Yassamine Mather of Hands Off the People of Iran faced pro-war journalist Nick Cohen of The Observer in one of the regular studio talks organised by London’s Soho Theatre on January 29.
Introducing Cohen to a packed audience, the chair, Martin Woollacott (ex-Guardian foreign correspondent), called him a “brave” but “lonely” voice on the left. A man who has doggedly stuck to his pro-interventionist stance despite the nightmare that has unfolded in Iraq. Indeed, as Woollecott correctly added, Cohen clearly thought the best form of defence was attack and had expanded his position into a general critique of the “western left’s sloppy softness – and even romanticisation – of fundamentalism”.
In fact, Cohen was decidedly less gung-ho on the night, plumping for a form of what he dubbed “cold war” against Iran rather than setting that country alight. And at one point he even seemed to indicate – in a rather blustery rejoinder to some heckling – that he agreed in principle with Hopi’s approach of militant solidarity with the grassroots movements of opposition to the regime rather than regime change Bush-style.
Of course, he believes no such thing. In his writings, Cohen has made it perfectly clear that he is calling on imperialism to hegemonise (and thus gut) these popular movements. And in case anyone thought there might have been progress in the man’s pro-interventionist world view, Cohen later made clear what he meant by a “cold war” – essentially ‘no bombs … yet’.
First to speak, however, was Yassamine Mather and she described how mass consciousness in Iran approaches the question of the regime and their country’s relationship to the world. While the peoples of Iran have no wish to be a pariah on the international scene and have a deep antipathy to the theocracy, they also do not want their country to be “humiliated – either by sanctions or air strikes”.
She recalled the disastrous history of western interventions in Iran, reminded the audience of the 1953 overthrow of Mossadeq, an event that prompted the redrawing of the political and social “map of the entire Middle East”. This event led to decades of repression for democratic and left forces, she pointed out, and was a real contributory factor to the coming to power of the islamic regime.
Comrade Mather described aspects of the repressive nature of the regime – the constant interference in the everyday details of daily lives, the huge economic problems and vicious neoliberal exploitation facing the working people.
Of course, there was no disagreement from Cohen when she concentrated on this side of the question. His face darkened considerably when the comrade pointed out that – in contrast to the Cohen version of world politics – growing pressure from imperialism actually had the effect of “strengthening the regime” and insulating it to a considerable degree from pressure from below in its own country.
In contrast, through persistent organisation and guerrilla skirmishes, the grassroots movements from below – of students, workers, women – were “winning” democratic space – “not overnight”, she conceded, but it was real movement in the right direction. Speaking specifically about the workers who struggled for survival when their wages were not paid for months on end, comrade Mather pointed to the obvious anomaly that “it would be very difficult” for people like this in Iranian society to conceive of a benign “regime change” effected by a world power that forces through the very neoliberal policies the theocratic regime pursues so robustly. And they were right to feel this way, of course, she added.
“The threat of war has made the islamic republic stronger,” Yassamine concluded, as it uses that threat “to attack its own population” and thus undermine radical challenges to its rule from below.
Nick Cohen started with the statement that he did “not support a war against Iran for very practical reasons”. Essentially, what he meant by this was that the military logistics of the identifiable targets were different: unlike in Iraq, he had not seen “any coherent military strategy”, as the regime had “scattered nuclear installations”, including in civilian areas, so as to use their own people as a “human shield”. So there was “no guarantee” a bombing campaign would work: “you would have to invade”, which would be “impossible” in terms of the scale of the west’s deployment in the region.
Oddly, he then stated that comrade Mather “did not discuss” the “alternative” – at which stage I wondered where his head had been at for the proceeding 20 minutes or so. Yassamine had in fact spent the bulk of her talk precisely identifying the genuine forces for democratic and social change in Iran – the grassroots movements. However, for Cohen, the only “alternative” to imperialist intervention he appeared capable of computing was leaving the regime in place and “we” having to face the potentially dire consequences further down the line (he got some heckling at this point along the lines of ‘Who’s this “we” you’re talking about?’ “Western interests,” the self-professed ‘lefty’ bluntly stated).
This cuts to the heart of the question, of course. Cohen went on to make superficially correct criticisms of what he thinks of as the left in terms of its attitude to the Iranian regime, the reactionary nature of multicultural particularism or postmodern relativism and to bemoan the fact that the repression of homosexuals, trade unionists, women or student were “not causes of conscience” for “liberal” and left opinion in the west.
He spoke about some of the reasons for this, centrally the loss of the notion of solidarity with the “death of socialism”. It is an irony, however, that in his response to this loss, he actually apes precisely those degenerate features of the left he purports to critique – with the caveat that Cohen cannot be considered as part of the left in any meaningful sense, whatever his pretensions.
In his book, What’s left (reviewed in Weekly Worker March 22 2007), we are repeatedly told that we are confronting a new totalitarian menace. Anti-semitism and conspiracy theories permeate the Middle East, islamism is a “global fascist ideology” (p354), which supports a “psychopathic totalitarian movement that will murder without limit for decades” (p359).
This hyperventilated rhetoric paves the way for a conclusion that is the key to a political characterisation of Cohen – pro-imperialism. Thus, opposition to the invasion and occupation of Iraq would simply have “kept fascism in power” (p282). He wags his finger at the anti-war movement, telling us that its impact was largely motivated by fear and that it failed to “oppose fascism” (p284). Instead, “a principled left that still had life in it and a liberalism that meant what it said might have remained ferociously critical of the American and British governments while offering support to Iraqis who wanted the freedoms they enjoyed” (p288). In other words, it should have offered critical support to the imperialist invasion and occupation.
Both Cohen and the left he so despises substitute forces other than the international working class and its programme as agents for social and political progress. Cohen may not like the distasteful apologetics of the Socialist Workers Party or Ken Livingstone for political islam, for example. However, his promotion of a US-led world imperialism as an instrument (he concedes it is a blunt one) for liberation is, of course, infinitely worse. If Iran goes for the nuclear option, he told the audience, then ‘our’ governments must give the regime “a taste of its own medicine” – including tactical nuclear strikes perhaps, Nick?
“You talk about mass movements and people and demonstrations”, he contemptuously responded to one questioner from the floor, “but suppose there had been a strike against Iran last year. For good reasons there would have been massive anti-war demonstrations in Britain. Do you suppose … Iranians who were against a military strike but also against the regime would have been invited to take part in the organisation of it? My guess is that you would have been excluded.” Thus, in Cohen’s perverse schema, another force has to be found to uphold the banner of ‘democracy’ in the Middle East. And one with a tad more resources at its disposal than the hoi-polloi in those fearful “mass movements and …demonstrations”.
This debate was a useful opportunity for Hopi to underline once more that its approach has no relation whatsoever to reactionary pro-war liberals such as Cohen, a man who must be thought of as a spokesperson for the left of the imperialist establishment.�
