Seriously, This Again?

The most annoying of all possible arguments:

“In hundreds of conversations I’ve had with Iranian intellectuals, journalists, and human rights activists in recent years, I invariably encounter exasperation,” writes Danny Postel in Reading “Legitimation Crisis” in Tehran: Iran and the Future of Liberalism, a recent addition to the Prickly Paradigm pamphlet series distributed by the University of Chicago Press. “Why, they ask, is the American Left so indifferent to the struggle taking place in Iran? Why can’t the Iranian movement get the attention of so-called progressives and solidarity activists here? Why is it mainly neoconservatives who express interest in the Iranian struggle?”

Obviously, most Americans simply don't take a ton of interest in events abroad at all, which is a fairly unfortunate trend. Among those people who do take such interest, there's simply no sign of indifference on the left to conditions in Iran. See, for example, Human Rights Watch's Iran page. Or Amnesty International's Iran page. The AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center does stuff on Iran. So does the Feminist Majority Foundation. In short, roughly every organization on the left that you would expect to deal with human rights conditions in Iran does, in fact, speak out on Iranian human rights issues and try to improve them.

Here on this blog and others we're also seeking to prevent a war with Iran that, as Garance Franke-Ruta points out, will, among other things, have the consequence of crushing the Iranian reform movement. Maybe I can write the "why are liberals such apologists for North Korea?" version of this book -- I don't have evidence to back my claims up, but, hey, who needs evidence?

Comments

Matt, those organizations may very well be vocal about Iran, but let's be honest. The American progressive left is hardly as mobilized against Iranian human rights abuses as it was for, say, the anti-apartheid movement, or as vocal as it is for, say, the movement to free Tibet. Now, I'm not equating one with the other, or saying that they should or shouldn't be as mobilized or aware. But I think it's true that the neocons have appropriated this one. And the answer to the question posed, ie. why that is, is fairly obvious: Because they're trying to use it to further their larger policy agenda in the Middle East. The left tends to mobilize out of compassion, the right out of interest. And I don't think the left has gotten its compassion mojo working on this one just yet.

Posted by Headline Junky | February 15, 2007 2:45 PM

But Matt you skipped the better of the Postel quotes:
“Of course we should be steadfast in opposition to any U.S. military intervention in Iran,” he writes “that’s the easy part."
Oh good, I can get my nap now that he's gonna be stopping BushCheney's bombing runs.

Posted by jaimie | February 15, 2007 2:46 PM

By the same token, why is the Iranian left so indifferent to the plight of American progressives? Selfish bastards.

Posted by blah | February 15, 2007 2:51 PM

The underlying trope is that the US left will only care about human rights in other countries if the US government is playing footsie wtih those governments but not if the US govt. is complaining also. A variation on the "blame-America-first" charge.

I wonder if the US left had more to say about human rights in Iran when the Shah was in charge.

Posted by applecor | February 15, 2007 2:51 PM

Yes, I remember hearing the exact same thing about Afghanistan a couple of years ago. And yet Katha Pollitt had been writing about the plight of Afghan women regularly in The Nation for years, and was by far the highest-profile opinion journalist doing so.

Better to ask Postel and his friends why they are only interested in human rights and civil society in countries the US is thinking of bombing.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | February 15, 2007 2:56 PM

The American progressive left is hardly as mobilized against Iranian human rights abuses as it was for, say, the anti-apartheid movement, or as vocal as it is for, say, the movement to free Tibet.

It's true that the anti-apartheid movement had a unique place in the progressive international agenda, presumably because it had such clear emotional resonances with the domestic civil rights movement. On Tibet, you had some celebrity conversions to Buddism that gave the issue a very high profile in the 1990s, but that faded years ago. Iran gets a level of attention today that's roughly proportional to the level that all foreign human rights issues get. Ideally, they'd all get more attention.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | February 15, 2007 3:00 PM

Neocons are interested in the iranian lefts struggle in exactly the same way the german high command was interested in the russian lefts struggle in 1917.

And that worked out well didn't it.

Posted by kb | February 15, 2007 3:02 PM

I think it is fair to say that the American left is not as vocal as the neocons on the reform struggle in Iran; and that the left is not as vocal about Iran as it typically would be. And it makes sense. The neocons' concern is a transparent push for war with Iran. A war that would likely lead to far greater human rights problems in Iran (see Iraq). It's no surprise that the American left, while still critical of human rights conditions in Iran, does not want to be too vocal about it lest it fuel the neocons' fire.

Posted by Brian | February 15, 2007 3:03 PM

Yeah, right--why did the White House shun Nobel peace prize winner Shirin Ebadi and prevent her memoir from being published in teh United states for several years? The bad faith on this whole debate is beyond belief. Now we're being lectured about whether we care about Iranian reformers by people who want to ignore the most urgent entreaties of those very reformers and bomb Iran back to the stone age. Sick bastards, is the only appropriate term that comes to mind.

