Guerrilla History - The Western Left's Letter "To Iranian Political Prisoners" - Dispatch

Episode Date: September 11, 2026

In this impromptu Dispatch episode of Guerrilla History, Adnan and Henry sit down to discuss the recent open letter published in the Guardian, "To Iran's political prisoners, trapped 'between two blades of a scissors'", signed by many notable members of the Western Left.  While unplanned as a result of having to reschedule a guest last minute, this topic was chosen because both Adnan and Henry had already spoken on this topic independently, and we thought that having a collaborative discussion on it would further develop our respective analyses further.  To listen to Adnan's other discussion on this topic, you can watch "Three Cheers for "Hollow Anti-Imperialism"! w/Sina Rahmani" on the Adnan Husain Show YouTube channel.  For Henry's discussion, you can find "Comment - The Western Left On Iranian Political Prisoners" on our patreon. Help support Guerrilla History by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory 

You remember Den Ben-Brew in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello and welcome to Gorilla History, the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckimacki,

joined by my co-host, Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queens University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? I'm doing well, Henry. It's wonderful to be with you. Absolutely. Nice to see you, as always.

So today we have a very interesting dispatch and one that we're putting together at the very last minute. So just for the listeners to know, this is going to be a short episode. It's going to be at most an hour because Adnan has a meeting coming up. We had a guest scheduled, but we're having to reschedule it. And then Ndn and I were thinking, what can we talk about now that we have this free hour of time? And we had realized that we had both given comment on respective platforms. I had made a Patreon post on the Gorilla History Patreon.

So for those of you who aren't on it, patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. You can help support the show by going there. And Adnan had also made an episode on his program, the Adnan Hussein show, on this exact same open letter that was in the Guardian. And so since we've both independently made commentary on it, we thought it would make for a good dispatch today. So I'm going to have this open letter linked in the show notes. Listeners, if you haven't already read it, you can find it there or you can look for it. It's titled to Iran's political prisoners, trapped between two

blades of a scissors, as I mentioned, published in the Guardian on August 20th and co-signed by many people. I'm not going to run through all of the names right now because I want to get Adnan into this conversation, but the names on this letter are notable for several reasons. But Adnan, you know, like I said, we had both independently made comment on this letter. What was your initial reaction to seeing this letter? And then I guess we should probably get into what the letter actually says. Yes. Well, I ended up tweeting about it. when it first came out, saw it on the Friday. It had been published late on the Thursday, and I started seeing people discussing it.

I myself tweeted about it. My first reaction then was to question the timing and the character of such a message in the context of U.S. failure militarily and diplomatically. to defeat Iran or to isolate Iran successfully and a shift that was being contemplated and announced with the typical Trump administration, braggadocio and bluster for, you know, demonstration effect rather than grounded in any genuine policy, which was the economic war that Iran has already been under extreme economic sanctions. we've done an episode a few years ago on the maximum pressure sanctions and how devastating those have been for years. In fact, you could say decades on Iran since the revolution in Iran in

1979, very soon after various kinds of diplomatic and financial economic sanctions were imposed, and those were only increased under the Obama administration and then especially under the First Trump administration that branded the maximum pressure. So Iran has already been subject to enormous economic sanction, but subsequently, you know, during this period of the war, ever since the June war, the 12-day war of 2025, already the spring preceding that had been, had witnessed a lot of currency manipulation and the decline of the strength of the Iranian Rial, their currency, and that accelerated in December with further manipulations that touched off the economic protests in late December and early January that then were expanded,

manipulated by subversive elements. you know, we know about that that preceded the actual war on Iran was already an economic war. So the question is, is what left, what is there really left in terms of the capabilities to impose new forms of economic sanction? There's already a blockade, an illegal naval blockade, which is attempted to strangle Iran. So the, announcement by Scott Bessent in August of, you know, D-Day economic warfare like we've never seen, was this kind of demonstration effect. And I think it was really for two audiences, internally and externally. And the main purpose of the announcing of economic warfare was part of the psychological

war, the disinformation war, the intellectual world war, you know, like, as Gabriel Rockhill talks about it, it's really that component, both for a domestic audience and to foment discord, division, disunity, and defeatism within Iran because they had discovered, I think, that they were much more successful in some ways

of causing chaos and disorder through economic discontent than they have been in direct military confrontation, or attempts in the diplomatic sphere to isolate Iran. So it seemed to me that a letter like this addressed to political prisoners was participating in some respects in the kind of political, the attempted political subversion internally in Iran to weaken Iran

during a period when they were announcing economic war as an information war kind of operation. So this fit into that pattern, and that's how I initially saw it as recruiting the Western left, whether wittingly, unwittingly, these are all things we can discuss to the larger project of imperialist assault upon Iran. Yeah, and I'm happy that you mentioned economic D-Day, as mentioned by Scott Besant. This is also something that I had mentioned in the Patreon post that I made. And I'm going to try to not repeat things the exact same way that I did in the Patreon post, just so that patrons of the show don't hear it twice on the general feed and on on the Patreon, but inevitably there's going to be some overlap.

But anyway, the reason that I'm happy that you mentioned economic D-Day, and you mentioned at the very beginning of your answer, that the timing was very interesting, the letter came out the same day that Scott Besant had announced that there was going to be an economic D-Day, economic warfare on Iran. This was on August 20th. So we have, on one hand, the United States is shifting to a completely new strat. strategy within Iran, in addition to the ongoing strikes, the floating of possibly, you know, alluding to using tactical nuclear weapons on sites like Pickack's Mountain in Iran.

