By David Walsh 

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Daphne Merkin’s “Publicly, We Say #MeToo. Privately, We Have Misgivings”

In a column Friday in the New York Times, “Publicly, We Say #MeToo. Privately, We Have Misgivings,” critic and novelist Daphne Merkin acknowledges there is considerable opposition to the current sexual misconduct witch-hunt even within its target demographic. The columnist lands a number of telling blows.

The starting point for Merkin’s piece is the Golden Globes awards ceremony on Sunday, at which, she predicts, “Hollywood celebrities, not exactly known for their independent thinking, will turn the red carpet into a #MeToo moment replete with designer duds... The rest of us will diligently follow along on Twitter, sharing hashtags and suitably pious opprobrium.”

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Truly “heinous sorts” run the US government and military-intelligence apparatus, the corporations and banks. The American ruling elite and its propagandists, including front and center the New York Times, are guilty of vast and horrible crimes against humanity in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere. The financial oligarchy does not lose any sleep over social atrocities at home either...

Merkin notes, however, that “many of us… will be rolling our eyes, having had it with the reflexive and unnuanced sense of outrage that has accompanied this cause from its inception, turning a bona fide moment of moral accountability into a series of ad hoc and sometimes unproven accusations.”

She suggests that the discussion of the issue “that has been going on in private about this reckoning is radically different from the public one.” Various women the columnist knows “say the right things, [while] expressing approval and joining in the chorus of voices that applaud” the current wave of allegations and takedowns.

“In private it’s a different story. ‘Grow up, this is real life,’ I hear these same feminist friends say. ‘What ever happened to flirting?’ and ‘What about the women who are the predators?’ Some women, including random people I talk to in supermarket lines, have gone so far as to call it an outright witch-hunt.”

Leaving aside Merkin’s individual history and motives, the appearance of the column with its acknowledgement of considerable hostility among middle-class women to the sexual misconduct campaign is a serious admission, if not a backpedaling, on the part of the Times itself. For months now, the newspaper’s editorial board, which has dedicated considerable resources to digging up dirt on various celebrities, and the rest of the American media have rolled out one headline and article after another asserting that the population is universally infuriated by the allegations.

In reality, the campaign has left substantial sections of the population, female and male, beset by economic woes and struggling to keep their heads above water, largely unaffected. The most intense “indignation” has been felt by a layer of female professionals. Merkin reveals that even here there is substantial consternation.

The article pointedly refers to a number of phenomena we have discussed on the WSWS, including the return “to a victimology paradigm for young women, in particular, in which they are perceived to be—and perceive themselves to be—as frail as Victorian housewives.” Furthermore, the columnist rightly characterizes the campaign to remove a painting by Polish-French artist Balthus from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as “the kind of censorship practiced by religious zealots.”

Merkin notes a “disturbing lack of clarity” about terms such as harassment, assault and “inappropriate conduct.” She observes, moreover, that expressing “sexual interest is inherently messy and, frankly, nonconsensual—one person, typically the man, bites the bullet by expressing interest in the other, typically the woman—whether it happens at work or at a bar. Some are now suggesting that come-ons need to be constricted to a repressive degree... We are witnessing the re-moralization of sex, not via the Judeo-Christian ethos but via a legalistic, corporate consensus... There is an inquisitorial whiff in the air, and my particular fear is that in true American fashion, all subtlety and reflection is being lost. Next we’ll be torching people for the content of their fantasies.”

Merkin’s arguments have undoubtedly struck a chord. Close to 2,000 comments follow her column, many of them expressing agreement and even relief. On the other hand, numerous correspondents register anger at the lid being lifted on the repressive character of the current campaign.

The article reflects an objective reality, that increasing numbers of people are disgusted with the self-pitying, self-absorbed pronouncements of Ashley Judd, Rose McGowan, Salma Hayek and company, millionaires all, who would have us believe they have suffered the tortures of hell. In some cases, the sexual misconduct campaign has opened up new career and economic possibilities.

To be brutally frank, there is a great difference between the situation facing a working class woman, on the one hand, for whom acquiescing to sexual pressures in a factory or office may be virtually a life-and-death issue, and the choices open to an entertainer or performer, on the other, who plays along in the interests of advancing a career. Merkin herself asks rhetorically, “What happened to women’s agency? That’s what I find myself wondering as I hear story after story of adult women who helplessly acquiesce to sexual demands.”

However, where Merkin’s column falls down terribly is in its acceptance of too many of the assumptions of the sexual misconduct campaign (despite her recognition that in the current climate “to be accused is to be convicted” and that “due process is nowhere to be found”) and her failure to examine the broader, political implications.

