I haven’t said anything about the situation in Iran, mostly because I don’t feel qualified to speak about it. I’m watching it, though, following the Twitter feeds obsessively and learning as much as I can about Iran’s history. I’ve been finding fellow blogger Richard Jeffrey Newman’s posts over at Alas especially illuminating about the nuances not being covered in the mainstream media.
I had to think hard about posting this here at ABW, though, because for awhile I wasn’t sure whether the situation in a Persian-dominated country halfway around the world, which has its own entirely different racial issues, was on-topic. Then I remembered a book I’d read a few years back, and considered the historical context that’s a constant undercurrent of the Iran situation, and realized it’s completely spot-on for a discussion of racism.
Because modern racism’s roots, we must remember, lie in European and American imperialism. The many hideous dehumanizations of people of color started centuries ago as an attempt to justify the slave trade and its cruelties. These dehumanizations continue today for the purpose of justifying American financial interests (primarily in oil). We’ve seen this again and again, to most devastating effect in Africa and Latin America, but in other parts of the world as well.
Iran belongs in this category. I was aware that the CIA had helped to overthrow Iran’s last democratically-elected government in the 1950s, replacing it with the tyrannical Shah — which itself touched off the Iranian Revolution and seated the government that is now oppressing its own people. What I hadn’t realized was just how cynical and deliberate the imperialist process was, until I read Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins.
Now, I didn’t like this book. Perkins, who spent the 1970s and 80s working for Chas T. Main, an engineering consulting firm — think Halliburton today — spends a little too much of the book glamorizing himself as some kind of geeky James Bond, lunching with power players and banging his way through the fairer sex; he reads to me as a guy on an extended midlife crisis. That said, the book is spot-on in revealing the ways in which American imperialists function in the modern day. Perkins explains that the NSA, CIA, and US business interests have repeatedly worked together to bribe, blackmail, frame, addict, overthrow, and if necessary, kill the leaders of other nations, so that ours can make more money. He touches on Iran, though only glancingly, but he provides enough other examples in Latin America and Asia, and shows enough of how the pattern works, that anyone who reads this book will have a clear idea of how American fucked up Iran.
And then compounded the initial assault over the next 30 years. Like many of us, I grew up thinking of Iran as “the country of religious fantatics who took American hostages, had something to do with the Contras, and just generally fucking hates us.” This was the framing of Reagan and his cronies, who — as imperialists themselves — had a vested interest in “othering” Iranians. There was frequently a racial component to this othering*, although sometimes it was just matter-of-factly self-serving.
I read Perkins’ book years ago, but I have to admit — I kept thinking of Iranians as a somewhat scary “they” and “them”, even though the book illuminated many of the ways in which they were us. If the US could have done so, it would happily have enslaved the Iranian people — economically if not literally — and frankly, some Americans are still trying. This, I suspect, is what’s really behind the inexplicable demands by Republicans that Obama make a stronger effort to endorse the protesters in Iran, even though this would be the equivalent of shooting the protest movement in the back. My guess is that they want Mousavi’s supporters to be suppressed — so that they can later send in “hit men” like Perkins to offer the same Faustian bargain that got offered to the Taliban of Afghanistan, and Saddam Hussein of Iraq. This is their favorite tactic, according to Perkins: cultivate a disgruntled minority and then use their desperation for profit. The hit men arrive bearing gifts and a message of hope: Promise to support our interests and we’ll help you gain power, and then you’ll be free to keep that power in whatever fucked-up way you want.
But this is why I’m so hooked on the Twitter feeds. I no longer think of the Iranian people as “them,” and I don’t think I’m the only person to feel this way. Here’s an excerpt from Twitter Ripped the Veil Off ‘The Other’ — And We Saw Ourselves:
All the accumulated suspicion and fear and alienation from three decades of hostility between Iran and America seemed to slip away. Whatever happens, the ability of this new media to bring people together – to bring the entire world into this revolution on the streets of Iran – has already changed things dramatically.
Yeah. This.
So fight on, people of Iran. I know you don’t like me much; that’s cool. You got cause. I still wish there was more I could do to help — but I think the best thing I can do right now is write to my own American politicians, and urge them in the strongest possible terms to shut the fuck up. And I’ll keep watching. God be with you.
* I’m really, really sorry to link to a post on Michelle Malkin’s site, folks. Unfortunately, it’s a great example of the nastiness that’s out there.
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Well I hate this jargon word “othering,” and I don’t want to leave the impression that I’m in politically correct lockstep with every word I’ve heard about “American Imperialism” in the classroom. Nor do I always find it appropriate for American views to be silenced on the matter of the third world. (If that were true, of course, then this very blog entry would have to be silenced, on that very principle.)
