Musings on politics, foreign affairs and culture.

16th
JUL

Assertions and Shackles

Posted by Kevin Sullivan under Uncategorized

Ezra Klein seems to be confusing totalitarianism with actualized repression.  He doesn’t think Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a totalitarian because 1.  Iran allows public protests denouncing him, and 2. Ahmadinejad isn’t even the most powerful person in Iran.

I don’t believe Iran is a completely repressed nation.  This doesn’t mean Ahmadinejad isn’t a totalitarian.  It’s odd that Ezra keeps returning to the protests in Iran, since organizers and dissidents involved in those protests have been subject to arbitrary arrest and crackdowns as a result. 

A totalitarian, with all of the tools of the state at his disposal, doesn’t need to publicly beat or belittle the discontents (although he certainly has done this).  They’re not called secret police for nothing.  To argue that a state tied to Islamic law and an Islamic code of conduct is not totalitarian seems rather strange to me. 

Also, I believe Ezra’s merely splitting hairs on the second point.  Whether or not Ahmadinejad, or the regional Mullahs or the Islamic courts are calling the shots is rather moot.  ALL of these men share a totalitarian vision for Iran, and often make a "Principlist" argument for an Islamic Iran consistent with the Revolution. 

I don’t think the Iranian people want to go all Thomas Friedman on us, but I likewise reject the notion that a very young, and increasingly Westernized Iranian people share the same view as Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs.  This is in fact a clash between totalitarians and reformists.            

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Reader's Comments

  1. Ken Hoop | July 19th, 2007 at 5:36 pm

    Meanwhile in Iraq, the Sunni insurgency makes clear it intends to fight American occupation while fighting and after fighting foreign al Qaeda-and to fight alongside many “Arab Shias” against it.

    Kev-you might want to send this along to the dreaming, dissembling AJ Strata, who bans posters who expose his duplicitous
    focus on al Qaeda as a means of rallying the true believers to a lost war.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2129544,00.html

  2. Ken Hoop | July 20th, 2007 at 5:26 pm

    Today AJ Strata resorts again to sophistry
    on Iraq, insisting Crocker’s characterization of Iraqis’ state of life as “fear” means fear that US troops will leave. Unfortunately for liars like Strata, polls taken of Iraqis show the predominant majority have wanted us to leave ever since 2004. The latest was but a few months ago.

    And no matter what the newly appointed careerist lackeys in the military who replaced the realists ,say about “progress” -now or in September-or in November as is now being requested, Americans have made clear they will not be believed.

  3. Ken Hoop | July 23rd, 2007 at 7:45 pm

    What to do if you are a government official in Iraq and afraid you enemies will get you as a collaborator if and when the Americans pull out?

    Get a MSM US media to quote your word on “progress” in Iraq and amoral neocon shills like AJ Strata will publicize it as truth to bolster the pro-war cause as he does today, July 23, from the LA Times.

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