The
expansion of the Western influence in Ukraine (in equal political and
economic terms), and a possible extension of the Western influence in
Iran (in equal political and economic terms), will be the progressive
scenario of the 21st century, and as a progressive scenario it will be
realized with the free will of the civilized progressive and liberal
peoples of these countries.
--
So that the Iranian leftists never again talk about hijacking in the plane-revolution (which has begun with the engines on the maximum) are called by history to board the only plane-revolution that awaits them, which is the (bourgeois-or-socialist) democratic Western-oriented plane of independent democratic Iran.
If they don't take the wheel of this plane, others will, and then please to they don't talk about hijacking again, it will be funny, as Marx said.
--
As a resident of Athens, I have experienced 2 major earthquakes, which did not have the deadly effect of the earthquake in Kurdistan, Turkey and Syria, but can make me able to understand the horror and fear that a major earthquake causes.
The only thing I can say at this moment is that we are truly shocked by the pain of our brotherly peoples, Kurds Turks and Syrians, all the more because we live together on a turbulent part of the mother earth which, apart from the conflicts between us and sometimes our vast differences, she takes care from time to time to remind us in a radically primal way that we are her children in common.
I wish brotherhood in the difficult present, and also, something that is most difficult, brotherhood forever, in a hopefully not too distant future.
--
Η διαχείριση των φυσικών καταστροφών είναι διοικητική και πολιτική υπόθεση, αλλά ποια είναι τα οντολογικά όρια τής πολιτικής;
Ως που φτάνει η αρμοδιότητα τής πολιτικής;
Οι φυσικές καταστροφές προσφέρονται για αναλύσεις τού στρατηγικού πεδίου τής κοινωνίας, διότι φανερώνουν διαρθρωτικά προβλήματα στην οργάνωση της, αλλά την ίδια στιγμή φανερώνουν τα όρια κάθε κοινωνικής οργάνωσης, γεγονός που γίνεται κι αυτό όμως αντικείμενο πολιτικής ιδεολογικής παρέμβασης.
Τότε, όταν ψηλαφούνται αυτά τα όρια, έρχεται η ώρα τής ανθρωπιστικής μεταπολιτικής που κάποτε ορίζονταν σε ένα ανοιχτό ως προς την ταυτότητα του θρησκευτικό θεολογικό πλαίσιο.
Και τότε και τώρα, ένα υπερβατικό στοιχείο εισβάλλει στον αυτοστοχασμό τής κοινωνίας, το οποίο όμως δείχνει αυτήν του ακριβώς την πολιτική λειτουργία.
Πολιτική όμως χωρίς παραβίαση τού μέτρου δεν υπάρχει, πολιτική χωρίς Ύβρη δεν υπάρχει, πολιτική χωρίς αξιοποίηση των πιθανών ως εκτός τούτης στοιχείων δεν υπάρχει, πολιτική χωρίς αφηρημένες και εκτός ορίων επικλήσεις των υπερβατικών αιτίων που πρέπει υποτίθεται να αντιμετωπιστούν με ένα ισχυρότερο αυτών πολιτικό αίτιο, δεν υπάρχει.
Και βέβαια, πολιτική χωρίς ξεδιάντροπη εκμετάλλευση τού ανθρώπινου πόνου, δεν υπάρχει.
Στην αρχή βέβαια υπάρχει μια συστολή, ένα μούδιασμα, μια τσίπα, σαν να υπάρχει επίγνωση ότι δεν είναι αρμόζον να πολιτικολογεις πάνω σε ερείπια λ.χ.
Η ιδεολογική και πολιτική εκμετάλλευση τού πόνου έρχεται λίγο αργότερα.
Όχι από όλους.
Οι μεγάλοι ανθρωπιστές δεν περιμένουν.
