Native Informants (Communist Party of Canada 37th Central Convention Contribution)

“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.