For reasonable people with open minds, Ervand Abrahamian's comparison between Khomeinism and Latin American populism should make sense and would likely help them understand the former better. But the point of comparison is of course lost on those who don't understand Latin American populism to begin with. While the view like Fernando Solanas's that Vincent Canby explains below* isn't the only view about populism among Latin American militants and intellectuals on the Left, it has been a common one, alive in the minds of Hugo Chávez (who refers to Perón as "mi general Perón") and his comrades as well.
The problem is compounded by the tendency among leftists in the West to think that peoples in the South ought to have the same attitude toward patriotism as the one they have toward patriotism in the North.
But things don't work that way in the South.
Yas Featuring Amin's "Hoviate Man" (My Identity), an Iranian rap response to the movie _300_, is a good example of the structure of feeling in Iran that Iran's youth, secular or religious, often have about their country:
<http://www.iranclip.com/player/1266> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6G9-bx7Kbc> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvczxoKNaWk> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnr1zFWgGWk> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmgCuID4CYc> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mZQ9pfRIjY> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aOvBXvqmHE> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjou-0FPZMM> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ogja7bCte4E> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VPuNsFV2aQ> (The same song, different videos.)
Yas's MySpace page is at <http://www.myspace.com/yaspersian2>, where you can find the English translation of the song's lyrics.
And here's an interview with Yas, who lives in Tehran: <http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1421919688>. The interview is part of Neda Sarmast's documentary about Iran's youth culture Nobody's Enemy: <http://www.myspace.com/NobodysEnemy>.
* <http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0DE7D9163EF932A15752C1A960948260> November 21, 1986 FILM: 'TANGOS: THE EXILE OF GARDEL' By VINCENT CANBY
''Tangos: The Exile of Gardel'' was shown as part of this year's New Directors/New Films Series. Following are excerpts from Vincent Canby's review, which appeared in The New York Times on April 8. The film opens today at the Cinema Studio 1, Broadway and 66th Street.
In ''La Hora de los Hornos'' (''The Hour of the Furnaces''), made in 1968 but not released in this country until 1971, Fernando Solanas, the gifted Argentine film maker, presented his own, highly subjective interpretation of the legacy of Juan Domingo Peron.
To the ''shirtless'' members of the proletariat, he was a committed socialist who guarded their rights. To the members of the far right, Peron represented the church, law and economic order.
To Mr. Solanas, whose political position was on the far left, Peron was the next best thing to Lenin. Among other things, ''La Hora de los Hornos'' argued that Argentina, under Peron, had for the first time discovered a national identity that at long last liberated it from the policy of Balkanization by which Britain, first, and then the United States dominated Latin America.
Mr. Solanas's particular politics were not as important to the success of ''La Hora de los Hornos'' as the film maker's passionate response to his own Argentine identity.
This, too, is the key to Mr. Solanas's beautiful, very free-form new film, ''Tangos: The Exile of Gardel,'' made in France, where he's been living for almost 10 years (having left Argentina after the 1976 military coup that ousted Peron's widow and successor, Isabel Martinez de Peron, from the presidency).
''Tangos'' is an Argentine exile's lament, at its best when it's expressing itself in the music and words of the tango, which in the early years of this century came out of the cabarets of working-class Buenos Aires to represent the soul of Argentina. The film's fictional frame is something else. It's a neo-Godardian, impressionistic, ''backstage'' musical about a group of Argentine exiles, living in Paris, who are putting on a song-and-dance revue called ''Tango-Dy.''
''Tango-Dy'' is only a mild excuse to justify the film's singing and dancing, which takes place spontaneously on the bridges, quays and streets of Paris as often as it does in a rehearsal hall.
Also figuring in the film's various sketches is a character called Misery, a clownish fellow who can short-circuit pay telephones so that calls can be made to Argentina without coins. Carlos Gardel, the singer who was known as the tango king at the time of his death in an airplane crash in 1935, also appears briefly - as a ghost. Just why he also appears in the film's title is a mystery. Though Gardel performed abroad with as much success as in Argentina, he was never - as far as I can learn - an exile.
''Tangos: The Exile of Gardel'' has very much the manner of something made away from home. Though technically fine, the film's subject - the dislocation of being in a foreign place and the longing to be somewhere else - can't easily be visualized, even in a movie as free as this one. The music and the dancing are splendid, but there's not enough of it to give an identity to the film, which is surprisingly nonpolitical.
There are many references to the state of affairs ''at home'' and, at one point, three exiled women set off for Buenos Aires to look for the missing grandchild of one. Yet the film is so preoccupied with the misery of exile and with its own cinematic self (with the tricks and jokes of film making), that at times it seems politically frivolous.