Λίγο μετά τον σεισμό, πάνω σε ερείπια και νεκρά σώματα, κάποιοι θυμούνται την διπλωματία των σεισμών (τού παρελθόντος) και κάποιοι άλλοι την γενική ενότητα των ανθρώπων πέρα από αυτά τα μικρά και ταπεινά των συγκρούσεων, κάποιοι άλλοι όπως πάντα την ταξική ενότητα των λαών.
Το τουρκικό κράτος έσπευσε όμως να τους προσγειώσει πάλι στη πραγματικότητα.
Παραβιάσεις τού ελληνικού εναέριου χώρου από την τουρκική πολεμική αεροπορία, χθες και σήμερα, πάλι. [8-2-2023].
--
The management of natural disasters is an administrative and political affair, but what are the ontological limits of politics? How far does the competence of politics go?
Natural disasters lend themselves to analyzes of the strategic field of society, because they reveal structural problems in its organization, but at the same time they reveal the limits of any social organization, a fact that also becomes the object of political ideological intervention.
Then, when these limits are felt, the time comes for humanist metapolitics that were once defined in a religious theological framework open to its identity.
Both then and now, a transcendental element invades society's self-reflection, which however shows this very political function.
However, there is no politics without violation of measure, no politics without exploiting the possible elements outside it, no politics without abstract and out-of-bounds appeals to transcendental causes which must supposedly be countered with a stronger political cause.
And of course, politics without shameless exploitation of human suffering does not exist.
In the beginning, of course, there is a hesitation, a numbness, as if there is an awareness that it is not appropriate to politicize on ruins, e.g.
The ideological and political exploitation of pain comes a little later.
Not by everyone.
"Great humanitarians" they do not wait.
Shortly after the earthquake, on ruins and dead bodies, some remember the diplomacy of earthquakes (of the past) and some others the general unity of people beyond these small and humble conflicts, some others as always the class unity of the peoples.
However, the Turkish state hastened to bring us back to reality.
Violations of Greek airspace by the Turkish Air Force, yesterday and today, again. [8-2-2023].
--
The overwhelming majority of the Iranian Left (as well as the Greek Left), is convinced that Ukraine is dominated by neo-Nazis.
It doesn't matter if these ideological factions in the majority of Left criticize and dislike the Putin regime, criticizing the Russian invasion, since they follow the dominant narrative of Russian imperialist Propaganda with cow naivety.
So we see that anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism are not enough to save from practical submission to an imperialism or a capitalism, as long as it is not western.
On the Western Left, such unrealistic notions also exist, although more widespread is a suspicious and ideologically more subtle neutrality.
2022-2023. The Left has been judged and weighed, and is light as a feather.
Where the wind blows, as long as it doesn't come from the west.
Then some they wonder how Khomeini won in the battle for who will prevail after the revolution.
--
Iran 2023. Beyond the theocratic regime and its supporters (certainly also a dwindling part of the Iranian people), a relentless ideological and political struggle is being waged within the opposition to the regime.
There are two main poles of this opposition: the nostalgic and supporters of the monarchy, and the left.
On the fringes of the opposition there is move in the so-called reformist branch of the regime.
Unknown and unrecorded is the influence of centrist social-democratic tendencies within the Iranian working class and society (I believe and hope that there is a great growth of such tendencies, which still do not have leadership representation and a political "home").
There are justified and great suspicions on the part of the left that a large part of the regime is looking for the "danger exit" from the existing regime through the reformers in the direction of the neo-republican semi-liberal front, that the would-be new Shah is trying to build.
I believe that the revolution and the radical change will be led by the Iranian people themselves, rather trying to transcend in a democratic direction the traditional political and ideological factions of Iran, and I also believe that this transcendence will be defined by a non-subservient, moderate pro-Westernism.
The revolution in Iran is inevitable, it will happen as if it has the force of natural law. Iran is after or next to Israel the most deeply capitalistized country in western Asia, so the garment of theocracy is too narrow for such a country.
I can even say that despite the great power of Israel at the level of capitalism, because Iran "contains" as a capitalist country a series of (demographic, quantitative-social, cultural and other) factors that make it the most weighty as a capitalist country in this widest geographical area of the planet, for that and it matters more than Israel.