Posted by elle loco | February 15, 2007 3:04 PM

I'm honestly more curious about why more Americans don't understand that Iran is a functioning country and not a totalitarian nightmare along the lines of pre-war Iraq.

It's a bad human rights violator and I wouldn't want Jerry Falwell vetting political candidates in America, but it seems to me to be far more along the lines of an autocracy evolving into a pluralistic democracy (say, like South Korea at one point) than an autocracy evolving into an expansionist fascist state (say, like Germany ca. 1935).

Posted by guy | February 15, 2007 3:13 PM

As bad as the Iranian regime is, it is still one of the relatively most liberal in the region. The women in Iran have more rights than women in our ally, Saudi Arabia. I wouldn't be surprised if they also have more rights than women in Pakistan de facto can exercise, in part because the central government has lost effective control of much of the country. Iran is not a Burma, a China nor a North Korea, and even China is a lot more free now than 20 years ago. Should there be work on Iranian human rights abuses? Yes, of course. However, when 97% of all executions take place in China, you have to prioritize these things. When genocide takes place in Darfur (and possibly Burma and parts of northern Uganda as well), the genocide takes precedence over crackdowns over freedom of speech in Iran.

There is also a fear of becoming party to non-consequential ethics. On its own terms, fighting for human rights in Iran is just and must be done. However, in the current political climate, doing so may make things worse by contributing to the Iran = Nazi Germany meme going around, which would lead to war and a tightening on domestic freedoms in Iran. When Clinton backed off his pressure in the late 1990's, Iran became more free. When Bush stepped up his rhetoric, Iran became less free. Both Bushes sold their wars in Iraq partly using Amnesty International reports of human rights abuses. I would say that because of Bush, there is a definite fear that working on Iranian human rights abuses, especially rather overtly and publicly, will lead to an increase in Iranian human rights abuses.

Posted by Reality Man | February 15, 2007 3:17 PM

When neocons talk about human rights, I can't help but think of Syriana.

Posted by Reality Man | February 15, 2007 3:19 PM

It's our responsibility not to start a stupid war with Iran.

It's the Iranians responsibility what kind of government they have.

Posted by Steve Sailer | February 15, 2007 3:19 PM

Look, the argument has some merit. Ali Eteraz made a similar point here

For holding these anti-orthodoxy views, we are often co-opted by the right. In fact, if you look around, all the “Muslim reformers” out there are in the pocket of the right....Look, I am one of those people who don’t want to be co-opted by the right... Yet, at the same time, it is only the right which is listening to progressive Muslims talk about sex slavery, illegal polygamy (yes, within America), the fact that Wahhabi literature pervades our American mosques

And he was even more vehement when he tried to mobilize American feminist blogs in favour of Pakistan' women's protection bill. He said

it is better if a progressive rather than a Neo-Con gets gung ho about human rights in the Muslim world because the latter will try to solve the problem by occupation and turning half the country into ‘insurgents. ... progressives will not get gung-ho about human rights issues except as an academic exercise ...progressives need to usurp and re-assert their former dominance in the international human rights arena

The original post is quite a bit more eloquent. And the points have merit.

Posted by Ikram | February 15, 2007 3:26 PM

"American feminist blogs"

Yes, because when I think of liberal human rights activists, I immediately think of American feminist blogs.

Posted by Reality Man | February 15, 2007 3:37 PM

Reminds me of the current meaning of "isolationism" when rightwingers apply it to the left. They seem to mean "not quick enough to bomb and occupy the country I'm interested in this week."

Urging diplomacy --talking, dealing, having treaties, etc. with other countries -- now seems to be isolationism.

Posted by blatherskite | February 15, 2007 3:44 PM

Matt, I don't mean to be prickish here, but when was the last time that you, or the Prospect, or In These Times (where I work), covered the struggles that Iranian liberals and leftists (feminists, trade unionists, gays, intellectuals, etc.) regularly face? I'm proud that ITT has run some of the work by Doug Ireland on the plight of Iranian gays, but on most of the other issues, I've gotta say that we've dropped the ball and I don't see why we should attack Danny for pointing that uncomfortable fact out. I'd agree with you that there are a lot of under-covered international issues and groups that don't get the coverage that they warrant, but I think there is a tendency to write off some regimes as just "bad in general" and thus ignore any of their specific actions against specific groups.

Meanwhile, as Danny points out in the rest of that interview, there is a vibrant dissident community inside and outside of Iran that would benefit greatly from having their voices and arguments amplified to a wider audience. Danny might very well be over-generalizing here and (in part) arguing in bad faith--although that, after all, is what caught your attention in the first place---but to dismiss him completely out of hand (as you've done here) seems to me equally wrong-headed.

