Iran: A 1930s Level Crossroads for the International Left
By Al Giordano
First, a fresh report from Iran, from Entekhab News – one of the Farsi-language news sources blocked within Iran by the regime - translated for The Field by Hessam Rahimian:
Hundreds of thousand People are gathering in Imam Khomeini Sq in the heart of Tehran while wearing black shirts and holding candles to mourning for people killed earlier this week.
Entekhab broadcasting reports that the Imam Khomeini Sq is full of supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi and people even can’t exit from underground station and they are getting off the underground at next station.
Mir hossein Mousavi was seen among his supporters wearing black shirt and he spoke to people on top of a car with a small portable speaker.
Basijis were seen in streets around holding bats and helmet to scatter people.
We’ll start posting these immediate translations here at The Field with greater frequency from now on.
Meanwhile, some related thoughts on the historic moment we are in, and particularly as they pertain to the international left.
It is impressive to some (including me) and immensely frustrating to some others that so much of the international left has lined up against the purportedly left-of-center yet brutally authoritarian Iranian regime during the historic post-electoral struggle that is underway.
English-language, left-liberal journals from The Nation to The Huffington Post to the rank-and-file blogger army at the Daily Kos have rallied in solidarity with the millions of protesters in the streets of Iran.
That the events in Iran have caused a schism on the right is well established. There are neocons freaking out that they may not have Ahmadinejad as a convenient prop to inspire fear and justify warlike policies. In recent days, they’ve succeeded in marginalizing themselves in the same ways that some sectors of the left unwittingly accomplished for so many years, causing an infrequent alliance between what might be called the Reagan right and the libertarian right, which shares the world’s – including the majority on the left’s - shock and horror at the violent response of the Iranian regime to peaceful protest and speech, and our pleasure at seeing People Power rise up against it.
Virtually identical to those neoconservatives on the right are some on the left who do not celebrate that the Iranian regime teeters at the abyss. What do they have in common? It is a nostalgia for the Cold War and an inability to break out of its dualist mode of thought: one in which the world is divided between two ideological poles (the dinosaur left and the neocon right disagree only on which pole is “good” and which is “evil” but the rest of their analyses line up seamlessly together; as they argue with each other, the rest of the world has moved on to embrace a more current reality).
As a student and often protagonist of the history of the left, it’s crystal clear that this situation resonates strongly with what occurred in the 1930s. There came a turning point in the international left when a critical mass turned against its flirtation with Benito Mussolini’s regime in Italy and "that other guy in Europe" whose name can’t be spoken without invoking Godwin’s Law.
Woody Guthrie’s legendary guitar, upon which he wrote “this machine kills fascists,” is a wonderful emblem for that historic shift. The US left became the Western vanguard of opposing fascism’s rise across the sea. Those on the left that continued their flirtation with the German and Italian experiments long after they had slid into fascism are not remembered very fondly by history. We are at a similar crossroads today.
Belief in a bipolar world in which “good” countries ally against “evil” ones internalizes the bipolar cycle of mania and depression among its adherents. It disregards what those of us on the left ought to understand better than most: that global capitalism has made the nation-state a secondary player on the world stage. One of the reasons that George W. Bush’s “war on terror” did not last as a new operating principle for the planet is that it did not snugly fit with such Cold War thinking: when the opposing force is not itself a nation state, there’s no longer a clear dualism. Nation states have a very difficult time when they choose to battle with amorphous networks that do not themselves have flags or capital cities. The same flailing that occurred from Bush’s corner in his inept and harmful attempts to deal with Al Qaida is inverted today. The Iranian state is in a similar spasm in trying to deal with an amorphous nonviolent network of communications and resistance by its own citizens. It’s confusion can be seen in this statement, yesterday, by its Revolutionary Guard bureaucracy:
Washington, 17 June (WashingtonTV)—Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps [IRGC] issued a statement today in which it warned online activists that if they fan the flames of “disorder on the streets,” they will face “legal confrontation” by the IRGC, which will have “grave results”.
Addressing the people of Iran, the IRGC said in the statement: “Unfortunately, currents which deviate from the principles and values of the revolution, have been behind all the disorder in the country in the past few years…and the disorder in these days, which has resulted in hooligans and vandals assaulting people’s lives, possessions, and honor, is the result of a designed, pre-planned scenario on their part.”
In its statement, the IRGC said that “the argument over the election and the number of votes and the winner, have only been a pretext for generating insecurity and riot.”
It adds that “with precise examination of the country’s cyberspace, the Center for the Investigation of Organized Crime has encountered numerous instances of deviant news websites, which have changed [their] approach and created numerous sites and weblogs to disturb the public, publicize riots and create disorder on the street, and with their lies, fabricated accusations and organized riots, they continue their illegal actions of sabotaging and disrupting order and public security.”
The IRGC warned “those who publicize disorder and threats to the people and spread rumors in cyberspace, to take action to eliminate such content.”
A government that engages in such desperate and punitive efforts to censor speech during a time of crisis loses its legitimacy to govern.
Any government that blames events in the physical world (such as street protests) on words in the virtual world (in this case, the Internet) has lost its grip on reality. Any attempt to hold non-corporate speech as somehow responsible for the deeds of millions begins the slippery slope to fascism. And the response by the Iranian regime, as seen in that press release, is akin to trying to attack a beehive with a shotgun: you’ll surely kill a few bees, but, man, are you going to get stung, and the bees will thrive anyway.
