From: tsm@fastmail.ca   
      
   Julian  wrote:   
   > And just like that, the left loses interest in the Middle East. In 2025,   
   > they spoke of little else. They culturally appropriated Arab headwear,   
   > poncing about in China-made keffiyehs. They wrapped themselves in the   
   > Palestine colours. They frothed day and night about a ‘murderous regime’   
   > – you know who. And yet now, as a Middle Eastern people revolt against   
   > their genuinely repressive rulers, they’ve gone schtum.   
   >   
   > What is it about revolts in Iran that rankle the activist class? These   
   > people love to yap about ‘resistance’ and ‘oppression’. Yet the   
   minute   
   > men and women in Iran rise up in resistance against the oppressive   
   > theocracy that immiserates and subjugates them, they go coy. Their   
   > solidarity evaporates. Their flag-waving ends. They go back to tweeting   
   > about TV.   
   >   
   > It’s happening again as the latest Iranian uprising enters its seventh   
   > day. In cities across Iran, people are protesting the economic   
   > mismanagement and clerical tyranny of the Islamist ruling class. It   
   > started a week ago, in Tehran, when shopkeepers shuttered their   
   > businesses and hit the streets to express their anger about yet another   
   > sharp fall in the Iranian currency against the US dollar. They were   
   > swiftly joined by other Iranians furious about declining living standards.   
   >   
   > The protests are morphing into a collective rage against theocracy   
   > itself. Students have joined: young women and men sick of being told   
   > what to wear and how to think by the ayatollah classes. It is now the   
   > largest revolt to have shaken Iran since the uprising in 2022 over the   
   > death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young woman from Iranian Kurdistan   
   > who was accused by the morality police of not wearing her veil properly.   
   >   
   > There have been images of unimaginable bravery from the past week. We’ve   
   > seen young women dancing and laughing, their hair freely flowing, in   
   > defiance of those cranky old men who think such ‘sinful’ creatures   
   > should cover up and shut up. We’ve seen a lone man sitting in the middle   
   > of the road, blocking the way of the regime’s riot goons on their   
   > motorbikes. It has echoes of Tiananmen Square’s ‘tank man’.   
   >   
   > For those of us who love liberty, who support the freedom of the   
   > individual against the dictates of theocratic strongmen, these are   
   > stirring scenes. It is especially electrifying to see Iran’s young women   
   > once again raise a collective middle finger to their Islamist   
   > oppressors. Women in Iran face huge legal and social discrimination –   
   > that many are throwing off their hijabs and saying ‘No more’ is a   
   > wonderful blow for equality against cruelty.   
   >   
   > So where are the solidarity marches? Where are the gatherings outside   
   > Iranian embassies to echo the protesters’ cry for an end to the sexist,   
   > regressive rule of the ayatollahs?   
   >   
   > It’s an anti-war uprising too. Protesters are chanting ‘Neither Gaza nor   
   > Lebanon, my life for Iran!’, in glorious protest against the regime’s   
   > wasteful spending on its anti-Semitic proxy armies of Hamas and   
   > Hezbollah. Where are the Western anti-imperialists to cheer this demand   
   > for social spending over the squandering of billions on a medieval war   
   > of attrition against the world’s only Jewish state?   
   >   
   > This is where we get to the ugly truth of the left’s creepy silence on   
   > Iran. Where Iranian progressives understand that Hezbollah and Hamas are   
   > brutal outfits doing the bidding of a ruthless regime, our activist   
   > class has a tendency to view them as ‘resistance’ movements.   
   >   
   > They could never get behind the Iranian people’s cry for those   
   > neo-fascist militias to be defunded because they are drunk on the   
   > delusion that these terrorists are an important bulwark against the   
   > ‘real menace’ in the Middle East: Israel. Their Israelophobia has so   
   > thoroughly shattered their moral compasses that they bristle at the very   
   > suggestion that Iran should stop funding Israel’s hateful foes and   
   > instead should focus on improving the lot of the Iranian people.   
   >   
   > We end up in the truly perverse situation where the privileged keffiyeh   
   > classes of the West instinctively want the Iranian regime to survive –   
   > in order that it might continue sticking it to evil Israel – while the   
   > young of Iran dream of the regime’s withering away. The revolt in Iran   
   > has exposed not only the crisis of legitimacy of the ayatollah classes   
   > but also the treachery of Western progressives. It’s now clear that   
   > their luxury cause of madly hating Israel takes precedence over   
   > everything else, including offering solidarity to the freedom-yearning   
   > people of Iran. Your liberty will have to wait, guys – we haven’t   
   > destroyed the Jewish state yet.   
   >   
   > There’s another ingredient in their moral cowardice – the fear of being   
   > thought ‘Islamophobic’. A generation raised to believe that everything   
   > from criticising the Koran to dissing the hijab is a form of bigotry is   
   > never going to be able to stand with people who are throwing their   
   > hijabs on to open fires and taking the mick out of their Islamic rulers.   
   > The left’s snivelling silence on Iran speaks to how far they have fallen   
   > down the well of moral relativism.   
   >   
   >   
   > Brendan O’Neill   
   >   
      
   Yup. It’s way more sexy and fun to march and wail wearing a made in china   
   hijab or a Keffiyeh scarf.   
   Idiots!   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)