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The Selective Solidarity of the Left

By Danny Postel

In Tehran since 1999, government vigilantes have stormed a student dormitory brandishing clubs and thrashing students with chains. They have tossed one student out of a window to his death. During such raids, helicopters hover overhead, elite units of anti-riot police gather and plainclothes Intelligence Ministry agents buzz around on motorbikes. Plainclothes security officers routinely detainstudent radicals at gunpoint. Why… return to article

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    Postel hits the nail on the head: it is simply too uncomfortable for too many to utter anything that might come from the mouths of Bush, Wolfowitz et al. Worse, when people do, as Christopher Hitchens did, they’re castigated as neo-con wannabes.
    I wish things were cut and dried in this world, but that’s a fantasy more durable than my crush on Cameron Diaz. Of course we must take care to offer more in our criticisms than the drivel the GOP-led ruling class does, but we must not succumb to the temptation to refrain from criticizing those who deserve it because “Amerikkka"---what a misnomer--doesn’t like them. When the only people who lampoon Islam (not just criticize it, any idiot can do that) are class clowns like Bill Maher, you can just see the “Islam Rocks!!” T-shirts coming.
    While we’re being honest, let me offer this: our discomfort with criticizing Islam to the extent we do Christianity comes from a desire not to be seen as racist. Get over it; if it’s a religion of peace, then my ass chews gum.

    United States Posted by Doug P on Nov 25, 2003 at 7:06 PM

    It is important that progressives get involved on issues regarding Iran. There are a lot of creative ways of dealing with Iran and helping Iran’s democratic movement, which none is discussed now and practiced by this administration.

    For example, instead of pushing for blank sanction on Iran that exists now, a clever sanction can be applied where trade under 1 million dollor by private companies in Iran with the US be allowed. This can strengthen Iranian middle class which makes backbone of democratic movements. Or many progressive professors can travel to Iran to participate in scientific conferences and meanwhile change the attitude the minority in Iran that still has a negative view of Americans.

    Lots of other positive things can be done and progressives who have a better understanding of how democracy works can come up with them not the people who are in charge. The only thing they know is confrontational solutions for every problem, which evidently hasn’t worked on Iran for past 25 years and Cuba for the past 50 years.

    United States Posted by Mehdi Y. on Nov 26, 2003 at 7:31 PM

    The reason the repression in Iran is not getting the energy that repression in Central America got is not discomfort but the lack of concrete connection.  We had direct links to the US supplied Guatemalan military boot on the neck of the Guatemalan people.  An effective solidarity campaign would require a clear linkage that we can use to pressure those providing support to the repressive regime, and Postel fails completely to identify such connections.

    We need to build awareness and dispel illusions of our own and of others, but, again, I’ve seen considerable coverage of the repression of students and others in Iran in the mainstream press.  It’s not a covered-up issue that needs a campaign by the left to make information available.

    These are the reasons we have and should continue to put more of our effort into US supported bad guys that into US opposed bad guys.

    United States Posted by Dave Parks on Nov 26, 2003 at 10:31 PM

    Progressives should be speaking out in favor of the students who are seeking greater freedom under the theocratic regime in Iran.  However, we are in a tough position, as Americans, to speak with moral clarity about the need for democratic reform in Iran, since (as the author points out) the American CIA engineered the overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953, which led directly to the Islamic revolution in 1979 that deposed the shah.  One could even argue that this act of espionage inflamed and precipitated the rise of radical Islamic militants throughout the Middle East, that culminated in the devastating attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.  In other words, we created the hell we are now living in.

    United States Posted by Stephen Kriz on Dec 9, 2003 at 10:50 AM

    I’m glad Stephen Kriz agrees with me that progressives ought to be speaking out in support of the student movement in Iran. And I agree with him they we’re in a “tough position” as Americans, given our government’s nefarious role in undermining democracy in Iran. But recognizing this tension should not keep us from acting in solidarity with our progressive counterparts in Iran today. By that logic, American progressives wouldn’t have supported the forces for progressive change in Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile, East Timor, or myriad other countries, since the U.S. government has visited incalcuable suffering on those socieites, too. But we *did* mobilize around those cases—just as we should in the case of Iran today. Yes, we’re Americans, but we’re also internationalists and humanists, whatever our national citizenship.

    United States Posted by Danny Postel on Dec 9, 2003 at 6:55 PM
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