On Iran, Ahminajad at Columbia, and Free Speech.

All of the recent hysteria over Iranian President Ahminajad’s visit to Columbia University this week got me thinking about Iran and Persian politics, specifically the Iranian Revolution, which is one of the saddest tales in modern political disaster.

Over the years I’ve had several good Iranian, or as most of them prefer to call themselves, Persian, friends. Some were radicals, others not so much. One of the less radical, the absurdly talented Ms. Persia of Oakland/San Jose-based The Mamaz, wrote a song a while back that perfectly captures the split called “American Me”, about how while she loves her culture there’s no way in hell you’d ever catch her walking around “under black sheets.” as she put it, “I do what I want, do what I please, Americanized, American Me.” For her it’s a love song to the country where she was born and raised, but it could just as easily be a lament about how badly Iranian women have been fucked over by the Islamic fundamentalists that have run their country since the Revolution in 1978. And that, of course, is a reminder of just how far wrong a revolution that started off as a genuine movement for liberation can go.

Another long-time friend, who will remain anonymous because being outed as an Anarchist could negatively impact his legal status, is a bit older and was actually involved in the Revolution, not on the side of the Shah or the Fundamentalists, but on the side of the once-mighty Iranian labor movement that kicked off that Revolution with a general strike and, early on at least, fought both the Shah and the Islamists. Once the thing got going, however, the workers were betrayed by the Soviet sympathies of their Unions leadership – men who took orders from Moscow, not from the workers they claimed to represent. When the leaders of the movement sided with the fundamentalists against the Shah the labor movement fractured and broke, and after the Islamists had officially seized power radicals of all stripes who didn’t manage to get out of the country were systematically hunted down and murdered. Moscow, of course, didn’t give two shits about the Iranian labor movement but, in true cold war fashion, was very much interested toppling the U.S.’s puppet government. My friend, along with many thousands of other Iranian radicals, was forced to flee the bloody purge that followed. He’s still hopeful though and is very active in the Iranian exile community organizing support for those still inside Iran who are working to oppose the Islamist regime there. I shouldn’t even need to tell you that, like virtually all Persian-Americans, he is passionately, deeply, utterly, opposed to US military action against Iran; not only because such an invasion would be beyond stupid for America and utterly ineffective in combating the extremists in power in Iran, but because he knows far to well the personal human costs that such a war would have on the Iranian people. The government there has in the past sent groups of children out onto mine fields in order to clear the mines by setting them off and getting blown to pieces. These are not nice people. You can rest assured that in case of an American attack it will be ordinary Iranians who will suffer the most.

As for Ahminajad, he’s an evil fucker and I hope that if there is an afterlife he ends up in the worst possible corner of Hell or Hades or whatever. That doesn’t, however, mean that he shouldn’t have been allowed to speak at Columbia. I think the Dean was dead on to say that he’d invite Hitler himself to speak if he could get him to engage in an open debate and I’m glad there are at least a few academics in America willing to stand up for Free Speech.

Ahminajad looked like a fool when he tried to sidestep his own shtick about the Holocaust, his remark that gays simply don’t exist in Iran drew richly deserved derision, and he drew well-deserved applause when he pointed out that the holocaust doesn’t have a damn thing to do with the Palestinian people and that Zionists have used the memory of the Holocaust as cover for their brutal, illegal, and utterly immoral ethnic cleansing of Palestein. The fact that it’s an opponent making a good point doesn’t make the point invalid, any more then friendship or alliances improve bad arguments (something Tony Blair would have done well to remember before agreeing to go to war in Iraq). Letting the man speak for himself showed him for what he is, a petty tyrant who is only capable of claiming the moral high ground when he is talking about Israel & Palestein, a brutal conflict that his nation has nothing to do with but ours has everything to do with. He’s not worth fearing, at least as long as you’re lucky enough to not be living under the government he heads.

The only people who need to fear open and honest conversations with their enemies are people who have something to hide, something they don’t want the rest of the world to see. Friends often have too much at stake in a relationship to be as honest as they should be, if you want to improve your arguments find someone who hates you to debate with. And that’s the point of debate after all, isn’t it? To critically examine our own ideas and those of our opponents by comparing them to each other? If we have lost the capacity as a nation to engage our enemies in open debate then we have lost something very precious indeed. And that’s my professional opinion as someone who debated competitively for several years. To all of the people who’ve gone on and on about how allowing this man to speak at an American university is an “abuse” of Free Speech I’d like to say that the only possible abuse of Free Speech is silence, period. Free speech is absolute, no exceptions. It has to be or it isn’t really free speech, it’s just watered-down censorship.

My only regret about this whole episode is that my friend who survived the Revolution couldn’t be in that audience asking the tyrant the questions that really matter. Rather then asking him whether he believes Germany committed genocide half a century ago, the time would have been far better spent grilling him about the incredible disregard for human rights, dignity, and life itself that his own regime has shown. The human wave attacks, the aforementioned use of children to clear minefields, the brutal murder and repression that his regime levies against people who are not content to live as slaves and instead stand up and demand their freedom. Instead, the questions focused mostly on Israel and the Holocaust, things that don’t really have a damn thing to do with Ahminajad or the regime he heads. Iran, after all, is not at war with Israel and in fact has never shown any overt aggression towards it. The Iranian government is, however, waging a brutal war at home against anyone and everyone that dares to speak out. But then I suppose Persian babies getting used as cannon fodder aren’t as interesting to Americans as vague threats towards Israel, now are they? And, of course, if the discussion had gone there Ahminajahd would have been able to point out that the mines in question (along with all kinds of chemical weapons and logistical support) were supplied to Sadaam Hussein during the Iraq-Iran war by none other the the Republican Party’s patron saint, Ronald Reagan; and supplied by the CIA which was headed at the time by Bush Sr. in a deal negotiated by Donald Rumsfield. We’d have to remember our own part in that incredibly gruesome and bloody horrorshow.

It’s not surprising, really. The Chickenhawks who run America aren’t interested in having their distorted picture of the world challenged. They’d much prefer we all got our information on Iran from the corporate news. It’s much easier to convince the public to passively accept yet another war of conquest if the only picture of the nation we are about to invade is a two-dimensional cutout of an “evil” extremist country, a veritable nation of terrorists. Recognizing the real internal diversity and the intense life-and-death struggle being waged in Iran between the forces of intolerance and religious fundamentalism and the people who are working and fighting to reclaim their nation by every means available to them would complicate the picture and cloud up the fairy-tale-esque “good vs. evil” narrative that our own Fuhrer loves so much.

The Iranian people are not our enemies and murdering them en masse with our bombers won’t make us any safer. The real “enemies of freedom” are the political elites that control every nation state on this planet, including America, and the economic elites who give them their marching orders. At the end of the day Ahminajad, Blair, Bush, and all the other heads of state have far more in common with each other then any of them do with ordinary working class people of any nation, and we have far more in common then any of us have with them. As soon as we forget that critical fact we lose sight of the real struggle for freedom; not the one being waged by the armies of New Rome, but the one being waged daily all over this planet as the gap between rich and poor widens and our civil liberties are slowly but surely stripped away. These are dark times, no doubt. But as long as we remember which side of the fence we’re on there’s still hope.

As the old anarchist slogan puts it – No war between Nations, no peace between Classes. it’s short, it’s simple,. some may even say simplistic – but it’s also the single best strategy for ordinary people in Iran, America, Israel, and everywhere in between to finally get the freedom we hear so much about and experience so little of.

Posted: September 25th, 2007 under politrix.
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