- Iranian Democracy Deemed Nonexistent
- Jews as Victims of Anglo Hegemony
- Iran Doing What Saddam Failed To Do
- Snippets
- The USA: One Nation, Suffering From God Delusions
- China Once Again Remakes Itself
- China Not Short of Workers
- Goths as Mongrels?
- How To Fail Again in Afghanistan
- Electricity Failure
- Gay But Sorrowful
Iranian Democracy Deemed Nonexistent
Iranians in 1979 chose to replace the corrupt system of the pro-Western shah with a strong reassertions of Islamic values. And if Khomeini’s networks grabbed power to get the outcome they wanted, they didn’t rig it any more than most Western systems get rigged. We have Starner because he promised to continue most of Corbyn’s policies. We might get Reform dominating after the next election, because Britain sticks to the unfair First-Past-the-Post system. The same thing gave the USA Trump-Biden-Trump. Bernie Sanders would have been elected had the vote been less unfair.
No one should lecture Iran about their electoral system. It works, while much of the Global South has failed governments.
Western leftists make the point about British-led hostility to functional Iranian secularism back in 1953. But fail to realise that some changes cannot be undone.
Cooking can offer lessons about politics. Eggs when raw can become many different things. But when you’ve made scrambled eggs, say, you can’t then backtrack and get poached eggs instead. Likewise the half-arsed cunning of Anglo politicians in the 1990s has permanently ended the chance of substantial Westernisation in most of the Global South. I hope they can move on to accept the more positive things invented in the European Enlightenment, as China has done. But the imitative culture that was once widespread is increasingly marginal. (https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/problems-magazine-past-issues/the-west-fails-in-five-civilisations/the-west-fails-in-five-civilisations-2/.)
Most Western leftists ignore the previous major war: Saddam’s Iraq invading in 1980, hoping to detach oil-rich Khuzestan with its significant Arab population. The USA almost certainly encouraged him, and it’s well-recorded that in 1987 the US stepped in to save Saddam when Iran seemed likely to destroy him. (https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/very-old-issues-images/magazine-001-to-010/magazine-004-october-1987/why-the-west-saved-saddam-hussein-in-1987/.)
The whole thing has slipped out of the political discourse, even though it undermines US claims just as clearly as the 1953 tragedy. But most Western leftists fail to understand the twisty logic of global hegemony. Saddam was useful when the Soviet Union was a global rival, but its collapse gave the New Right a wildly inflated view of what they could do with their victory. A view that was disastrously shared by Tony Blair.
Imperial China had a saying: when the swift deer are caught, the hounds are cooked. The US elite would not do that to dogs: they manage to reason themselves into doing it to non-white and culturally unfamiliar foreigners.
The war against Iraq actually solidified the new Islamic Democracy in Iran. Those who doubt it ignore what happened in Iraq after Saddam was destroyed. The USA devised what they saw as a perfect electoral system. But actual voting produced what Westerners called a Sistani Tsunami: most Shia Iraqis voted for religious and pro-Iranian parties. Plans for a perfect Capitalist Parliamentary Democracy failed.
Something similar happened in Turkiye. And began to happen in Egypt after a vigorous pro-Western minority forced open elections, but discovered that the Muslim Brotherhood had a clear majority. The USA endorsed a return to military autocracy, but seems incapable of learning any wider lessons.
The New Right notion of Capitalism, Open Parliamentary Democracy and Fast Economic Growth as a single and inevitable combination was silly and ignorant. Not just misunderstanding and scorning alternative versions of civilisation, but also not understanding our shared Western past. The new US Republic was not even loosely democratic till the 1830s. Britain not till the 1880s. France denied the vote to women till after WW2. Switzerland made them wait till 1971, with the idea rejected by 67% of voters in 1959.
The New Right fantasists can’t admit how much of the current idea of the normal had needed to be pushed by the ‘woke’ left of previous generations. Opposed or evaded by older generations of the centre-right. (https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/m-articles-by-topic/m99-topic-menus-from-long-revolution-website/998-from-labour-affairs/the-french-revolution-and-its-unstable-politics/against-globalisation/the-left-redefined-the-normal/). It was even more half-arsed than the cynical but unrealistic power politics of the French elite. Fools who shot themselves in the foot when they reneged on the bargain that Gaddafi had made with them.
