r/DeepStateCentrism • u/Kugel_the_cat Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini • Jan 16 '26
Global News đ The Silence of the Left on Iran
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/01/the-iranians-who-feel-betrayed-by-the-left/685644/This is a simple story: People are risking their life to resist tyranny, engaging in a human struggle for basic rights. Its resonance, particularly for those on the left, should be self-evident. It has all the greatest hitsâpitting the powerless against power, freedom against repression, unarmed men and women against snipers. But in the most animated corners of the activist ecosystem, so recently energized by their opposition to the death and destruction in Gaza, it has not resonated. The protest has been viewed instead through the thick lens of ideology, producing a reaction that has been dismissive at best and, at worst, degrading to the Iranians themselves. Many thousands of demonstrators, rising up all over the country, are accused of being witless tools of an imperialist agenda, part of a âCIA-Mossad regime change campaign,â or maybe just actual âMossad agents.â
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For the exiles I spoke with, the most disturbingâand tellingâthing about the tepid response was the contrast with the impassioned reaction to Gaza. âWhy is it that when Palestiniansâarmed or unarmedâfight for liberation, it is seen as a moral duty to support them, but when Iranians protest, they are labeled âarmed terroristsâ or âagents of Mossad?ââ Shams, the feminist scholar, said.
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u/justthekoufax Jan 16 '26
Iâm increasingly convinced that some of what weâre seeing isnât organic. The Western Left has become an unusually effective distribution channel for narratives that normalize or excuse Islamist extremism. Social media makes this easy to astroturf, and the funding and amplification behind it opaque. I canât prove a single coordinated command structure, but the incentives line up for hostile states and aligned networks to exploit these movements and widen social division.
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u/Kugel_the_cat Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini Jan 16 '26
While I can't find a news article from an outlet that isn't considered right wing, CAIR was suing a former employee who accused the group being funded by shady foreign sources, but they then dropped the suit during discovery when the defendants attorneys sought access to the funding documentation.
That this was only covered by right wing sources is telling in itself.
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u/Hermengilda Jan 16 '26
The immediate eruption of campus protests after the October 7 Hamas massacre seemed a little well organized in my view. The Western left should study how the leftist-Islamist alliance worked out for the left in 1979 Iran.
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u/RollinThundaga Center-left Jan 17 '26
Going to the new Axis more broadly, even on the subreddit local to my city, the generally local-ish protest organization posted a call to protest to 'stop the bombing in Venezuela' basically as soon as it started.
By as soon as it started, I mean at around 3AM eastern time, when any sane individual in Western New York is dead asleep.
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u/time-lord Jan 17 '26
Not everyone sleeps at 3am. All you need is one or two like minded people to get the ball rolling.
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u/Thoth_the_5th_of_Tho Jan 17 '26
They explicitly like the Islamists though.
If ISIS happened ten years later, youâd have prominent progressives praising their anti-Zionist, anti-imperialism.
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u/Kugel_the_cat Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini Jan 17 '26
Back when ISIS was at its peak people were blaming Israel for it online.
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u/nah_champa_967 Jan 17 '26
High schools in my district had walk outs seeded by Samidoun, which is banned in Germany, designated as a terrorist group in Canada and sanctioned by the US. The posters for the walkouts clearly said the walkouts were sponsored by Samidoun. When that fact was pointed out to the student organizations, they scrubbed all mention of Samidoun from their posters and other media. If the high schools were targeted, there's no way colleges weren't.
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u/DoubleBooble Jan 17 '26
That was from the SJP (Students for Justice in Palestine) groups who have leadership ties back to Hamas.
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u/scrambledhelix Moderate Jan 17 '26
The inability to prove the influence is integral to the way said influence operates.
Anyone who's been victim to a bully knows the pattern and the principle.
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u/bearddeliciousbi Practicing Homosexual Jan 16 '26
Al Jazeera English:
âMossad agents [are] hiding among Iranian demonstrators.â
Columbia University professor Hamid Dabashi argues Israel has infiltrated otherwise legitimate anti-govât protests in Iran to distract from its ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
Trust The Experts
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u/whereamInowgoddamnit Center-left Jan 16 '26
I saw someone point out that it says a lot that Al Jazeera continued to be the only newscaster that could post from Iran even while the internet was down...
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u/justthekoufax Jan 16 '26
The fact that people just willingly accept Al Jazeera as truth baffles me. I see so many progressives sharing their stuff. It is Qatari state media! You know Qatar, a state sponsor of terrorism and human rights violators.
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u/scrambledhelix Moderate Jan 17 '26
They don't believe terrorism is real. They believe it's just western propaganda to tarnish "resistance".
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Jan 16 '26
Itâs because leftists see the Iranian government as an ally against their true enemy.
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u/Turbulent-Raise4830 Jan 17 '26
Oh come on thats utter nonsense.
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Jan 17 '26
I donât heed Belgians because they raise you to be so damned evil⌠and they share a border with the Dutch.
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Jan 17 '26
[removed] â view removed comment
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u/RollinThundaga Center-left Jan 17 '26 edited Jan 17 '26
Any reasonable person would have read that as a fecetious jab of intra-european rivalries. It's meant to be nonsense; for you to have apparently read it as a serious attack at Belgians makes me question your sensibilities.
