Sunday, July 26, 2009

How Many Leftists Are "United for Iran"?

"8,000 people at the [25 July 2009] event in Paris, 4,000 in Stockholm, 3,000 in Amsterdam, more than 2,500 in Washington DC, 2,500 in New York, 2,000 in London. . . ," says United4Iran.org, the sponsor of the global day of action. The numbers suggest that few non-Iranian leftists showed up (when leftists join and mobilize for protests en masse, Paris, for instance, sees hundreds of thousands -- sometimes millions -- of protesters easily). While a number of leftists have made impassioned pleas for solidarity with Iran's Green Movement, (throwing themselves into an obligatory intra-left battle royal that has eclipsed any battle against the power of unelected clerics in Iran), most leftists appear to find it inadvisable to join the protests against the Iranian government (such as United4Iran's) that don't have an anti-imperialist point of unity emphasizing "Hands Off Iran" as much as criticism of the Iranian government's conduct in handling the Green protests.

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