Anecdotal I know, but I’m friends with several Iranian people, good friends with some of them. Every one of them and their families has nothing but bad things to say about that government. They’re a horrible dictatorial power that completely suppresses women’s rights, religious freedoms, and bodily autonomy. They rule on fear and terror and are genuinely awful.
They are still supported by small groups of extreme religious conservatives who will threaten and call the police on any woman exercising autonomy because that is what they believe their imaginary space friend wants.
This is not propaganda when it comes from people, especially women, who’ve lived their whole lives in fear of this regime and couldn’t wait to get out. Could my knowledge be skewed by only having spoken to Iranian emigrants? Yes, sure. But the facts they’ve talked about are still true.
Huh, you conflate the Iranian regime with the Iranian nation. That’s not a reasonable thing to do. Hey, quick aside, why do you think middle eastern countries are mostly autoctacies? It’s not Islam, not by a long shot. Albania and Bosnia are majority Muslim. Who benefits from keeping the populations in the MENA countries muzzled up? Huh?
you conflate the Iranian regime with the Iranian nation
No, I don’t
why do you think middle eastern countries are mostly autoctacies
Go ask Mohamed Morsi. Ask Mohammad Mosaddegh or Chadli Bendjedid. Ask Thomas Sankara. Hell. Ask Ismail Haniyeh. Ask all the Middle East liberals what happened following the Arab Spring.
“Why is a country that’s perpetually under siege and threatened with regime change so militaristic and obsessed with self-policing?” should be self-explanatory. Particularly when “we’re under attack by evil outsiders, please surrender all your civil rights!” is a line I hear regularly in Western Media.
I guess I can bat the question back to you. Why are so many NATO member states autocratic oligarchies?
you conflate the Iranian regime with the Iranian nation
No, I don’t
Oh yes you absofuckinglutely do. You literally changed the noun here:
The Iranian regime is horrible
…
Practically every Muslim nation gets this treatment to some degree.
I wrote regime, you wrote nation. It’s literally right there for everyone to see.
Go ask Mohamed Morsi. Ask Mohammad Mosaddegh or Chadli Bendjedid. Ask Thomas Sankara. Hell. Ask Ismail Haniyeh. Ask all the Middle East liberals what happened following the Arab Spring.
Ah, but you misunderstood my question. You focus on the “anti-imperialist” side of the ledger, whereas I asked about all MENA countries. The “anti-imperialist” autocratic regimes are all degenerate cases that resulted from the defeat of movements, as a way to contain the population while continuing to exist in the imperialist order. Go and see what all the “anti-imperialist” autocrats, without fucking exception did to the communists, to the labour movement, to the radical youth. In Syria, in Lebanon, in Iran, etc. They all parrot/ed “anti-imperialist” platitudes while actually brutally suppressing the Left in all its expressions. And everytime a campist fool sings their praises, what they’re actually doing is revelling in the murder, torture and brutalization of Leftists. As if Iranian labour activists and feminist radicals owe your sorry ass to sacrifice themselves for your “anti-imperialist” abstractions.
Then broaden your view a little. Why are the western allies also autocracies? Qatar, UAE, Saudi, Jordan. Who do they also suppress? Right: the Left, the socialists, the labour movement, the radical youth. The same apparatus doing the same thing. If you boil it really down to brass tacks, none of these fuckers really care about imperialism, they care about their own regimes positioning themselves in the imperialist order. And how do you do that? Suppress the commies and the pinkos, suppress labour, suppress the youth. Same story, everywhere, whether with an “anti-imperialist” stick or a “royal” stick or a “national” stick.
If you actually want to be anti-imperialist, and live in the West as I assume you do, stop glorifying these assholes, focus on the class war in the imperialist core. If your heart bleeds for Iranians, stand in solidarity of the actual people bleeding from both american/israeli bombs and basij brutality, and if you can’t do both, if you can’t handle the heat, gtfo the kitchen.
I guess I can bat the question back to you. Why are so many NATO member states autocratic oligarchies?
That question is a gotcha only in your foolish campist framework. You really think I’m interested in …defending them?
The nation is its people. You don’t get to wiggle out by saying “I just hate the government, not the popular movement that formed the government”. Iran isn’t being occupied from the top by an invading army. It’s a super-majority Muslim nation that is governed by a popular clergy and democratically elected bureaucracy.
You focus on the “anti-imperialist” side of the ledger, whereas I asked about all MENA countries.