She writes at one point, “It goes without saying that no one is coming to the defense of heinous sorts, like Kevin Spacey and Matt Lauer.” Heinous sorts? Are we talking about Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini? Neither Spacey nor Lauer has been charged or found guilty of a crime. Spacey, one of America’s most gifted actors and the two-time winner of an Academy Award, has been turned into a “non-person” primarily on the basis of an allegation about a sexual encounter that may have occurred more than 30 years ago. The statute of limitations, which exists for a reason, has been reached in many cases. Individuals can be guilty of loutish, boorish or inappropriate actions, and conduct that one generally disapproves of, but there are no grounds for this kind of personal demonization. It simply fuels the witch-hunt.

Truly “heinous sorts” run the US government and military-intelligence apparatus, the corporations and banks. The American ruling elite and its propagandists, including front and center the New York Times, are guilty of vast and horrible crimes against humanity in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere. The financial oligarchy does not lose any sleep over social atrocities at home either, the communities destroyed by factory closures, the poverty and homelessness, lowered life expectancy, tens of thousands of drug deaths and the social misery of a larger and larger portion of the population.

Merkin’s article largely sidesteps the enormous legal and democratic issues involved. There has been nothing like the current drive since the McCarthyite period. In some ways, there is even less of an attempt today to dress up the destruction of lives and careers—often on the basis of anonymous and flimsy accusations—in pseudo-legal guise than there was in the early 1950s. How has this large-scale effort, which the columnist herself argues may pose the danger of people being “torched” for their thoughts, gained such traction?

Sexual harassment and assault are emotive and very real issues. But portions of the American establishment have not taken up these questions because they suddenly feel deeply about abuse and injustice. They feel nothing about such matters. This is a coldly calculated political operation directed by the Democratic Party and its media orbit, including the Times.

It is one element of the reaction of the Democrats to their defeat in 2016. They hope to leverage this, the sexual misconduct/assault issue, into electoral and political success. At the same time, they want to muddy the waters and divert attention from the conditions of life for millions and the malignant social polarization.

This campaign falls into the same fraudulent category as the “fake news” censorship drive and the hysterical Russophobia that has gripped considerable layers of the upper-middle class.

People are being led by the nose—and many of them quite willingly—into supporting a campaign that will facilitate outright political repression. The present crusade has as much to do with sex as the anti-Russian campaign has to do with protecting American democracy. 

The indecent audacity of the US government and its whore imperial media knows no bounds. 

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CROSSPOSTED WITH STRATEGIC CULTURE
he United States Government says that Syria’s Government caused the U.N.-estimated "at least $250 billion" cost to restore Syria from the destruction that Syria’s war produced, and so Syria’s Government should pay those reconstruction costs. That link is to a New York Times article, which explicitly blames Syrian “President Bashar al-Assad’s ruthless triumph” — which was won against all of the jihadist groups (which the US and its allies had brought into Syria to overthrow and replace Assad's Government) — for having caused the devastation in Syria; the US and its allies say they aren’t to blame for it, at all, by their having organized and armed and trained and manned that 6-year invasion of Syria; and, so (they say, and the NYT article implicitly assumes it to be true), if the invaders-occupiers of Syria might ultimately agree to pay some portion of these $250B+ reconstruction costs, then this would be sheer generosity by the US and its allies — nothing that these governments are obligated to pay to the surviving residents in Syria.

It would be charity — not restitution — according to them. The way that this NYT news-report presents this case is, first, to ask rhetorically, regarding the US and its allies in the invasion of Syria, “Can they afford to pour money into a regime that has starved, bombed and occasionally gassed its own people?” and then promptly to proceed by ignoring this very question that they have asked, and instead to provide a case (relying heavily on innuendos) for the immorality of the US and its allies to provide restitution to Syria’s Government to restore Syria. That’s how this Times’ news-report argues for the US Government, against Syria’s Government, regarding Syria’s postwar reconstruction: The Times news-report repeatedly simply assumes that Syria’s Government is evil and corrupt, and is to blame for the destruction of Syria, and thus shouldn’t receive any money from good and honest governments such as ours. It implicitly accepts the viewpoint of the US Government — a viewpoint which blatantly contradicts the actual history of the case, as will here be documented by the facts:

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America’s Government (including its press, such as the NYT) simply refuses to recognize the legitimacy of Syria’s Government (even after the first internationally monitored democratic election in all of Syria’s history, which was held in 2014, and which the incumbent candidate Bashar al-Assad (whom the US alliance has been trying to overthrow) won, by 89%), and the US Government has, itself, evilly been trying to conquer Syria (a country that never threatened the US), ever since at least 1949, when the CIA perpetrated a coup there (the new CIA’s 2nd coup, the first one having been 1948 in Thailand — and here is the rest of that shocking history) and ousted Syria’s democratically elected President; but, then, in 1955, Syria’s army threw out the US-imposed dictator, and restored to power that democratically elected Syrian President, who in 1958 accepted Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s offer to unify the two countries (Syria and Egypt) into the United Arab Republic (UAR), in order to protect Syria against a then-imminent invasion and attempted take-over by NATO member Turkey (which has traditionally been hostile toward Syria). It was a peaceful and voluntary transfer of power, to Nasser.

