Al_Sham [she/her]
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109·9 months ago
10 years ago today was the Odessa trade union massacre.
On May 2, 2014, NATO-backed Ukrainian neo-nazis attacked an encampment of anti-maidan protestors. When some of the protestors took refuge in the trade union building the neo-nazis lit it on fire. Those who tried to escape the building were beaten to death. This was all recorded live and posted online but the Ukrainian regime never punished the perpetrators. 48 people were murdered.
This is my point. It makes people tremble. These series of statements in conjunction constitute a series of forbidden phrases that are, together, unspeakable within the imperialist manufactured “human rights” discourse. No NED NGO or liberal zionist or social democrat or normalizing gulf regime would dare to say all of them together.
Ilan Omar and other fake allies can wave Palestinian flags and wax poetry about “humanitarian crisis in Yemen” but they would never repeat the slogan.
If you want to know why it’s not actually antisemitic anyways you can listen to Ansarullah’s own explanation. About 5 minutes into this video interviewing Ansarullah political officer Muhammad al-Bukhaiti he gives quite a good explanation about the meaning being this line.
God is the greatest
Death to America
Death to israel
God’s curse upon the Jews (more precisely, “May Allah deprive them of His mercy”)
Victory to Islam
It really is mashallah.
Unrelated but this is also part of the power of Ansarullah’s slogan: liberals, normalizers, and controlled opposition can never co-opt it.
Allahu Akbar
Al mawt li amrika
Al mawt li israel
Al lanat al yahood
An nasr al Islam
https://twitter.com/xpmov/status/1783871060682637507
Need more like them. 👍
American protestor waving Hezbullah flag saying “I love Hezbullah”
Can anyone explain materially the mechanism through which these US student protests will change US policy regarding the zionist entity and the drive of US-led capital to genocide Palestinians?
Last I have seen the US and in fact all western countries have been holding protests since October 8th but just this week the US government approved another 100 billion dollars for its fascist proxies in Asia.
I saw Dr. Sam Torabi’s tweet which is why I ask.
He brought an unexploded artillery shell (presumably disarmed) to propose to his wife a few months ago. The shell had landed next to him while he was reporting from the border a few days prior.
He has a name, it is Ali Mortada and he is one of the most respected pro-resistance reporters in South Lebanon. He has put his life on the line for years to report the news from the front and the zionists have tried to kill him on multiple occasions. He was there when al Mayadeen journalists were martyred earlier this year from zionist artillery, this man is a hero. There is a 25 minute interview with him about the role of journalists during this war of liberation you should watch it. https://twitter.com/aliimortada/status/1769123046327988333
Iranians make fun of “israeli” failed drone attack
Then the Flood overtook them, while they persisted in wrongdoing. (29:14)
I explained below.
It is noteworthy that Tudeh was never a grassroots organization in any meaningful way. The places where the masses were gathering during the revolution was the Mosques and not student gatherings or the Tudeh headquarters. The Tudeh failed to create labor union movements because they kept wanting to make them secular organizations in a country that is 95% Muslim. (Ramin Mazaheri discusses this somewhat). Even by Tudeh’s own accounts they did not have a very large amount of members.
It’s also noteworthy that whenever people talk about the Islamic Republic “purging leftists” in the late 1980’s, the vast majority of those purged were MEK. MEK are CIA-backed contras who had fought on the side of Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. These are the terrorists (Mariam Rajavi) who meet with John Bolton at annual events and are responsible for murdering 15,000+ Iranians through terrorist attacks over the last 40 years.