But that, too, could be one of the points being acknowledged by the director, who's aware that he's been too long away from home and from the dangers of on-the-spot commitment. A LAMENT TANGOS: THE EXILE OF GARDEL, directed and written (in French and Spanish with English subtitles) by Fernando E. Solanas; photography by Felix Monti; edited by Cesar D'Angiolillo and Jacques Gaillard; songs by Jose Luis Castineira de Dios and Fernando E. Solanas; choreography by Susana Tambutti, Margarita Balli, Robert Thomas and Adolfo Andrade; soloists: Mr. Thomas, Manon Hotte, Gloria and Eduardo, Nora Codina, German Altamiramo, Ines Sanguinetti; produced by Fernando E. Solanas and Envar el-Kardi. At Cinema Studio 1, Broadway and 66th Running time: 125 minutes. This film has no rating.
Mariana...Marie Laforet; Pierre...Philippe Leotard: Juan Dos...Miguel Angel Sola; Florence...Marina Vlady; Jean-Marie...Georges Wilson; Gerardo...Lautaro Murau; Ana...Ana Maria Picchio; Maria...Gabriela Toscano; San Martin...Michel Etcheverry; Discepole...Claude Melki Carlos; Gardel...Gregorio Manzur; El Angel...Fernando Solanas.
On 6/25/07, Lenin's Tomb <leninstombblog at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On 6/25/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> > Well, most of the rest of the piece was true. There is a crackdown
> > underway, even if it doesn't result in guys sucking butt-cleansing
> > cans for wearing tight t-shirts.
>
> Possibly, but how can you be so sure that it was? It reminds me of
> a remark that Alexander Cockburn once made: the corrections
> column in the New York Times is there to give the impression
> that everything else in the paper was true.
The New York Times article claims that "Iran is in the throes of one of its most ferocious crackdowns on dissent in years" (Neil MacFarquhar, "Iran Cracks Down on Dissent, Parading Examples in Streets," 24 June 2007, <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/24/world/middleeast/24iran.html>). The same paper has been rooting for not only Khatami, whose administration, too, saw repression of student, labor, and women's rights activists, but also Rafsanjani and sometimes even Khamenei, who were both at the center of power when Iran's government actually executed thousands of political prisoners.** That is because the paper, and the power elite who depend on it, wish to keep two options on the table: regime change or a deal with Iran's neoliberals. For the former option, the paper wants to say that things are now worse than ever before and change from within is impossible, and for the latter option, the neoliberal elite, whose record is worse than that of the current administration, must be portrayed as "moderates" (which is a codeword that they are friendlier to the empire and foreign capital).
** According to Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran by Ervand Abrahamian (University of California Press, 1999), "The Mojahedin attempt to overthrow the regime in June 1981 set off waves of repression," leading to 7,943 executed by June 1985, of whom 6,472 belonged to the Mojahedin (pp. 129-130), with several thousands more executed in 1988, the majority of whom were also members of the Mojahedin (see Chapter 5).
On 6/25/07, Lenin's Tomb <leninstombblog at googlemail.com> wrote:
> For the record, I fully support the Iranian workers and
> students when they resist the state, as well as the Iranian capitalist elite
> of which it is the executive arm.
>
> But why should I have to stipulate that every time I point out that we
> shouldn't necessarily believe even 50% of what's in the New York Times on
> such a sensitive topic as Iran?
The best way to support Iranians, including workers, women, students, etc., is to stop the empire's regime change campaign, from media propaganda, "democracy assistance," economic sanctions, diplomatic maneuvers, to war, and to do so, it's important for us not to demonize Iran's government. After all, our job is to force the governments of our countries to normalize their relations with _Iran's government_, preferably not on the conditions that Iran cease to support Hamas, Hizballah, etc., break its relations with Cuba, Venezuela, etc.
Beyond that, there isn't much you can do to directly support Iran's workers, women, students, etc. If, for example, you are a dock worker and live in a country that imports goods from Iran, and Iran's workers strike, and you are asked not to handle hot cargoes, you should do what you can to not allow the hot cargoes to move, provided that the strikers aren't like the CTV of Venezuela. But few of us are in such a position.
As I said before, leftists who can't reform their own country's labor movement are unlikely to be of much assistance to other countries' labor movements. There is no short cut.
On 6/25/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> if you hadn't gotten thrown off PEN-L
and Marxism.
Leftists tend to have the same attitude toward dissenting views as the one that many people have in many countries, including some that I know well.
But I don't believe in retribution myself, much as I believe that "andie" has a point on this subject. I have not excluded anyone other than fascists and imperialists from MRZine, and you can find Louis Proyect commenting away there.
On 6/25/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> The last
> seven contributions have averaged 11,000 characters, submitted to at
> least three different listservs. That's not very sociable behavior.
Unlike your announcements of your radio show and the like, multiple copies of which have landed in my in-box, or your "responses" to me?
> Why don't you pause the one-way communications for a while and actually converse?
Speak for yourself. -- Yoshie