I personally find the defense of the Ahmadinejad-Khameini regime from some self-marginalized corners of the left to be as embarrassing as it is despicable. It is the sort of thing that can and will likely end friendships and old alliances (simultaneously opening new ones) and, objectively speaking, it should. The reason I don’t single any of these misguided individuals out as examples is not to invent “straw men," but is, rather, a fraternal gesture. I hold out hope that – just as in the 1930s - as events prove the Iranian regime to be unworthy of any support or defense or apology from the authentic left that many of those stuck in such Cold War thinking will come to rethink it. The moment is now.
There are those who really seem to believe that the three million plus people in the streets are merely dupes of the manipulation of destabilization plans hatched in Washington or Tel Aviv. The latter claim is confounded by the words of Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak, who said yesterday, "We should not be confused about Mousavi - these people are fundamentalist Muslims," and those of Israeli Mossad chief Meir Dagan, who joins the neocon chorus in pooh-poohing the popular revolt as insignificant: "The riots are taking place only in Teheran and one additional region. They won't last for long." That reeks of wishful thinking and reveals that Israel's government, for one, wants Ahmadinejad to survive the tumult. Yet even if Western governments would like to fuel the protests, it still would not confer legitimacy on Iran’s fascist regime.
History has taught us that any self-proclaimed part of the left that does not resist and oppose fascism has gone over to the dark side and is no longer authentically the left.
From the standpoint of these misguided souls, here’s how they mirror neocon thought: Iran serves as a kind of place-marker, psychologically, for the former Soviet system. Because Washington is in opposition to it, Iran must therefore be considered a “good” government, worthy of solidarity. As some disgraced members of the left argued in the last century in defense Mexico’s single-party rule under the PRI, others today argue that if the Iranian state offers social programs and even if it only somewhat resists global capitalism then therefore its violent and authoritarian actions can somehow be justified, forgiven or denied.
Some portray the uprising in the streets there as a phenomenon guided by external powers. They also portray it as an upper class revolt of the elites, a claim that is demonstrably false as anybody who has watched the indigenous media – YouTube videos and such – produced by Iranian citizen journalists has seen. Some of these same people cited and cheered the reports of journalist Robert Fisk when he exposed the falsehoods promoted by the US in the Iraq war. Well, Fisk is on the streets of Iran today, and here’s his ground level and well-informed view of the protesters:
"…this was not just the trendy, young, sunglassed ladies of north Tehran. The poor were here, too, the street workers and middle-aged ladies in full chador. A very few held babies on their shoulders or children by the arm, talking to them from time to time, trying to explain the significance of this day to a mind that would not remember it in the years to come that they were here on this day of days."
So, understand, those that keep repeating the yarn that Iran's is an upper class revolt, are now saying that Fisk is somehow a liar or a dupe, too, and, worse, that their own eyes lie to them when watching the indigenous media from below out of Iran.
Indeed, there are recent examples of such attempted interventions by Washington and corporate powers in lands like Venezuela, where the opposition was the exclusive domain of previously spoiled elites. But the Venezuelan elite's sneering contempt for the workers and poor of their countries, infused with racist bigotry, was evident any time they appeared in public. The Venezuelan coup attempts indeed were what I called at the time “the revolt of the spoiled brats.” It is a gross error in observation and analysis to therefore presume that what occurs today in Iran is the result of the same dynamic. The evidence is overwhelming that the Iranian resistance spans the usual boundaries of class segregation.
Another canard being forwarded by the Iranian regime and its defenders is that “Western media” has somehow generated the uprising. That one is falling flat, though, and the regime has undercut its own argument by putting foreign reporters under house arrest, expelling others, even arresting some, and prohibiting them from shooting video or photographs of what occurs in the streets. They’ve made the capitalist media secondary players, dependent on citizen journalists for the images and words in their reports. Western corporate media has been neutered and spayed when it comes to reporting from Iran this week. And the Authentic Journalism Renaissance – media from below – is evident to the world.
The third argument used by some mistaken voices on the left and right is that Mousavi, the opposition candidate, has as authoritarian a history as Ahmadinejad, and the same goes for any comparison between the opposition’s biggest clerical backer, Rafsanjani, with the current supreme leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei. (You can see, above, that they're making the same argument as is being made by the state of Israel.) There is some truth in that, but it is an essentially elitist analysis because it focuses on the power struggle and circus going on up above among the elites and ignores the story from below, of the millions in resistance.
Revolutionary moments change everything, including the context by which either faction – or a third one, yet to be revealed, of the kind that often pops up in these situations – will be able govern. No matter which faction emerges on top as a result of the current tumult, it will not be able to rule as before. A people awakened and organized is not so easy to push around anymore.
If there is one thing we’ve learned reporting on indigenous movements throughout Latin America it is that authentic journalism reports, first and foremost, what is going on below without getting lost in the circus of power – its own dominant narrative - up above. One literally has to aim one’s cameras and microphones downward to be able to see and hear the aspirations and demands of an organized people. Those on the left that are basing their analysis on what goes on up above – the power struggle among candidates, for example - have not learned this lesson, and in that they are in the same headspace as the corporate media. They become, by doing so, allied with the corporate imperatives and, in sum, a part of what others of us are opposing.
My Mexican experience also informs another lament: As with accusations that indigenous movements south of the border must be manipulated by foreign powers behind them, there is racism in the suggestion that there must be some outside (read: white and developed world) force that has manipulated the people that are struggling against the regime. They might as well say, “those people aren’t capable of organizing themselves.” It is an argument that considers the Iranian people to be somehow subhuman. (They said the same of the Southern Civil Rights movement in the US; that those people couldn’t possibly organize themselves, so they must be manipulated by foreign communists.) It is frankly the same kind of inhuman thinking that led US Senator McCain to sing "Bomb bomb Iran." Any authentic member of the left will reject such thinking and stand up in opposition to it.
