MEMRI: Iranian Leader Ali Khamenei Calls Upon Egyptian Army to Join Masses in Ousting Hosni Mubarak
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One similarity between ’79 Iran and Egypt now is the role of contemporary communication technolgy in dissemenating information among the protestors. Cassette tape then and Twitter now played a role in shaping events.
@ George Jochnowitz:
You sure the “masses” are interested in Iran? The Iranian Green Movement, like most of the current crop of movements, tend to be top-heavy with professionals, students, intellectuals, and so on. Haven’t heard enough about the labor activity in Egypt to form an opinion on its significance, though any sign at all of the revolt spreading to new sectors has got to alarm the regime.
I thought Khamenei’s analysis was pretty good from the perspective of an Islamist revolutionary, though with demerits for elements of possible wishful thinking regarding the Islamic and, as above, truly popular character of the Egyptian and Tunisian events. It seems that Shi’a and classic Western leftwing revolutionism have more in common than a superficial convergence of interests. With a few minor adjustments, the same speech could have been given by a Marxist-Leninist.
@ CK MacLeod:
It’s the Marxist-Islamic Alliance.
@ George Jochnowitz:
Actually, it’s not – that is, not Egypt. What Khamenei describes is the basis for a Marxist-Islamist revolutionary confluence, but that’s something very specific.
@ CK MacLeod:
Egypt isn’t Shi’a.
A confluence is an alliance.
George Jochnowitz wrote:
Egypt isn’t Shi’a.
A confluence is an alliance.
As I said, there may have been wishful aspects to Ali the K’s analysis. Perhaps because Egypt isn’t Shi’a, perhaps even in a bow to reality, K emphasized a revolutionary anti-imperialist line rather than a strictly religious one, though even that required him to do some fudging.
Not all leftists are Marxists, not all Marxists are M-L’s. Likewise, not all Islamists are Shi’a Revolutionaries. Shi’a Islam in contrast to Sunni is often considered a movement of the poor, or one that emphasizes heavy identification with the poor. That identification also persists in M-Lism. M-Lism was also all about democratic centralism under the leadership of the revolutionary vanguard. Iranian revolutionary Islam has a revolutionary vanguard as well, with the politicized clergy in the approximate role of party ideologues.
So, it’s not an alliance of Islam or even of Shi’a Islam with Marxism. It does speak to areas of significant ideological and theoretical overlap. Revolutionary, especially peasant-based movements of the poor that are neither Islamic nor Marxist have also thought and operated in parallel ways.
Actually Colin, Marxism isn’t about that at all. Orwell’s sentiments in ‘1984’ are closer to the truth in practice. I don’t think Khamenei will get much bang for his buck for this, but one recalls in Reds as Zinoviev
translated Reed’s script into Islamist revolutionary propaganda, against
the British supported government. Now Egypt labored under Soviet influence, for about a decade, just short of the Warsaw Pact with
Pyramids, and some of those cobwebs haven’t been wringed out of the structure.
miguel cervantes wrote:
Actually Colin, Marxism isn’t about that at all.
You’re entitled to your reductive opinion, don miguel, but where did I offer a general characterization of Marxism, in practice or otherwise?
What happened in ’78-79, is not unlike what happened in 1956-60, or
1917-on, Fidel and Lenin, coopted a broadbased popular movement.
Recall that the earliest and more tenacious rivals to Fidel, were members of the Escambray movement, like Matos and Bosch, Savinkov
had been in opposition to the Czar for a generation. The People’s Mujahadeen (MEK) had been conducting ‘direct action’ against the Shah, long before Khomeini really started in earnest from Paris,
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Wouldn’t it be nice if the Iranian Army joined the masses to oust Khamenei?