This is a guest post by Karl Pfeifer, a veteran anti-fascist and journalist based in Vienna.
In the June 23 issue of the anti-fascist magazine blick nach rechts (”A look to the right”), Anton Maegerle notes that European neo-Nazis have been expressing their solidarity with the Tehran regime.
Maegerle says that in contrast to the hundreds of thousands of Iranian citizens protesting the stolen election, neo-Nazis and extreme right-wingers have expressed their solidarity with the antisemitic and anti-Zionist President in Tehran. Among them is the fugitive Swiss Holocaust denier Jürgen Graf, who fled to Iran in 2000 seeking “political asylum” - Graf gives his address as “PO Box 19395/7161, Tehran,“
“Hearty congratulation to your reelection, Mr. President!“ rejoiced the Deutsche Volksunion (DVU) under its leader Matthias Faust after the alleged reelection of the Islamist despot.
The Iranian people, says the DVU, “has decided in favor of a man of the people.” Ahmadinejad is acclaimed by the DVU as an “uncompromising patriot” coming from “the people,” against whom “the self-proclaimed money-elite, the smart merchants and the western- oriented members of the Tehran upper class” has conspired.
Exhilarated NPD federal leader Udo Voigt said of the official election result: “As if by a miracle, they elected against what the western world and its Jewish lobby stands for.“
“Apparently,” Voigt continued, “the democracy there is more stable and less prone to blackmail than the Western countries“. Mass demonstrations against the Tehran regime are, according to Voigt, caused by incitement from abroad. Foreign countries have a “clear interest in a chaotic situation“.
Also the leader of NPD in Nordrhein-Westfalen, Claus Cremer, took a stand. He confirmed that Ahmadinejad is one of the “last strong leaders on this earth, who openly and forcefully stand up against the objectives of the USA, Israel and the ‘Western community’ of values and do not bend to political correctness.“ Cremer told Iranians living in Germany: “If you are not happy with what happened in Tehran, you should use the opportunity to protest as Iranians in Iran, instead of taking your problems into our cities. Go back to your homeland.”
The Osnabrück base of the NPD-youth Junge Nationaldemokraten (JN) glorified Ahmadinejad on their homepage as the “true Fuhrer of the people.” Ahmadinejad was praised for closing “the American-branded fast food restaurants” and for having “curbed the distribution of decadent products of the American music industry which are responsible for rotten subversion.“
The new blood of the NPD was moved by Ahmadinejad’s firm stance against “the capitalist world power USA and Zionist Israel. His staunch advocacy for the disenfranchised and oppressed Palestinians and for the liberty of research in recent history is what has caused the hatred of the Zionist rulers of Israel and the USA.“ As example of the ‘liberty of research in recent history,’ they name explicitly the Holocaust denial conference sponsored by Ahmadinejad in December 2006.
The extreme rightist Swiss Partei National Orientierter Schweizer (PNOS) also expressed solidarity with Ahmadinejad. “It must be hoped,” said their statement, “that he can defend himself successfully against foreign attacks and further denounce Zionism and the Holocaust Religion.”
Meanwhile, Vienna’s leftist anti-imperialists declared, on June 16: “From an anti-imperialist point of view, the overwhelming victory of Ahmadinejad in the elections is positive, because the incumbent and president-elect stands for confrontation with the U.S.-led new order for the ‘Near East.’”
On June 24, they published a letter by “Y.B., activist from within 48 Palestine“ (meaning Israel) under the headline: “In Palestine Ahmadinejad could win any election with much bigger margins.”
“I’m aware of the crazy defamation of Ahmadinejad in the west, where the hypocrisy of the left is converging with the self interest of the exploiters and the oppressors to pose ‘democratic’ racist Israel and the ‘moderate’ Saudi royal family and the Egyptian police state as natural allies for the western democracies. Here in Palestine, where people experience Western imperialism at its sharp edge, Ahmadinejad could win any election with much bigger margins without even campaigning…At last, Iran is one of the few states in the world where there are meaningful elections where people can make real choice. In this sense it is one of the most democratic states in the world. Of course, nothing is perfect, and we always aspire for the better, but in the Iranian election the Iranian people had to choose and they did choose the leadership that proved its readiness to serve their interest best, and not those of foreign imperialism or the local elites.“
Prof. Gerhard Oberkofler, an old Austrian Stalinist, defended Ahmadinjad’s views on the Holocaust on June 24, writing: “Such thoughts are dismissed as bizarre and antisemitic, but one can understand them historically.”