Finally, let me also explain why this reporter, who has long focused exclusively on events in this hemisphere, is so interested and captivated by the events in Iran, and writing about them here.
Ever since I penned The Medium Is the Middleman: For a Revolution Against Media, I’ve been waiting for this moment, which I predicted, twelve years ago, would come: a great day when the corporate media got pushed out of the way by authentic media from below. What is occurring worldwide, with the Iranian crisis as catalyst, is the emergence of the very kind of media from below that the human race - particularly the working class and the poor - so desperately needs.
Following these events – including the fast-developing advances in communications strategies and tactics and the efforts from above to censor and cut those communications – provides a gigantic global teach-in and workshop (much like during the 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela) on how it is done. As a journalist, I have always followed the stories that help me to learn something new and important to me. And every hour, I’m learning a new set of tricks from these brave communicators in Iran and around the world: methods and techniques that will serve us in this hemisphere, soon enough, too.
The study of how to break information blockades is a life’s study for some of us. What a wonderful classroom we’ve been provided this week. Perhaps, just as Woody Guthrie painted on his guitar, we will finally be able to mark our communications tools: “This machine kills fascists,” and then evolve it to his friend Pete Seeger’s rejoinder, painted on his banjo: “This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.”
Update: On a related note, there have been suggestions from some corners, not citing any actual facts, mind you, but nonetheless claiming that the Mousavi opposition faction is more pro-capitalist and "free trade" advocating than the Ahmadinejad-Khamenei faction. This may be another case of presumptions clouding clear vision.
In a NY Times profile of Mousavi this morning, this historic tidbit is resurrected from a previous era:
As prime minister, (Mousavi) often clashed with Ayatollah Khamenei, who was president at the time. The fights were mostly over economic issues; Mr. Moussavi favored greater state control over the wartime economy, and Ayatollah Khamenei argued for less regulation.
I don't claim to know if this is still the case. But those that claim it is not the case don't have any hard evidence to go on either. They're just making it up because they presume it to be the case based on the dynamics on past, but unrelated, "color revolutions" in Eastern Europe. The historic record, however, suggests the opposite in Iran. Maybe the neocons have additional reasons, beyond wanting a bogeyman, to favor the triumph of Ahmedinejad. Interesting, no?
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Comments
Kernel of doubt
Submitted June 18, 2009 - 11:32 am by Tom W. (not verified)Al, I guess I'm one of those "mistaken voices" on the left with grave doubts about Moussavi. Of course it's despicable to support the Ahmadinejad-Khameini regime for vague "leftist" ideological reasons - or because you're a right-winger and desperately need an opponent to demonize. But I think it's somewhat naive to think that a guy like Moussavi, who approved Salman Rushdie's death sentence and had a hand in the disappearance of 30,000 dissidents in 1988, won't merely use this moment to consolidate power. I think it's equally naive to assume that the millions marching are all pure democracy-loving movement activists.
However your 1930s analogy is spot on! Problem is, there were plenty of mass movements during that decade that didn't exactly work out - they, too, filled the streets with revolution and change and promises to empower the downtrodden people.
I do agree that the social networks allow a new kind of communications for a cause like this one (hell, I wrote a book on it!) but I'm not ready - like our President isn't either - to jump in behind one of the two major theocratic/totalitarian factions in Iran. That McCain wants us to is, to me, a warning...
Is there a chance that this uprising for one of the two flavors of the old Iranian revolution will blow both of those factions into history? I guess there is - but I'm a bit cynical about that happening, frankly. I can't accept that the Moussavi portrait on millions of flags and banners and walls "means nothing," that it's "not about the leaders" or about the power struggle. I suspect that it's exactly about that.
And although you clearly use this amazing story as an opportunity to delve deeper and learn something (me too - I agree it's a fascinating, historic time), the "pop culture" nature of so many short bursts of "support" for Iran stuns me in its naivete and lack of serious inquiry.
I guess we both hope for the same result, but you're far more the optimist.
@ Tom W
Submitted June 18, 2009 - 11:42 am by Al GiordanoTom - Let's play devil's advocate and presume, as you do, the worst: That the Mousavi-Rafsanjani faction rises to power and proceeds to behave with the same fascist tendencies as its predecessors (including themselves when they were in power years ago). If that were to happen, we would soon see the revolts continue. The horse is out of the stable. It's not going back in again. Hopes and expectations among the people - the youth, in particular (and Iran is, comparative to much of the world, a very young population) have already been raised too high to go back to what was before.
Well...
Submitted June 18, 2009 - 11:57 am by Tom W. (not verified)I think the "worst" is a successful and bloody clampdown by the Ahmadinejad-Khameini forces - not out of the realm of possibility.
But let's assume a Moussavi insurgency win: does the theocracy fall? Or is it strengthened? Does the nuclear program advance? Do they stop hanging young gay kids from cranes in the provinces? Do they still pray "Death to America" every evening? Does the revolutionary guard disband? Or is the theocratic revolution actually strengthened by the bloodletting - and ouster of less-effective mullahs for more effective mullahs?
Does Moussavi have his defeated opponents executed?
I dunno...
Or maybe the opening continues and we get real democracy with no clerics pulling the puppet strings in time - isn't that the best case?
I leave "best case scenarios" up to Iranians
Submitted June 18, 2009 - 12:20 pm by Al GiordanoTom W - Anything can happen. Here's another plausible scenario: the liberal wing of Shiite Islam, as embodied by the pacifist (almost Gandhian) dissident words and practice of the revered Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, a very different interpretation of Islam than has dominated in the last 30 years, suddenly comes into vogue.
