Korchagin
15th August 2009, 09:15
Right-opportunists and sectarian "leftists" who either rally behind the right-wing "green" deviationists and Iranian counterrevolutionary emigres or deny the progressive nature of the Iranian revolution are behaving in an un-Marxist and anti-popular manner. They have stopped short of being outright collaborationists with the class enemy.
It immediately become an article of faith in imperialist circles, trumpeted by Obama and Brown, through to the revisionists of the Communist Party of Britain (CPB) and the Trotskyite Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP), that the elections had been rigged and the true winner cheated of his prize. So pervasive has this claim been that it is largely forgotten or unnoticed that not a single shred of evidence has been produced to support it. It is simply a manifestation of how effective is the Goebbelsian technique, that the bigger the lie, and the more often it is repeated, the more likely it is to be believed; and how wedded to this stratagem is not only the bourgeoisie, but equally its hirelings in the working class movement.
What we have seen in Iran, therefore, in the days after the election is not the spontaneous outpouring of popular anger against a repressive regime (although undoubtedly many of the demonstrators are themselves honest in their intentions and have some legitimate grievances related to issues of personal freedoms and so on), but rather a well prepared and carefully scripted, imperialist-inspired attempt at regime change, along the lines of previous ‘colour revolutions’ in Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia and Thailand. The crucial difference is that, unlike Georgia, in particular, the present Iranian leadership has genuine, deep-seated and well-founded support among the popular masses, and, unlike Thailand, the apparatus of the state, including its “bodies of armed men”, are largely supportive of the elected President and disinclined to throw away the Iranian people’s hard-won gains, for which they have shed so much blood, both in the struggle against the hated rule of the imperialist puppet, the late Shah Reza Pahlavi, and then in the imperialist-inspired, decade-long Iran-Iraq war.
In many instances, these protests soon descended into violent provocations and riots, with attacks on security forces and revolutionary guards, the torching of vehicles, banks and public buildings, the looting of shops, and so on. Larger, and peaceful, demonstrations were also held in support of President Ahmadinejad and the revolutionary government, but, in contrast to the anti-government demonstrations, which have received blanket coverage and support, not to say incitement, in the west, these have been either ignored or dismissed by the western media.
Whilst the Troto-revisionist fraternity tie themselves in knots trying to paint black white and counter-revolution as revolution, the imperialists themselves are as clear as the Iranian masses as to their class interests. Barack Obama may think that one glib speech in Cairo, acknowledging, but pointedly not apologising for, the fact, long known to the entire world, that the CIA was instrumental in the 1953 overthrow of Iranian nationalist leader Mohammed Mosaddeq following his nationalisation of his country’s oil industry, absolves US imperialism of any suggestion of involvement in the current turmoil, but he has done nothing to curb or cancel the current CIA destabilisation programmes put in place in the country since at least 2007.
Lalkar sends its greetings to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the government and people of the Islamic Republic of Iran and wishes them every success in safeguarding the country’s independence and crushing imperialist-backed attempts at destabilisation and ‘regime change’.
It immediately become an article of faith in imperialist circles, trumpeted by Obama and Brown, through to the revisionists of the Communist Party of Britain (CPB) and the Trotskyite Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP), that the elections had been rigged and the true winner cheated of his prize. So pervasive has this claim been that it is largely forgotten or unnoticed that not a single shred of evidence has been produced to support it. It is simply a manifestation of how effective is the Goebbelsian technique, that the bigger the lie, and the more often it is repeated, the more likely it is to be believed; and how wedded to this stratagem is not only the bourgeoisie, but equally its hirelings in the working class movement.
What we have seen in Iran, therefore, in the days after the election is not the spontaneous outpouring of popular anger against a repressive regime (although undoubtedly many of the demonstrators are themselves honest in their intentions and have some legitimate grievances related to issues of personal freedoms and so on), but rather a well prepared and carefully scripted, imperialist-inspired attempt at regime change, along the lines of previous ‘colour revolutions’ in Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia and Thailand. The crucial difference is that, unlike Georgia, in particular, the present Iranian leadership has genuine, deep-seated and well-founded support among the popular masses, and, unlike Thailand, the apparatus of the state, including its “bodies of armed men”, are largely supportive of the elected President and disinclined to throw away the Iranian people’s hard-won gains, for which they have shed so much blood, both in the struggle against the hated rule of the imperialist puppet, the late Shah Reza Pahlavi, and then in the imperialist-inspired, decade-long Iran-Iraq war.
In many instances, these protests soon descended into violent provocations and riots, with attacks on security forces and revolutionary guards, the torching of vehicles, banks and public buildings, the looting of shops, and so on. Larger, and peaceful, demonstrations were also held in support of President Ahmadinejad and the revolutionary government, but, in contrast to the anti-government demonstrations, which have received blanket coverage and support, not to say incitement, in the west, these have been either ignored or dismissed by the western media.
Whilst the Troto-revisionist fraternity tie themselves in knots trying to paint black white and counter-revolution as revolution, the imperialists themselves are as clear as the Iranian masses as to their class interests. Barack Obama may think that one glib speech in Cairo, acknowledging, but pointedly not apologising for, the fact, long known to the entire world, that the CIA was instrumental in the 1953 overthrow of Iranian nationalist leader Mohammed Mosaddeq following his nationalisation of his country’s oil industry, absolves US imperialism of any suggestion of involvement in the current turmoil, but he has done nothing to curb or cancel the current CIA destabilisation programmes put in place in the country since at least 2007.
Lalkar sends its greetings to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the government and people of the Islamic Republic of Iran and wishes them every success in safeguarding the country’s independence and crushing imperialist-backed attempts at destabilisation and ‘regime change’.