[If you have been watching closely the updates from Iran, much of what follows will not be new -- though, the last part of the diary likely will be a surprise. Regardless, hopefully you will stick around for the discussion...]
Sometimes, your enemy's enemy is not your friend.
As MB has detailed well, Ahmandinejad and Khamenei are two of the neoconservatives' favorite objects of ire. This fact, coupled with Moussavi's own less-than-liberal history, and the perceived class basis of the uprising, has led some on the left to speak out against the Iranian uprising.
Suffice it to say that I find these arguments thoroughly unconvincing.
But instead of wading into this discussion myself,* I thought it made the most sense to respond to these posts by simply highlighting social democratic and feminist Iranian (and Iranian expatriate) perspectives on the current crisis.
First, as reported by Al Giordano, the Khodro auto workers have initiated a partial strike in solidarity with the protesters. Here is the statement they released, as translated for The Field by Iraj Omidvar:
Strike in Iran Khodro:
We declare our solidarity with the movement of the people of Iran.
Autoworker, Fellow Laborers (Laborer Friends): What we witness today, is an insult to the intelligence of the people, and disregard for their votes, the trampling of the principles of the Constitution by the government. It is our duty to join this people's movement.
We the workers of Iran Khodro, Thursday 28/3/88 in each working shift will stop working for half an hour to protest the suppression of students, workers, women, and the Constitution and declare our solidarity with the movement of the people of Iran. The morning and afternoon shifts from 10 to 10:30. The night shift from 3 to 3:30.
Laborers of IranKhodor
Second, the remaining elements of Mossadegh's social democratic party, the Iranian National Front, have issued a statement about tomorrow's planned rally (It has also been translated by Iraj Omidvar):
Fellow Citizen:
Tomorrow will be a day that will determine the destiny of our people and our country’s history. After the speeches by the leaders of darkness, deceit, and destruction in today’s Friday prayer ceremonies that were held around the country at the expense of the Iranian people and through the transportation of thousands of paid attendees, the people of Iran will demonstrate who is the true owner of this country.
The blood of the martyrs of Khordad 28 is the support of freedom and the signed ownership document for Iran, which should not be allowed to be trampled on.
Tomorrow people will see whether Mir Hossein Mousavi is a man of freedom or not.
Tomorrow people will see whether the Guard and the Basij will work to protect their fellow citizens or not.
Tomorrow the world will see whether a group of thieves and pillagers will continue their rule over a freedom-loving people or whether the legs of the regime will weaken so that peace and friendship can be spread around the world.
Tomorrow will be one of the most difficult crossings in the history of Iran, even if its leaders prefer the shop of religiosity to freedom.
Tomorrow, Saturday, 31 Khordad 1388, at 4 in the afternoon, Freedom Square will be the palpitating heart of the world.
Bijan Mehr
The News Network of the Iranian National Front
Third, Marjane Satrapi, best known for her Persepolis comics, has emerged as a spokesperson for Moussavi. Anyone who has read her comics, which present the 1979 revolution and its aftermath, can vouch for Satrapi's commitment to social democracy and women's equality. Here is a clip of her recent speech to the European Parliament.
Fourth, Ramin Jahanbegloo, a prominent Iranian academic who,in 2006, was placed in solitary confinement for four months as punishment for his political activities, and who now teaches in Canada, has justweighed in on the crisis. Here is what he says about the current uprising:
The present crisis in Iran following the Iranian presidential elections is rooted in the popular quest for the democratization of the state and society and the conservative reaction and opposition to it.
But there is another factor distinguishing the current political crisis from the previous instances of political factionalism and internal power struggles in Iran.
This is a crisis over a deep-seated ideological structure inherited from the Iranian revolution. On the one hand, those, like Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karubi, who have been among the architects of the Islamic regime and the challengers for the presidency, believed that the Islamic nomenclature allowed scope for reform and renewal. They now find themselves at the head of a pro-democracy and pro-reform movement that seeks to defy the very essence of illiberalism and authoritarianism in Iran.
