[lbo-talk] profile of an editor: "There are certain people still remaining who challenge the values."

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 9/22/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> New York Times - September 22, 2007
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/22/world/middleeast/
> 22shariamadari.html?_r=1>
>
> The Saturday Profile
> Freed by Revolution, He Speaks for Iran's Hard-Liners
>
> By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
> TEHRAN
>
> WHAT becomes of a man who at the age of 27 was sentenced to life in
> prison for his political views, whose toenails and fingernails were
> ripped out, whose teeth were kicked in, who was shocked with
> electricity and had the soles of his feet beaten?
>
> What happens to him when his allies come to power and he is freed?
<snip>
> His words are almost always couched in the language of reason,
> insisting that he is not to be feared, that he simply follows the
> rules while others, namely reformers, do not. He does not like the
> word fundamentalist, preferring principle-ist. His goal, he says, is
> to nurture the system, a religious-based system that is almost 30
> years old and still finding its way. "There are certain people still
> remaining who challenge the values," he said in his understated
> manner. "What I mean by 'challenge' are those people who make debates
> regarding the values of the system."

A number of people who belong to various political traditions on the
Left have often behaved in exactly the same way as Shariatmadari.  And
I don't mean just Stalin, et al., who presided at the pinnacles of
power of socialist states.  Some of today's leftists have the same
"principle-ist" mindset, which has them think: "There are certain
people still remaining who challenge the values. . . .  What I mean by
'challenge' are those people who make debates regarding the values of
the system," especially if the values in question are liberalism and
secularism.  If Shariatmadari, et al. have, in some ways, become like
those who once oppressed them, those who hate Shariatmadari, et al.,
in some ways, resemble the object of their hatred, even without having
had their toenails and fingernails ripped out like the Kayhan editor.
-- 
Yoshie