There is no evidence compelling enough to make one who does not want to see or has an interest not to see, see. Herein is the core of perversion that blights theories and ideologies. It is not a question of the failure of intelligence but that of a willful obfuscation. One pretends not to see, sometimes with the help of elaborate schemes. A sick man may be cured, but not the scoundrel who plays the sick man. As an astute psychologist once said, hypocrisy is hard to maintain, so one finally ends up being taken in by one’s own fraud. The same applies a fortiori to ‘theoretical’ fraud. Only personal costs dissuade the fraudster. In the realm of social and political theory cost mechanism is nowhere as effective – happily, I haste to add, at least in the West. Putting up with theoretical fraud should be an acceptable price for the invaluable goods of freedom of expression and academic freedom. And so it is. If only one could speak to theoretical fraudsters with the same bitter, endgame voice of Dostoevsky’s Underground Man! Where there is nothing to gain, the eyes have a much better chance of improving their function! Unfortunately, the self-styled intellectual academic has got his own little stash of gains. This weighs down on his eyelids, which are not so robust to begin with.
I would have liked to say: a recent article by Professor Emeritus Fayazmanesh in CounterPunch is a lesson, a contrario, on how to maintain one’s decency. But a lesson for whom? If one had to rely on arguments and lessons even in a case such as the one before us, I am afraid, they would be pointless. ‘Don’t mingle with self-confessed murderers, torturers, etc. Don’t make dubious excuses for them because…’ Should not the facts of the situation itself already be compelling enough? And for the one who pretends not to see these facts, would any argument be persuasive enough? Arguments for him are just a game he happily plays. Fayazmanesh tells his reader how he has been warning the supporters of the so-called green movement, Iran opposition movement that grew out of the 2009 ‘presidential elections’, about the dangers of USrael propaganda machine. He says he receives emails from his trusting admirers commending his vigilance and alerting him to the activities of the diabolical machine and its assimilated dupes. (A short article by an Iranian-American lawyer, Bitta Mostofi, ‘Admiring Ahmadinejad and Overlooking Activists’, published in CounterPunch, comes in for a mention right at the beginning. One of his emailing correspondents worries that this article is a piece of USrael propaganda, a view with which the good professor apparently agrees since he reproduces it without comment. I suppose the mind-altering manipulation contained in Mostofi’s article could be subliminal since it escapes me.) Fayazmanesh also refers to his earlier articles where he makes the same warning against the ‘dangerous liaison’ with USrael propagandists, which, he says, ‘brought numerous expressions of gratitude from like minded readers of CounterPunch, including many progressive Iranians.’ Receiving due gratitude must be satisfying, indeed. I should think Fayazmanesh has to be reckoned an exception since self-appointed advisers usually elicit annoyance. Congratulations to him.
Fayazmanesh attacks ‘super green Iranian exiles’ for their obsession with the ‘stolen election’. They are said to be as self-righteous and intolerant as the ‘principalists’ (in plain language: the ruling mafia of Guards and mullahs). They try to portray every criticism of their views as support for the Iranian regime. They use ‘self promoting theatrics’, claiming torture and killings, etc. where, supposedly, there has been none. ‘Visit any Iranian Green website and all that you see is criticism of the current regime. This is as if all the troubles in Iran are caused by the ruling regime and all the problems would go away if there is a regime change in favor of the Greens.’ They have also jumped on the USrael bandwagon of sanctions, and so on. The good professor ends with the following apology for what he calls the ‘American progressives’: the ‘above partial account of the politics and tactics employed by some exile supporters of the green movement explains why many American progressives are wary of this movement and its future.’ At the same time, the ‘progressives’ should allow for the ‘complex political situation in Iran’ and makes room for ‘legitimate concern about the current government’s intolerance for any voice of dissent.’ The ‘balanced view’ is of course the credential of the academic, which he never fails to display.
The ‘arguments’ of Fayazmanesh amount to the following. The political situation in Iran is complex, so the moralizing discourse is out of place because simplistic. Besides, you who want to be able to condemn this regime absolutely, you yourselves lie just as the proponents of the regime may do, and are intolerant as they are. (Who is to say that if you had the power you would not also become a tyrant?) Thus, not only the complexity of the situation undermines any straightforward condemnation of the regime (as if all the problems people face in Iran should be accounted to the Islamic regime) but also your very conduct belies your self-righteous moral posturing. Besides, Iran’s relation with the US is complex. Opposing the US foreign policy, as the Islamic regime does, is bound to attract all manners of machinations on the part of the US and its cronies, including the cynical wielding of the human rights weapon. The opponents of the regime are more often than not dupes of the USrael propaganda machine, whose single-minded pursuit is regime change in Iran in the interest of Israel, as it did in Iraq, with millions of people dead or displaced and an economy in ruin. Thus, one should stop asking for regime change, be far more cautious and circumspective in asking for respect for human rights, have a more balanced view of the regime in the international setting, seeing not just its unpleasant aspects but also its anti-imperialist or anti-colonial virtues in standing up to the US. Such virtues are in fact what have won it so much good will among the US progressives. So much for the ‘arguments’!