Best case scenarios are those that pleasantly surprise. They go way beyond the rejection of a previously discredited path. They invent new ones. I think it is difficult to fathom what is possible through a western lens.
On that last sentiment...
Submitted June 18, 2009 - 12:34 pm by Tom W. (not verified)We concur.
And I've read some of Montazeri these last few days - clearly, that's the sound of real reform - Islam's version of liberation theology?
What about Chavez's support for Ahmadinejad?
Submitted June 18, 2009 - 12:37 pm by Thunderheart (not verified)First time commenter here, and I really enjoyed your article, but as a more centrist Democrat who still (barely) identifies myself as being of the Left, I am wondering how so many Left Americans who admire Chavez square his open alliance with the Holocaust-denying Ahmadinejad/Khamenei faction in Iran.
I think both sides in American politics, right and left, all too conveniently depart from their principles in foreign policy, alas. For the Left, Chavez's abuses or Castro's are forgiven because, hey, after all, they're "for the poor." So things like rigging elections, or not having elections at all in Castro's case, are put aside because American hard lefties think Chavez and Castro are overall doing the right thing.
The same is obviously true with American arch-conservartives supporting the death squad regime in El Salvador in the 1980s, or the Somocista Contras in Nicaragua, or Marcos in the Philippines, or on and on and on. So long as these thugs were anti-Communist, all other sins were forgiven by far too many on the American right.
Returning to my original point, though, I don't understand on what possible ideological grounds Leftists here in the U.S. support the Iranian thugs now facing off against a peaceful revolt of their own people. Aside from some throwaway rhetoric, Ahmadinejad is not remotely left in his politics -- he's an outright religious fundamentalist fascist, with (at least verbal) pretensions to genocide against the Jews of Israel.
I'd love to see principles adhered to -- PERIOD! -- by both sides in American politics, but particularly by the left with which I still identify.
To my mind, Chavez's support for Ahmadinejad disqualifies him as a true small-d democratic leader, because he's willing to openly applaud theft of an election and brutal repression just because Iran is anti-U.S. like he is.
Chavez stands exposed as someone who believes in democracy so long as his side wins, which ain't democratic at all. In this, he's exposed himself as a fraud just as surely as Ahmadinejad has.
@ Thunderheart
Submitted June 18, 2009 - 12:54 pm by Al GiordanoThunderheart - If I were to go along with your thinking - that someone being wrong about one thing makes him wrong about everything and therefore a "fraud" - all of you fellow earthlings would be frauds to me! And I, to you! That's a level of intolerance that I hope I never emulate.
Chavez - who has in the past read from the pages of Narco News aloud on his Alo Presidente program, and who may well read the words I've just written - is obviously one of the colleagues on the left to whom I have addressed this essay.
While I disagree with Chavez's gut reaction to the Iranian elections, I understand it. First, for geopolitical realities: Venezuela and Iran, as two of the key powers in OPEC, need each other in order to keep the price of oil high.
But there's another reason why I think Chavez reacted as he did: On the surface, the charges of electoral fraud against Iran resonate with such charges made against Venezuela after recent elections. In those cases, the charges were false (rebuked by the Carter Center and other international observer organizations) and part of a US-backed destabilization campaign.
In this sense, some adherents to the Bolivarian Revolution (of which I am one, but I do not react the same) are akin to veterans of a bloody war that, when they hear an automobile backfire, jump because it sounds like a gun shot.
There are elements to the post-electoral scene, and news coverage of it, that sound like the gunshots against Chavez. My essay is also a fraternal call on those colleagues to see, no, this is just the sound of a car backfiring, now calm down and see it for what it is.
That said, you're absolutely wrong to portray Chavez as "someone who believes in democracy so long as his side wins." First, because the proof is in last year's referendum on a new constitution which he lost, when he accepted that defeat and its results like a truly democratic leader would. The second is that when Chavez was hit by a violent coup d'etat and then his people defeated it (much as the Iranian people are rising up today against what is really a coup), he did not engage in the repressive measures that the Ahmadinejad regime is deploying today.
Chavez never ordered the police into the streets in bloodbath of violence against peaceful protesters. He never put his political opponents in prison or even charged them with any crime: not even those evidently guilty of a violent coup d'etat! Freedom of the press in Venezuela is stronger and more vibrant under Chavez than it ever was under any previous government. His internet critics are many, but not one of them has ever been censored or threatened with punishment.
To compare a leader like that with Ahmadinejad based only on the thin gruel of Venezuela's congratulatory message after the election (messages that were also sent by the governments of Turkey, Iraq and others) is George W. Bush-speak. It is an attempt to demonize and play McCarthyist guilt-by-association, when part of the lesson of Iran is that that kind of purge mentality is what has to be done away with, too.
@Thunderheart
Submitted June 18, 2009 - 12:59 pm by celia (not verified)I am reposting Al's comment on another of his reports on Iran in response to another reader:
"
@ "Bolivarian"
Submitted June 17, 2009 - 7:28 am by Al Giordano
"Bolivarian" - First of all, how ironic that between the time you posted your comment and I woke up to approve it, others had already relayed Robert Fisk's reports that demonstrate your claims are untrue: the opposition in Iran is multi-class, unlike the esqualidos of Venezuela.
And I'll tell you another thing (because I reported it as it was happening and remember it very well): President Chavez, even after being kidnapped at gunpoint by a military coup, did not engage in the repressive activities that the current Iranian regime is doing to put down protests. His government never prosecuted a single coup plotter. Not a one was imprisoned, beaten or tortured, much less assassinated. All of those things have happened in Iran in a matter of hours.
Yes, I have heard the claims that these millions in the streets of Iran are "upper class" but one need only look at the YouTube videos and cell-phone photos being provided not by the corporate media, but by the people themselves, to quickly grasp how untrue such statements are.