The question is in which direction the revolution will be led.
The quantitative and qualitative development of Iran as a capitalist society, brings it to a paradoxical "isolation" in relation to its neighboring countries but also in relation to all of Western Asia and North Africa. Contrary to what many progressive Iranians (not only leftists) believe, Iran as a revolutionary society will not have followers as an example in this wider zone. Iran is already too much of a "western" society to coordinate with the other regions "closer to it" or "a little further away", so a revolutionary, necessarily even more progressive social Iran, will find itself in a geopolitical and cultural isolation that will only be able to be broken if it once again becomes the great flagship of the Western cultural, ideological and ultimately political influence of the existing Western world, without this necessarily implying a relationship of dependence towards Western capitalism/imperialism.
--
Fiction (heroes are fictional persons).
When the joke of ideological-religious sectarianism begins to turn into a serious slanderous situation.
''..I made a rather critical and cryptic post about the ideological founder of an important Marxist or "Marxist" sect or trend in the Iranian leftist movement, Hekmat, and again it was a mess with the Iranian and Kurdish comrades.
I have told you, when I ought not, for thus the demonic magic of real dialectic is lost, that I am here playing the part of all your devils' advocate.
But somewhere I have begun to lose track of your demons, and my work has become very difficult, the Mossad does not pay me well, it denies that all this constitutes overtime, I have become a low-paid mercenary of imperialism.
For many Kurds, and also many Iranian marxist, Hekmat is an Iranian chauvinist or far-right in the garb of Marxism, maybe even a semi-fascist, so they tell me, without proving it with excerpts from his writings or statements.
I saw earlier that he was even considered a Zionist, but in my service records I didn't see his name anywhere, so I thought that this theory was probably not well substantiated.
I also asked an old manager of mine, a specialist in the leftist movements of the Middle East, a former leftist Zionist who knew Ben Gurion from the time of the Second International, and he told me that this is all nonsense between communists.
Anyway, I'm desperate, my career is in jeopardy.
I also see the Hekmatists discovering the extreme right everywhere, something that even the theocrats of the regime are used to, who everywhere, as they say, discover monarchist Shahist and Zionist conspiracies, and I despair even more.
Where is the demonic truth? i want to find it to serve it and provide it good pay, which it would also help me in my spy career..''
--
The dialogue that inspired me [Continuously updated]:
-
Peshraw Ben
Mansoor Hikmat was not a (strong) Marxist, he borrowed the basics from different and diverse British Trotskyism.
He just mixed these already borrowed theories with the Iranian context and produced a semi-pan farsism.
Ιωάννης Τζανάκος
Peshraw Ben I have pointed out elsewhere what in my opinion are the dark points of Hekmat's view.
We probably have another completely different perspective on what these dark spots are.
It is certainly not his thinking, I think, a simple reproduction of British Trotskyist patterns.
Also, in what sense is he pan-Iranist?
There is certainly a kind of intentional misunderstanding of the Kurdish national movements, as it emerges from the general intention of a unity of popular forces.
Surely perhaps this intention hides an unacknowledged Iranian-Persian patriotism within the limits of hegemonism, but isn't it an exaggeration to speak of fascism?
I think all Marxists have a common problem with defining fascism when discussing overt or covert nationalism.
Ιωάννης Τζανάκος
Peshraw Ben For example.
Hekmat infiltrated Komala and created a communist Marxist tradition within it that has continued to this day through splits, as I understand it.
There is a part of Komala that went to the right, with a leader whose name I do not remember well, but I have seen that he has direct contacts with international social democracy and western imperialist factors, from what I have seen there is a new split, not so to rightist direction, with Alizadeh(?) and there is still Komala who is driven by Hekmatist ideas.
For me, all this is a bit of a maze.
However, one cannot talk about semi-fascism when talking about the Hekmatists, especially the Kurds Hekmatists.