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However, Nasser became an unpopular President in Syria, as the nation’s economy performed poorly during the UAR; and, so, on 28 September 1961, Syria’s army declared Syria's secession from the UAR; and it then installed-and-replaced seven Presidents over the next decade, until 22 February 1971, when General Hafez al-Assad resigned from Syria’s military and was promptly endorsed by the Army for the Presidency; and, soon thereafter, on 12 March 1971, a yes-no national referendum on whether Assad should become President won a 99.2%"Yes" vote of the Syrian people. President Assad initiated today’s Syria, by assigning a majority of political posts to secular Sunnis, and a majority of military posts to secular Shiites. All of the Sunnis that he allowed into the Government were seculars, so as to prevent fundamentalist-Sunni foreign governments — mainly the Sauds — from being able to work successfully with America’s CIA to again take over Syria’s Government. Assad’s Ba’athist democratic socialist Party chose his son Bashar, to succeed Hafez as President, upon Hafez’s death on 10 June 2000; and, when Barack Obama became US President in 2009, Obama carried forward the CIA’s plan to overthrow Bashar al-Assad and to install a Saud-allied fundamentalist-Sunni Syrian government to replace the existing non-secular, but Iran-allied, Ba’athist Government. However, since Bashar had built upon Hafez’s secular, non-sectarian, governmental system, the old CIA plan, to apply fundamentalist Sunnis to destroy the basically non-sectarian state (which is the basis of the Assads’ political support), ultimately failed; and, so, America’s Government and media are trying to deal with the consequences of their own evil, as best they can, so as to have only Syria and its allies suffer the Syrian war’s aftermath. US President Donald Trump has been continuing President Obama’s policy, and he loaded his Administration with rabidly anti-Syrian and anti-Iranian people.

In the American Government’s view, the least that Syria’s Government should now do is to pay all the costs for the consequences of America’s lengthiest-ever effort against Syria — or, if Syria’s Government won’t do that, then the US Government will continue its occupation of Syria, and won’t help the Syrian people at all, to recover from the devastation, which they blame entirely on Assad (who never threatened the US).

However, the Syrian Government says that the countries which invaded it with their weapons and their jihadists and their organization — not only the United States and its weapons-supplies to the jihadists, but also Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Turkey, UK, France, and other US allies, the entire US coalition who organized and supplied the six-year international jihadist invasion against Syria — are to blame for the destruction of Syria; and, “If you break it, you own it, and need to replace it.” So, Syrians think that the invaders — and not the people of Syria — must pay the reconstruction cost.

The US Government blames Syrian President Bashar Assad for everything. That charge is, however, quite problematic, given the facts in the case. The US CIA was behind the “Arab Spring” movements to overthrow and replace Assad and other Arab leaders who dissatisfied the US regime, and it then fed into Syria the ‘rebels’ until now. Few of them are still remaining under US protection — which is mostly east of the Euphrates River, where America’s Kurdish proxy-forces are in control, after having finally defeated, with American air power, Syria’s ISIS.

That NYT article used the word “rebel” six times to refer to the jihadists who were fighting against Syria’s Government, and didn’t even once use the word “jihadist” or “terrorist” or anything like that, to refer to even a single one of them. However, almost all of the anti-Assad fighters were, in fact, jihadists (or, some people call them, instead, “radical Islamic terrorists”).

Western-sponsored opinion polls have been taken of the residents of Syria, throughout the war, and they have consistently shown that Bashar al-Assad would easily win re-election there in any free and internationally monitored election, and that the Syrian people overwhelmingly (by 82%) blame the United States for having brought the tens of thousands of foreign fighters into Syria to overthrow and replace their nation's Government. Consequently, if Syrians will end up bearing the estimated $250B+ reconstruction cost of a war that 82% of them blame on the US, then the Syrian people will become even angrier against the US Government than they are now. But, of course, the US Government doesn’t care about the people of Syria, and won’t even allow in any of them as refugees to America; so, Syrians know whom their friends and enemies are. America’s absconding on its $250+B reparations-debt to them wouldn’t surprise them, at all. It’s probably what they’re expecting.