As I presently argue, the appeal to complexity is a red herring. The brandishing of the bugbear of the USrael propaganda is a mere ad hominem, as if it has any bearing on the fact of systematic and egregious violation of human rights by the thuggish regime. To Fayazmanesh concerns about what happens to our sisters and brothers in prisons is ‘drivels’. To buy some respectability for his chicanery he puts his hand in the pocket of Martin Luther King: he reminds his ‘critics of Marin Luther King’s forgotten statement that the US is “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” The statement was true in King’s days and continues to be true in our days. So why ignore the big purveyor of violence and violator of human rights and concentrate on the puny one? (italics added) Worse yet, why appeal to the first about the second?’ The US is the Big Bad Wolf of human rights realm, why pick on the puny one? Can it be any clearer what this professor is after? He himself tells us what the point of his ‘argument’ is when he says he has been ‘accused’ of turning a blind eye to the violation of human rights in Iran and supporting the regime. He thinks by presenting it as an accusation leveled by the ‘intolerant opponents’ of the regime who are themselves morally suspect (because use the same tactics as the proponents of the regime) he makes it just that: a mere ‘accusation’ that needs not be taken seriously and may be rightly dismissed. We see through your attempt at exculpation! What did go through your mind when the words ‘the puny one’ appeared on your screen? Did your conscience object? I wonder. In one of his speeches at the parliament Gramsci said something like: people have asked me in the interest of mutual understanding to try to look at things from the position of the other side (the Fascists), but the stench there was so overwhelming that I soon desisted. We should not like to go there.
The appeal to the complexity of political situation in Iran is specious. If it refers to the structure of political power in Iran or more specifically to the ‘institutional design’ of the regime, it is erroneous. The current state structure has grown in a more or less haphazard manner from the various de facto power struggles among pretenders throughout its miserable existence. The ‘complexity’ of it is not that of a sophisticated design with multiple layers and divisions of power for the purpose of checking unilateral and unrestrained exercise of power against civil society, but that of a new feudalism with mostly ad hoc criminal and corrupt centers of power, some of which are housed by legally sanctioned institutions and some operating in the shadows. The favorite instrument of these feudal lords with regard to one another is intrigue and with regard to society at large, especially civil society activists, repression. This has always been the case in the Islamic regime and has only got worse. For the civic actor who asks: ‘what should I think of the regime, what should I do with the regime?’ the answer is clear: ‘it is my denier, my oppressor, my torturer, my executioner; it has to be removed’. As far as her attitude toward the regime is concerned, the situation is simple: for her the regime means lack of freedom, crime, corruption, general hopelessness, etc. Nothing could be clearer. Her existence as a citizen, as a civic actor, as a thinker, as a woman, as an Iranian who cares about her country and its future, in short, her very existence as a decent human being is under constant threat.
Every phenomenon is complex. The point is not this, but the relevance that the complexity in question has for the program of action that must handle the phenomenon. Even a research project is a program of action and has to reduce, in accordance with its own methods and objectives, the complexity of the phenomenon it studies. Reduction of complexity is defective only when it makes the actor blind to the relevant facts. For people like myself, the Islamic regime cannot be a point of reference but only an object of tactical and strategic handling, which has to be oriented to its removal. We do not want to preserve but remove the Islamic state. This tells us what degree or manner of complexity is relevant for our program of action. Fayazmanesh wants to preserve the regime. This is the real meaning of his appeal to complexity: to distract attention from and excuse crime, or reduce as much as possible the culpability of the regime and hence its responsibility.
Of course, the appeal to complexity is also a professional obligation for Fayazmanesh. After all, if what the good professor studies and points to as the basis of his position, self-image and self-worth – if this were not ‘complex’, and hence restrictive and exclusive, what would become of his ‘positional good’? By definition what he is an expert in is ‘complex’. By duty he has to tout the ‘complexity argument’, and hope no one will ask: ‘yes complex, but what does this have to do with our problem. The regime is not an academic subject for us but a destroyer of our lives and future!’ Fayazmanesh grasps at every scrap of platitude to ‘normalize’ the regime. He says not all the problems we face in Iran are due to the regime, as if this excuses its criminal behavior, and makes its removal any less necessary. In fact, however, there cannot be any question whatsoever that this regime, with all its incompetence, corruption and crimes, is the main cause of misfortune and despair for Iranian people and the main obstacle to a decent society.
With all his chicaneries Fayazmanesh is after one thing and one thing alone: to remove the ignominy of mingling with criminals. He wants a free hand (I would have said guilt-free conscience had I thought he might have any) to shake the bloodied hands of murderers and torturers of Iranians, of the best of Iranians. I say: he is welcome to it! I keep my hands clean and spirit hygienic. Is not naming, shaming, and isolating people like him our duty in honor of our fallen and imprisoned compatriots? I also allow myself a word I have always wanted to say to Fayazmanesh’s ‘progressives’: consider your own sorry state. What drives you to become a cheering squad for a reactionary psychopath or a megalomaniac clown? Is this what ‘being left’ is to you? You do not find this troubling?
Contact the author: (borzooyehzendig [at] gmail.com)
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