[lbo-talk] Iran poll results

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 10/25/07, ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> wrote:
> On 25 Oct, 2007, at 16:07 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
> >
> > So Yoshie's claim that "leftists [don't] trust the people of Iran to
> > condemn the crimes committed by their own government and deal with
> > them appropriately in due course?" looks completely unfounded, at
> > least in this forum.
> >
> > I'm not surprised. I await her acknowledgment of this.
>
> To the contrary, assuming that the list had 200+ members (last I
> checked) who took the trouble to join it, but did not vote, it
> indicates at best an ambiguous trust in the Iranian people! Yoshie
> stands vindicated, especially since LBO as a sample is the wimpy, non-
> militant, non-expressive variety of leftists, so this tells us that
> the more vocal ones like Doug Ireland are clearly even further
> distrustful of Iranians' ability to examine their government.

If leftists in the West trust "the people of Iran to condemn the
crimes committed by their own government and deal with them
appropriately in due course," they must then _refrain from usurping_
the Iranian people's right to do so at their pleasure.

It's possible that there is a silent majority of leftists who actually
think like you and me, though, and it is only a vocal minority of
opinion-makers among us who insist that we all condemn the crimes of
other peoples' governments to gain "credibility" among the Americans
who they think want to hear such condemnations _early and often_.*

If that is the case, the silent majority ought to speak up and change
this self-defeating practice of leftists that does not cultivate the
habit of democracy and republicanism and that only contributes to the
dumbing down of political discourse (X is a "monster," a "new Hitler,"
a "cruel dictator," etc.).

What the public need from leftists is not condemnation but description
and explanation -- regarding the political economy, social structures,
and other relevant facts of Iran (we've yet to get them to study Iran
101), imperialism today and its history, and so on.

* <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20071008/019560.html>

[lbo-talk] Can Politics Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style?
Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Sat Oct 13 07:33:12 PDT 2007

On Oct 13, 2007, at 12:11 AM, Julio Huato wrote:


> Even if Dabashi doesn't intend it, his perorations against Ahmadinajad
> translate into moral grandstanding from the academic Mount Olympus of
> a prominent U.S. university.  As influential as a Columbia professor
> may be (or may believe he is), the broader terms of the conflict won't
> bend.  I mean, the terms of the conflict between Iran and U.S.
> imperialism -- because the terms of the conflict over the allocation
> of resources at Columbia University may end up affected.

Besides, who's your presumed audience? You're never going to convince
the American public, elite or mass, that the Iranian regime isn't
terrible. So if the antiwar position is seen as contaminated with an
apologetics for the Iranian regime, or even an unwillingness to
criticize it, it will lose all credibility.
-- 
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>