One further twist. Trump seems to share the racism of his Ku Klux Klan father, who was also a genuinely brilliant businessman in a way ‘Trump Junior’ is not. He seems to think of the new globalised USA as hopelessly corrupt. He also and correctly sees the world as slipping out of US control. So maybe Trump would be quite content to see the global order crash
Jews as Victims of Anglo Hegemony
The 23rd March saw another round in the Western elite’s twisted muddling of actual anti-Semitism with attempts to limit Israeli extremists. As before, the absence of hard facts did not stop the headline-writers
“Jewish charity ambulances set on fire, with PM calling it ‘deeply shocking antisemitic attack’…
“Green Party leader Zack Polanski has said he is ‘horrified’ by the attack. ‘Antisemitism is vile and has no place here,’ he writes on X. He expresses solidarity with the Jewish community in Golders Green and across the country” (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/czj1m8xpk14t).
Polanski is being naive. False Flag attacks are common, and there are some confirmed cases of events aimed at exaggerating protestors’ hostility to Jews rather than Israelis. The ambulance attack is exactly the sort of thing I might do if I were a libertarian and supporter of Israel.
Or just a supporter of the Iran war with no strong feelings about Jews. Especially the now-marginal Iranian royalists.
Also worth suspecting are some right-wing Christian groups, mostly found in the USA but some over here. Hastening Armageddon. And expecting an easy exit with the ‘rapture’. Which, incidentally, is a 19th-century addition to the already-crazy notions of the Book of Revelations.
Not that it’s a Christian monopoly. Some foes of Israel wildly exaggerate Israel’s ambitions. They cite a biblical promise of land for Abraham’s heirs:
“From the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates” (Genesis 15:18)
This ignores Biblical history. The Israelites reportedly led out of bondage by Moses were already west of the Nile. Abraham’s home city Ur was on the Euphrates. So was Babylon, where Jews lamented their exile.
Biblical history claims Arabs as well as Jews as descendants of Abraham. Arabs via Ishmael who was the child of a concubine. A youth driven out after he failed to defer to Abraham’s son Isaac: the son he was later willing to senselessly slaughter in obedience to God. And Esau survived to father the squabbling siblings Esau and Jacob / Israel. All of which I find as outdated and absurd, but I was amused to note that both Egypt and the Mesopotamian / Iraqi lands later became Arab, thanks to Islam.
In modern times, Jews living in Egypt or Mesopotamia regard themselves as still in exile. Strict religious Jews say the Exile continues and can’t end until the supernatural arrival of the Jewish Messiah. See secular Israel as a mistake.
For my views on religion, see https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/m-articles-by-topic/040-religion-as-a-mode-of-human-existence/religions-as-imperfect-human-understanding/. For why I think Israel should have been honest in the 1990s and allowed a real Palestinian state, see https://mrgwydionmwilliams.quora.com/Israel-Against-Zionism.
Iran Doing What Saddam Failed To Do
At the time of writing, 24th March, Iran can still reliably hit Israel. Thankfully, it seems their genuine religious faith would not let them use nerve gas, anthrax spores, or one of the many infectious diseases bred for germ warfare. Something that Saddam thought about but did not carry through.
A post on X (Twitter) reminded me of another major difference:
“In 2002, the US conducted Millennium Challenge, the largest war games in its history…. Red team was supposed to lose, but General Van Riper didn’t want to lose. So he played to win. He used asymmetric tactics by doing things like using civilian boats instead of military ones, motorcycle couriers and coded messages in mosque towers because their cell phone networks had been hacked.
“He launched a massive preemptive strike using a swarm of small boats and cruise missiles, which overwhelmed the Blue Team’s Aegis defense system. In the simulation, this resulted in the “sinking” of 16 American warships, including an aircraft carrier.
“The exercise was supposed to take 14 days. Vin Riper and his team won after day one.
“Understandably, the US military was embarrassed because this was supposed to show off all its superior tactics and cutting edge technologies. So, they restarted the exercise and changed the rules to force everyone to follow a script so that the red team could not win.” (https://x.com/SizweLo/status/2035267027309306190).
