“Native
Informants”
Our
Iran policy
is wrong because, in the name of solidarity
with the people against the government,
we objectively echo imperialist
propaganda (I’ll show you), using
anti-war declarations as a cover. Remember,
the German Social Democrats
said they were anti-war when they
voted for war credits! This mistake has
now born bad fruit with Libya and Syria,
which unlike Iran did/do have progressive
governments, because we automatically
“copied and pasted” our Iran
position. We are silent on anything progressive
about Libya and Syria, and vilify
them while reaching for anything redeeming
about the “opposition”. Life is
exposing our mistake.
Instead
of doing our own research and thinking,
we have “outsourced” to “native informants”
(see http://is.gd/LKNflX), a racist
idea where just because someone is
from somewhere they must be right about
their country. But communists from one
country have many views (check out our
convention!), inevitably we listen only to
“informants” who confirm our own prejudices,
or worse exploit them for their own
agendas.
In
2005 the PV reprinted the Tudeh Party’s
statement saying Ahmadinejad threatened
to wipe out Israel (http://is.gd/0Mujuz).
Even if you don’t speak Persian (which
Tudeh does) you’ll see this is wrong
as Ahmadinejad specified elections,
not war, as the answer. This echoes
imperialist propaganda and doesn’t
help the Iranian people. To our credit,
in 2007 and 2012 we printed a debunking
(http://is.gd/KVs0UH http:// is.gd/hyaMnc)
but at the 2014 International
Meeting of Communist and Workers
Parties we signed a statement (http://is.gd/GVfyLI
only 2/3 parties signed,
e.g. Cubans didn’t) vaguely referring
to Iran’s “reckless gestures”, which
only plays into this same propaganda.
Our
first People’s Voice article on Syria
(http://is.gd/wAwlHW) vilified the government
(with better poverty rates than
neighbors) for “actively and purposefully
pauperising” the people. The
comrade who supplied this article at first
denied it said this, but when I showed him
the quote he conceded this was wrong and
he hadn’t read the article! When I asked
a party leader, who at first didn’t even
know correctly who wrote it, they defended
themself saying they hadn’t read it
either! But that’s not a defense, it only condemns
our blind “native informant” recipe.
There
is a racist willful ignorance about the
Arab and Muslim world, as if we are exotic
creatures who cannot be understood
by the Anglo mind. If you cut
us we bleed just like you, it’s not complicated.
I’m no expert, but a few minutes
of looking things up exposes our policies
as embarrassingly misinformed. The
biggest casualty: demoralized members
who see obliviousness to mistakes
from outsourcing to “native informants”
with their own agenda.