And now on August 20th, they announced that they're going to be going on this maximum economic warfare route, in addition to the fact that, you know, as you mentioned, Adnan, Iran had been under sanctions for decades. And we had talked about that on guerrilla history. And for newer listeners, and as Adnan had mentioned, we have an entic. series on sanctions as war from a couple of years ago. And we have an episode on Iran within that series. So go back and listen to that series and listen to that episode in particular. If I remember correctly, it was with Muhammad Sahimi. Really, really interesting episode. But in any case,

it's the same day, you know, while there is this ongoing, really genocidal campaign by the United States against Iran, targeting infrastructure, targeting civilian sites, killing school, girls killing volleyball teams targeting grain warehouses, electricity infrastructure, bridges, roads. And then they also add on this economic deed day, and that is the precise day that this letter, which now I am going to go through the names of the people who signed onto the letter. Alberto Toscano, Angela Davis, Bernardine Dorn, Bill Ayers, Cherry Moraga, Dan Berger, Jairus Banaji, Jairus Banaji, Jason Stanley, Judith Butler, Keanga Yamada Taylor,

Michael Lowy, Michael Mansfield, the one that really disappoints me, Mumia Abu Jamal, Ricardo Jimenez, Ruha Benjamin, Ruth Wilson, Gilmore, Walden F. Bello, and Yasun El Hajj Salef. And they published this in The Guardian. Now, to the point that,

again, I'm going to try not to repeat things exactly the same, they utilize the metaphor within the article Before you talk about that metaphor and go more deeply into it, I think it's important to note that that is not the original

signatories list that was published because it did include additional names, four or five names in fact of people who were originally part of the publication on the 20th, but who

professed to have Well, nobody admitted that they changed their mind because of the incredible backlash on social media in other venues. We can assume that that had some kind of consequence on people's willingness to stand by this. But under claims that what was published in The Guardian wasn't exactly what they had been shown, that had been vague kind of, you know, reports about the character of this, and people felt like they'd been perhaps somewhat misled or claimed to have been somewhat

misled. None of these people, unfortunately, published the emails or the correspondence they had received so that we could compare what they had been sent versus what was published in the Guardian. So there's doubts about that. But in any case, what it meant is that four or five, people, I think maybe five people withdrew their names, including Robin Kelly, Nasrin al-Amin. There were several other. Oh, Rashid Khalidiyy quietly withdrew his name.

Another Palestinian scholar, I'm forgetting her name, also quietly, didn't make an announcement about it, but clearly wrote to the Guardian and said, take my name off this, and one other person. So that's important also in the story in terms of when you look at the list now, it's actually different. Yeah. I'm glad you flag that up. I had missed that, Adnan, you know, because I had read through this list on the Patreon because the reason I was doing it, I guess I should have mentioned at the top of this. Press TV. Oh, Nadia Abul-Haj was the Talist.

Yep, yep, yep. Press TV, Iran's English language news network had invited me to talk about this open letter on their network. You know, they said, you know, as an anti-imperialist, Marxist, who lives outside of the West, would you, you know, mind coming on and talking about the Western left in this open letter? And I said, you came to the right person. I'm always willing to bash the Western left, especially when they are, you know, running cover for imperialist war. And of course, they say in the letter, well, we don't agree with the war on Iran, but, on the other hand, we're going to condemn Iran within this open letter.

And I'll get more into that in a bit. So when I had made that Patreon post, and I also should say that for listeners who are going to the press TV website and looking for the interview that I did on this topic, they changed the topic on me about 30 minutes before we went on to something different, which was also a good conversation. If you can find it, it's on Iran's offensive, defensive, military posture. but yeah, the episode that was planned to talk about this open letter never actually aired, never actually recorded. And so the only thing that exists from my my thoughts on it was the Patreon post. But as you mentioned, Adnan, when I went through that in Patreon, I had read through the names before. And when I just read through it now, I didn't catch that I didn't read the same list. And you're right. Definitely Robin Kelly was on there. Definitely Rashid Halidi was on. there.

The others that you mentioned that I already forgot the names of off the top of my head. Nadia Bulhaj, Nasrinah, Allaheen. And I think Sinan Antun is the other person. Yes. Sinan and Toon is not listed here anymore. Trying to remember back three weeks, I do remember reading that name. I think those are the five that withdrew.

Sinan Antun, Nadia Abul Hajj and Rashid Khalidi, I believe did so, you know, without like a big public announcement or attempt to, you know, explain or justify, whereas Nestrina Lamine tweeted and then withdrew the tweets about it, but also her name was removed and she said she was going to have her name removed. And Robin Kelly made an Instagram post, you know, from his wedding anniversary weekend. It was a very strange post, but that got a lot of attention. So those people were known to have withdrawn, but then you would have to pay attention to this changing list to notice the other names because they didn't make public announcements. But what's kind of interesting is that there have been subsequent letters posted in solidarity.

You know, people who weren't asked, like nobody cared enough to actually include them in this letter, but they decided that they would take the opportunity to say, we are in solidarity with the letter from the Guardian and WARREN. and want to like attach our names essentially to it. And there were some jokes as well that like Yanis Faru Fakis and Naomi Klein, you know, wanted to be put on it, you know, subsequent it was published and that they want. Those were, I think, jokes. But the point was that there were people actually in response to the overwhelmingly negative reaction that initially in the first two, three days came out,

then either wanted to defend people on that. this list, to make the, you know, kind of process, either question the process in order to try and find some way to exonerate signatories or to just defend them as having the right position and, you know, being consistent or saying like it's terrible over an issue like this to defame and attack good scholars and activists. Their whole career should not be. They shouldn't be canceled just because you know, they put their name on on this letter. So you had a variety of apologetics as well as like aggressive solidarity taking the opportunity to say, oh, we are in solidarity. The letter was correct and other kinds of responses and reactions. Yeah, I just want to say before I get back to the

letter itself and talking about the metaphor that they talk about, some of these people who are retracting their names are saying, well, you know, the wording might not have been. It wasn't what I was originally seen. But functionally, the impact is the same, even if the wording is slightly different. You're signing on to a letter in the Guardian, which is a mouthpiece of the imperialist Western liberal, you know, not left, but liberal left. And the purpose of the letter is to stand in solidarity with political prisoners in Iran while there is economic deed day being declared and while Iran is still being bombed. Even if the wording is slightly different in the letter, the function is exactly the same.