For Oberkofler, the convening of a conference of Holocaust deniers is neither bizarre nor antisemitic. So once again neo-Nazis, rightist extremists and “anti-imperialists” agree.
Hence to reconfigure some basic con- and per-ceptions, both left and right totalitarians/authoritarians on one end of a spectrum - with social/political classical liberals (in the lineage of Locke and Montesquieu) on the other end of the same spectrum. That seems a more fitting template and linear spectrum if one is to be conceived vis-a-vis Iran, other purposes as well.
Such a schema has disadvantages, but it has several critical advantages as well, such as inherently acknowledging the Lenin-Mussolini continuum in terms of praxis and at least some ideological motifs (e.g., the authoritarian/socialist aspect itself); such as inherently acknowledging the authoritarian/pluralism divide in the form of basic institutions (separation of powers, checks and balances); such as inherently acknowledging and placing ultimate significance upon the individual qua individual and not first and foremost as part of a political collective. That’s individual qua individual, with a simultaneous dual emphasis upon freedom/responsibility both.
Thanks for informing us Karl. A political nexus between the IRI, specifically the figure of Ahmadinejad, and neo-Nazi movements is disturbing but not surprising. It makes me feel even more sad for my country…
Amazing stuff…It’s interesting in this context to note that polls have shown that Ahmadinejad used to be among the most popular political figures in the ARAB world (mind you) — he shared this honor with Hezbollah leader Nasrallah (no.1) and Syrian president Assad, and the reason that this trio was so popular on the “Arab street” was that they were seen as “standing up to the West”. In my view, this is one of the best illustrations of the problematic neighborhood Israel finds itself.
Therefore, this is arguably fascinating article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2009/06/24/ST2009062403031.html?sid=ST2009062403031
The Sounds of Silence on Iran
By Mona Eltahawy
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Do you hear the silence from the Arab world over events in Iran?
That neo Nazis and Nazis support Ahamdinejad is not news.
But what accounts for hard leftists like Chavez and many others in Europe support for this little murderer.
Isn’t it the case that there has always been among leftists a love for authoritarian and even totalitarian solutions to political and social problems, Karl?
Robbins who are the “leftists”? according to you?
In Austria and in Germany one part of the left takes a very clear stand against antisemitism also when it is disguised as antizionism and against antiamericanism.
Some leftist, like Noam Chomsky served giving a teudat kashrut (meaning giving a certificate that they are OK) to Holocaust deniers like Faurisson. Norman Finkelstein, who claims to be a leftist, has no problem with HizbAllah or Hamas. So I am in favor of judging every case on its merits.
karl (and mod)– i think you have your finger on an important question. at what point can anyone who supports a holocaust denier like ahmadinejad actually be said to be on the left? is it that they’ve simply fallen heir to a rhetorical style of speaking that historically one associated with the left, or perhaps a vocabulary that they can manipulate for its symbolic value? or is it that large and very vocal sections of the left are more and more collapsing into a kind of “vulgar anti-imperialism”, the anti-imperialism of fools, and in the process, have distanced, even divorced themselves from the basic emancipatory project that the left has always tried to promote? let’s be frank: chavez is not a “hard leftist,” he’s a populist. and there are only two kinds of populism–wretched and reactionary. as for mr. chomsky, when he’s talking about universal grammar, he’s more on the left than when he’s talking about politics.
les, once a British journalist told me, a leftist can’t be an antisemite and an antisemite can’t be a leftist. He was wrong.
The left was never free of antisemitism, one has to read Siberner or Sternhell to get this documented.
However I object to sweeping statements about “the left” and “the leftist”.
As far as Israel is concerned, when the SU leaders wanted to hurt GB they were more zionistic than the zionist (1947/48). Later they changed their attitude.