Thursday, December 14, 2006

Iran and the future of liberalism

Tomorrow, Prickly Paradigm Press, about whom I've written for Ideas, will publish an excellent pamphlet by Danny Postel, a Chicago-based intellectual and political activist who I've known and admired for years.

"Reading 'Legitimation Crisis' in Tehran" asks why American progressives, human rights activists, and antiwar types seem so indifferent to the plight of Iranian progressives, who in the past year have suffered from a brutal crackdown -- by the Ahmadinejad government -- on dissident intellectuals and newspapers, trade unionists, student movement leaders, and human rights organizations. (A veteran of the Central America solidarity movement of the 1980s, Postel sees no similar efforts today with respect to Iran.)

The short answer, according to Postel, is that most American leftists view Iran through

the prism of American imperialism, which is no less an American prism for being critical, as opposed to uncritical, of US foreign policy.

By that, Postel means that American lefists are uncomfortable with the idea of being on the same side of a movement to reform or topple a foreign government as the Bush administration. Especially when it comes to Iran, where the CIA infamously toppled a government already. In Guatemala (or Indochina, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, or East Timor), by contrast, solidarity with the victims of military juntas was an extension of one's opposition to the US Empire.

What can western supporters of those fighting for democracy, feminism, pluralism, human rights, and freedom of expression in Iran do to help? Postel, who pointedly identifies himself in his pamphlet not as a leftist but a liberal, suggests that those of us whose solidarity is with all people struggling for liberation from oppression take inspiration not from Marxist, postcolonialist, and poststructuralist thinkers, but from liberal political philosophers like Jurgen Habermas, Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, and Karl Popper -- i.e., the heroes of American neocons.

UPDATE: After an email exchange with Postel, I retract these imprecise, misleading, and partially incorrect lines.

How to be a liberal who is not a neocon? Postel suggests that American have a lot to learn from Iranian intellectuals and activists who have rediscovered "radical liberalism" as a fighting faith, and that liberals need to roll up their sleeves and engage in the kind of solidarity politics that the US Left, to its credit, is known for.

There's much more to this slim pamphlet, including a fascinating interview with Iranian philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo, who was arrested last year, and who (despite his maddeningly vague arguments in favor of a "soft univeralism" of human values) emerges as an extremely charismatic figure; and a close psychological reading of Michel Foucault's illiberal 1978-79 articles in support of the Iranian Revolution.

I read the pamphlet every morning before work last week, on the subway; couldn't put it down! Great stocking stuffer...

UPDATE: Scott McLemee weighs in on all this.

Posted by Joshua Glenn at 02:58 PM

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