Of course, from what I have seen, the heckmatists also easily use the term, slanderously, as well as the term nationalism.
Vassilis Serafimakis
Mansoor Hekmat.
Javad Rastipoor
Mansoor Hekmat neither had a strong mind nor was a Marxist. He was an opportunist with childish theories which put him on the far-right side of politics ... if we take him seriously.
Ιωάννης Τζανάκος
Javad Rastipoor You Marxists (I deny this self-definition, I am interested in workers' democracy, not isms) have a big funny when you deny each other the self-definition of a Marxist.
You are like the separate religious as they are divided into separate sub-sects, Shiites vs. Sunnis, Catholics vs. Protestants, etc.
If someone is an atheist or rather unrelated to each unique belief, he sees Muslims or Christians accusing each other as "atheists" or "not believers" in the doctrine of the one about the other.
I remember once having a conversation with a Sunni Salafist cleric who was trying to convince me that Shiites are not Muslims, and I had a big fun with him.
In any case, it would also be funny if a Hekmatist also participated in the conversation, who would claim that you and not he are NOT Marxists.
All kidding aside, I'd like an explanation for these claims because I'm writing a book about the deep secret relationship between Marxism and religion.
Also, no misunderstanding please. Moderate your momentum a little, not only in your own movement but in the entire left, in characterizing a political space as extreme right.
For the left in crisis, everyone else ends up being considered far-right.
This leads nowhere.
An objective criterion is needed to assign such a discreditive political definition, because we all know that extreme right ultimately means fascism..
Javad Rastipoor
I can refer you to Razmandegan and Ranjbar newspapers which show how alien Hekmat was to Marxism.
If you need a doctor one day, and a person who you know is illiterate claims to be one, will you believe him? The same thing is true about politics.
Ιωάννης Τζανάκος
Javad Rastipoor
Yes, I would like these references, because it is good to learn from Iranian sources and not from speculation what is happening in the movement in Iran.
I also advise all of you, comrades in the context of a wider progressive comradeship, to translate your views into English, because the whole world is listening to you, also the whole left-wing anarchist and progressive social democratic Greece, since today they must nothing exist in isolation. Also, the fact that Hekmat may not have been a Marxist does not make him an extreme rightist. This latter characterization presupposes other documentation.
-
My post that sparked this discussion, and it said:
''Mansoor Hekmat.
A strong (marxistic) mind that produced a mixture of truths and delusions...'
----
Disgrace.
The Greek left (its main party, SYRIZA), through its official newspaper, calls indirectly for the lifting of sanctions on the Assad regime, at the same time accusing the US of sending aid only where there US supporters.
SYRIZA's argument may be correct as far as the USA is concerned (but it is not checked) but the fact that it combined it with the demand to lift the sanctions against the Assad regime shows what insidious pro-Russian and pro-Assad snakes are the false "leftists" in Greece.
---
Ακόμα δεν έχω καταλάβει καλά πως εννοεί ο κύριος εκφραστής των αριστερών Ιρανών πολιτικών προσφύγων στην Ελλάδα την προσπάθεια των δυτικών (ιμπεριαλιστών) και των μοναρχικών Ιρανών να αξιοποιήσουν το ουκρανικό "μοντέλο" δυτικής παρέμβασης.
Να σας πω πώς καταλαβαίνω εγώ τις φοβίες του, ή μάλλον τις προκαταλήψεις του.
Φοβάται το σενάριο μιας ενδο-αστικής ανατροπής στο Ιράν, και την εγκαθίδρυση ενός φιλο-δυτικού καθεστώτος.
Σύμφωνα με το αυτοαναφορικό ιρανικό αριστερό σενάριο η ανατροπή τής θεοκρατίας χωρίς σοσιαλισμό δεν θα σημαίνει κανονική αστική δημοκρατία δυτικού τύπου αλλά θα σημαίνει ένα βοναπαρτιστικο ημι-φιλελεύθερο καθεστώς, με τον επίδοξο Σάχη στον ρόλο του Λουδοβίκου Βοναπάρτη, όπως τον σκιαγράφησε ο Μαρξ σε ένα από τα πραγματικά σπουδαιότερα έργα του.
