Hawzah News Agency - Although the political agenda of Middle Eastern regimes and far-right groups are not always compatible, they find a common middle ground for their own interests. For instance, Arab governments spend millions of dollars on research to shape Western thinking about domestic political activists opposing their rule, some of whom are religious, a Foreign Policy report published on Saturday said, adding that "they elicit sympathy from the West" by claiming to also suffer from the malice of radical terrorists and offer to work together to stem the ideological roots of the threat.

The report notes that Arab regimes employ scare tactics to exaggerate the threat and "create an atmosphere in which an alternative to these regimes becomes unthinkable from a Western policy standpoint." This rhetoric also allows these regimes to crack down on dissent under the name of terrorism.

For instance, the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke had expressed support for Syria's Bashar Assad during a visit to Damascus in 2005, disregarding the autocrat's oppression against the Syrians.