Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Excellent "Lenin" post on the Iranian elections and the protests

It's even-handed and thoughtful, which is not something I can say about almost everything else I've read recently on the topic. The most helpful point that he makes is to emphatically say that the demands of the protesters are not identical to those of Mousavi, on the contrary, they are more ambitious and radically democratic. Of course, although the post doesn't explicitly say much about this, some Leftists have taken the barrage of hysterical press in the big Western consensus media and merely negated it (i.e. they defend Ahmedinejad as an anti-imperialist). The result is every bit as vulgar (and, dare I say, worse) as the histrionics and facile analysis one finds in corporate news outlets. "Lenin's" post is refreshing.

Read it here.

Also there is a Zizek piece circulating on Iran, which you can read here. Again, it also makes the (poignant, in my view) point that anyone who fails to grasp the emancipatory potential of the present Iranian protest movement, whatever its limitations, is politically bankrupt. (Also -Zizek calls Ahmedinejad the "Iranian Berlusconi" which strikes me as probably true).

2 comments:

Arvilla said...

Fantastic post from Lenin. Really puts this thing in perspective. Okay, so Mousavi is no saint. But these people are being MURDERED.

t said...

Absolutely. I totally reject any of this crap from some on the Left who are decrying the protesters as all a bunch of 'yuppies'.

I think the really nice point Seymour makes is that the demands of the protesters are not collapsible into the demands of Mousavi. On the contrary- it appears that the protesters are demanding far more ambitious reforms than Mousavi and his entourage may be alright with.

There are vulgar cynics on the Right here -those who JUST want to see a neoliberal regime who loves Washington no matter how repressive (e.g. see Mubarak's Egypt, which receives massive amounts of US aid, second only to Israel and Colombia). But there are also some Leftist cynics to be found here as well -those who accept the story that the Big media paints ("us versus them", etc.) and then simply take the opposite side of Washington, et al.