You are condemning Iran at the time that they are under imperialist assault by the United States and by Israel. Personally, I don't care if the wording was slightly different. You should know exactly what is going to happen when you are signing your name onto a letter by the imperialist guardian for readers in the imperialist West, the liberal imperialist left, but nevertheless, the imperialist liberal left and the West that is condemning Iran for political prisoners at this particular time. Regardless of what the specific wording is in there, you know how it's going to be utilized. Empire utilizes a narrative and utilizes rhetoric in any way that it can. So you know that as soon as this comes out, the empire is going to be able to say, look, even these quote unquote anti-imperialists, the rabid left-winger is here in the United States and

England, they're saying that Iran is a bloodthirsty regime. So even though they tell us that we shouldn't be bombing them, well, you know, we disagree on how tactically we should deal with things, but we agree that it's a bloodthirsty regime. And that's essentially what's said. So again, even if the wording was not what was originally presented, most of the people did stay signed on to this letter. And in this letter, and as mentioned in the title of it, there is the central metaphor of scissors. What it tells is that, again, political prisoners are caught between two blades of scissors, the imperialist bombing campaign against their country and also the bloodthirsty regime of the Islamic Republic. But again, this central metaphor is complete imperialist obfuscation, and it misses the mark entirely, because what are scissors are two sharp blades, equally sharp going in opposite directions and slicing something equally from each sides.

What they're saying is that Iranian political prisoners being caught between these blades of the scissors are saying that each side is equally oppressive. right? Iran is equally oppressive as the imperialists that are bombing Iran are. But you have to, again, recognize that one of those blades has been waging a genocidal war against the people of Gaza, has been bombing Iranian territory, has been assassinating scientists, has been imposing sanctions not only on Iran, but globally that have killed millions upon millions of people. And the other blade is a state that, Sure, it does have repressive policies, but despite that has been standing against that very empire for 40 years, those aren't symmetrical forces. And to treat them as symmetrical forces, it completely misses the mark. And this also leads to, and then I'll turn it over to you for a while and not. Otherwise, I'll get into a huge rant. But the primary thing that the Western left misses is that imperialism is the imperialism is the, primary contradiction in the vast majority of the world.

So one can have criticisms of the Islamic Republic. I don't agree with many of the domestic policies that the Islamic Republic has either. You know, surprise, surprise. I don't say that everything that they do is great. But I recognize something that the signatories on this letter clearly either don't understand or willingly ignore, and that is that imperialism is the primary contradiction. We have to utilize the analysis of dialectical materialism, understand world history to draw conclusions, and then draw strategy from that. The U.S.-led empire is the greatest threat to life on the planet, whether that's through waging wars, destroying economies, or destabilizing entire regions.

Why is Iran in the crosshairs of that empire? it's because for decades it has refused to bow to the imperialist global system and the U.S. at the head of that and their dictat. If we miss the fact that imperialism is the primary contradiction, we then just look at actions in isolation from the systems that produce those actions. If you're under the boot of imperialism and have been for 47 years, you are going to have to develop policies and tactics that are not, you know, a utopian fantasy in order to survive the imperialist onslaught. That's not to excuse everything that is done, but it is to understand that when you are under the boot of imperialism and they are consistently and constantly waging genocidal actions against

your populace and trying persistently to overthrow your government and make you again bow to the will of the imperialist core that in order to preserve your project that runs counter to that imperialist project you're going to have to do things that aren't you know what utopians would would want you just have to understand that. You don't have to say that it's great, but you do have to understand it. And clearly the signatories of this letter, as I said, either don't or they willingly ignore that in order to come out with these nice statements that, of course, all political prisoners everywhere in the world have exactly the same, should have exactly the same rights and we should stand in equal solidarity with them regardless of where they are. I mean, it sounds great in principle, but it does come. completely ignore that primary contradiction of imperialism and what it forces upon governments and people. Yeah, it's really rather remarkable that many people who are trained in and considered leaders of a kind of materialist, you know, dialectical materialist analysis and politics that flow from that are so incapable of of looking at context, specific and unique conditions, the reception and circulation of the messages

and ideas they put out in the world. It's a remarkably idealist sort of political position that says, well, abstractly, we are going to assert these principles that, you know, everybody has the, you know, rights, you know, political prisoners everywhere are oppressed. And so therefore, the meaning of making such a statement, which like in at the level of abstraction is of course true. Like, you know, but in the level of concrete reality and that is the realm that politics actually functions in. Not applying any analysis to the contextual conditions. I find that fundamentally the problem here is asserting the primacy of being correct. like we have to demonstrate in this kind of public sort of way and perform some kind of correctness.

But in fact, actually, what's even worse is the arrogance of the discursive position of it being important that people hear and listen to these people's performance of their political position. as stars and celebrity activists and scholars in the Imperial Corps, whose voices should be circulated globally and everyone should pay attention and accept their analysis, their leadership, you know, as determinative and emulatable, worthy of emulation, and taking them as the compass points and direction for our analysis and movements. What it actually proved is that this is a bankrupt class.

Many of them are incredible, wonderful scholars who have made enormous sacrifices at certain points in their life, have been political prisoners, have been on the cusp of radical movements. But in the position they're in now and relationally to peoples in the global South, they don't inhabit that position. And in fact, they no longer have credibility with the people who are fact, engaged in the anti-imperialist struggle, which is why the phrase they used in this letter was so patronizing of having to reject hollow anti-imperialism. I think that Iran and the axis of

resistance have a very full anti-imperialism. There's nothing hollow about it. The center and core is defending their sovereignty, defending against the onslaught of the empire. That's not hollow anti-an-terrorism. I think an open letter is hollow anti-imperialism. I agree with you 100%, but I also read the target of that specific line that you mentioned is slightly different. I agree. When I read hollow anti-imperialism, I wasn't reading that as people like you and me that might have been the target.