Δεν αποκλείεται οι αριστερές ιρανικές φοβίες να επιβεβαιωθούν, αλλά η αυτοαναφορικοτητα τής αριστερής ιδεολογίας τής εποχής μας είναι τόσο αδιέξοδη ώστε να δημιουργεί αναλυτικούς μονόδρομους οι οποίοι εντέλει παρεμποδίζουν την δράση και τής αριστεράς (εν προκειμένω τής ιρανικής αριστεράς) αλλά και των άλλων πολιτικών δυνάμεων, μερικές από τις οποίες δεν είναι υποχρεωμένες να χωρέσουν στους προϊδεασμους τής γερασμένης πλέον αριστεράς.
Στο Ιράν δεν είναι αναγκαίο να υπάρξουν μόνον θεοκρατες μοναρχικοί και μαρξιστές κομμουνιστές, όπως πιστεύουν και οι τρεις αυτοί πολιτικοί χώροι.
Η επανάσταση στο Ιράν έρχεται και δεν χωρά σε προκαθορισμούς.
Δεν θα αναφερθώ πάλι στην απαράδεκτη στάση τής πλειονότητας (και) τής ιρανικής αριστεράς απέναντι στον αγώνα τού ουκρανικού λαού, και το γεγονός ότι δεν χωρά στο μυαλό των περισσότερων (και Ιρανών) αριστερών η αναγκαστική αλλά και ελεύθερη επιλογή του να συμμαχήσει με την Δύση. Φτάνει πια.
Η συζήτηση τελείωσε σε αυτό το θέμα.
Να κοιτάξουν οι αριστεροί Ιρανοί τον άμεσο εχθρό τους.
Οι θεοκρατες τους αποπροσανατολισαν πάλι. Αν δεν το βλέπουν αυτό, τι άλλο να πω.
Η Ουκρανία τους πείραξε;
--
The creation of leadership and the choice of one or the other leadership of a people and a (mono-ethnic or multi-ethnic) nation, belongs, as a process and as a result of it, to the people and the nation itself.
Foreign peoples have rights to the opinion, since we live as one essentially one humanity, but they have the second or third opinion in line.
The first and "last" (determin) opinion in line, belongs rightfully so by each people, each unique and separate society.
The fact that we all have the right to judge and criticize a leadership of a foreign people, the fact that we can ask for a change of this leadership, although we are foreigners, does not justify hegemonic authoritarian foreign interventions in the affairs of foreign peoples.
On the other hand, as we have said before, we have the right to judge, to propose, to support one or the other leadership of a foreign people, without hegemony and overstepping boundaries.
Let's say, although I am not Iranian, I support the democratic opposition to the theocratic regime.
I don't consider my attitude suspicious, since I am not connected to secret services, nor connected to "my" state (but only as an ordinary citizen).
Within the Iranian democratic opposition itself, I like its left wing more, although I think it makes important strategic mistakes in its analysis and is dominated by sectarianism.
--
Open the border for the unfortunate Syrians of northwest Syria, finally. They have been locked in a cell, from where they can neither leave nor they get aid (even if they get, with difficulty, from only one road).
Some say they may be controlled by the jihadists.
So what? even if they are all followers of islamist organizations, which they are not (at least ''all''), aren't they human? do they not have the right to help and care?
--
From the beginning I have been wary of postpolitical humanism, which is essentially a form of metaphysicalized politics, but now is a partly different situation.
My suspicion is of a political nature and signifies the desire of a truly without ransom concern for the living and the human.
As a human being, I would prefer to speak only with actions, and not cover all my possible good human actions with big words about "Humanity".
A month ago a Syrian from NW Syria asked me for financial help and I couldn't give it to him because I don't have a fiver in my pocket, and that made me sad. It doesn't matter if this Syrian (in Facebook) friend was "real" or a form of fraud.