Posted by Brian Cook | February 15, 2007 4:05 PM

It seems to me that there is a very conservative answer to this. When the human rights situation is in a country that the U.S. is hostile to, the state has a way of monopolizing the discourse about that country. Thus, things the left can do that may work are vacuumed up by the state, and the opposition of the left to aggressive action by the U.S. may simply take up all the energy of the left. When, on the other hand, the U.S. has relations, even friendly relations with a state where the human rights situation is targeted by the left, the left is then much more free to operate as a pressure group for human rights. Nobody wants the U.S. to go to war with Israel, but there are people on the left who want the U.S. to exert more pressure on Israel to get out of the West Bank, for example. In truth, that group doesn't have to worry about U.S. supporting - arming, paying for -, say, terrorists against Israel, whereas with Iran, one does have to worry that the U.S. will arm actual terrorists to blow up things in Iran. So, the issue is one of divided attention. This doesn't really seem that hard to understand - there is a simple physics to politics as well as a rhetoric.

Posted by roger | February 15, 2007 4:06 PM

Matt, I don't mean to be prickish here, but when was the last time that you, or the Prospect, or In These Times (where I work), covered the struggles that Iranian liberals and leftists (feminists, trade unionists, gays, intellectuals, etc.) regularly face?

We haven't run that much content on the subject. We have, however, ran much more content on it (a random example) than we have on the human rights situation in, say, Belarussia. Indeed, I'd say that outside of human rights issues in the United States, Iranian human rights issues have probably gotten the second-most amount of attention, though it's possible China gets more coverage.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | February 15, 2007 4:10 PM

Anyone else think the presence of a "vibrant dissident community inside and outside of Iran" is perhaps reason not to worry so much about Iran? No one ever talks about the vibrant dissent we must support in North Korea or Sudan.

Not that this obviates any need for concern, just it's a short hand for prioritization.

Whereas I'm pretty sure that if Neocons felt like taking over Canada's oil supply, they'd use the existence of the Quebecois party as a rationale to go in.

Posted by Tony V | February 15, 2007 4:17 PM

Surely the crazed extremists at the niversity of Chicago are my conscience. Last I saw they were telling us the Iraq war would be a bargain at twice the price. Moral idiots.

Posted by Jennifer | February 15, 2007 4:35 PM

The only serious "reform" movements in Iran are the Azeri nationalists who want their own country and the Kurds who want to join greater Kurdistan.

Posted by Linus | February 15, 2007 4:37 PM

Its dumb to start blathering on about the outrage levels of "the left." "Outrage" and "solidarity" aren't some measurable, quantifiable qualities that we can assign a number to, and weigh in comparison to other objectionable problems in the world. Nor is "the left" some sort of easily defined category.

But if someone wants to make the points that:

1) a) There exist people on the left who assume that anyone who complains about Iranian human rights abuses and treatment of women must automatically be some kind of crypto-neocon shill, b) that this unfair assumption makes it harder to actually do anything about these problems, and c) that said people making said assumption could do us all a favor and go die.

2) There exist people, purportedly on the left, who give Hirsi Ali way too much shit.

Well, then I'm all for it.

I don't think said people make up a huge part of "the left," so I'm not totally outraged by them. But they're still dicks.

Posted by Patrick | February 15, 2007 4:37 PM

Thanks for the reply, Matt. I appreciate it, although I've gotta say your admittedly random example was somewhat weak (and provincial at that, being framed within the context of a U.S government decision). Again, though, like I said, ITT hasn't been much better.

I think your point about Belarussia, though, actually strengthens Danny's case, in that there is probably not a liberal-left bloc of vocal Belarussians who are attempting to reach out to their Western counterparts. (I may be wrong, in which case maybe we should get Danny to focus on them as well.) As you correctly point out, the work you're doing on this blog and TAPPED and others is in part aimed so that this group of dissenters is not crushed. But why not include the voices of that dissenting group into your arguments? They'd only strengthen them.

Posted by Brian Cook | February 15, 2007 4:38 PM

Matthew, this is extremist tripe. Want to help Iranians, then withdrawn soldiers from Iraq and learn to negotiate.

Posted by Jennifer | February 15, 2007 4:38 PM

"Matt, I don't mean to be prickish here, but when was the last time that you, or the Prospect, or In These Times (where I work), covered the struggles that Iranian liberals and leftists (feminists, trade unionists, gays, intellectuals, etc.) regularly face?"

Not my place really but I'd say that the Left does a much better job of covering human rights in Iran than the Right does in say, Occupied Palestine. Part of the reason it seems so under the radar is that much of the attention is divided up by specialty; labor unions, media, women, the different groups get coverage by sister organizations so to speak. Those are not meant as excuses, just partial explanations.
Further, while the Left will condemn the persecution of gays and lesbians in Iraq and Iran the Right only seems to care about the issue to beat up Iran.