People like you and me that are targeted. People that in other venues that would understand, term they would call campists. So if they were writing for, uh, you know, like more Marxist readers rather than just whoever happens to be reading the Guardian that day, I'm sure they would have said campest rather than hollow anti-imperialist. But I read that line as a direct attack on people like you, me, Max Isle, Alicadri, uh, you know, the people that you hear on guerrilla history, those are the people that they are calling out for hollow anti-imperialism.

Well, and we would have people who are in the community here who, you know, wrote this letter or supported it or somehow got dragooned onto it in the areas where their experience and expertise are relevant. You know, like if I'm going to talk about the Black Freedom Struggle, I would love to have Robin Kelly on to talk about that because he's done the most important and interesting work. However, this idea that people who are inhabiting those locations and those positions are something more, it's the kind of celebrity politics, you know, that the star sort of system where the privilege of being a global north, highly, you know, recognized academic is somehow

supposed to accord you greater credibility when it comes to the anti-imperialist struggle that is actually being led by peoples in the global south. It is the people in Iran. the people in southern Lebanon, the people in Palestine, the people in Yemen, who are what I would say is a better metaphor, the tip of the spear, okay, than these blades of the scissors. And it also has two sides of, you know, two blades that are sharp, but it's oriented in a very different sort of way. And in fact, actually, it was, I had on, and you, soon, you listeners of guerrilla history,

I had him on office hours. Hopefully you'll be having a chance to listen to the audio if you don't check out the video on my YouTube channel. You'll have it here on Gorilla History, a discussion with Orisonmi Burton, who is the author of a book with that title, Tip of the Spear, Black radicalism, prison repression, and the Long Attica Revolt.

And he has a passage in the introduction that was very resonant because I was just, you know, coming off of talking about this letter and it's something that we discussed also a little bit in our discussion with Orsani Burton is his quote of Jalil Muntatim was a veteran of the Black Panther Party and a member of the Black Liberation Army and political prisoner. He said, we are the tip of the spear, right, in attempting to foment another Attica.

And the analysis that Burton was using here was to say, you have to look at the this as a question of war. It's a martial and military metaphor is that, you know, it is a war and the prisons are an extension of the war. And you have to look at these relations in the framework of war. That should be very obvious in the case of the war on Iran, that we're talking about wartime circumstances. And the other thing is, you know, being able to, you know, the other side of the blade is behind the, you know, enemy lines and, you know, that that's the other direction, you know, that the metaphor of the tip of the sphere, you know, could catalyse. And he quoted here, in other words, speaking about Jalil Muntakim's metaphor, maybe he was deploying this phrase as a

tactician, much like Franz Fanon when he wrote, quote, it is among these masses in the people of the shanty towns and in the lumpen proletariat that the insurrection will find its urban spearhead. Okay. So that's the way we should be looking at it. Not this blades of the scissors, but what I think is that, you know, I mentioned the Scott Bessent announcement as a kind of demonstration effect to try and foment division, weakness internally within Iran, like the mere announcement. of it is attempt to say, oh, you are under pressure and to revive those dissatisfactions with the economic situation that had led to the initial currency-related bazaar class protesting and so on in late December and early January.

That the other side of this is what's the domestic audience for these things? And of course, Bessent has a particular audience. The Trump administration has a domestic kind of audience. But in terms of this open letter, that audience is, I think, what you were saying, Henry, is people like you and me who are arguing that the priority now should be anti-war movement. And you have to look at the situation from the perspective of saying that Iran's kind of position has energized a lot of anti-impeer. Solidarity, and it is building as they make incredible achievements against the Imperial War machine and manage to survive, thrive, and, you know, fight back effectively, that that is having a big ripple effect, not only materially, but also in terms of the sort of soft power,

credibility of Iran's state. And its portrayal and representation of one very important thing, which is their solidarity with the struggles against Israel in southern Lebanon and Palestine. That is what is uniquely distinguishing the place of Iran against the imperialist world system. It is not just that they are defending their sovereignty, but they have taken an extra step that is very powerful and very unique and not common. We see it maybe the only other state that we've seen do this. It was Cuba, okay, of making sacrifices, having ideological commitment and being willing to make sacrifices

in solidarity with other oppressed people fighting the empire. That is a huge step. And that has to be derailed. So the audience is, for a letter like this, seems to me, to be, how do you, you know, the function or the intention. I don't care. But what it does is try and divide people on the potentially anti-imperialist left from expressing their solidarity with Iran in its struggle against the empire and in building in the imperial core, which is, I think, the main, they're not, how many political prisoners are going to come to know about this letter. It's addressed to them, but it's really addressed to, you know,

a domestic kind of internal left audience to tell you, hey, don't identify. with Iran. They're evil. The state is evil. You can identify with the people in an abstract sort of way, but not with the actual state that is combating the empire in order to inhibit anti-war mobilizing, which is what should be at the forefront right now. So in some ways, I even feel like if this is a public episode, in some ways I'm not happy about like continuing the discussion around it because it's given too much kind of vent to internecine division rather than coalescing, which is what it's designed to do, or at least what it's effect, these kinds of things does. It's like the sort of Syria situation.

You know, suddenly nobody's talking about Palestine. They're just fighting with one another about what's going to help Palestine or not, or whether you should, you know, privilege the Palestinian cause and what might harm or hurt it over the freedom, so-called of the, you know, Syrian people and creating false kinds of questions and issues that divide, discourage, suppress the energy around the political demand to stop the genocide and in this case to stop the imperialist war. That's what we should be focusing on, you know, internally. I mean, nobody in Iran cares, like they may have asked you on press TV to comment on it because it became a thing. But as Helia Dutari pointed out,

You know, this class is totally bankrupt. Nobody in Iran is sitting here debating. Oh, you know, these important Western leftists said that like, you know, we should take up this stance. Let's discuss and debate and should we doubt our position? No. And in fact, actually, the question is, is who are they to talk? What have they?