And 1/1000 if he was real, he wouldn't have, and don't have significance this point, for the my ability to help him.
It doesn't matter if this Syrian once made the mistake of supporting Islamism, after all that is his right too, every people has the right to make mistakes too, haven't we this right as every people?
After all, even if someone represents on an ideological level something that makes us cringe, doesn't he have a right to our care when he is down, defeated, wounded on the ground?
Are we not obliged in our hearts to help him live?
There is precisely here the difficult boundary of politics and the possible well-intentioned post-politics of real humanity and real human rights, at least when we refer to critical human tragedies of extra-human origin.
We must not bend our political criteria and political suspicion at this point either, certainly examining with suspicion the perennially cynical politics of all states, but also (examining with suspicion) the very position of people in the position of the victim.
But, perhaps somewhere there, there is also the sensorium, the sensitive judgment.
Help Idlib, unconditionally!
--
An old (commonplace, trite) reasoning of mine about war affairs, which I did not expect to be related to the tragic results of an earthquake (I will comment on it further):
Never step on the fallen body of a defeated enemy, because then you are just a dishonest and super evil person, regardless of whether you fought for a righteous cause.
-
The way Mr. Assad is behaving on Idlib shows that he has no shred of honor and dignity.
The way Mr. Erdogan treats the Kurds shows that he has no shred of honor and dignity.
The critical, not at all post-political, question to the Syrian opposition and the Kurds of the YPG, is:
How do you see now the political forces and political figures with whom you allied, even temporarily, to defeat your enemy?
[The Syrian Arabs (Islamists -jihadists or moderates) anti-Assad with Erdogan (occasionally or more permanently) and the Kurdish anti-jihadists with Assad (occasionally or more permanently)].
Neither their enemy nor their supposed ally have been treated by these "Mr" with basic humaneness, they think only of trampling down their defeated enemy and instrumentalizing their supposed ally-friend.
So, also the people have a partial (perhaps less) responsibility, unfortunately, because they voluntarily become the tool of the evil forces.
--
A strange bourgeois alliance in which a postmodern would-be Shah, practicing a postmodern Bonapartism, is "combined" as a vaguely institutional "role" (The Prince Shah who doesn't want to be a Shah, so he says) with a democratic Kurd of center-left (whom the entire Kurdish and Iranian radical left curses), and various other well-known pro-Western figures in the Iranian opposition.
I will not make up theories about a Western-imperialist conspiracy like my beloved Kurdish radical leftists and Iranian Marxist-communists in general, etc. do.
It is obvious that within the Iranian bourgeoisie and middle-class ethnic elements, a spicy food is being cooked in which the Western factor or Western imperialism does not only play the role of seasoning.
The Western factor wants to have a stake in the main body of post-theocratic food, and it too uses spoons and forks to stir the recipe.
But this does not mean that the Iranian people want to eat this particular food, and beware! I'm not only talking about the progressive, left, or liberal part of this people, but I'm also talking mainly about the part of this people that is governed by conservative ideas and perceptions and is perhaps now seriously flirting with the pro-Western scenario.
I myself as an uninvited outsider have suggested to Iran's sectarian-minded left to seriously consider this country as a western-oriented secular country in the future, but oh god or Allah or Buddha, I mean no such thing.
The moderately and independently pro-Western orientation of the new post-theocratic Iran cannot be implemented "from above", through Western state cooking, but only through its progressive unguarded youth, which is beautiful smart modern, either as progressive and left-wing or as influenced by moderated bourgeois liberal nationalist ideas.
What is happening among the radical youth inside Iran matters, and how the progressive, leftist and also neoconservative ideas are structured within this youth in Iran.
They are all Iranian youth, anti-theocrats, and culturally westernized, without underestimating the culture of Iran or Kurdistan.
--
Ιωάννης Τζανάκος
Ο εκ τής Παρθίας ορμώμενος.
