This piece from Amfang is worth highlighting.
The Iranian Revolution was supposed to be a victory for the people. In 1979, millions rose up and toppled the Shah, a U.S.-backed monarch who ruled through secret police, torture, and oil profits. It was a mass revolt. Workers shut down industries. Students marched in the streets. Religious leaders called for resistance. Marxist guerrillas fought in the hills. For a brief moment, everyone stood on the same side. But not everyone had the same goal. The revolution was real, but it was not finished. And what came next should haunt us.
The left was there. It helped lead the struggle. The Tudeh Party, the Fedayeen, secular radicals and Marxists all believed that Khomeini was an ally. He hated the Shah. He spoke against imperialism. He had the people behind him. The left told itself it could ride the wave of religious rage and steer it toward socialism. But Khomeini had his own plans. The clerics moved quickly. They created militias. They took control of the narrative. They positioned themselves as the true voice of the people. And when the dust settled, they turned their guns inward. The revolution devoured the very people who sparked it.
Political parties were banned. Leftist organizers were hunted, jailed, and killed. The Tudeh Party, which had cheered Khomeini just months before, was declared treasonous. Its leaders were executed. Its rank and file disappeared.
Remember that the Christian right thinks that everyone who ever participated in an abortion is a murderer. Remember that eliminationist rhetoric is dirt common. Remember that the Nazis didn’t kill Jews or Roma first, they mass murdered the left first, then liquidated ethnicities they didn’t approve of.
The Social Gospel was fundamental to both FDR and Theodore Roosevelt’s power, but that movement is dead. There is no powerful Christian movement in America that the left can cut a deal with. Even the Roman Catholic Church, while it has substantial overlaps on anti-war and social justice issues, must be considered dangerous. Remember that the Supreme Court Justices who are validating Trump’s over-reach and dismantling the Constitution are almost all Catholic. In American Catholicism social justice is important, but it is secondary to social warfare concerns.
The left and the right (the real left, Democrats are not left wing in any meaningful way) are fundamentally in opposition. The Christian right and the left overlap in “we hate the current system” and practically nothing else. And religious fanatics are “fundamentally” OK with mass murder of those they see as against their religion’s principles.
Don’t play patty cake or make alliance with the religious right. They want you dead.
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