Iran, and more

Thursday links added at the bottom. Last updated 12:39 Brockley time.

Iran

Iran tangentially, and the failure of the left
Not about Iran, but some of my favourite recent blog posts.
Thursday links
  • Slavoj Zizek has distributed a guest post on Iran, which you can read at DST4W among other places. It's good, and I'm pasting two extracts here:
"Finally, the saddest of them all are the Leftist supporters of Ahmadinejad: what is really at stake for them is Iranian independence. Ahmadinejad won because he stood up for the country’s independence, exposed elite corruption and used oil wealth to boost the incomes of the poor majority – this is, so we are told, the true Ahmadinejad beneath the Western-media image of a holocaust-denying fanatic. According to this view, what is effectively going on now in Iran is a repetition of the 1953 overthrow of Mossadegh – a West-financed coup against the legitimate president. This view not only ignores facts: the high electoral participation – up from the usual 55% to 85% - can only be explained as a protest vote. It also displays its blindness for a genuine demonstration of popular will, patronizingly assuming that, for the backward Iranians, Ahmadinejad is good enough - they are not yet sufficiently mature to be ruled by a secular Left.[...]
Ahmadinejad is not the hero of the Islamist poor, but a genuine corrupted Islamo-Fascist populist, a kind of Iranian Berlusconi whose mixture of clownish posturing and ruthless power politics is causing unease even among the majority of ayatollahs. His demagogic distributing of crumbs to the poor should not deceive us: behind him are not only organs of police repression and a very Westernized PR apparatus, but also a strong new rich class, the result of the regime’s corruption (Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is not a working class militia, but a mega-corporation, the strongest center of wealth in the country)."


Comments

Noga said…
The Link to Just Opinions is wrong, Bob.
ModernityBlog said…
Bob,

You really need to link to SU blog, just for fun. Wight's guff is almost demented.
Noga said…
Salma added another post:

http://antiutopia.wordpress.com/2009/06/23/don%E2%80%99t-let-this-fire-die-%E2%80%A6/
Will said…
Zizek

http://drinksoakedtrotsforwar.com/2009/06/24/guest-post-by-slavoj-zizek/
Noga said…
Selma left this comment on my blog:

"It's 3 am in Tehran. I'm sitting in the dark, waiting for a miracle to happen. ‎
Two of my friends who were at the protests today are missing. No sign of them, their cell ‎phones are off, no one knows where they are. We know a large number of people were ‎arrested today, but there is no list of detainees, no place to refer to, we don’t know who is ‎arresting them and where they are taken.‎
Tonight of all nights, I feel that “loneliness” with my flesh and blood.‎
I don’t dare write this in my own weblog. Just visited your blog to read your recent posts ‎and couldn’t help writing this comment here.‎
Yes, we have fought this lonely fight for a long time…‎
But is the world hearing our voice? Is there anybody out there?‎

From Tehran with Love - Selma"
bob said…
Thank you, Noga, for the link correction and for letting us hear Salma's voice.

Thank you Will, for Zizek's guest post. It is very good.

Mod, I might cruise over to SU now and see if I can stomach it.

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