However lets focus on the communist groups instead of MEK. In order to understand this we have to understand the role of the USSR in Iran during the time. The Tudeh communists had a long-standing relationship with the USSR. From 1980-1982 the USSR had a position of “neutrality” in the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988). However in 1982 the USSR began supporting Saddam in an attempt to crush the Islamic Revolution. It’s unclear to me why they did this but it prompted the Islamic Revolutionary government to begin arresting Tudeh members due to their relationships with the USSR. (This is all verifiable in English its probably even on CIA-pedia.) It’s also noteworthy that the 1982 wave of arrests was not just targetting the communists but also purging a lot of corruption that was emerging from within the different wings of the Revolution. Many of the leaders of the revolution were assassinated during this time due to the presence of spies and traitors backed by the CIA as well. Revolutions have to defend themselves from counter-revolution.
The “repression” of the backwards and counter-revolutionary communists didn’t really pick up until 1985. The Tudeh members and other (non-MEK) communists who were purged were done so on the basis of attempting another revolution in the middle of the war. In 1984-85 Tudeh Party and the Fedaian party released a joint statement calling for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic. (This was called the 18th Plenum and you can read all about it on the Tudeh own website. They brag about trying to overthrow the revolution!)
The country had only just had a revolution and was being subjected to the most horrific war from Iraq which was backed by both NATO and the USSR. And Iraq was unleashing chemical weapons and ballistic missiles on the civilians of Iran. And in the middle of this horrific war, the Tudeh party calls for another revolution! This is treason of the highest order.
Before this treason, they did contribute to the revolution of 1979 and that is also openly verifiable. They endorsed the national vote to create the constitution of the Islamic Republic and identifying the new government as an Islamic Republic (Something like 97% of the country voted in favor of that).
So honestly these communists deserved what they got and they are unsurprisingly still garbage today. Tudeh were respressed for being reactionaries. I have no sympathy for them and I find it somewhat disturbing how many leftists want to position Iran as being backwards “repressing communists” without knowing the details of the actual history.
The Iran-Iraq war was a defining moment of modern Iran, and instead of supporting an obviously anti-American government, the USSR armed Saddam. By 1986 I believe the USSR was the largest sponsor of weapons to Saddam. So, if we’re going to blame anyone then blame America, Brezhnev and Gorbachov.
Why were they banned and what happened in 1984? What was the state of the revolution at that time and what was the relationship of the communists to the Iranian masses?
In case you’re wondering why the Iranian communists have been irrelevant since 1984. With “communists” like these who needs imperialist propagandists 🤷♀️
The Iranian communist Tudeh party publication 15/4/2024: “Iran’s theocratic government is not anti-imperialist”
The theocratic regime’s empty posturing and crocodile tears shed for the plight of the Palestinians are exposed as just that when one considers how Iran has consistently worked to undermine the struggle of secular, left, and progressive Palestinian forces against Israel’s occupation.
Put simply, a truly anti-imperialist alliance cannot be crafted on the defunct logic that goes along the lines of “the enemy of my enemy is therefore my friend!”
From a left perspective, rooted in the works of Marx and Lenin on class analysis and imperialism, the Iranian regime does not even come close to classifying as anti-imperialist unless one is happy to omit its ever dwindling social class base inside Iran, the exploitative neoliberal political economy over which it presides, its total disregard for basic human rights and freedom, along with its continuing track record of horrific human rights abuses and brutal oppression (directed not least against the various forces that make up the Iranian left).
The legacy of Iran’s internationalism is one that will be studied for generations after Palestine is liberated. Rather than controlling the resistance factions, the Islamic Republic has enabled them to follow their own destinies, enabling autonomy instead of dependence.
The reality is that while these are heterogenous groups with heterogeneous ideologies their class interests allign and therefore the strength of the resistance axis derives from Iran helping them develop their own capacities and working together as partners to achieve the goals of their shared class interests. There’s a free academic article written by Max Ajl talks more on it in a Marxist-sociological framework if you’re into that. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/22779760241228157
“France has sent its first troops officially to Ukraine. They have been deployed in support of the Ukrainian 54th Independent Mechanized Brigade in Slavyansk. The French soldiers are drawn from France’s 3rd Infantry Regiment, which is one of the main elements of France’s Foreign Legion (Légion étrangère).”
(Asia Times)