In this case regarding Iran, though, it is completely appropriate. Republican attacks against Obama for failing to speak up more loudly have been well rebuked by the fact that Ahmadinejad has seized on his most forceful statements, to use him as a foil, just as we–and Obama–knew he would.
For further reading, if you were interested in the Perkins book, but want more substantial critique of economic imperialism, read Ha-Joon Cheng’s book on the subject. It mentions the way that the developed world has insisted upon lowering of tariffs and on “free trade,” when they didn’t practice that themselves on the way up.
A WTO employee also recommended a book called “Dead Aid” to me, on the same subject, but I haven’t read that one yet.
The cure for bigotry, of course: Meeting People.
“Because modern racism’s roots, we must remember, lie in European and American imperialism. The many hideous dehumanizations of people of color started centuries ago as an attempt to justify the slave trade and its cruelties. These dehumanizations continue today for the purpose of justifying American financial interests (primarily in oil). We’ve seen this again and again, to most devastating effect in Africa and Latin America, but in other parts of the world as well. ”
Ahhh, my head explodes. Yes we shouldn’t try to intervene in Iran, but for the very practical reason that it is more likely to hurt than help. And yes because of Iran’s history hating Imperialism from all sides would make it backfire. But racism, even modern racism has its roots in the fact that people all over the world are xenophobic on all sorts of different dimensions–many of which translate into race. A huge percentage of Chinese people are very racist, and it has zero to do with European and American imperialism. It has everything to do with the belief that Chinese people are pretty much better than everyone else.
Mmm… well I would wholeheartedly agree that racism is endemic to the human race, and that had no slave trade, or 19th-century conquest of Africa, or even white people, existed, yet still, more peoples than not would have had their own racism crop up from time to time. It’s not a European invention.
But are you going just a tad far when you say that European and American imperialism had “zero” to do with Chinese racism? What about the fact that the British used gunboats to force the Chinese to accept Indian opium, against their will and in spite of their sovereignty, during the 19th century? Would the Boxer Rebellion’s cadres have emerged as a Chinese self-help society, had they not had European encroachment to focus their anger against? I wouldn’t say “all,” but I sure wouldn’t say “zero.”
Point of information regarding modern racism’s roots in European and American imperialism: the mutually racialized animosity that exists between Persians and Arabs–the original post only mentions Persian attitudes towards Arabs–goes back centuries, at least to the Arab Muslim conquest of Iran in the 7th century CE. (This is not a statement about Islam; just a point of historical information.)
That would seem to have something to do with Chinese attitudes towards Britian and zero to do with Han Chinese’s attitudes towards the other ethnicities in the Chinese empire (and vice versa).
Well okay, but Sebastian didn’t specify that he was only speaking about Chinese attitudes to minorities within China. He said, unless I read it wrong, that Chinese racism had “zero to do” with European or American imperialism, full stop.
So yes, exactly: it would seem to have zero to do with Han Chinese attitudes toward other Chinese minorities, but certainly something greater than zero to do with Chinese racism as a whole, that was my point. To say European imperialism had nothing at all to do with Chinese racism seems to be hyperbole. This may be a minor point within the bigger post above, but Sebastian did say his head exploded, so I was trying to mend his head simply.
Thanks Richard Jeffrey Newman, that’s good to point out. The original post did specify the African slave trade, so it was a bit broader than just Persia and the Arabs. But your post does speak to the point that not all racism, by any means, is a European invention.
VJ,
Check out the link in the second paragraph; it goes to an article about anti-Arab racism in Iran. That’s what I was referring to.
Ah, I see, thanks. I hadn’t noticed the link. I think that Naguib Mahfouz, the author, wrote a bit about that phenomenon in one of his novels.
I’m not going to justify the really bad behavior of the US Government during the Cold War, because even though it was supposed to fight against communism (at least that was what I was taught in school) as I got older, I started realizing “That isn’t how you convince people that democracy and the free market are better.”
But racism? Oh Gods, that is sooooo short sighted and racist in a way. It’s as if history started during the 1400’s. Do I need to point out the Egyptian Mahmud’s, who’s ranks were replensihed by white slaves captured for Europe? And that isn’t the only group that were enslaving white people. Now, I’m not justifying that Europeans were right, BUTwhen people talk about slavery and racism, it didn’t just start in the 1400’s when Columbus found the New World. Slavery is very, very old, and whole cities were enslaved by well everyone. Mongols, Persians, Babylonians, Aztecs (oh, wait, they cut out their slaves hearts.)
It’s not right, it just is. People quite often do bad things when they are in power, and sometimes they come up with rationales to support their actions to make them look good. Other times they rape, plunder and enslaved, and who really cares, because their sword is at your throat? And if you honestly think you’re going to change that, good luck. If anything, if you get to those hollowed halls of power, I’d bet that you would be no better, and maybe even worse, because the more righteous you are in words, the better you can argue that this really bad idea is for the best.