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]ome US propaganda-media, such as Britain’s Financial Times, have field-tested an alternative, a blame-Russia approach, in case the US team can’t get the blame-Syria story-line to gain sufficient international acceptance. For example, that newspaper’s Roula Khalaf headlined on 1 March 2017,  “The west to Russia: you broke Syria, now you fix it”, but most of the reader-comments were extremely hostile to that designation of villain in the case. Here were the most-popular comments:

COMMENTS, Most recommended:

Nomad_X Mar 1, 2017 What dreadful 'analysis' .... Russia finished the Syrian war because they had to. Syria was an artificial proxy war instigated by the USA, Saudi Arabia and Turkey - the Iranians and Russians joined in after the west tried to remove Assad, and failed. The UN also said publicly that Syria was not a civil war - it was a war of foreign mercenary groups trying to overthrow the Assad regime. Russia had no choice but to be there - Putin said publicly there was over 500 Russian nationals involved, and they would be going home once they were finished in Syria. Syria is another US foreign policy disaster which someone else had no choice but to clean up - it essentially created and legitimatized ISIS and now we ALL have to pay for it ....

Reply Airman48 Mar 1, 2017 The usual Bogus Russian troll perspective that is devoid of the truth. Syria has been a Russian client state in the 1960s when Hafez al Assad invited the Soviets in. Russia took ownership of the Syrian Civil War the minute it intervened and deployed Military forces to that country and after waging a brutal campaign of indiscriminate bombing that killed many hundreds of innocent Syria Non combatants it now expects the West to pay to reconstruct Syria. Read the title of the article again "The West to Russia. You broke it, you FIX it”

Reply Nomad_X Mar 1, 2017 @Airman48 Some facts for your viewing pleasure - 1. Syria being a client state is not new news - just because they bought their weapons does not mean they wanted a war. 2. Russia cleaned up and finished the war - they did not initiate it - the USA did. 3. The title is a misnomer - the USA, Saudi Arabia and Turkey broke Syria. ReportShare27Recommend 

Although some readers, such as “Airman48,” seemed eager to blame anything on Russia, most of the readers, even at that rabidly anti-Russian, neoconservative-neoliberal (or, to use old terminology, pro-imperialist) publication, seemed to be somehow uncomfortable with that view. Perhaps that view would have been popular in 1900 (America and UK were proudly imperialistic at that time), but it seems to be unpopular today. It’s not as easy to fool the American and British people into an invasion as it was, for example, when we invaded and destroyed Iraq on the basis of lies, in 2003. Barack Obama managed to win public support for a repeat of that performance in Libya in 2011, and, of course, for the anti-Syria campaign, and also for a very bloody coup overthrowing Ukraine’s democratically elected government in 2014 — a trifecta of US invasions on the basis of lies (and all of which were invasions of countries that never endangered US national security) — but the bipartisanship of that US hyper-aggressiveness (first with the Republican Bush, and then with the Democratic Obama) has made clear to many Americans, that the US Government itself is the problem, that this is not a partisan problem; it is a problem with the Government itself, by both Parties, which is evil in what it is bipartisan about (such as supporting invasions by lies, against countries that never threatened us). [And it does so to fill its masters' goals, that is the goals of the plutocratic elites that own all the huge global corporations and much of the wealth in the US and the world.—Eds]

Voice of America is no more propagandistic than all of America’s major media are, even though it’s openly a US Government medium; and it headlined on 30 December 2017, “Pentagon Preparing for Shift in Syrian Strategy” and reported the latest variant of the US regime’s plan to dump all the costs of the invasion of Syria, onto the Syrian people. Secretary of ‘Defense’ James Mattis said, “What we will be doing is shifting from what I call an offensive, terrain-seizing approach. … You'll see more US diplomats on the ground.” The article continued, “‘When you bring in more diplomats, they’re working that initial restoration of services. They bring in the contractors. That sort of thing,’ the defense secretary said. ‘There’s international money that’s got to be administered so it actually does something and doesn’t go into the wrong people’s [the Syrian Government’s] pockets.’” He wants US international corporations to be placed into position to skim off some of that reconstruction-money. (Some of this cash might then become recycled into Republican political campaign donations, which would please the Republican US President, and Republicans in Congress. But the Democrats in Congress are ‘patriotic’, and so will not resist Republicans’ effort to continue crushing Syria.)

