--- Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages at gmail.com> wrote: [lbo-talk] Countering the Politics of Fear (was Tariq Ali at UCLAtoday) Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com Mon Oct 30 08:47:38 PST 2006
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On 10/30/06, Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages at
gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
I should clarify by saying that in Russia's and other more secular nations' cases, quite often, economic liberalism gets combined with cultural cosmopolitanism (rather than secularism as such) and economic populism gets combined with cultural nationalism. But you get the point, no doubt. The lineup tends to map along the class divide as well as the rural-urban divide, too. -- Yoshie
--
The Russian "left" parties (by which I mean the Communist Party, Rodina, and in some ways the Liberal Democratic Party and the Party of Life) are parties that are very conservative culturally speaking and tend toward nationalisms of various stripes and intensities (but then just about all groups worth noting along the Russian political are nationalist in various ways, which the exception of Yabloko, which has almost no voters left). That's who the disadvantaged vote for. That's the rural vote. That's who protested the Moscow Gay Pride parade.
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