Progressive Internationalism Articles

I write this having just listened to the prime minister talk about
Britain’s strategy for Afghanistan. There wasn’t a huge amount to
disagree with in the content of the speech – he was right to talk about
the need for increasing support for the Afghan National Army and
police, and for other NATO members to play a full role in the mission
there.

Christopher Hitchens at a speech in the Commonwealth Club in California
recently observed that the underlining principle of the Islamic
Republic – the concept of ‘velayat-e-faqih’ (or rule of the jurist) –
is based on the idea that the people of Iran are the children of the
regime. The original concept of the velayat was for orphans, children,
the mentally ill or lost in society were to be looked after as wards of
the state. “Khomeini decided that this velayat should be extended to
everybody. Everyone in Iran is now considered to be a child with the
paternal authority vested in the Guardian Council and the Supreme
Leader…[it is] the father who will never go away.”

The French post-structuralist philosopher, Michel Foucault, had a
fascination with Iran. When a million people descended onto the streets
in 1979 to oust the venal and corrupt Shah, he declared it to be the
ultimate proof of his theory of revolutions – one of the very few
historical examples of a popular overthrow that was not simply an elite
coup d’etat.

So the pundits and the pollsters got it wrong.

They predicted the tightest result in the general election for years,
with less than a hair’s breadth between the two main parties, the
Congress and the BJP. That would have given the so-called ‘Third Front’
– a mixture of leftist and regional parties – a decisive role in
forming a ruling coalition.