Mattis was threatening Syrians with America’s absconding with all the damages it left behind, unless Syria’s Government will give America’s Government at least some of what it wants (but never earned). This VOA article said, “There are questions about how the initial recovery efforts will work, given that much of Syria is now under the control of forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.” The implication there is that America has a right to overthrow Syria’s Government; and, that, unless Syria’s Government will bend at least part-way in recognizing this right, the US Government will abscond totally from this matter. The US regime is blaming everything on Assad, and expects him to be grateful for any financial assistance that the US Government, in its kindness and generosity, provides, to his land, which it has destroyed. (Of course, Syria’s Government has also bombed targets in Syria, but the only alternative that was available for President Assad would have been to surrender Syria to the jihadists whom the US team had brought into and armed there.) However, VOA’s presumption that Syria’s Government is to blame and that the invading jihadists aren’t, isn’t likely to be accepted by any nations except some of America’s allies. For example, Poland might back it, in order to retain the US regime’s support, which is especially important to the Polish regime, because their support from some of the other European regimes has been fraying recently, and because beggars (such as Poland is, when it becomes widely criticized by the rest of the EU) can’t be choosers. Apparently, the Trump regime believes it can assemble a sufficient number of such regimes, so as to win its way.

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]rump has the support of the entire US aristocracy on this. A leading voice of the US aristocracy (and funder of its agents — such as US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner — when they are in the revolving door between government-service and Wall Street or other private agencies of the aristocracy) is America’s Council on Foreign Relations, which publishes Foreign Affairs magazine, which is perhaps the chief public voice of America’s billionaires, concerning international relations. On 4 October 2017, it published an article, “since 1949 to overthrow and control; and the advice that they are giving to their vassal aristocracies is: “The West does not get unlimited tries to remove Assad or to dictate Syria’s politics”; and, so, “The West” should just walk away from the matter: there shouldn’t be any deal — Syria should just become a failed state, such as Libya, or Afghanistan.

Another prominent institutional voice of America’s billionaires is the similarly solidly neoconservative-neoliberal (or pro-imperialistic) Brookings Institution, whose Steven Heydemann headlined on 24 August 2017, “Rules for reconstruction in Syria”, and he wrote:

For the Assad regime, however, reconstruction is not seen as a means for economic recovery and social repair, but as an opportunity for self-enrichment, a way to reward loyalists and punish opponents, and as central to its efforts to fix in place the social and demographic shifts caused by six years of violent conflict. Assad himself affirmed this intent in a speech he delivered to mark the inauguration of the Damascus Exhibition. Thanking Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah, Assad said that Syria had “lost its best youth and its infrastructure,” but had “won a healthier and more homogenous society.” The prominent Arab [Qatari-Palestinian-Israeli] political analyst Azmi Bishara described Assad’s claim as "Hitlerian" and as confirmation of the “genocidal” intent of the regime’s policies of displacement.

Thus, a statement by Assad expressing satisfaction that Syria has even a smaller percentage of its citizens who support jihadists today than it had prior to the US-Saudi-UAE-Qatari-Turkish importation of the world’s jihadists into Syria, was there being called “Hitlerian.” America’s billionaires (or at least their policy-propagandists) view Assad’s loathing of jihadists as bigotry, just like Hitler’s loathing of Jews was.

Furthermore, Bishara, who was being cited there by Brookings as an authority about Assad, was a big supporter of the US coalition against Syria: for example, he said about Assad’s Government, at 2:17 in this 20 May 2013 telecast on Syria’s enemy Qatar’s Al Jazeera television in Arabic (Al Jazeera is pro-jihadist in its Arabic broadcasts, but anti-jihadist in its English ones), “Now, it’s shelling its own people, ferociously, an ongoing massacre, and yet the people resist. They haven’t stopped.” He didn’t mention “jihadists” or “terrorists” at all (because he represents their backers). There is no available evidence as to whether Bishara is being paid by the CIA, or perhaps by the Thani family who own Qatar, but Brookings’s failure to disclose information like that (Bishara’s statement’s falsely implying that Assad is anti-Syrian instead of anti-jihadist), in such a context as this passage by Heydemann, indicates the extent to which Brookings should be presumed to be merely an extension of the same international aristocratic group that ultimately controls the CIA, CFR, etc. (Bishara then went on there to use the phrase “we, the Israelis”; so, maybe he instead represents Israel’s Mossad. But that’s just as bad, and maybe even the same thing as the rest of them.)

The argument by America’s billionaires (via their agents), regarding restitution to the Syrian people, for the catastrophe that those billionaires (via their political contributions) spearheaded against Syrians, is: If anyone should pay it, then Syria’s Government should.

Apparently, “The West” intends simply to keep on destroying nations and leaving behind more and more failed states.

Of course, that long war to get rid of Russia’s allies might be a profitable policy for the owners of corporations such as Lockheed Martin, but there are big downsides to this policy, for the billions of people whom “The West” seems to care nothing about, such as in Syria, and in Libya, and in Ukraine. And this evil policy is also bad even for the American people, who are increasingly coming to loathe the Government that America’s billionaires have increasingly bought and impose upon us.