I suggest you inform yourself better both about the events in Iran and also the history in Venezuela. You could start here. One thing that marks the Bolivarian Circles in Venezuela is they always want to work with the best and most accurate information, and put a high emphasis on self-education. Before you go around using their name as your online ID, I suggest you emulate and try to be more like them first. You're shaming the name by spreading disinformation."
ALSO
"
@ Shifferraw
Submitted June 17, 2009 - 2:57 pm by Al GiordanoShifferraw - Human Rights Watch has been criticized from these pages consistently ever since the 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela.
Here's some news about their antics back in 2004.
Here's HRW's director Jose Vivanco, in 2005, speaking out against the establishment of new media!
Vivanco and company are myopically dedicated to portray democratic governments as somehow opponents of human rights while they provide important cover for undemocratic regimes from Mexico to Colombia. Most recently, in his zeal to put on a clown show aimed at discrediting Venezuela, Vivanco entered the country without having applied for the same human rights observer visa that Venezuela had granted him multiple times prior. He then called a press conference, in violation of his tourist visa. He was expelled from the country (the same would definitely happen to foreigner doing that in the United States) and used his clown show to try and portray Venezuela as being opposed to human rights.
Yet on every level, Venezuela under Chavez has more press freedom, more freedom of dissent and speech, less repression, than it had in any previous administration in the country's history. You can do a search here at Narco News and read scores of stories documenting those claims. I hope you take the time to do so."
from this report: http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/cowardice-bill-keller-ayatollah-new-york-times#comments
I am sure Al may again comment if he has time.
Posts like this are why I
Submitted June 18, 2009 - 1:04 pm by Trinity (not verified)Posts like this are why I return again and again to this site. You give me much to consider Al. Thank you.
Fascism
Submitted June 18, 2009 - 3:41 pm by Antony SchofieldI'd just like to add that Ahmadi-Nejad's holocaust denial has greatly helped the overtly fascist, and holocaust denying, British National Party to gain credibility over here; as well as helping it scrape its way to two seats in the European parliament (the first time the Brits have ever elected fascists to anything).
The far-right anywhere strengthens the far-right everywhere.
Also, The Pirate Bay are linking to this site for people that want to help those in Iran:
http://iran.whyweprotest.net/
Art that has to be in a gallery to be art isn't art.
Al I am very grateful for
Submitted June 18, 2009 - 4:09 pm by valdivia (not verified)Al I am very grateful for this article which is spot on. I read you all the time and greatly respect you and tend to see eye to eye with you on pretty much everything.
But, yes there is a but, the one thing I just cannot agree with you on or accept is Chavez getting some sort of free pass just because he has been accused by others of fraud to support Ahmadinejad and the thugs who are right now oppressing a movement that is the most dramatic show of people power we have seen in many many years, especially in the context of a regime that as you said so eloquently before is not free and where doing it risks life and limb. Even more disturbing to me is that Chavez's support for Ahmadinejad continues unabated despite what is so clearly happening on the streets of Teheran; he continues to claim that this has been organized by foreing agents and to stand steadfast in support of oppression. Furthermore, Chavez's support predates the current election and Ahmadinejad was just as fascitic and undemocratic before the election.
I have no brief here for those who loathe Chavez, my worry, or my problem is that giving Chavez a free pass just because he has been fighting similar fights as Ahmadinejad and his memories of this we should let him get away with this support, we should strive to just understand him, instead of clearly saying he is behaving towards the Iranian protesters the way the escualidos and the right wing idiots in this country behave towards *his* supporters. I guess I would like to see someone of consequence who supports Chavez say it without equivocation--Chavez is dead wrong to support Ahmadinejad. No excuses. Obviously I am not saying it *has* to be you Al but given how passionately you feel about what is going on I would ask, why isn't it you? May a friendly reminder of what is really going on in Iran from hsi own supproters and friends, a calling out, be healthy and crucial?
The self-marginalized left
Submitted June 18, 2009 - 4:38 pm by Tom Greensfelder (not verified)Al: thanks for your long and thoughtful article... incredibly a friend had just sent me a lefty article this morning whose author believes Ahmadinejad is being "demonized" among other paranoid fantasies, ie:
"As a person who has seen it all from inside the US government, I believe that the purpose of the US government’s manipulation of the American and puppet government media is to discredit the Iranian government by portraying the Iranian government as an oppressor of the Iranian people and a frustrater of the Iranian people’s will. This is how the US government is setting up Iran for military attack."
It's a sad day when the left can't recognize a popular uprising for what it is.
Excellent Reporting on Iran.
Submitted June 18, 2009 - 5:19 pm by JustinaForJustice (not verified)Thanks for your excellent work on developing events in Iran. While a part of me has serious doubts about whether a Moussavi government would appreciably improve the conditions for women and workers in Iran, there is no doubt that millions of Iranians are willing to put their lives on the line in that belief.
The machinations of the various religious leaders who are supporting Moussavi while weakening Almadinejad, are unlikely to be produce enthusiastic supporters of a real democracy. They pursue their own places in the power hierarchy. But their opposition does provide some measure of protection for the folks in the streets.
I was struck by the suggested association of dissident Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri with Liberation Theology. If he truly espouses a similar doctrine from the Moslem perspective, that would be a major advance over Amadinejad's reactionary fundamentalism. That would greatly aid the status of women in Iran.
Liberation theology was one of the roots of Chavez's Bolivarian socialism. As an American woman living in Venzuela, I have been profoundly delighted by Chavez's commitment both to equality for women and democratic principles. Indeed, they seem to go together as I've observed a massive number of women who are taking leading roles in the community councils here -- as well as holding many important positions in the highest levels of the Chavez government.