I know they are people who have been in the struggle. But guess what? The Western left has failed. Like up to this point, where is the revolution? It's since the late 19th century, the Western left has not, the Western Marxist, the Western left has not accomplished the goals of revolutionary change. So it's not in a position to lecture the rest of the world about the pathways of the struggle. In fact, actually, they should be learning from those who are actually advancing the

anti-imperialist struggle right now. I agree with all of that, Adnan, but I have to also say that when you're saying that building coalitions is an important thing. I agree to an extent, but we also have to recognize that there is a very distinct class of anti-anti-imperialist, quote-unquote, Marxists. And these are the people that are trotted out all of the time to build these sorts of positions to divide the left and ensure that the left never actually takes radical steps in the West. And so, sometimes. of these people are present on the letter, you know, not to name too many names, but Jason Stanley,

Judith Butler, they get trotted out all of the time whenever there is anti-imperialist Marxists, particularly those from the global South, but even within the global, the global north, that come out and take a principal position, an anti-imperialist position against American imperialism or Western imperialism, more generally, they always get trotted out in the same sorts of venues, the Guardian, who are happy to air, again, the people like Stanley and Butler, who are the anti-anti-imperialist Marxists, so they can scold anti-imperialist Marxists for their campist positions, for not taking a very, a very principled line, a humane line on every issue, making sure that we have the correct, as you mentioned earlier at non, that you have the

correct position on everything. But their correct position is on these abstract individual choices rather than as the correct position vis-a-vis imperialism. And so on this letter, it's no surprise that we see these sorts of people. And I don't think that trying to build a coalition that includes the sorts of people like Judith Butler is something that makes sense. That being said, there are people on this letter that I am particularly disappointed to see their name. on the letter. So you mentioned that, you know, there's scholars that when it comes to their subject matter of expertise, they are absolutely worth talking to people like Robin DG.G. Kelly, whose name, you know, was removed from this newer publication of the letter. Some of the people,

I don't think are worth engaging with whatsoever based on the fact that they get brought out all of the time to just denigrate anti-imperialism and anti-imperialist Marxists more specifically. but there are people who have some expertise on the specific issue that was being brought up in this letter that's still signed on to the letter. And I want to bring up these ones because instead of just trashing people like Judith Butler and Jason Stanley ad nauseum, which one could easily do but wouldn't be particularly useful for the audience because they can all, you know, do that in their sleep. The ones that I think are really worth struggling with their inclusion on this letter are people like Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Mumia. Abu Jamal. And the reason I bring these two up in particular, Ruth Wilson Gilmore has done some of the most important work on abolition and the carceral state. She more than just about

anybody understands how prisons function as tools of social control and how they target marginalized communities. And in the case of the United States, that is racially marginalized communities. Yet somehow she cannot see within this letter that she signed on to that the U.S. Israeli war machine is the ultimate carceral apparatus that sanctions are the ultimate form of collective punishment. And I know that I had made the same metaphor within the Patreon post, but for me, it's making political prisoners of 90. million. Two million.

Exactly. For me, and this is the metaphor I made in the Patreon Post. Sanctions are a prison without walls. You know, she's able to analyze the carceral state. Yet when it comes to a country which is, has been under sanctioned for decades, is often having to alter its plans as a result of sanctions and now has only seen an increase in the amount of actions taken against it, including more sanctions. We have this, the structure that is very reminiscent.

of a prison, and yet she signs onto a letter in solidarity with these people and to denigrate the state that the United States is operating against. The sanctions regime is really the largest carceral system in human history, and yet Gilmore signs a letter that treats Iran's domestic repression as equivalent to the genocidal project that is created. this invisible carceral state. That for me is a failure of analysis and a failure of solidarity. The other one that was really the most depressing to see on here was Mumia Abu Jamal. Mumia signed the letter, a political prisoner of the US state for over four decades. A person who has suffered under the very carceral empire that this letter claims to oppose

And yet he's using his voice, which is an incredibly powerful voice. And he has done extremely important writing that everybody, of course, should read. Yet he uses his voice to sign on to a letter that provides ideological cover for the regime that imprisoned him. And what I mean by that is not that he's saying that the United States is great. But the fact is that at this moment, the United States is taking action against Iran. and providing any rhetorical support that would give them an excuse to carry on the actions that they are doing is ideological cover for them even if you say that you are opposing them. And for me, that's particularly heartbreaking because I have a huge amount of respect for Mumia.

But this is just, it's clearly a mistake. The empire that locked him up is the same empire that's bombing Iran. And instead of focusing on that primary contradiction of imperialism, he's using his voice and his platform to reinforce the both sides' narrative that this letter is doing. And I say that with genuine sadness to see his name on here. There's a lot more that I could say, but again, this really makes me want to rant on everything. Because even within this letter, it's not all complete garbage. There are some points in here that are legitimate. And even the anti-imperialist threats would say, yeah, you should be focusing on that.

For example, sorry, I know that I said I was going to cut myself short, but I got onto this. I might as well finish this point. For example, they do bring up the 53 coup against Mossadec in this letter, and they correctly do so. The coup was a crime against Iranian sovereignty. and was to ensure that Iran would remain under the boot of imperialism. However, and this is very notable, despite the fact that they mentioned the 53 coup, they do not mention in this letter anywhere else that the United States and the United Kingdom have been meddling, rather, in Iran.

Ever since then, there has not been a moment since that coup has taken place in which the United States and the United Kingdom were not intervening in Iran, whether that was in favor of the Shah, or whether that was the consistent and persistent attempts of overthrowing the Islamic Republic since 79, which has only ramped up in recent years. They don't mention, for example, that the United States armed Saddam Hussein with chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War. They didn't mention the assassination of Iranian scientists. They don't mention. They don't mention the cyber attacks that are being carried out against the country. They don't mention the fact that sanctions on the country have caused and are causing shortages of life-saving medicine.

