Mick Hartley

Why is it that the theocracy in Iran gets a pass from the Western left, while that same left has no difficulty calling out Saudi Arabia, for instance, as a corrupt and autocratic tyranny. Could it be something to do with the fact that Saudi Arabia is an ally of the West, and therefore fair game, while Iran, as an outspoken enemy of the West, is somehow considered a potential ally and therefore an illegitimate target for criticism? Never mind that one of the world's great cultures has endured forty years of the most barbaric and brutal repression in the name of an intolerant religion, while gays are hung from cranes, women's voices are stifled, and the economy is a disaster zone…

Mariam Memarsadeghi in Quillette – The West’s Betrayal of Iranian Dissidents:

Next month, Ayatollah Khamenei’s theocracy will stage celebrations commemorating 40 years of revolutionary power. It will do so amidst widespread acts of civil disobedience, street protests, labor strikes, and ubiquitous resentment produced by a collapsed economy and grotesque corruption. Even prominent regime insiders are now openly proclaiming the emptiness of the regime’s authority, with critiques resembling late analysis from the Soviet nomenklatura as it was confronted by cascading legitimacy crises manifested by the primordial contradictions of an ideological state.

When the Iranian people rose up against an authoritarian dictator four decades ago, they were rewarded with one of the most politically ruthless and socially backward totalitarian regimes the world has known. Falling for the siren song of populist Islamist rule, they failed to win the justice or the freedoms they had been demanding, and instead lost everything they had taken for granted under secular, modernizing rule: personal liberties, social progress, and economic opportunities that had birthed a middle class. South Korea and other countries economically inferior to Iran before the revolution are now towering over it, despite Iran’s vast oil wealth.  Iran, like Venezuela, has fallen precipitously into a wasteland of severe government mismanagement and unaccountability, environmental apocalypse, brain drain, and social malaise. Today, the country is beset by poverty, child exploitation, drug addiction, suicide, prostitution, human trafficking, and a profound lack of trust, the full truth of which no one dares bring to light for fear of deadly repression.  […]

Yet today’s Iranian liberals, unlike the anti-American supporters of the 1979 revolution, are largely ignored in the West. Though their values are no different from those expressed by Solidarity in Poland or the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, Iranians who yearn for democracy and an open, prosperous society at peace with the world are met with overwhelming indifference from the West’s media and political leaders, not to mention its universities, unions, civic groups, churches, and celebrities—the very people and institutions that historically have lent their empathy, solidarity, and concrete assistance to the cause of freedom across the world.   […]

Though it is barely recognized by Western feminists, the Iranian women’s movement is at the forefront of a valiant struggle for human dignity against a fascist ideology determined to deny Muslim girls and women the fundamental human rights and freedoms rightly cherished in the West. The defeat of Islamist politics and the global advancement of women’s rights are in no measure guaranteed but are, rather, wholly reliant on those heroic souls—above all free thinking women—with the courage to denounce medieval gender doctrines. In the halls of academe, the struggles of Iranian women are more likely to elicit embarrassment about the Global South’s naive embrace of Enlightenment norms than solidarity with the universality of their cause. In the name of a pious commitment to self-criticism, Western elites prefer to embrace the headscarf rather than risk the arrogance of imperial judgement. But their selectively applied moral relativism only helps to confer a perverse legitimacy on practises like child marriage, domestic violence and marital rape, stoning, and unequal treatment before the law which are, it is implied, culturally authentic and therefore superior to the hypocrisies of the West’s imperfect egalitarianism. In this way, not only are the socio-economic achievements of Western women diminished, but the struggles of women in places like Iran are scorned.

Not content with its betrayal of Iranian democrats and feminists, the Regressive Left is also betraying Iranian workers. Despite violent repression of independent labor unions, Iranians have staged a series of nationwide strikes. But their demands, the reports of torture, and the photos and videos of striking workers have been ignored by all but a few unions in the West.  The AFL-CIO once proudly supported Poland’s Solidarity worker’s movement during the years of Cold War oppression, but it has remained silent about striking Iranians. The American Federation of Teachers, meanwhile, has turned its back on Iranian teachers striking to protest unpaid wages, abysmal working conditions, and the omnipresent ruthlessness of the regime. It is as if the American Left is unwilling or unable to see that Iranian dissidents are suffering the same state-controlled command economies and rentier politics that characterize all brands of totalitarianism, regardless of time or place, culture or religion….