Weimar Context
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Tag Archives: France
Al-Qaeda Claimed It Was Behind the 2015 ‘Charlie Hebdo’ Attack. But Was It?
“Socialism With A Human Face” Was Always Impossible
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 21 August 2022
It was on this day in 1968, fifty-four years ago, that the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia, one of its colonies in the “Warsaw Pact”, which had embarked on a program of liberalising reforms. The Czech leadership did not intend to depart from the socialist path, merely to soften its edges—and ran into the brute fact that this was not possible. Continue reading
United Nations Report Finds Al-Qaeda and Islamic State Reduced, But Reviving
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 30 July 2022
Islamic State in Palmyra, December 2016
Tajikistan and the Afghan Resistance
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 1 October 2021
Since the takeover of Afghanistan by a coalition of jihadists controlled by Pakistan, the one neighbouring state to vocally object is Tajikistan, which has extended support to the remaining anti-Taliban resistance. This is a reprise of Tajikistan’s role in the 1990s, when it provided a rear base to the United Islamic Front (UIF) or “Northern Alliance”, and was the gateway for the states supporting the UIF, notably Pakistan’s great rival India. Continue reading
Al-Qaeda Congratulates the Taliban on its Victory in Afghanistan
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 31 August 2021
Al-Qaeda’s General Command released a statement earlier today through As-Sahab Media congratulating the Taliban on its victory in Afghanistan. This is the first statement from Al-Qaeda Central since the cataclysmic events in Afghanistan over the past few weeks. The official silence of the organisation heretofore—even as its operatives worked in lock-step with the rest of the coalition of jihadists run by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to conquer the country—is almost certainly deliberate, to allow the Taliban and the United States political cover to ensure the American departure while avoiding the ramifications of Al-Qaeda controlling the Afghan state, the very thing the mission in Afghanistan was intended to (and had succeeded in, so long as it was sustained) undoing. The statement itself is exactly what one would expect: gloating about the West’s defeat and the damage to American hegemony, saying this proves that jihad is the only way, and that the Taliban’s “Islamic Emirate” is merely the first step in a global campaign to bring the world under the rule of the shari’a. The text of the English-language statement is posted below, with some minor editions for transliteration and translation. Continue reading
General Franco’s Intentions in the Second World War
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 25 June 2021
Writing recently about the first meeting between Adolf Hitler and Francisco Franco at Hendaye on 23 October 1940, where the Führer tried to enlist Spain into the Axis, I concluded, drawing on Franco: The Man and His Nation by George Hills, a former BBC journalist and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society:
The Last Coup of the Russian Tsardom
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 29 March 2021
Tsar Pavel I
A few days ago, it was the 220th anniversary of the palace coup that, in the early hours of 24 March 1801, deposed the Russian Tsar, Pavel (Paul) I, the last of the Russian monarchs to fall in this way.[1] Continue reading
Islamic State Calls for Muslims to “Fight and Abuse” Infidels Until They Stop Blaspheming
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 2 November 2020
Al-Naba 258, page 3
In the 258th edition of Al-Naba, the Islamic State’s (IS) weekly newsletter, the main editorial on page three is entitled, “Fight the Heads of Disbelief, Perhaps They Will Desist”, and addresses the ongoing and now international dispute after the murder of Samuel Paty, a French schoolteacher, on 16 October. Paty had, after offering those who wanted to leave that opportunity, shown the cartoons from Charlie Hebdo during a class on free speech, and was subsequently beheaded by an Islamist accusing him of blasphemy. In the two weeks since, many Islamist and jihadist groups and individuals, as well as alarming proportions of ordinary Muslims, even in Western countries, have said Paty deserved what he got—albeit at varying levels of openness. A similar message has been transmitted by a number of governments in Muslim-majority countries, notably Turkey and Pakistan, who have effectively blamed France for the atrocity, either citing the French version of secularism (laïcité), racism, or some other grievance. The primary message of IS’s editorial is to declare itself unimpressed with these stances. Continue reading
Islamic State Celebrates the Murder of French Schoolteacher
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 24 October 2020
Al-Naba 257, page 3
The 257th edition of Al-Naba, the weekly newsletter of the Islamic State (IS), was released on 22 October. Al-Naba 257 contains an article praising the 16 October murder of French schoolteacher Samuel Paty by an Islamist who accused him of blasphemy for showing the Charlie Hebdo cartoons of Islam’s prophet Muhammad during a class on free speech, but the article does not claim that the Chechen refugee who carried out the assassination, Abdoullakh Anzorov, was an IS operative. Among other things, this is a reminder that IS’s claims of responsibility are not indiscriminate, even if it is believed there have been a couple of incidents of high-profile deception. Continue reading
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