Islamic Revolution, Cultural Marxism, and 'Reverse Orientalism'

A few years ago, when Federica Mogherini, the current High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs, visited Gaza, one Israeli media outlet labeled her a 'communist and Islamophile.' This characterization of her leftist leanings is accurate, at least if we consider her membership in the Italian Communist Youth Movement as indicative of such. However, calling a leftist political activist an Islamophile is a discussion that continues to be heard here and there. Mogherini is not the only Western politician with a leftist background who is aligned with Islamists. Across the Western world, leftist politicians are accused of appeasement, sympathy, and alignment with radical Islamists. Not only left-leaning politicians but also remnants of Cold War communism, such as the governments of Cuba, North Korea, and even socialist Venezuela, have deep ties with an Islamic government, like that of Iran. Mogherini's trip to Tehran in the summer of 2015, just days after the Iran nuclear deal with the 5+1, is not an isolated incident; throughout Iran's history, especially with the emergence of leftist movements, there are many examples where communist forces have allied with the most radical Islamists. In 1979, just months after the Islamic Revolution, leaders of the Tudeh Party, one of Iran's oldest communist political parties, went so far as to endorse Sadegh Khalkhali as their candidate. Nourreddin Kianouri, the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Tudeh Party of Iran at the time, stated that Ayatollah Khalkhali, with unparalleled courage, sent several hundred of the most important imperialist figures to the firing squad. The issue of leftists' alignment or sympathy with Islamists is not limited to these historical examples; it has a long and ideologically philosophical background. About half a century ago, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi referred to the communist and Islamist forces that later allied against him during the 1979 Revolution as 'the red and black reaction.' His precise intention was to describe a coalition of Marxists and Islamists who had lined up against him for various reasons. Cultural Marxism has been extensively discussed and written about. Adherents to Marxism are so scattered that it is difficult to find a single model to define it. Nevertheless, what is discussed in classical Marxism is the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. However, in the 1960s, over a century after Marx and Engels published the Communist Manifesto, a new narrative of Marxism emerged, now known as Cultural Marxism. Cultural Marxism historically has its roots in the Frankfurt School, during the period between the two World Wars, when thinkers like Theodor Adorno proposed Critical Theory. This perspective gained popularity among leftists in Europe and North America from the 1960s onward and became the dominant discourse in the humanities and social sciences, particularly in European universities. This influence has been so profound that even after more than half a century, its main ideas and content still overshadow European faculties. Unlike classical Marxism, Cultural Marxism sees the social sphere as a battleground between the exploited and the exploiters, in other words, the struggle between the majority and social minorities. Therefore, followers of Cultural Marxism generally support the rights of homosexuals, transgender individuals, feminism, ethnic minorities, and similar causes, while also finding common ground with Islamists. From their perspective, Christianity has played the role of the exploiter, and supporting Islamists is seen as a form of compensation and a way to support the exploited population. While theoretically such alignment between followers of Cultural Marxism and Islamists should not be possible, in practice, despite fundamental disagreements on issues like transgender individuals and homosexuals, a deep commonality has emerged between the two. Understanding this strange contradiction may seem difficult at first glance. However, Cultural Marxism developed and expanded during a time when the postmodern artistic and philosophical movement was gaining ground in France. In the realm of art, strange works devoid of aesthetic elements were introduced. Avant-garde art, surrealism, and postmodern thought based on epistemological relativism all expanded during this period. The connection between Cultural Marxism and Islam may have been made possible for the same reason that Robert Rauschenberg's completely blank white canvas is displayed as a work of art at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco. In such a contradictory intellectual climate, media activist and founder of the feminist group Code Pink, Medea Benjamin, is expected to defend the rights of oppressed Iranian women and take a stand against discrimination and pressure on them. Instead, she becomes a defender of the policies of the Islamic Republic, wearing a mandatory hijab during her trip to Iran and receiving a certificate of appreciation from some of the regime's most anti-women figures. If we piece together these complex puzzle pieces, we will find out how and under what conditions the connection between Cultural Marxism, postmodernism, and Islamic radicalism has been established, and for example, what the intellectual basis for Michel Foucault's support for the Islamic Revolution was. It is enough to see that Michel Foucault, a postmodern theorist, joined the French Communist Party in 1950 and was influenced by Marxism and the Frankfurt School. During the Islamic Revolution of February 1979, he strongly supported it and even traveled to Iran twice during that tumultuous period. Three years ago, when François Burgat, a French philosopher, visited Qom, he told one of the clerics of the Islamic Republic, 'We are all your students, and we know that Shia political and ideological thought is very rich, and that is why we are eager to learn more from you.' François Burgat, a leftist orientalist, is the same person whom Sadiq Jalal al-Azm, a Syrian thinker, referred to as a 'Reverse Orientalist.' Yemeni lawyer Hussein al-Wada'i writes in an article titled 'The European Left that Loves Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Hates Taha Hussein' that the European left believes that the true voice of the Middle East is that of Ruhollah Khomeini and the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists. From this writer's perspective, the European left views concepts like democracy or human rights as colonial values of the West and believes that these concepts do not align with the reality of the Middle East. Al-Wada'i writes that François Burgat is praised in the East because it is believed that he presents a correct image of Islam to the West. This popularity of orientalists has always existed not only in the Arab world and the Islamic world but also in contemporary Iranian history, and many Iranians have held orientalists in high regard. Ahmad Kasravi was one of the few thinkers who opposed this view and examined the flaws and misunderstandings of orientalists. Kasravi found 142 errors in Edward Browne's translation of Ibn Esfandiar's History of Tabaristan and believed that many orientalists are of low quality. From Kasravi's perspective, even those orientalists who have praised Hafez are enemies of the East and want the people of the East to spend their lives like Hafez in the corners of taverns. In his view, even individuals like Mohammad Ali Foroughi, Mohammad Qazvini, and Ghasem Ghani have been deceived by European orientalists. Beyond traditional Orientalism, Reverse Orientalism carries a somewhat derogatory view of the people of the Middle East. From this perspective, the people of the Middle East are seen as those who desire superstition and wish to distance themselves from modernity. They are perceived as people who do not want progress and knowledge. From the viewpoint of reverse orientalists, repression, torture, and the killing of intellectuals and critics in the Middle East are the prevailing and real values of these countries, and concepts like secularism, liberalism, and democracy are seen as ill-fitting patches that do not align with the cultural fabric of the Middle East. The people of the Middle East want the Islamic Republic, an Islamic state, and a caliphate, not prosperity and modernity. European leftists, under the shadow of Cultural Marxism, do not see human rights violations in these countries as particularly ruthless, as they believe that these brutal acts stem from the spirit, culture, and existential reality of these countries, and for this reason, they easily turn a blind eye to them. The European left, while adhering to concepts and values such as freedom of expression, democracy, and secularism, desires this adherence only for themselves and European societies, not for Middle Easterners. This is why the leftist head of the European Union's foreign policy, while condemning the violation of democracy and human rights, for example, in Myanmar, makes the slightest mention of human rights violations and democracy issues in the Islamic government during her visit to Tehran, despite numerous requests from human rights activists. The views expressed in this note do not reflect Radio Farda's perspective. Erfan Kasraei, a researcher in science and technology studies and a member of the German Society for Philosophy of Science.