Apparently the anti-colonialist - and at times anti-capitalist rhetoric of the Iranian elite - has legitimate left-wing sources. A former classmate of mine in grad school was a student of the Iranian revolution, spoke Farsi fluently, and was of the opinion that first generation Iran revolutionaries were very well schooled in Gramsci, Fanon and Marcuse.
According to her reading of Iranian revolutionary ideology in the seventies, these three thinkers helped lay the groundwork for the Mullah's analysis of Western capitalist imperialism and human needs, which they grafted onto a theocratic framework. Khomeini, from what I remember being told, was actually a big fan of the 1844 Manuscripts.
Not unreasonable given the intellectual currents that many Iranian revolutionaries gravitated towards in exile in Europe during the sixties and seventies.
On May 12, 2006, at 11:38 AM, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>> Fidel, you ought to have that talk
>> with Ahmadinejad ASAP and bring the man to senses!
>
> Is there any evidence that Ahmadinejad has socialist/
> internationalist leanings?
>
> Doug
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