The pattern of imperial conquest, ethnic divide-and-conquer governance, and villainization of popular politics isn’t unique to occupied MENA states. What sets Iran apart from Saudi Arabia or Turkiye or Jordan or Egypt is its unaligned status.
What Americans claim they hate about Iran and Yemen but can’t be bothered to care about in Dubai or Kuwait or Azerbaijan is a series of tropes drummed into them by Christian Fascist national media.
Why are the western allies also autocracies? Qatar, UAE, Saudi, Jordan. Who do they also suppress? Right: the Left, the socialists, the labour movement, the radical youth.
Iran isn’t a leftist or socialist state in any meaningful sense. They’re as draconianly anti-socialist as any Saudi government. That’s a big reason why you have crowds of Iranian civilians gulled into supporting a nepo-baby from Maryland as their US-sponsored savior (which the US secretly backed a return of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a western proxy). This is not a conflict between Western liberals and Eastern socialists. It’s a fight between Western Christian Imperialists and Eastern Muslim Nationalists.
You accuse me of …liberalism when you have swallowed hook line and sinker the romantic nationalism that is the foundation liberalism. I mean this is just out in the open:
The nation is its people. You don’t get to wiggle out by saying “I just hate the government, not the popular movement that formed the government”. Iran isn’t being occupied from the top by an invading army. It’s a super-majority Muslim nation that is governed by a popular clergy and democratically elected bureaucracy.
Ein volk, eh?
There is basically zero marxism in your diatribe. The only thing that has a “red” tint in what you’re saying is the word “imperialism”, but your framework differs extremely little from Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations. You use left-wing vocabulary, but the structure of your analysis is nationalist and civilizational rather than class-based.
I don’t see any point in continuing this discussion, we’re using fundamentally different paradigms and value systems here.
Lol, just to clarify, because your American(?) mind probably cannot understand what I wrote, and you respond with “???”:
You think I’m calling you a liberal because you support human rights and NGOs or whatever. I’m calling you a liberal because your basic unit of analysis is the nation. “The nation is its people” is not a Marxist statement. It’s a liberal-nationalist one, romantic nationalist: Mazzini, Fichte, Michelet, Paparigopoulos. Marxists don’t accept the “nation” as the unit of analysis. We ask where are the class antagonisms, political conflicts, and repressed social movements. Where did this go when you collapsed them all into “the nation”? In the “anti-imperialism” dualism, the clash of civilizations. Huntington, nationalism, clash of civilizations and romanticism. That’s the paradigmatic disagreement.
I’ve been reading this propaganda continuously since I was old enough to pick up a newspaper.
Practically every Muslim nation gets this treatment to some degree. But countries we’re at war with get it extra bad.
Anecdotal I know, but I’m friends with several Iranian people, good friends with some of them. Every one of them and their families has nothing but bad things to say about that government. They’re a horrible dictatorial power that completely suppresses women’s rights, religious freedoms, and bodily autonomy. They rule on fear and terror and are genuinely awful.
They are still supported by small groups of extreme religious conservatives who will threaten and call the police on any woman exercising autonomy because that is what they believe their imaginary space friend wants.
This is not propaganda when it comes from people, especially women, who’ve lived their whole lives in fear of this regime and couldn’t wait to get out. Could my knowledge be skewed by only having spoken to Iranian emigrants? Yes, sure. But the facts they’ve talked about are still true.
Yeah, executing political prisoners and gay people and shooting protestors in the face is good, actually!
Huh, you conflate the Iranian regime with the Iranian nation. That’s not a reasonable thing to do. Hey, quick aside, why do you think middle eastern countries are mostly autoctacies? It’s not Islam, not by a long shot. Albania and Bosnia are majority Muslim. Who benefits from keeping the populations in the MENA countries muzzled up? Huh?
No, I don’t
Go ask Mohamed Morsi. Ask Mohammad Mosaddegh or Chadli Bendjedid. Ask Thomas Sankara. Hell. Ask Ismail Haniyeh. Ask all the Middle East liberals what happened following the Arab Spring.
“Why is a country that’s perpetually under siege and threatened with regime change so militaristic and obsessed with self-policing?” should be self-explanatory. Particularly when “we’re under attack by evil outsiders, please surrender all your civil rights!” is a line I hear regularly in Western Media.
I guess I can bat the question back to you. Why are so many NATO member states autocratic oligarchies?