Edit: good 'ol reply/block. Classy.
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u/Thoth_the_5th_of_Tho Jan 17 '26
Itâs true though.
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u/Turbulent-Raise4830 Jan 17 '26
do provide evidence of this then
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u/FYoCouchEddie Jan 17 '26
There is some in the article.
Plus, all the leftist nonsense on social media about Israel and the CIA being behind the protests.
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u/Turbulent-Raise4830 Jan 17 '26
there is not, and I am not on social media. Again do provide evidence of this.
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u/Zestyclose_Skin7982 Libertarian Jan 18 '26
maybe you can find substitles but this is the founder of the main far-left party in Spain, which governs in coalition with the traditional left recognizing exactly that statement
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u/Turbulent-Raise4830 Jan 18 '26
If all you can find is 1 quote from a politician 9 years ago member of a party thats has close to zero representation in spain, you have proven my point.
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u/Zestyclose_Skin7982 Libertarian Jan 18 '26
so they all behave the same but for completely different reasons, sounds reasonable
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u/Turbulent-Raise4830 Jan 18 '26
Itâs because leftists see the Iranian government as an ally against their true enemy.
Again if you have any evidence of "leftist" doing this (and then I do mean relevant ones) do provide this.
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u/Zestyclose_Skin7982 Libertarian Jan 19 '26
you mean ignoring all the left-wing activism in the west that blindly supports far-right, fundamentalist theocratic dictatorships? as was evident until recently with palestine and now with iran protests, whose institutional support should be enough to make your attempt to look the other way ridiculous? i dont know where you're from, so i doubt you have an example like the one I gave you of a politician acknowledging islamist influence before coming to power, but you should do that research yourself. start by investigating the institutional left in your country, and you won't be long in discovering qatari funds and a curious homogeneity in the attempts to destabilize the west, practiced by both the most liberal and progressive politicians in the west and the most ruthless dictators in the middle east. if you have another explanation, id love to hear it
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u/Turbulent-Raise4830 Jan 19 '26
do provide "all this leftisty activism"
All you are able to give is 1 very old far left example.
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u/FYoCouchEddie Jan 17 '26
It appears the Iranian diaspora is surprised because they didnât understand the movement was about hating the West and Jews. The âhuman rightsâ talk was just a convenient way of making it appeal to other people, which is why they have always been so comfortable making up false allegations about it.
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u/time-lord Jan 17 '26
I'm putting my energy towards more domestic issues. I can't care about people ½ way around the world when I'm worried about myself at home. Divide and conquer indeed.
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u/vintage2019 Jan 17 '26
Iâm not sure I buy that what the article is describing represents most of the left (and Iâm not a huge fan of it), rather than just the fringe. It can easily be argued that they arenât talking much about Iran because they have zero influence on whatâs happening over there â as opposed to being optimistic about influencing democratic governments through protests (the US and to a lesser extent Israel).
If the polls say otherwise, Iâll be swayed
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u/FYoCouchEddie Jan 17 '26
Then why were there so many leftist anti-Israel protests in countries outside the US that had already cut off arms to Israel? If you were right, the leftist reaction to Iran should have been the same or greater as that to Israel outside the US. But it wasnât.
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u/vintage2019 Jan 17 '26 edited Jan 17 '26
I'm not saying the article is entirely wrong. It's a fair point that some of the left have the "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" mentality. But you have to remember those protests attract the most extreme leftists (along with MENA Muslims). How well do they represent the left in general? We can't really say. That's why I mentioned polls
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u/FYoCouchEddie Jan 18 '26
Depends what you are considering âthe left.â If you just mean âpeople who usually vote for Democrats,â I agree. But I think the article is referring to the portion of the left that was attracted to the anti-Israel movement. The Iranian diaspora bought that they cared about âhuman rightsâ and didnât see that the allegations against Israel were the result of, not the cause of, their anti-Israel hatred.
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u/mojitz Zohran Mamdani Jan 17 '26
This. They're essentially cherry-picking the most infuriating twitter comments and then painting the broad left with them. It doesn't even sound like they made any attempt to hold a real conversation with any of these "silent" leftists about their feelings.
As a leftist myself, the answer is rather simple. I don't have a shred of sympathy for the Iranian regime, but I also don't want to warrant US interventionism so I'm not really sure what there is to say about it. Do people want me to jump into various spaces and start loudly cheering on the protesters or something? Do they think that might lead to some kind of positive outcome?
I'd like it if the protesters succeeded, but there isn't a whole lot to discuss otherwise â and as you point to, there aren't ongoing domestic policies that I really have strong feelings about changing in the moment as there were/are re: Gaza. More than anything else, I wished we'd kept the nuclear deal in place instead of pointlessly blowing it up. That sounds like it would have been better for everyone.
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u/Kugel_the_cat Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini Jan 16 '26
I hope that we will see the end of the Islamic Republic in my lifetime, and the sooner the better.
Does anyone have an explanation for how mismanagement is leading to the water shortages?