And that is largely my point. So much of the Right's concern about human rights seems only political ploy. When Jeane Kirkpatrick died in December the Right went into paroxysms of praise for her support of right wing dictatorships worldwide.
Pinochet was a Good Thing!
What could be more corrupt?

Posted by jaimie | February 15, 2007 4:45 PM

I don't think the author's intention was to laud the right in comparison to the left. In fact, I'm really, really certain that wasn't his intention.

Posted by Patrick | February 15, 2007 4:49 PM

Absolutely Patrick and my apology if I inadvertantly suggested otherwise. It was unintentional.

Posted by jaimie | February 15, 2007 4:52 PM

Hey, when the hawks take bombing Iran off the table, I'll gladly raise hell about Iranian human rights abuses. Until then, I'd rather not be their stooge.

Posted by dj moonbat | February 15, 2007 5:12 PM

"I don't think the author's intention was to laud the right in comparison to the left."

Are you for real? Of course the idea was to slander liberals, because that is what extremists do.

Posted by Jennifer | February 15, 2007 5:22 PM

Iran gets a level of attention today that's roughly proportional to the level that all foreign human rights issues get. Ideally, they'd all get more attention.

I'll give you that. It might also be worthwhile to point out that the progressive left has had its hands full these past four years trying to influence American policy. I think that may have something to do with the "compassion fatigue" on any number of global issues, notably Darfur (I admit, I can rarely bring myself to do more than skim a headline about it), Congo, and a few others.

I guess there's always celebrity conversions. From what I understand, Adrock & Mike D are still available.

Posted by Headline Junky | February 15, 2007 6:06 PM

How many sectarian civil wars between the early 1990s and some interdeterminate point in the future do there need to be before people realize that countries in the developing world - by and large - are not divided between pro-western liberals and anti-western illiberals but between people of different ethnic groups, religious groups, racial groups, and tribes?

Posted by Linus | February 15, 2007 7:24 PM

Huh. I don't get it. Which ethnic groups and religions are pro-western liberals, and which ones are anti-western illiberals? Without knowing that, it's really hard to figure out who to bomb.

Posted by mattsteinglass | February 15, 2007 8:26 PM

I guess.

Posted by Linus | February 15, 2007 10:10 PM

1) a) There exist people on the left who assume that anyone who complains about Iranian human rights abuses and treatment of women must automatically be some kind of crypto-neocon shill,

That or a Spart.

There is your cadre of anti-islmofascism leftism right there, boldly denouncing the mullahs and only offering only military support to the regime in Iran.

I'll stick with trying to figure out how the hell we got stuck in a rerun of the Crusades and how we get out of this for now.

Posted by Ed Marshall | February 15, 2007 10:47 PM

The real question is why the right only seems to care about human rights struggles in countries whose governments they want wage war against. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch document human rights abuses even in places like Iraq, Iran, and Syria, even when they know that their research may be used as ammunition for a future war which personally most of them are against. It should come as no surprise if people on the left are less than enthusiastic about really making a big effort to voice their complaints against the mullahs of Iran at this particular point in time. There are dozens of other serious human rights problems in the world that the left could choose to highlight, where their efforts would not be used as public relations for a war campaign. It's such a naive question that it's probably disingenuous.

Posted by Jeremiah J. | February 15, 2007 11:00 PM

It could be worse. The European left is downright hostile to the leftwing dissident movement in Iran, viewing them as CIA fronts and otherwise irresponsible people who are helping the 'warmongers'.

In general, the more I see of the European left, the better the American left looks.

Posted by r4d20 | February 16, 2007 2:02 AM

r4d20, which "European left" are you talking about? It's a fairly big continent with a number of countries in it, you know. There was a recent debate at Lenin's Tomb on this subject which didn't turn out the way you're talking -- which suggests the way British lefties are thinking. I have no idea what the German left thinks. Do you?

Posted by MFB | February 16, 2007 6:57 AM

MFB- I hope you're equally critical of all general statements of that sort. I expect that if I reviewed this blog's archives, everytime Yglesias says something categorical about "the right" or "conservatives" or "republicans" or "democrats," there's a post by you demanding to know exactly which people he's talking about from amongst the larger whole.

Posted by Patrick | February 16, 2007 9:48 AM

This reminds me vividly of the many right-wing accusations that Western feminists don't care about the plight of women in Islamic countries, even though many feminist organizations have been in the forefront of campaigns against wife abuse, forced child marriages, clitoridectomies, "honor" killings and so forth. It's a classic straw man(woman) argument, and deserves to be treated as such.

Posted by Rebecca Allen, PhD, ARNP | February 16, 2007 2:05 PM