I was disapointed by Chavez's rapid support for Almadinejad's victory, but as Chavez is neither an anti-woman religious fundamentalist nor an undemocratic dictator, I expect his position may change if it becomes clear that that the Iranian movement will be truly democratic, and not be subject to control by reactionary corporatist and imperialist forces.
Meanwhile, the brave actions of the Iranian people in taking to the streets to protect their votes will hopefully serve as a model for Americans who should do the same to get the health care and and other social and economic programs we so desperately need. Obama needs to be pushed -- hard -- to act for the people, not the plutocrats. Millions of Americans in the streets might just do that.
@ Valdivia
Submitted June 18, 2009 - 6:16 pm by Al GiordanoValdivia - If you're looking for some kind of showy denouncement of Chavez, don't hold your breath waiting for it from me. Not. Gonna. Happen.
It really doesn't matter what Chavez says about Iran. He has no vote or authority over the situation. And as Obama has pointed out eloquently, foreign support for the people in the streets will only strengthen Ahmadinejad's hand in painting them as foreign influenced or agents.
I'll repeat that I really hate the typically US tendency in politics of demanding that this one denounce that one. I loathe the politics of denouncement. (It reminds me of the demands that Obama denounce Bill Ayers during the election!) I don't practice them. And I don't insist that anybody else does, particularly, as in this case, it doesn't matter in terms of changing the outcome.
Finally, I am sensitive to what I pointed out before: To many millions in Venezuela, this does look and sound a lot like the attempted coups against them and their will, even though it isn't. Nor am I going to denounce a Vietnam Vet who jumps from his chair each time a car backfires and makes a loud "boom." Chavez also is responding to public opinion in his country, as all leader do.
It's clear from what I've already said that I'm not at all shy about expressing this disagreement with Chavez or anyone else. That's exactly what I've done here. But nor am I shy about saying that the politics of puritanical denouncement has no place in a civilized society, not the one I want to live in.
@JustinaForJustice
Submitted June 18, 2009 - 6:23 pm by Laura M. PoyneerI appreciated your comment and was nodding along in agreement until the last part. Assuming that if Obama is just "pushed" hard enough things will change does not make sense to me. As Al has illustrated on many previous occasions, many of the roadblocks to real change are in Congress. Even if Obama had the politics of Chavez, he would still need to get his bills through Congress, including 60 votes in the reactionary Senate. He doesn't have a magic wand that allows him to enact everything by fiat, and such a thing would be undemocratic within the American political system.
I would like to see more people offering practical action plans for getting Congress to support and pass by majority vote (or by 60 votes in the Senate!) the changes we need.
The Carnation Revolution
Submitted June 18, 2009 - 6:58 pm by Erin RosaTo many of my Portuguese friends the events in Iran bring up memories of the Carnation Revolution in the 1970s, where the left staged a successful coup over the brutal dictatorship initially chaired by António Salazar. (Salazar actually looked to Germany and Italy fascism for pointers during his rule.) Incidentally, the 35th anniversary of the revolution was in April. I'm also happy to see that the current administration in the White House, to the best of my knowledge, has chosen not to interfere in the Iranian peoples' struggles. This is why Obama matters, kids.
yes, but this reminds me of
Submitted June 18, 2009 - 7:29 pm by Anonymous13 (not verified)What about the elements of the left that sympathize(d) with the Soviet Union or revolutionary Maoism?
Or the elements of the left that now sympathize so much with authoritarian terrorists like Hamas that they lose their common decency (condemning self-defense and security measures but not terrorism)?
Maybe the Hezbollah and Palestinian death squads used by the Iranian regime to attack the protesters will give them something to think about...
Al as always I appreciate
Submitted June 18, 2009 - 9:03 pm by valdivia (not verified)Al as always I appreciate that you both publish and answer those engaging with you in a back and forth. I will just add that I am not seeking a denounciation, I specifically meant a calling out. There is a difference no? When Obama does something wrong we all call him out, you too have done so, and that is not a denunciation. Perhaps if someone would simply ask Chavez as a friend why a people's movement, which every day grows, is not legitimate in his eyes. Chavez himself calls people out all the time on support for causes he dissagrees with so I think it is fair for others to do the same to him, this is not abut denunciation it is about, as you clearly say in your piece, a moment in history where some are being blinded by their own history.idoelogical blindness to see what is really happening. Is saying Chavez is wrong a denunciation? Really? I guess my idea of renouncing and denouncing is a little stronger than a simple calling out.
I still do not see how the experience in Venezuela excuses the support of Ahmadinejad. But that it just me. I find it jarring that leaders who spend their time denouncing and calling people out on behavior they find despicable (again Chavez is not shy, is he, about this) not only keep quiet but actually encourage the oppressors when it is convenient for them. I hate when it happens on the right, it is even worse (for me, because I am a woman of the left) to see it happen on the left.
Moussavi and economics
Submitted June 18, 2009 - 9:18 pm by Laura M. PoyneerThis book has some information on Moussavi's economic policies as prime minister during the 1980s. A section comparing his last economic plan to Rafsanjani's first one says:
The new pragmatist cabinet of President Hashemi Rafsanjani decided that it needed a bolder, flexible, more open, and largely market-oriented plan.... The Hashemi plan...intends to move the economy toward a mixed and semiopen economy with a more powerful private component.
more economics
Submitted June 18, 2009 - 10:25 pm by Laura M. PoyneerAnother book provides some greater background on Moussavi. He belonged to a faction called the maktabis, who were lay (not clerics; Moussavi is a civil engineer and architect by profession) and their views are described as:
They advocated a strong centralized economy, the total nationalization of major industries, and a comprehensive land reform, and they viewed the Islamic Revolution as a movement geared to benefit the downtrodden.
