[lbo-talk] Hamid Dabashi on Ahmadinejad & Bollinger

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Thu Oct 11 18:22:12 PDT 2007


On Oct 11, 2007, at 7:49 PM, Michael Smith wrote:


> Pathetic. I hate this moral-equivalence stuff -- it's
> so liberal, so above-it-all.

Did you get past the headnote? What kind of liberal denounces Bollinger as the racist president of an imperialist university?

Dabashi:


> When Bollinger finished with his preamble and turned his attention
> directly to Ahmadinejad, we begin to witness the precise manner in
> which the legitimate criticism of the Islamic Republic invariably and
> ever so imperceptively degenerates into an illegitimate propaganda
> manifesto for the missionary position of the United States to save
> the world and for its client Jewish state of Israel to do its share
> in this civilizing mission.

This illuminates precisely what Yoshie, and apparently you accept: that the legitimate criticism of the Islamic Republic is the same as a propaganda manifesto on behalf of imperialism. Bush, with the support of Bollinger, weakens and isolates the reformists in Iran that Dabashi writes about, much to the pleasure of Ahmadinejad & Co.; you & YF seem invested in the same maneuver, which benefits the imperialists and their repressive opposites, and not many others.

Doug



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