I know, you know, somebody who I used to be very friendly with, but I have lost contact with just because I'm not on social media. His father died in Iran because the heart medication that he needed to take got added to the sanctions list and wasn't able to be brought into Iran anymore and his dad died because of that. I know several other people who have relatives that have literally, I mean literally died because medicine, specific medicines that these people needed and they knew they would die without were sanctioned and prevented from going into the country. So just to, you know, say, Iran's domestic repression, it didn't emerge in a vacuum. It emerged in a vacuum. It emerged from a context of 40 years of constant imperialist aggression.

And yet, this letter completely, absolutely, completely ignores any sort of imperialist action other than the 1953 coup, which again, the 1953 coup absolutely should have been brought up in this context. But the fact that that was the end of their analysis of imperialism. other than the current bombing campaign on Iran is a stunning failure of analysis. Well, they do say mention sanctions one time, you know. At the very end of the letter, they say

the Iranian authorities must stop their inhumane practice of death and incarceration now. And the U.S. and Israel must end their barbaric wars and brutal sanctions that knowingly devastate our communities. I don't know who the hour communities, but I do remember that. It made no sense to me either. It was communities. It was like they couldn't say these are criminal endeavors.

They have killed millions as a result of these sanctions and wars. So they had to kind of frame it. It devastates our communities. Like, we feel devastating. It's just very devastating. It's like, well, you are highlighting and emphasizing Iranian authorities' practice of death and incarceration, you know, which is like, do you know a state that does not incarcerate people? And there's no like subtlety to the analysis that in the context that you just mentioned, Henry, of constant subversion, attack, war, saying that there is. there is also quite a lot of internal, you know, subversion fomented and linked to terrorist groups like

the MEPK funded and operated and, you know, by, you know, the United States, Zionist assassination. And, of course, they have to rely upon local people who they pay or they blackmail or who are so, like, upset with the government, etc, that they're willing to collaborate treasonously against their government with like outside, you know, forces from Mossad or CIA, that some of those people end up being incarcerated in Iran. Like I'm not saying that all of them there are, you know, maybe, you know, I know, I know and I have heard of some political activists who were not collaborating with anybody who ran afoul of the Iranian authorities and either had restrictions placed upon their social media or. were brought in for questioning and things like that. So, you know, there may be plenty of things that one could, you know, critique and criticize about the choices and decisions that Iran facing this extreme pressure is doing to try and maintain, you know, the integrity of the state and sovereignty of the nation. But a lot of the people there are also working, are, you know, working against the country in some fashion.

And it's not unique to Iran to, you know, jail people for things like that. You know, the United States is full of people who, you know, simply for, you know, this is what I also was concerned about is that there was very little here talking about the suppression of political rights. in the United States, you know, and the increasing, you know, repression and political repression that's taking place. I would also say what I found really remarkable is no mention of the Iranian revolution. So you can talk about the 1953 coup because they're willing to defend possibly a secular nationalist government from the 1950s, but they are not willing to say that equally the people expressing sovereign will for regardless of the critiques that you might have about the eventual outcomes of the revolution. It was a popular revolution. In fact, it was more popular

than the American Revolution in terms of participation by people in the total percentage. It was more popular than the French Revolution. In fact, it was more popular than the Russian Revolution. The statistics on the participation are the highest of any revolution. It's one of the four great revolutions. Well, there are many more than just four, but I would say it's one of the great world revolutions that took place, you know, in modern history. And not to acknowledge that that means that the government has some legitimacy. Maybe it has forfeited it. Maybe there's critiques. Other, you know, within some, but that's for the Iranians to figure out and decide. And there's no acknowledgement that there was a popular revolution against the empire. And as

precisely because of that, that they are now being made to suffer, you know, in these wars and in these, in these sanctions, that all of what Iran is doing, it is never, it's as if there's a vacuum. Iran could do this, they could do that, but they've chosen to imprison these people. And so we should, you know, regard them as equally culpable to the largest prison industrial complex in the entire world. the largest military machine engaged in operations, you know, military invasions and occupations around the world between it and Israel, the largest kind of infrastructure of deep state subversion, you know, of these coups, et cetera. They stop doing these things? No, it's like, so I really do feel that when we say that

imperialism is the primary contradiction. That that's based on a material and dialectical analysis. And that's where our analysis needs to be rooted. If you don't root it in that, then it's possible to have these idealist positions. Oh, we should be in favor of, like, you know, freedom for everybody. Yes, in an abstract way. But what does saying that targeting Iran now really mean, you know? And that's the level at which I also have concerns with this.

in solidarity with the people. It's this idea that the state, this comes from this anarchistic kind of orientation, but also, I mean, it may principally have, like, resonance with a kind of more anarchistic position that is very suspicious of organized powers, if that's itself evil, not like what it's used for. That's one component.

