Intellektuelle und die Islamische Revolution im Iran
In seinem brillanten Werk “Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran” schreibt der amerikanische Journalist Danny Postel, dass er in “hunderten von Gesprächen”, die er mit iranischen Intellektuellen, Journalisten und Menschenrechtsaktivisten geführt hat, immer wieder mit derselben Fassungslosigkeit konfrontiert wurde: “Why, they ask, is the American Left so seemingly indifferent to the struggle taking place in Iran? Why can’t the Iranian movement get the attention of so-called progressives and solidarity activists here? Why is it mainly neoconservatives who express interest in the Iranian struggle?” [S. 47]
Die iranische Menschenrechtsaktivistin Ladan Boroumand weist im Interview mit Alan Johnson vom Online-Journal “Democratiya”, darauf hin, dass die iranische Linke von dieser Blindheit genauso betroffen ist und deshalb die Islamische Revolution mit zu verantworten hat:
Alan Johnson: The Iranian left (and the western left, with a few exceptions) catastrophically misjudged the Islamists by supporting the ‘anti-imperialist Imam’ – failing to see that along with human rights and democracy, their own survival was threatened. Before it was dispatched by the regime, the left had failed to defend the democratic rights of ‘perfumed bourgeois women’ and ‘bourgeois liberals’ so intoxicated were they by their fantasies about ‘the anti-imperialist revolution’.
Fred Halliday has argued that ‘the central avoidable error of most of the Iranian left [was] its catastrophic stand on “liberalism”‘. He claims that ‘the Left allied with Khomeini to break “liberalism” – that is those moderate democratic forces that opposed the Shah but were against clerical dictatorship’. He goes on: While ‘[i]n any historical materialist perspective, the “liberals” reflected a more progressive position than the reactionary ideas and policies of Khomeini, the Marxists viewed events through the prism of ‘anti-imperialism’. For myself, I’d say this repudiation in theory and practice of a basic historical materialist truth by vast swathes of the post-1960s left, including the ‘historical materialists’, is now virtually complete and has resulted in a catastrophic loss of political bearings.
Ladan Boroumand: Well, actually I don’t think the Left made a big mistake. If they were to be true to their ideology, which was a totalitarian ideology, then they made the right choice. Yes, they got killed for it, but many Communists got killed for it in the Soviet Union as well. The fact is that between Dr Bahktiar – who represented the option for a liberal democracy – and the creation of a totalitarian system, the Left supported the creation of a totalitarian system. Why? Because that system was much closer to what they wanted than what Bahktiar was offering.
Alan Johnson: Perhaps I am revealing my own wishful thinking about what any Left ’should’ support.
Ladan Boroumand: So the real questions are: why did so many Leftists have a totalitarian mind-set? Why were so many so easily absorbed by a totalitarian ideology instead of supporting liberal-democracy? We were an autocratic nation lacking the cultural, philosophical and intellectual heritage of the West. Only ten chapters of John Locke were available in Farsi in 1979 in a book that had not been on the market for 20 years. Liberal ideas were almost non-existent while Lenin, Marx, Fanon were systematically translated. We just didn’t have the liberal background that you had in the West that helped you resist and defeat your own totalitarian tendencies in the twentieth century.
Die Aussage des letzten Satzes kann man angesichts zweier Weltkriege freilich so nicht stehenlassen. Aber der Iran ist letztlich nur eines von vielen Beispielen die zeigen, wohin die Gegnerschaft zu illiberalem Gedankengut führen muss. Egal ob sie von links oder von rechts betrieben wird.
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Siehe auch:
• “Konglomerat aus Ignoranz und Feigheit”, 21. April 2007,
• Unsichtbare iranische Demokraten, 11. April 2007,
• Mirfetros über die iranischen Intellektuellen, 17. Februar 2007.