…disturbingly, like in the situations in Gaza or Lebanon, where Hamas and Hezbollah uncritically became champions of anti-imperialism, for some other people on the left, Ahmadinejad has become a champion because of his seemingly firm rhetoric against Israel and the U.S. Based on a crude class analysis, he is also directly or indirectly praised by some for his supposed campaign against the rich and imagined support of the working poor.
These analyses undermine the genuine movement within the vibrant Iranian civil society, and denigrate their demands for democracy and political and individual freedoms as middle-class concerns, instigated by Western propaganda (a view shared by Khamenei, Ahmadinejad and his supporters).