The second layer is it seems like it's very easy, even in the anti-racist secular left, to demonize Iran because it is a species of Islamophobia. And what is the most dangerous kind of form of Muslim identity is a political sovereign, you know, Muslim expression in the world. So the fact that it's the Islamic Republic of Iran, that means that the Western left just has a great deal of difficulty

overcoming some of the antipathies. that are kind of baked into certain, you know, orientations and prejudices and barriers to be able to actually just recognize the material reality and do that larger system analysis and put aside some of these other concerns and considerations and say, well, we have to be at least agnostic on that question. Let's just look materially at what's happening. I don't have to identify or disidentify, but I can't identify, I can't figure out that U.S. and imperial capitalism is the big danger here. And, you know, let's put it in that form of analysis. I mean, I think, you know, I myself believe that there is a contribution being made in some ways to anti-imperialist thinking

from this orientation. And, you know, I look forward to exploring that further. But I don't think you have to still have a kind of clear-eyed view, you know, on the material. kind of grounded reality of what position does Iran as a state have in the imperialist world system. And if you want to defeat capitalism, you know, they are doing more to defeat capitalism than, you know, several decades of organizing, you know, and electoral politics and so on in the Imperial West that suddenly is also willing to throw Black Live Matters and defund the police under the bus, which is why it's so interesting that so many of the people who were recruited to, you know, because they are involved in anti-carceral, you know, anti-police brutality, you know, politics and the politics of racism that they've been brought into this, you know, but they're being organized and an outlet for them is to talk about Iran rather than to say what is going on in our politics now, where only a few years after the largest mobile. in the history of the West in terms of participation,

for against police brutality, against, you know, racial murder, you know, that the people who have emerged from the left are quickly, you know, kind of saying, yeah, well, defund the police. I don't subscribe to that. And, you know, Woke 1 was a crazy focus on these people who are your real problem because they're supposed to be your allies, but they are abandoning you and throwing you under the bus and then try and then the imperialist forces are ready to use you and, you know, put your dignity and credibility in the direction of assaulting,

you know, and building consensus for imperialist war against Iran. I mean, it's crazy. Adnan, you led right into the topic that I wanted to close the conversation with. And I know that your meeting is coming up soon. So I'll, I'll try to be somewhat brief and then give you the final word here. So the final thing that I wanted to talk about, is why Iran matters. And you mentioned that if we're talking about our ultimate goal is to overturn capitalism. We have to keep in mind that capitalism and imperialism are co-constitutive. And what that means is that, again, it comes down to what is the primary contradiction,

globally, what is the primary contradiction in individual societies? globally, largely, the primary contradiction is imperialism, as I've said many times here. So is Iran a socialist state? No, of course they are not. However, if we are thinking about what is the primary contradiction, if our goal is to overturn capitalism, the primary contradiction right now is imperialism. So while Iran is certainly not a socialist state, are they an anti-eastern? imperialist state. And the answer, in my mind, is pretty unequivocally, yes. Of course they are. Now, again,

people like, you know, Judith Butler and Jason Stanley would would argue about these things. But nevertheless, I think that anybody that's taking a sober materialist analysis would say, yeah, Iran is an anti-imperialist state. So, again, keeping in mind, imperialism is the primary contradiction. we have to overturn imperialism if we want to overturn capitalism. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't do, that we should do nothing to try to overturn capitalism directly as well. But if we have the opportunity to directly confront imperialism, that is a step in the direction of overturning capitalism by extension.

And as you mentioned Adnan, Iran is doing far more to challenge imperialism than any of these scholars in Western institutions. I know you're a scholar in a Western institution, Adnan, but your work is very much not in line with theirs. You'll see you as charged. Yeah, I'm giving you a pass. I don't live in the West, so I don't need a pass here, Edna. It's my one thing that I have a step up on you on.

But in any case, the signatories of the letter claim to support Palestinian resistance. I mean, almost all of them will very frequently be posting on social media to what I can see here in Russia. You know, I can't see really anything. But I've seen statements that are being made by them in solidarity with Palestinian resistance. I've seen photos of them, videos of them marching for Gaza. They've been speaking out against the genocide. However, they don't connect the dots. Iran is the backbone of the axis of resistance.

Without Iran support, without weapons, without funding, without diplomatic cover, the other members of the access resistance would not have been able to resist as they have. As we mentioned in our episode with the Farnia's, not that long ago, Iran is the only country in the world that has a permanent budget line for the Palestinian Revolution. and yet the same people who sign this letter who march for Gaza can't bring themselves at all to defend Iran without immediately attacking it relentlessly within letters such as these. They want the resistance without the state that makes it possible. The U.S. and Israel understand the strategic importance of Iran. That's why they've been trying to destroy it for decades. understand that Iran is what allows the access of resistance to exist. They understand that without

Iran, the Palestinian resistance would be isolated and would be easy to crush. So why is it that the Western left cannot understand this very simple point? Why can't they see that weakening Iran, even through rhetorical attacks, serves the interests of empire? The signatories of this letter are not stupid people. They have done a lot of very important work between them, work that we cite, work that we use in our own analysis. These are not dumb people. They know what they're doing, though, here.

They're choosing, in my view, and this might be slightly cynical, but nevertheless, here we are. They're choosing comfort over solidarity. They're choosing what is, convenient for their career while still appearing to be radical over principle. And I believe that anti-imperialism is a core principle that we should all have. And if you're doing something that doesn't align with anti-imperialism,

because you're at an elite institution and it's easier to say Marxist things, but without coming out in support of anti-imperialist states, you know, that's choosing your career over that principle. and that just to me, and as the final note, that shows it a lack of revolutionary commitment because it's not something that I can see that they can't, that imperialism is the primary contradiction.

They should be able to see that. By not acknowledging it, though, they are abdicating the revolutionary commitment that they should have. Adnan, your final thoughts, and I know you've got to go. Yeah, well, I think, you know, I mean, a lot of these people are major academics. They have activist histories and experience, but there has been also a conversion of activism into academic scholarship, you know.

