FOUCAULT, KHOMEINI AND CAMPISM

This year, everything is about revolutions brewing in America, Iran, France, India, Afghanistan, and other places. Yet war also happens all across the world. An orientalist view would predict that people in the West would view situations in Iran as something they would understand, as Eurocentrism is a massive part of ideology in the Western education system. This is precisely what orientalism describes: instead of understanding the Orient (the East) in terms of Eastern traditions and history, many view it through their own framework. This is true even for the Iranian diaspora, as well as many people in the West.

The masses would either want a mythical and fantastical revolt to go back to some sort of Sassanid structure before Islam, which is ridiculous in itself, or they think that the regime in Tehran is what the people want. These two views do not oppose one another, meaning they are another excrement of the bipartisan ideology people have in the West, the anti-bad, pro-good philosophy.

Iranians in the diaspora, specifically the older generation, are out of touch with the realities of Iranian society. As revolutions are mostly carried out by younger generations, they want to believe that an Iran that looks like American or European societies would be amazing, and mostly neglect the massive issues in those societies as well. For the Iranian diaspora, the issue is not that they want the regime to go away; rather, they blame different groups for being indifferent to the situation in Tehran, yet they themselves are almost blind to major problems in the world.

Their view is an orientalist analysis of the world, blinded by fascist advertisements rather than making actual progress. And, of course, in a world where people love to blame each other rather than reason and have conversations, the foreigner and the Iranian in the diaspora blame each other to a hostile degree.

For the foreigner, of course, major human rights violations happen at home, for instance, by the Trump administration. If people do not acknowledge that, they are absolutely wrong. Financial, moral, sexual, and societal corruption, warmongering, fearmongering, religious fundamentalism, and much more are not problems limited to America or Iran; they are issues of the world as a whole.

Therefore, the orientalist idea here is that people who do not live in or have not experienced the structures of Iranian society view it as some sort of new form of society, with ancient history and a government that, on paper, seems to be anti-imperialist and values life. However, what is anti-imperialism without anti-capitalism? Or can you really be anti-American while being a totalitarian regime yourself?

This is an issue with many communists today. While Ukraine’s government is, of course, not the best, or is itself a pro-imperialist force, this does not justify Russia’s aggression that has been going on since 2014. Campism, therefore, fails to include the people of those nations. Many Ukrainians lost their homes and had to evade missiles, yet their rulers being pro-American makes people take sides almost instantly against them.

Even with the DPRK, of course, many things coming out of the DPRK are false and can be objectively disproved. However, one cannot deny the totalitarian ideology of Juche, which itself does not count itself as communist.

We now have to address the elephant in the room: Iran. If your goal as a revolutionary is only to bring revolution to the United States, of course, that would instantly solve many issues worldwide. However, it fails to account for the misery that totalitarian regimes impose on their people. For instance, in Afghanistan, of course, the United States is absolutely responsible for the creation of the inferno the Taliban has made. Just because the Taliban is anti-American does not somehow make them good or make their actions justifiable.

Your goal, as someone who truly wants change in the world, is to see the people win, rather than nations or the “Third World.” This is exactly what the side you oppose does too.

When discussing revolutions in history, one can almost always see that all revolts happen when the oppressed overthrow the oppressing class. Most people talk about the Russian Revolution or the Chinese, Cuban, French, and other revolutions, yet nobody brings up the Islamic Revolution in Iran. This is because we all know that the revolution occurred to empower the clergy class rather than the people.

Iran at the time was what people claim to be authoritarian, which is true since the nation was a one-party constitutional monarchy. It was much freer than what came afterwards. As Reza Negarestani, the great Iranian philosopher, mentions: “Revolutions can be real and still be hijacked.”

Michel Foucault was an extraordinary philosopher with many revolutionary ideas. Many thought we were discrediting him totally in our post criticizing postmodernism. We do not, as Foucault is perhaps one of the revolutionary thinkers of the modern era. However, just like all philosophers and scientists in history, he made a massive blunder by claiming Khomeini was a spiritual and mystical leader, as opposed to a political autocrat.

Foucault wrote in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera that Iran was undergoing something alternative to both communist ideals and Western technocratic rationality. He also visited Khomeini at his Neauphle-le-Château residence, then wrote essays claiming Khomeini was a legendary, unarmed spiritual leader.

This could have been instantly rejected if Foucault had read Khomeini’s books, such as Velayat-e-Faqih: Islamic Government, in which he advocates absolutist theocratic views. Just a simple search will bring up his quotes, for example:

“We need to establish a government ruled by the clerics, as the divine successors and the guardians of God’s jury, and the role of leadership must fall into the hands of the Islamic lawmakers (Fuqaha). Therefore, the Almighty Leader of all Muslims shall rule over all matters and the totality of government and life. All planning and execution of every single law shall be undertaken and overseen within the framework of the almighty leader (Valy-e-Faqih).”

This goes against everything Foucault stood for. The bottom-up analysis of his criticism of power structures also appears here.

Khomeini’s only ideology was to rule via religious theocracy. He advocated against communism and the West at the same time. The scale of executions and barbarism in Iran is the result of this rule by the clergy class, which Iranians want to overthrow. Even the economic model implemented by Khomeini’s government was formed like a capitalist oligarchy, as even today Iran has many billionaires, such as Babak Zanjani and Ali Ansari.

However, it is necessary to indicate that Foucault did actually criticize the regime over its unsurprising turn to authoritarianism. Foucault did not acknowledge his mistakes over the Iran issue, and it is something the contemporary left can learn from.

Nuance has completely died in the modern world, both for Iranians and non-Iranians: the idea that, in a complex belief system, many things can be true. For instance, you can criticize imperialism without being pro-Islamic regime or pro-Russia. Campism, therefore, makes for a very anti-humanitarian and even anti-communist ideology, since you would be siding with the bourgeoisie of a certain nation just because they are against the USA.

Your camp should consist only of the proletariat, and not necessarily the nations of that proletariat, since many of those nation-states are not dictatorships of the proletariat. Instead, just like the case of Iran, they are a “cleric dictatorship.”