Iran

Imperial Interests, Orientalism, and Ideological Manufacture

Morning Comrades.

Like many of you I witnessed Iran strike Israel militarily over the weekend and it is absolutely safe to say that the vast majority of “left-leaning” sentiment online was massively joyous about this. Of course, it is a logical result based on Israel’s impunity over committing a genocide for everyone to see, our ruling classes not only providing moral and legal cover for it but also wholeheartedly supporting Israel with the weapons, ammunitions and logistics necessary to do so. It then comes at no surprise that when Iran retaliates, a country long in the sights of the Western imperialist powers for a “regime change”, people cheer when the “bad guys” get pushback, similar to the massive support Yemen has also.

But hold up, isn’t Iran the bad guy?

I certainly was raised and actively indoctrinated to believe so and despite all my efforts to counteract the indoctrination of my native power structures something still scratched at the back of my mind when I dipped into the celebrations in favour of Iran - and thus, allow me to dig a little deeper.

Aside from the inherent British disdain of current Iran, and yes, this has everything to do with British Petroleum aka BP, that was forced upon me from day one, for example, the Iranian Embassy siege in London took place when I was two, there was an additional layer that was many of the Iranian refugees, people that had fled the country after the revolution in 1979, we knew as a family. Their stories I was told from an early age onwards certainly played a part. I vividly remember writing a paper for my IB History class in High School around 1995 on the Iraq/Iran war that was so heavily one-sided towards Iraq, a logical result of the US interest and support during that time for Saddam Hussein which still lingered despite the first Iraq war in 1990/91. The point being, we here in the West have been told to fear and despise Iran for as long as I can remember, but I never knew why.

I had never been to Iran and to my disappointment I still haven’t been and for what it is worth, I genuinely know jack shit about what life is like in Iran. I know Iranians here, to be sure, but I have never been. When Henry Rollins went to Iran in 2007, came back and spoke favourably of his time there things started cracking for me, in earnest, however, and I tried and am still trying to learn about a place, a people and a culture that our ruling class has been trying to go to war with since the 1950s.

With that, and within the context of the last few days, I wanted to dig a little deeper into how and why we accept to fear and hate a people that we don’t know, which is what is presented below.