On the other hand, there is another and equally important factor that must be taken into consideration. Most of the demonstrators who have been questioning the entire legitimacy of Iran's electoral process in the past week are not, unlike their parents, revolutionaries. They belong to a new generation who did not experience the revolution of 1979 and wants another Iran. Most of them were not around or are too young to remember the revolution. They made up one-third of eligible voters in the Iranian presidential election.
These youngsters are a reminder of the fact that a monolithic image of Iran does not reflect the mindset of the 70 percent of the population who are under the age of 30. The young Iranians' quest for democracy has presented serious challenges not only to the status of the doctrine of the "Velayat i Faqih" and questions of its legitimacy, but also to the reform movement and its democratic authenticity.
In 2006, Jahanbegloo gave a great interview to Danny Postel, an important figure in Chicago's social democratic scene. The interview is printed in Postel's highly worthwhile and readable pamphlet, "Reading Legitimation Crisis in Iran," which presents an argument for how the international left should relate to Iranian protest movements. You can order the pamphlet here. I found this exchange from the interview particularly worthwhile, in light of recent events (emphasis added):
DP: The work of Jurgen Habermas is quite popular in Iran today. Can you talk about his visit to Tehran in 2002 and the effect it has had on the Iranian intellectual scene? Why do you think his ideas have caught on with Iranian students and intellectuals in the way they have?
RJ: Habermas's visit to Iran was a huge success. he was treated in Iran the way Bollywood actors are treated in India. Wherever he went or lectured, he was encircled by hundreds of young students and curious observers. This same phenomenon happened again when Richard Rorty visited Iran in 2004: around 1,500 souls came to his lecture on "Democracy and Non-Foundationalism" at the House of Artists in Tehran. Habermas's visit to Iran was an important event in the process of democratic thinking and dialogue among cultures. As Victor Hugo says in Histoire d'un Crime: "One can resist the invasion of an army, but one cannot resist the invasion of ideas whose time has come." The time of philosophical ideas have come to Iran. Today in Iran philosophy represents a window on Western culture, on an open society and on the idea of democracy. This is the reason why Habermas, Rorty, Ricoeur, Berlin and many others are relevant in Iran. Most of the intellectuals in Iran today are struggling against different forms of fundamentalism, fanaticism and orthodoxy. Habermas is considered the inheritor of the Frankfurt School's intellectual tradition that from the very beginning questioned all orthodoxies and authoritarianisms ....
I think there is another reason why Habermas is so popular in Iran. It has mainly to do with the fact that with the failure of Marxist-Leninist movements in Iran and a new interest in Marx and Hegel, a younger generation of intellectuals and scholars are interested in rediscovering these thinkers from a new angle. The popularity of Habermas has also to do with the fact that he sees himself as a nexus in which Marxist thought is reformed, transformed, refined, improved, and brought forth to a new generation. Habermas's theory of communicative action derives largely from Marx but involves a systematic rethinking of Marx's ideas. Last, but not least, I think that Habermas' positive assessment of the Enlightenment and his insistence on its democratic potential finds its true place in the lively debate between the two concepts of tradition and modernity in contemporary Iran ....
This brings me to Kant and Habermas. As you might know, Kant is a very popular philosopher in Iran and there were several celebrations in Tehran for the two-hundredth anniversary of his death in 2004. Well, once again as for Hegel, Habermas's recasting of the Kantian principle of autonomy and its political implications shows how public reason lies at the heart of democratizing processes and is decisive to the survival of non-authoritarian political, social, and economic institutions in our world. And you can see how Kant -- and Habermas's reading of Kant -- can be helpful in reformulating and re-elaborating a new democratic thinking in Iran. Habermas via Kant offers Iranian intellectuals and civil society activists a model of democratic agency and political thinking that avoids two unattractive alternatives: that of rooting politics in personal preferences for authoritarian personalities and that of eliminating the universality of ethics in the name of a revolutionary break (79-82).
I hope these materials were interesting to you, and I'd love to read any similar materials that you know of. Please post them in the comments, and I will try to bring them up into the body of the diary.
Thanks for reading!
* If I were to weigh in more extensively, my response would sound a lot like one of Al Giordano's
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