Oh yes you absofuckinglutely do. You literally changed the noun here:
I wrote regime, you wrote nation. It’s literally right there for everyone to see.
Ah, but you misunderstood my question. You focus on the “anti-imperialist” side of the ledger, whereas I asked about all MENA countries. The “anti-imperialist” autocratic regimes are all degenerate cases that resulted from the defeat of movements, as a way to contain the population while continuing to exist in the imperialist order. Go and see what all the “anti-imperialist” autocrats, without fucking exception did to the communists, to the labour movement, to the radical youth. In Syria, in Lebanon, in Iran, etc. They all parrot/ed “anti-imperialist” platitudes while actually brutally suppressing the Left in all its expressions. And everytime a campist fool sings their praises, what they’re actually doing is revelling in the murder, torture and brutalization of Leftists. As if Iranian labour activists and feminist radicals owe your sorry ass to sacrifice themselves for your “anti-imperialist” abstractions.
Then broaden your view a little. Why are the western allies also autocracies? Qatar, UAE, Saudi, Jordan. Who do they also suppress? Right: the Left, the socialists, the labour movement, the radical youth. The same apparatus doing the same thing. If you boil it really down to brass tacks, none of these fuckers really care about imperialism, they care about their own regimes positioning themselves in the imperialist order. And how do you do that? Suppress the commies and the pinkos, suppress labour, suppress the youth. Same story, everywhere, whether with an “anti-imperialist” stick or a “royal” stick or a “national” stick.
If you actually want to be anti-imperialist, and live in the West as I assume you do, stop glorifying these assholes, focus on the class war in the imperialist core. If your heart bleeds for Iranians, stand in solidarity of the actual people bleeding from both american/israeli bombs and basij brutality, and if you can’t do both, if you can’t handle the heat, gtfo the kitchen.
That question is a gotcha only in your foolish campist framework. You really think I’m interested in …defending them?
The nation is its people. You don’t get to wiggle out by saying “I just hate the government, not the popular movement that formed the government”. Iran isn’t being occupied from the top by an invading army. It’s a super-majority Muslim nation that is governed by a popular clergy and democratically elected bureaucracy.
The pattern of imperial conquest, ethnic divide-and-conquer governance, and villainization of popular politics isn’t unique to occupied MENA states. What sets Iran apart from Saudi Arabia or Turkiye or Jordan or Egypt is its unaligned status.
What Americans claim they hate about Iran and Yemen but can’t be bothered to care about in Dubai or Kuwait or Azerbaijan is a series of tropes drummed into them by Christian Fascist national media.
Iran isn’t a leftist or socialist state in any meaningful sense. They’re as draconianly anti-socialist as any Saudi government. That’s a big reason why you have crowds of Iranian civilians gulled into supporting a nepo-baby from Maryland as their US-sponsored savior (which the US secretly backed a return of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a western proxy). This is not a conflict between Western liberals and Eastern socialists. It’s a fight between Western Christian Imperialists and Eastern Muslim Nationalists.
Thought-Terminating liberalism at its finest.
You accuse me of …liberalism when you have swallowed hook line and sinker the romantic nationalism that is the foundation liberalism. I mean this is just out in the open:
Ein volk, eh?
There is basically zero marxism in your diatribe. The only thing that has a “red” tint in what you’re saying is the word “imperialism”, but your framework differs extremely little from Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations. You use left-wing vocabulary, but the structure of your analysis is nationalist and civilizational rather than class-based.
I don’t see any point in continuing this discussion, we’re using fundamentally different paradigms and value systems here.
???
Scaring yourself by reading words in German will put you out of whole branches of modern political philosophy.
Lol, just to clarify, because your American(?) mind probably cannot understand what I wrote, and you respond with “???”:
You think I’m calling you a liberal because you support human rights and NGOs or whatever. I’m calling you a liberal because your basic unit of analysis is the nation. “The nation is its people” is not a Marxist statement. It’s a liberal-nationalist one, romantic nationalist: Mazzini, Fichte, Michelet, Paparigopoulos. Marxists don’t accept the “nation” as the unit of analysis. We ask where are the class antagonisms, political conflicts, and repressed social movements. Where did this go when you collapsed them all into “the nation”? In the “anti-imperialism” dualism, the clash of civilizations. Huntington, nationalism, clash of civilizations and romanticism. That’s the paradigmatic disagreement.
Bye.