Another passage mentions:
Prime Minister Musavi felt it necessary to devote much time to the problem [over nationalization]. He pointed out that the guardianship council had not ruled the cooperatives to be against Islamic law: "The cooperatives are one of the revolutionary foundations in our country," he said, "consequently, they are being strongly supported by the deprived people."
Another interesting passage reads:
[Musavi] pressed on the new deputies the issue of how to redress "the gap between the wealthy and poor through execution of the Article 49." (This article gives the government the authority to confiscate the wealth "accumulated through usury, usurpation, bribery, embezzlement, and misappropriation" during the pre-revolutionary period.)
This second book has a lot of details about Moussavi's premiership, including his relations with Khamenai (then president), Rafsanjani, and Karrubi (the other reform candidate in this election).
Some neocons get it
Submitted June 19, 2009 - 1:51 am by Derek (not verified)Never thought I'd see Micheal Ledeen and Al Giordano converging on a foreign policy observation but by god it happened:
http://pajamasmedia.com/michaelledeen/2009/06/17/so-now-whats-going-on-i...
"The same mistake is repeated when people say that Mousavi, after all, is “one of them,” a member of the founding generation of the Islamic Republic, and so you can’t expect real change from him.
...
I think that, whatever or whoever Mir Hossein Mousavi was five days ago, he is now the leader of a mass movement that demands the creation of a free Iran that will rejoin the Western world. And yes, the wheel could turn again, this revolution could one day be betrayed, all kinds of surprises no doubt await the Iranian people. Yes, but. But today, there is a dramatic chance of a very good thing happening in Iran, and thus in the Middle East, and therefore in the whole world."
Which goes with Al's point:
"Revolutionary moments change everything, including the context by which either faction – or a third one, yet to be revealed, of the kind that often pops up in these situations – will be able govern. No matter which faction emerges on top as a result of the current tumult, it will not be able to rule as before. A people awakened and organized is not so easy to push around anymore."
Hard to find right now, but there seems to be some (ok, just this one) neocons that actually get it.
great piece, Al
Submitted June 19, 2009 - 5:52 am by MikeD (not verified)thanks for this, Al. Context and analysis, which have been sadly lacking with all the retweeting and well meaning, yet sometimes uninformed, "discussion" on the #iranelection twitter thread. One thing I find funny on that thread is the number of people (including myself, at times) who frantically retweet whatever comes from oracles such as Stephen Fry and Neil Gaiman. Without even realizing it, they (or should I say we) repeat and pass on what these wise men say, falling prey to the tendency to submit, which is exactly what the folks in the streets of Iran are struggling against. It was a fascinating study in human behavior to watch #iranelection on Monday and Tuesday of this week, and see hundreds or thousands of people retweet, for example, that Stephen Fry said #iranelection was being blocked in Iran, and to change to another hashtag. Which, as it turned out, wasn't true, and was likely a (somewhat successful) attempt by Iranian security to stem the tide. It took a couple of hours for Mr. Fry to realize his error and correct it. However, that information (that #iranelection was being blocked) kept being passed on for HOURS, and then his retraction was passed on ad infinitum. Some of the best examples of the power of social media and its influence on popular movements now and in the future might be negative ones, and those of us who are fascinated by movements and phenomena like this can learn a lot from this powerful example.
Chavez, Ahmadinejad, and principles
Submitted June 19, 2009 - 9:41 am by Thunderheart (not verified)Al,
Thanks for your reply to my previous post. I am not trying to engage in guilt by association, but rather am suggesting that Mr. Chavez raises legitimate questions about his commitment to democracy by his support for Mr. Ahmadinejad, not to mention the Castro brothers or Robert Mugabe!
Further, I am suggesting it's vitally important to denounce favored leaders each and every time they drift from democratic principles. This is not to play into the hands of a perceived ideological foe, but simply to remain true to one's own principles. Just as bad as McCarthyite guilt by association is the circle the wagons impulse.
As for the particulars of your defense of Chavez, suffice to say I disagree. Yes, he has not been brutal in his governance of Venezuela -- to which I would add, yet. He was quite brutal and violent in *his* attempted coup back in the early 1990s, though. So to say the man is incapable of violence against his political foes is to simply ignore the very event that launched him onto the public stage in Venezuela.
Finally, if Chavez accepted the will of the people regarding his effort to be re-elected indefinitely, why did he schedule a second referendum after losing the first? If George W. Bush pulled such a stunt in our country, we'd quite properly be howling.
Cynical alliances are one thing -- every country engages in them, sadly. But the way Chavez vehemently defends Ahmadinejad, Castro, Mugabe et. al as revolutionary leaders who are perfect in every way makes me wary in the extreme of his long-term commitment to democratic norms.
Democracy before ideology, I guess that would be my motto.
Defining Coups
Submitted June 19, 2009 - 10:22 am by Al GiordanoThunderheart - I have always rejected the use of the term "coup" for the rebellion Chavez led against the upper brass of the Venezuelan military back in 1992, at the age of 38.
The then President, Carlos Andres Perez, had just committed a bloody massacre in against a peaceful protest march, known as the Caracazo. You use the words "brutal and violent" to define an act of resistance against a regime that truly was brutal and violent. Chavez's rebellion, by five rebel military units against its own commanders does not fit the definition of a military coup (when the generals and commanders send the armed forces to displace a government). It was a rebellion within the ranks against what was a violent regime. In that sense, the Venezuelan people saw it as heroic.