And I think it removes people to some extent from being in touch with movements on the ground, the social struggles that are taking. place in a kind of the way in which that can clarify politics to be actually very engaged in struggle. Like you learn things, your analysis gets honed by actually engaging in organizing and struggle. And, you know, there's a lot of them are older people who were radical kind of activists in earlier, you know, generations. And there is a new, generation that is actually involved in the struggle that I think by and large sees the connections between opposing empire and opposing capitalism because a lot of people's critique some of these people their critique of imperialism is that it may be that it is a separate process from capitalism on

some level. They're capable of saying empires are bad in and of themselves because they're oppressive, they're unequal, and their forms of state power that, you know, tend towards conquest of others or at least domination of other groups of people, and so forth. So empire is bad. But they don't seem to connect it necessarily, as you said, co-constitutive. That actually historically speaking, the way the system and the world that we have inherited developed as it did because of colonialism and the kind of transformation of direct colonial rule through decolonization into a different kind of form of subordination through international institutions and, you know, kind of international law and the funding agents and like the kind of globalizing of U.S. military

into imperialism, right? So there is an intimate connection historically. They are co-constitutive. And so I don't believe it is really possible to defeat capitalism without defeating empire. And I don't believe that just being anti-empirate has no consequences for the project of capitalism. They're completely related in this era. And I think, think if you are able to just channel this critique of empire, then you can create as somehow separate from capitalism, then you can be led into the mistakes of kind of just being suspicious of, you know, anti-perialist states, if they are not avowedly socialist or if they don't adhere to the kind of considerations that would make them an appropriate, you know, kind of ally or, you know,

not that these sorts of people were really that allied with really existing. socialism and avowedly socialist states. I mean, plenty of them are ready to kind of critique China in ways that are totally unfair. So I don't buy that as a legitimate. That was the topic that we were going to be talking about today with our guest, actually, but that'll be rescheduled for soon, listeners. We'll get a more kind of serious kind of look at that kind of process. But I think, you know, I think what I'm where I'm going with that is,

is the idea that without kind of linking these in a global analysis, it's very possible to get mistaken about how to take. And it isn't fundamentally how you individually have to take a stand as a kind of moral question and, you know, kind of perform that. You know, but it's really like, where do you align your efforts, you know? What, where do you align your efforts, you know, what, where do put the solidarity. If you're in solidarity with the Iranian people, what's the most important thing you could do to ensure their survival, their life, their flourishing, and their ability to achieve their aspirations politically, socially, economically? It is to stop the U.S. and Israeli war upon them and the oppressive imperialist system in which they are not allowed

to operate through the regime of sanctions and all these other things. That, you know, that's and also have some humility and some sense. Like we're always sort of told by practitioners of these kind of identitarian, kind of lefty, intellectual, post-colonial, decolonial movements of we have to locate ourselves. And so they spend a lot of time talking about their various positionings and identities and all that as a pre-analysis before they can talk about their actual analysis because you have to be placed somehow and evaluated, you know, in that

way and acknowledge all of those, you know, kind of complete. Well, how about the main important one, which is you are a first world intellectual and scholar who's inside the empire? That's your primary location. And that should not be a warrant for you to pontificate upon everything and that the people of the global South should listen to you. It should be, I'm in this position. What can I do that materially might advance the cause of defeating capitalism and empire? You're positioned inside the imperial core. Defend the BLM movement and extend it and make it more radical.

You know, try and, you know, fight against fascism domestically here. And fascism always leads to war. In fact, it feeds off of impoverical. imperialist war. So that's the biggest thing you can do is to fight. And there is no Western kind of mobilization around this war. Remarkably, it's a deeply unpopular war. And yet there is no organized force that is building the coalition to actually put political pressure to stop the war. There's great mobilizations that we've had. They have had some effects. You know, for on behalf of Palestine, but it is remarkable how actual U.S. assault upon Iran that is having

material and devastating effects on the economy for everybody in the world, it's deeply unpopular. Why is it that there is no strong anti-war movement? We had million people in New York, in against the Iraq War. We had million people basically week after week or at least hundreds of thousands in London, you know, against the genocide. What is it about Iran, you know, that is preventing this kind of solidarity? Well, I would say that part of it is that the luminaries of the Western left, both in terms of like anti-carceral, anti-police brutality, anti-racism politics, and the kind of Marxist Western, you know, kind of left and left movements and so on.

you know, have not made it a point of emphasis to risk anything to stop this war. So that's, and a letter like this, in fact, actually it seems like it is trying to kind of create some sort of, I've seen some unwholesome things emerging out of this, is that because people were so angry, you know, with this, with this open letter who are on the anti-imperialist left, they attacked the signatories in ways that, you know, are personal or canceling or unfair, perhaps without valuing where their, you know, intellectual work and activism has made a contribution. But this kind of thing, it has then started to pit communities that should be in certain kinds of solidarity and alignment against this war of feeling aggrieved that why are you attacking these, you know, wonderful and important black scholars. even if they've made mistakes and even if we disagree, you shouldn't be going, you know, to the level of like debasing and attacking and denigrating them the way some people, you know,

like this is what is fomented by this kind of era of social media politics. If all of these people were actually involved in anti-war organizing, we would probably be able to put aside a lot of these issues and focus on what's real and what's important. And I'm hoping that by talking about it, we're not foment. and, you know, inflaming more of the kind of division and polemic and polarization in a divided, fragmented left that does have elements that you said. We can't really be in solidarity with people who are working to be anti-anti-imperialist in their, like as the central plank of their political praxis. And when they get involved is only to be anti-ante imperialist. But for the rest of the,

you know, basic, you know, people who are in solidarity, with Palestine, you should be in solidarity with, you know, Iran. And we need to actually work collectively to that goal. That should be the primary outcome is for us to focus on what's important, which is not the status of people in the Western left and critiquing them and all that, except for clarifying that the important thing we should be doing right now is not what they're doing of disabling solidarity with the anti-imperalist struggle, but actually refocusing on the practical ways, the political ways we can organize to stop this war, lift the sanctions, you know, and stop the war.

Agreed. Now, Adnan, you're already late for your meeting. So I will just tell the listeners, subscribe to the Adnan Hussein show on YouTube, support the Adnan Hussein show on Patreon. If you're not already subscribed to guerrilla history, that. That would be very strange that you're at the very end of a guerrilla history episode. But if you're not, you can subscribe to guerrilla history on your podcast feed of choice and support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this at patreon.com forward slash gorilla history, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And until next time and solidarity.