In the latest Politics Theory Other, Narges Bajoghili spoke to Alex about the eruption of protests in Iran and how such a huge movement seemingly erupted from nowhere. The discussion touches on the regime's response, and how the left in the West should respond to those who opportunistically seize on women's rights for their own Islamophobic purposes.
Give it a listen!
2 comments:
The prospects for the current, totally justified, young women-driven, popular uprising against the theocratic Iranian regime must surely be very grim indeed. The Iranian regime meets all the necessary criteria to be described as 'clerico fascist', rather than simply 'oppressive' or 'dictatorial'. As a fascist regime - with a powerful, coherent , widely shared across all social classes, ideology, (ie an extreme ultra regressive version of Islam, combined with ultranationalism ), it still has a massive social base , particularly in the more rural , mosque-dominated, areas . The regime also has a massive, deeply ideologically indoctrinated , machinery of mass repression, using whatever violence is necessary to retain control. And these instruments of mass violence aren't just restricted to the formal instruments of repression, the police, army, militias, the judiciary, but would extend to masses of volunteer , mosque-loyal, citizens if the mullahs require informal masses of violent forces to suppress this uprising.
Iran's overwhelmingly young population, at least the better educated in the bigger cities, is obviously totally pissed off with living under such a repressive regime, particularly young women. But it is the very framework of suppression of women that is a key ideological tool in all extreme Islamic movements and states , that draws so many men into giving their unconditional support when that male dominance is threatened.
My gloomy prediction is that the clerico fascist Iranian theocracy will drown this totally justified uprising in blood, and lots of it. As to the required Western Left' response to the uprising. For umpteen years the Western 'Left' has ludicrously categorised the Iranian , and previous Syrian, Libyan, Iraqi ,regimes too, as part of some entirely mythical 'Axis Of Resistance' (to US Imperialism - and of course, that very dodgy Western 'Left' obsession, Israel), and the huge oppressive crimes of these regimes has simply been awarded a 'free pass' for their gross oppression, eg, misogyny, oppression of gay people, and religious intolerance of other faiths, and gross suppression of all workers rights, so I don't hold out much hope of the Western 'Left' being able to come up with any sort of coherent analysis at all of the 'right side to be on' in Iran today. Personally I hope the fascist theocracy in Iran is overthrown tomorrow, but realistically I think the current uprising will be totally smashed in very short order , with an astonishing brutality that will stun and atomise the protest movement, and head off any development to the required mass armed struggle needed to overthrow such a murderous clerico-fascist regime.
I do not know who is going to come out on top in Iran, but I know that it is not going to be a teenager. There are people behind all of this, and there are people waiting in the wings, as they have been doing since before many of these courageous schoolgirls' parents were born.
The longstanding neoconservative and liberal-interventionist aim has been to install the utterly insane PMOI/MEK as Iran's new regime. That is the weirdest political cult in the world, and it has been in exile since 1981, meaning that it has no constituency in a country of which half the population is under 30 years of age.
Consider how the world turns, since that outfit was headquartered for many years in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, where it participated in atrocities committed by the Iraqi Revolutionary Guard. During the Iraq War, Biden's, Bush's and Blair's Boys bombed the PMOI/MEK into surrender, as part of a deal with Iran to hand over certain al-Qaeda suspects who were of course in any case opponents of the Iranian regime. Oh, how the world does turn.
Opponents of the Iraq War were screamed down as Islamists and revolutionary Marxists due to the presence of a few of each in our enormous ranks. But now the plan is to hand over Iran to the people who really do manage the remarkable feat of being both, yet who were nevertheless closely allied to Saddam Hussein.
The Americans have relocated the PMOI/MEK to Albania, which is now a member of NATO. It also maintains a considerable presence in the France of Emmanuel Macron. And it is allied both to Israel and to Saudi Arabia, with that latter alliance, at least, showing us that its Shia principles are truly worth as much as its Leftist ones.
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