America’s corruption deserves a Nobel Prize, like was won by Henry Kissinger and Barack Obama; but, this one should be called the “Hypocrisy Prize” and awarded directly to the US Government — an invoice, “amount due,” totaling the damages done by this Government to all of the governments that had posed no threat to US national security but that the US Government nonetheless overthrew, starting with Thailand in 1948. Of course, the rogue US Government would not pay it, but the bill should still be presented, because that bill would be the first Hypocrisy Prize, and it would show what hypocrisy can amount to.  

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When perhaps the top daily-news leftist website - the World Socialist Web Site - has the phrase “brutally exploited Iranian working class” in their first sentence, something is clearly out of balance.

Because if Iran’s working class is “brutally” mistreated, then what is the working class in, say, the United States? Do they call it the “astronomically, incredibly, stupendously, racially exploited US working class”?

Because the increase in Iran’s Human Development Index since 1990 - a measurement taken by the United Nations, the best (and only) global political organisation in the world - is second only to South Korea.

Does the UN’s HDI exclude the working class, or something? Of course not.

I like to bring up this statistic, and many others which prove the bona fides of Iranian Islamic Socialism, but it goes nowhere with so very many people that I wonder: Is thing on? Habla usted ingles?

The World Socialist Web Site is ardently Trotskyist, so they may prefer Esperanto, but to them I would say: Kaj vi, Bruto? (And you, Brutus?)

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The WSWS is a darn great site, and I’ve read it for too many years to count. They are exceptional in many ways, adored in the Third World, and are perhaps the most widely-visited truly leftist web site. They are so committed and so ideologically-rigorous that the “universal, permanent revolution” of Trotskyism compels them to end every article with one or two paragraphs that essentially say: “But this sucks and is a useless waste of our time because it’s not Trotskyism.”

Hey, I get it: Every medium has an editorial line to toe, and thankfully they are not pushing capitalism, imperialism, identity politics, fake-leftism, etc. Far from it, usually.

But this article on the Iran protests is a good example of good, impassioned leftists going astray.

A problem with such ideological rigour is that it can descend into ineffectual, ivory-tower idealism. It is especially glaring during times of crises, when people are looking to the WSWS for guidance.

For example, I can probably link to dozens and dozens of articles where the good-old WSWS decried an obvious political reality…but which suddenly transforms into “spurious” when the same idea comes out of the mouth of an Iranian:

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A problem with such ideological rigour is that it can descend into ineffectual, ivory-tower idealism. It is especially glaring during times of crises, when people are looking to the WSWS for guidance.

For example, I can probably link to dozens and dozens of articles where the good-old WSWS decried an obvious political reality…but which suddenly transforms into “spurious” when the same idea comes out of the mouth of an Iranian:

The rulers of the Islamic Republic are trying to justify their brutal crackdown with spurious claims that the protests are being manipulated by Washington and its principal regional allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia, as part of their incendiary drive for regime change in Tehran.

Well which is it, WSWS?

Call me biased - I am an Iranian civil servant, after all - but I think most non-dogmatic leftists will say that Iran is getting the same “capitalist-imperialist treatment” we have seen in Ukraine, Venezuela and about 9,000 other times in the past few hundred years.

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Some people love it when you lose - they love dirty laundry

[dropcap]B[/dropcap]ut the WSWS is not fully on your side unless you are Trotskyist.

A problem with such ideological rigidity is that it violates a key socialist concept, one which Trotskyists are less supportive of than Leninists or Stalinists: “auto-critique”, also known as “self-criticism”.

In short, this idea is based around the concept that you do not air your dirty socialist laundry in public.

China adheres to this quite strictly, and it is likely further helped by their cultural concept of “not losing face”. They do NOT criticise the Party in public, abroad or at home. Iran does this very well, too, but more so when dealing with foreigners, as we love a good needling (and potentially embarrassing) joke to be so concerned about saving face in our own home.

But make no mistake: this socialist concept insists that just because criticism is supposed to be saved for in private, criticism is ABSOLUTELY supposed to be done and not avoided - socialists are far more democratic than capitalists, after all.

What the WSWS could have done with this article, instead of jumping on Iran during a time of (not all that serious) crisis, is to practice some auto-critique and say…well, essentially what I am saying:

“Hey, what about UN’s HDI statistic - let’s not forget about that hard-won fact! Hey, what about the West’s proven manipulation of normal, democratic protests - are we rushing to judgment before we know all the facts? Hey, what about the fact that the world assumes that at this very moment some White American cop is killing or torturing a Black teenager somewhere in the US - so should we care what their opinion is?”

