Comments on: Not Like Ahmadinejad

By: Norwegian Shooter

Norwegian Shooter — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 16:02:22 +0000

Rowan, we agree liberal and conservative describe actual policies. What I am saying (and I think Daniel has too) is that policies should be the medium of debate, not labels made meaningless by their application. In terms of the Iranian regime (or any revolution), defenders of the new status quo are revolutionary, those that want to go back to the old way are anti-revolutionary. Each revolution is different, obviously, but they are usually formed from the masses who revolt against the current elites. So their is form is usually "populist" but what is more important is what policies they use their popular support to enact. Classical Liberalism is something completely different from what we are talking about in this discussion. You mean just plain old liberal.

By: Rowan

Rowan — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 14:06:42 +0000

I disagree. I think “left” and “right” make more sense as the terms which can be changed according to the circumstance of the country, where “liberal” and “conservative” tend to make more sense as describing actual policies. At least, “liberal,” in the classical sense, has fairly well-known and described policies attached.

By: Norwegian Shooter

Norwegian Shooter — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 13:50:35 +0000

Rowan, I’m afraid you’ve got it dead wrong. As Daniel has said in this post, “left” and “right,” however nebulous, should describe actual policies, not orientation to the current regime. You’re conflating these terms with “liberal” (change) and “conservative” (status quo).

Sean, only right-wing “populists” (scare quotes) sound vacuous because they don’t support any policies that could even remotely be described as populist. Dennis Kucinich doesn’t sound ridiculous (besides the UFO stuff).

By: Sean S.

Sean S. — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 05:22:14 +0000

It is hard to characterize the Iranian state, being as it is anchored in many of the same policies that Mossadeqh and other nationalist leaders of the Middle-East promoted, as following the rules of the traditional left-right divide of Western politics. It is a fusion, borne out of a colonial/imperialist experience. Some people wonder how many leftist groups in Arab states could support Islamic fundamentalism initially, but that mostly came out of expedience, and a presumption that Islam represented some sort of home-grown revolt against Western capitalism. most of them were sadly mistaken at a later date, but thats no here no there.

As to Palin, I think the term populist is fairly accurate, if for no other reason than there has hardly ever been politician described as “populist” that hasn’t sounded vacuous and ridiculous. I find when people throw around that word it means that the politician in question throws out a bunch of canards about national strength, red-meat cultural statements, and some vague ideas about things that may or may not have anything to do with the common person.

By: M.Z. Forrest

M.Z. Forrest — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 02:19:18 +0000

Palin likes to glad-hand. To call her a populist would be to give her too much policy knowledge and to, as Dr. Larison put it, describe the polar opposite of her actual policies.

By: Rowan

Rowan — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:57:50 +0000

When a regime becomes entrenched, don’t its most aggressive defenders become “right-wing”? I mean, I realize that this is semantics, but at a certain point, the revolution becomes codified and it has a recreation of what was “left” and “right.”

By: Daniel Larison

Daniel Larison — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 21:30:16 +0000

The “one of us” appeals are at the heart of what I’m calling pseudo-populism. That is not populism. It is the vacuous rhetoric that everyone seems willing to dub populism.

Ahmadinejad doesn’t represent defenders of status quo power. Of course, he now defends his own claims to power, and to that extent wants to defend the status quo, but he apparently wishes to retain power to upend the rest of the establishment.

The status quo power has been represented by Rafsanjani and Khatami–they are different wings of the same elite filled with clerics. He is quite vocally opposed to holders of vast landed wealth, he is seen correctly as an enemy of many of the clerics, and his main support inside the regime comes from military institutions. There is nothing necessarily “rightward” about being willing to use the coercive state apparatus against dissidents. By that standard, Khomeini and Mousavi were “right-wing” in the 1980s, which hardly makes sense. There is also an important factor that this is a revolutionary regime; the most radical or aggressive defenders of a hard-line interpretation of a revolution cannot credibly be labeled right-wing.

By: Steven Taylor

Steven Taylor — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 20:36:10 +0000

I have long thought Palin’s approach was populistic in nature: the whole “hockey mom” bit, the attacks on the media and elites, the anti-intellectualism, etc. Her basic appeal is that she is “one of us”–up from the PTA and all of that.

Likewise, Ahmadenijad’s placement within the Iranian spectrum is rightward, at least in terms of religion and coercive power of the state–and certainly in terms of the status quo power.