[lbo-talk] Countering the Politics of Fear (was Tariq Ali at UCLAtoday)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 10/30/06, Marvin Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:
> Yoshie writes:
>
> > On 10/29/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> >>
> [...]
>
> >> If George Bush gave a speech saying "get the liberals out of the
> >> universities!," a lot of people would be rightly scared.
> >
> > Well, except Ahmadinejad didn't say that, nor does "liberalism" in
> > Iran or anywhere else for that matter mean the same thing as what
> > Americans tend to mean here.
> ==========================
> In early September, the Iranian News Agency (IRNA) reported that Ahmadinejad
> told students at Tehran University they had a "right to strongly criticize"
> him for "the continued presence of liberal and secular professors in the
> country's universities." I think you may  have even been the one who posted
> the quote.
>
> So Doug's observation is valid. I don't think the Iranian president had the
> economic dimension of "neoliberalism" only or primarily in mind. His
> reference was to secularism, which, like Bush and other religious
> conservatives. he sees as just one component of "decadent" liberal culture.
>
> I know you regard Ahmadinejad and the Islamist populists as a
> "contradictory" political tendency - accurately - so why dispute this point?

Because the economic side of "liberalism" and "secularism" tends to
fall out of the picture many here have in mind.

It's been the case in many countries, not just Iran, that those who
espouse economic liberalism also espouse secularism and liberalism in
cultural and social terms and vice versa.  Lebanon is a good example,
and so is Russia, to a lesser extent.  If that overlap didn't exist,
women's struggle, for instance, would be easier.
-- 
Yoshie
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