That - pointing out the immoral, perpetual, inescapable crimes of capitalist societies - is what is needed ALL the time. Especially in a time of crisis. The USSR used to do this superbly…then Gorbachev came along and renounced the class struggle.

But the WSWS does the same thing for Venezuela, China, etc. - I’m sure citizens of those countries feel similarly left to twist in the wind in their times of crisis.

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The fact is, unless you are 100% Trotskyist, nothing is ever good enough for the WSWS. They aren’t really trying to “win” - they are trying to be “right”.

Yeah, being right feels nice, but that means Venezuela topples and the gains of Chavismo get rolled back; that means the capitalist-imperialists defeat the one Muslim country actually physically fighting for Palestine, Lebanon, Syria & Iraq. Do they care that we have also lost Kashmir, Afghanistan and Libya? Is the WSWS actually considering how we will ever get back the far-gone nations like Egypt & Morocco?! Is Trotskyism outperforming Iranian Islamic Socialism in any of those countries?

Bah….what I just listed are real-life concerns. The WSWS ignores this when “the stuff hits the fan” in the very countries they should be supporting (and in countries they usually support).

For certain, a crisis is not the time to pile on along with the capitalist-imperialists - I think common sense makes that quite clear.

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Do Trotskyists realize that a key step is ‘preserving’ actual socialist gains?

[dropcap]I[/dropcap] wonder how much the WSWS really knows Iranian society, and I do know that they consistently appear convinced that “universal revolution” is around the corner.

“The (communist) Tudeh party had deep roots in the working class,” is a prime example.

“Deep roots”? Islam had “deep roots”, not communism. I guess communism had “deep roots” if - let’s return to our first paragraph - if the WSWS will write that Islam had “super, mega-deep, core-embedding roots in the working class”. But, again, things are now losing their balance, accuracy and efficiency….

Communism in 1979 was one of the two main propelling ideologies, yes, but it was often limited to the intellectuals and the students. Islam, however, definitely was not.

You certainly don’t need to be literate to want to understand or promote socialism, but it was a bit difficult when less than 40% of Iranian women were literate in 1979 (but check those numbers now).

With the advantage of hindsight, it should not be at all surprising that a relatively-new political philosophy did not sweep aside the very birthplace of monotheism (Zoroastrianism) and a place where Islam is a living, vibrant, daily force; a place where a recent poll says 76% of people responded to the question - "to what degree should our country's policymakers take religious teachings into account when they make decisions" - with either "a lot" or “somewhat", while just 5% responded with (a very West European secularist) “none at all”. (Question #8 in this poll.) Iran is not France or West Germany, the very birthplace of socialism, and I note that socialism even failed in those two places, too.  ]

So if the Trotskyists may like to imagine that Trotskyism was about to sweep Iran in 1979….if only those mullahs hadn’t gotten in the way!…but that was not accurate and certainly not reflective of the democratic will.

Socialism clearly and democratically ran second fiddle in the Iranian Islamic Revolution, and thankfully so, when the alternative is to be influenced by imperialist capitalism.

If the WSWS wanted to actually help Iran, they would list the vast ocean of statistics and proofs which show the positive differences between pre- and post-1979 Iran; they would suspend their seemingly anti-Muslim (and anti-religion) attitude permanently (much like Cuba has, and which places like Vietnam and Eritrea don’t need to suspend because they never started on that terrible “forced atheism” route); at least they could not join in on the Iran-bashing when the forces of imperialism are acting rather “spuriously”; they could be using this time to credit a country whose socialist bona fides far, far, far outweigh about 98.5% of the rest of the world.

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What the WSWS gets right, kind of

[dropcap]I[/dropcap] am an Iranian civil servant, so I don’t want to get into internal Iranian politics and my stances. Anyways, this is not a Farsi-language article, and it is targeted for non-Iranians. But I would like to give some very basic clarifications about the “true nature” of these protests - economic issues - as I totally disregard the laughable “fake nature” of these protests - toppling a democratic government:

Regarding the economic demands of this protest:

Firstly, the blockade and sanctions. Secondly, the blockade and sanctions. Thirdly, I almost wish upon your country a blockade and sanctions so you can then tell me if I am making excuses!

But I’ll move on, and in an even-handed manner:

The WSWS website is correct that Iran has embraced some neoliberal capitalist changes. This goes way back to the era of not only the war reconstruction effort of Rafsanjani, but also Reformist politician Khatami, so it is not all that new. Iran was not just rebuilding a country and promoting a totally unique and modern revolution, but it was doing so after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Therefore, much of these changes I attribute to the global “socialism is dead” hysteria which went full-tilt in 1991, which was so contagious that it spared NO country.

