On Aug 4, 2006, at 3:16 PM, Bryan Atinsky wrote:
>> From "The Middle East in Flames"
>
> Gilbert Achcar interviewed by Andrew Kennedy for the Socialist Outlook
>
>
> [...]
>
> Q: Some on the British Left would probably like to entertain the idea
> that Hizbollah is capable of evolving leftwards. Is that a fantasy?
>
> Achcar: Basically, yes. Even a plebeian group like Muqtada al Sadr’s
> organisation in Iraq is more socially threatening to the bourgeoisie
> than Hizbollah. The latter, of course, is radical in its opposition to
> Israel, as is usual with Islamic fundamentalist forces linked to Iran,
> but in Lebanese politics Hizbollah is integrated fully into the
> system.
> It has two ministers in the government that is dominated by Hariri-led
> US clients and it allies itself with quite reactionary figures.
> True, it
> organises social services, but only as churches or charities do—they
> represent no social threat whatsoever to the bourgeois social order.
> There is not even a potential for that, given Hizbollah’s ideology,
> its
> structure, its close links to Iran and to Syria. Iran, Hizbollah’s
> model
> of society and state, is utterly bourgeois in its social structure.
> Whatever populist ranting Ahmadinejad (the Iranian president) may have
> given vent to, last year, in his electoral battle for the presidency
> against the capitalist Rafsanjani, these do not translate into any
> kind
> of concrete social measures. In that respect, Chavez’s Venezuela is a
> far more progressive state: Iran is not a Muslim equivalent of
> Venezuela. Such equivalents existed in the Middle East in the 60s, but
> it is out of their defeat that Islamic fundamentalism was able to
> grow.
>
> [...]
>
> The whole interview was crossposted here:
>
> http://alternativenews.org/index.php?
> option=com_content&task=view&id=485&Itemid=1
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>