When Chavez's troops were surrounded he in fact chose not to go the "brutal and violent" route, but instead surrendered himself to the authorities, and went to prison and served his time. The rebellion at no point harmed civilians; it was of military rank-and-file and mid-level officers against the high command. And it was against a regime that had squandered its legitimacy by having just massacred as many as 3,000 Venezuelan citizens in a single day.
If, for example, today in Iran, mid-level officers and rank-and-file soldiers rose up against the current regime, would that be a coup? Or a legitimate rebellion? Think about that before you call Chavez's 1992 attempt a coup. And even if you do use that word, you can't call it bloody and violent by any yardstick of rebellion. The Venezuelan people thought it was right and just - as demonstrated by their election, six years later, of its leader. I think most people living under a violent and bloody regime would have also seen it as a humanitarian and revolutionary act.
Also, regarding the referenda
Submitted June 19, 2009 - 10:32 am by Al GiordanoThunderheart - I think you're also working with an incomplete set of facts.
The first referendum - to change the constitution - contained scores of amendments, only one of which dealt with ending term limits. It was so long and confusing that polling showed that although people favored ending term limits they didn't feel they had the time to understand the whole thing and all of its provisions, and they opposed certain others, and that's why it narrowly lost. (And, again, Chavez accepted the results of that referendum.)
The second referendum was exclusively on ending term limits, without the dozens of other and separate proposals from the first referendum. It won handily.
Even if it had been the same referendum twice, there's nothing inherently undemocratic about that, any more than when politicians defeated a first time for office run a second, third or fourth time before winning (as occurred with Reagan in the US, Allende in Chile and Lula in Brazil). Public opinion evolves. If California voters put Proposition 8's repeal on the next ballot, would that be undemocratic, just because it won the first time by a narrow margin? Of course it wouldn't! Then what is the problem with trying again if at first one doesn't succeed?
I think you've frankly swallowed too much of the corporate media spin on Chavez to the point that you're mouthing their platitudes that take truly democratic actions of his and trying to make them sound undemocratic. I myself don't believe the corporate spin, but trust my own eyes and ears, which have walked through Venezuela's barrios and listened to the people there and thus, I believe, have a much better understanding than those who get their "information" from the New York Terrible Times.
Iran and International Left
Submitted June 19, 2009 - 11:14 am by Christopher Black (not verified)Sir,
Your article clams to talk of the international left. Yet, nowhere do you mention the fact that every communist party in the world has supported the Iranian revolution and condemned the provocations of Mousavi and his supporters. You consistently ignore the position of the communist parties of the world in all your articles. To claim that the Huffington Post and The Nation, two anti-communist journals, represent the left is mind-boggling. It only serves to disillusion workers and intellectuals from having any faith in the left when the real left is never mentioned by you and the rest of the liberal press and the bourgois liberal press is passed off as the "left". Christopher Black, International Commission, Communist Party of Canada
@ Christopher Black
Submitted June 19, 2009 - 12:25 pm by Al GiordanoChristopher Black - I'm not surprised that the Communist Party of Canada, whose leaders only won a 2005 power struggle by expelling enough opposition votes from its own board to "win" the internal election, would be gung-ho in favor of a regime that similarly engages in electoral fraud and cover-up.
This newspaper and this reporter has walked alongside and reported on every vibrant social movement on the left in this hemisphere, of which your grouposcule of a "party" - a party with no electoral victories, no members of parliament, and no working class support or constituency - doesn't even play in the same league.
A bunch of frickin' bureaucrats with a piece of paper calling yourselves a "political party" does not a political party make. You're self marginalized to the extreme, and your pro-fascism stance on Iran will only self-marginalize you even more.
Chavez, etc.
Submitted June 19, 2009 - 1:11 pm by Thunderheart (not verified)Al,
I confess to not having heard before of the Caracazo massacre, but I have corrected that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caracazo
The massacre was in 1989, though, so Chavez's coup attempt in 1992 can hardly be called an instance of him refusing to obey illegal orders from the Andres Perez government in 1989. It does, absolutely, add context to why he mounted the coup, context I previously lacked.
As for the referenda, I was reading various non-corporate news sites regarding it, and it was clear that the first was very well known in Venezuela as allowing for Chavez to run for re-election indefinitely, and he was defeated.
I may have too much skepticism about Mr. Chavez, but so far as I can tell you seem to think the man can do no wrong whatsoever.
@ Thunderheart
Submitted June 19, 2009 - 1:28 pm by Al GiordanoThunderheart - No, my dear Thunderheart. You're projecting. The problem is that you seem to think the man can do no right whatsoever.
I've given you the true facts. And you still misunderstand them. Whatever your news sources, non-corporate or not, clearly did not tell the true story about the first referendum attempt. They simply followed the corporate media spin that a referendum with - I REPEAT IN CASE YOU COULDN'T ABSORB THE FACTS THE FIRST TIME - dozens of provisions, some controversial, was somehow only or even mainly about what THEY were focused on from above: the end of term limits.
I also told you - YOU DIDN'T ABSORB IT - that polling during that first referendum demonstrated that a big swathe of the public that was for the provision allowing re-election was against other parts of it and therefore would vote against it.
AND YOU WILL NOTE THAT IN HUNDREDS OF COMMENTS HERE I HAVE NEVER USED ALL CAPS!
It's just that you are either playing dumb or being dense, and it's annoying to get the sense that a commenter is wasting my time here because he is unable to wrap his brain around the most simply stated facts. If you're coming here to disingenuously jerk my chain, simply because I'm one of the only bloggers that gives you and others any response at all to your comments, there is a limit to my patience with people who either play dumb, or are.
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