And we all know that neoliberalism doesn’t work, so….

But if there is one country which is “exceptional” it is Iran, and allow me to explain: After a decade of hot war, 20+ years of Cold War, and an increasingly-brutal economic sanctions campaign, many in Iran felt pro-capitalist reforms might be the only solution.

After all, Iran is not China: we do not “call the shots”.

Iran cannot be strangled forever, the Reformists argued. Those who favoured Khamenei’s nationalist “resistance economy” have a popular idea with many adherents, but Iran is a democracy, after all: there IS NO autocrat, most of our politicians are trying to win re-election, and - I’ll play along here with your nonsense - why would we even begin with the assumption that all mullahs think alike on economics?

So when Rouhani came to France and Italy in 2016 and made dozens of billions of euros in business deals, I gave the bargaining team a ton of credit: I read the fine print and - in a highlight of my career - I reported on that fine print for 17 continuous minutes in an interview on Press TV. Why so long? Because I was describing how this deal included technology transfers; how that deal is a joint venture and not just a capitalist sell-off to foreigners; how this other deal is going to let us learn how to build this vital piece of infrastructure which we need in our other cities, etc.

These deals were capitalist, ok…but they weren’t. They definitely were not neoliberal, free-market, sell-off-your nation to foreign high finance! They defied easy dogma, but they were - and thankfully for the People in France and Italy as well - “mutually beneficial”. That’s a key phrase you hear in Iran and China all the time but never in the West. We must use the tools of capitalism to build socialism (is this on, again?), but they must be mutually beneficial for both countries and their peoples, no?

“Opening up” our economy was also a tactic to win much, much, much needed political favor as well, the Reformists argued.

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[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hile Trotskyists may be already bristling, Iranians are trying to survive and have no time for the WSWS ancestor-worship of Trotsky. We are hoping that money talks with the Eurozone; that huge deals with Iran will pull them away from the Americans' policy of murdering Iran.

Will this work? Well, France’s Total is now talking about pulling out of the key oil deal so…too soon to say. If they do China will take their part over, so no real worries, and I can’t say I’d be too surprised: the US is a larger market than Iran for France, and France is a capitalist country that has no ideology, no solidarity, and would step over its own mother to make a buck (but they won’t cross Angela Merkel).

China has opened up in a similar economic fashion (though they call more shots, due to their weight), and their inequality has indeed increased…but the lower class - the focus of socialism and Iranian Islamic Socialism - has been enormousy lifted, while at the same time the Western capitalist lower class has not.

“So open up towards China and not the West!” many will cry!

The Iranian government did!

Iran has been making trade deals with China for some time, and…we all know how hard it is for any nation’s industries to compete with Chinese products. Their products have increasingly entered Iran markets and…you can imagine the results. But - and I wasn’t privy to the discussions - I assume that Iran HAD TO make these deals to keep China on our side. If we lose China and Russia - goodbye UN Security Council protection and hello invasion. While there are capitalist interests in the democracy of Iran, I assume that these concessions were granted mainly because the blockade has been so terrible. No blockade, and it’s far less likely any of these deals get made on anything less than a 50-50 basis.

Will Rouhani’s economic Reformism work? Well, what is certain is that Iranian voters appear to think so. The West claims the protests are about “regime change” (LOL), but they ignore the glaring fact that he has been re-elected with a voter participation rate that far exceeds the “mature”, “stable”, “democratic” countries of the West.

Where is the WSWS with these rather basic observations which are not just sympathetic towards leftism, but entirely correct and objective?

Why does an article dated January 4 not mention the pro-government protests on January 3 which were multiple times larger (not quite “exponentially larger” I think) than the anti-government protests? How is the WSWS aiding any type of democracy, capitalist or socialist, here?

The WSWS probably accuses all religious people of not adhering to their principles strongly enough, but I can say without reservation that I accuse the WSWS of not following their Socialist principles because: with that article…I can’t tell whose side they are on! And in a time of crisis, no less!!!

But the WSWS is far from the problem - after all, the article notes the capitalist nature of the Green Movement of 2009. Which media can we count on for going that far left, at least?

So I ain’t mad at ya, WSWS!

As an Iranian I cannot be as dogmatic as you are. It’s not that I work on a sliding scale - it’s that we are trying to keep winning—and surviving.

Good luck with the universal Trotskyist revolution. Please do let me know when you get one country. And when you do, I’ll push my Iranian comrades not to step on your neck when the capitalists come for you…which they will, and just like they are coming for us now, or haven’t you noticed? I think Trotsky would agree with this decision…