Mick Hartley

Daniel Finkelstein in the Times on Iran and the hard left:

Five years ago, during a row about his behaviour towards Jewish students at Bristol University, hundreds of leftist academics signed an open letter in defence of Professor David Miller. Despite Miller’s capacity for glaring factual errors and unhinged interpretations, his allies described him as an “eminent scholar” and “highly regarded”, presumably by the signatories as well as himself.

This week Miller has been busy arguing that the problem with the Islamic Republic of Iran is that it is too liberal and democratic, that it is nevertheless “the last line of defence against the destruction of civilisation by PaxJudaica” and that there should be “no leniency towards saboteurs” who he argues need to be liquidated. He calls Iranian refugees “American running dogs of the Zionist enemy”. Supportmiller.org is still available online should you wish to donate, or to add your signature to that of Noam Chomsky.

Miller is an extremist, even within the ranks of extremists. He, for instance, describes Zarah Sultana, who recently advocated the nationalisation of all of Britain’s sweet shops, as “shilling for Mossad”, while one of the recent fruits of his eminent scholarship has been to identify the Guardian columnist Owen Jones as a “footsoldier for the Jewish empire”.

So it would be unfair to suggest his latest pronouncements are supported by all the people who leapt to his defence in 2021. But precisely because he seems no longer to care what anyone else thinks, his frank opinion is helpful in understanding the puzzling position of the left towards Iran over the last 45 years.

Miller’s view is that the revolutionary forces in Iran are a vital bulwark against capitalist imperialism. It is essentially the same position taken by Jeremy Corbyn towards the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War. In 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Corbyn told a conference held by the Morning Star that while there were criticisms to be made of the Soviets, they were the only country protecting insurgent states from the West.

And Corbyn has long thought that true of Iran as well. For decades Iran was one of his favourite subjects. He devoted a great deal of energy to attacking western interference and holding out a hand of friendship to the ayatollahs.

On one extraordinary occasion in 2014, just before becoming leader of the opposition, Corbyn spoke at a meeting to “commemorate the auspicious anniversary of the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran” and was introduced as a “very dear friend”. Early in his birthday speech, while the rest of us were celebrating quietly at home, he bemoaned how little the West understood the Islamic Republic’s inclusivity and tolerance.

Once upon a time the left had good reason to battle against the depredations of a ruthless capitalist class. Friedrich Engels, for instance, saw first hand the appalling conditions, including child labour, in Manchester’s cotton mills. Meanwhile western imperialism did indeed have its wicked way with “native” societies across the world. Those days have ended – thanks in no small part to the battles fought by the left and by the unions. Not that it’s all perfect, of course, but then it never could be. But the left hasn’t changed. Rather like Stonewall – forced to regroup and invent a new cause in the form of trans rights after the gay fight had been won – the left needs to reinvent new battles and new heroes in its endless struggle to keep relevant, while failing to notice that these heroic anti-western forces, like communism, like Islamism, are far far worse than our current liberal democracies.