Saddam thought in Western terms. Fascism is part of Western thought: the Baath used it as a way of getting a society to think in broadly Western terms, puzzling people who thought Westernisation was natural, and who learn nothing from repeated failures.
It is better to think of the Nazis as an extreme in a general European metamorphosis that began before 1914 with the right-wing Republicanism of Imperial Portugal. Created a new Polish state under Pilsudski, who like Mussolini had been part of the socialist Second International before 1914, and whose mildly-antisemitic system was seen at the time as a variation on the fascist theme. And it was variously expressed without using the word Fascist in Britain’s National Government, the USA’s New Deal, and De Valera’s Fianna Fail, which literally means Soldiers of Destiny. De Valera’s main foes self-identified as Fascists: one of them managed the bizarre feat of making an absurd failure of trying to help Franco in the Spanish Civil War with keen and experienced Irish volunteers. Most of the actual Irish contribution was on the Republican side, and actual Irish fascists were a parody: what the Chinese call ‘an ape dressed up as a philosopher-king’.
Baath Fascism was working until the West destroyed it. Nasser’s Egypt had a lot of fascist influence, and is the main secular and Westernising hold-out among Arabs.
Iran has been thinking in its own terms since 1979; something that began much earlier and incorporated many ideas from Leninism. It has many people who fully understand Western political thinking, and are unsurprised when it fails to work.
In making a system that combines a rational scientific output with a genuine faith in their own older religious tradition, Iran repeats what Japan did in the 19th century. I’ve not seen anyone make the comparison, but to me it seems obvious.
I’d also say that only a fool would assume that Japan will never ‘flip’ and decide it need not bother to be so Western. Not to quarrel with China over issues irrelevant to Japan’s long-term interests. I even saw a hint in The Silent Service, a rather improbable adventure about a rogue Japanese submarine that’s now showing on Amazon Prime. Just as Batmangives an insight into secret US wishes, it may be what more and more of them are thinking.
Meantime Iran has avoided the errors of Japanese Imperialism, which had some idea of being the leader of East Asia, but helped defeat itself by a racist belief that people who were close to them historically and genetically were inferiors. Wastrels fit only to be pushed around and kept down.
For Islamic Iran, there seems to be no racism and a broad belief in equality. And there are downtrodden Shia-Muslim minorities or even majorities in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates, where Sunni Islam is the religion of the rulers. The only exception is Oman where the rulers and many of the people follow Ibadi Islam, a third and much smaller branch of the faith.
Snippets
The USA: One Nation, Suffering From God Delusions
The USA was created by rich gentry and business people who were believers in the European Enlightenment. Which had its good points, but tried to normalise inequality. Even slavery, for many of the Founding Fathers.
Most British studies of the USA ignore the three recognised waves of faiths known as the Great Awakenings. In particular the second, from about 1790 to 1840, giving a new culture to people who had broken with their previous British identity.
Religion was an attempt to reassert human values, but when hostile to socialism it does the opposite. Sadly, that’s what it became in the USA. It can’t have helped that the functional socialism of Roosevelt’s New Deal was implemented through the corrupt old Democrat Party.
Sad that the once-radical Republicans got captured by a naive trust in business interests. US ‘conservatives’ do realise that market values are inherent eroders of whatever society they operate within. Conservative where it costs them nothing, but ‘come not between the business person and their profit-margin’. The role of a state machine in keeping them civilised is denied and denounced.
Religion offers false answers in a society that is increasingly offended by the predictable results of its own long-term policies. Or rather its failure to plan long-term, haunted by a great fear that the state machine might be out to get them,
Socialism remains strong in Europe, and is still far too weak in the USA. Many who voted for Trump would sooner have voted for Bernie Sanders, given the chance.
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China Once Again Remakes Itself
“Beijing’s decades-long push to reduce its dependence on foreign oil with huge investments in clean energy sources like electric vehicles is now paying off…
“China has spent decades and hundreds of billions of dollars investing in electric vehicles and renewable energy, a long-term strategy that is paying off as other countries grapple with upheavals in the oil market. Beijing has sought to curb its reliance on foreign energy by expanding domestic supply and accelerating the development of alternative power sources, including solar, wind, hydro and nuclear.
“Chinese demand for refined oil, gasoline and diesel fell last year, making a second straight annual decline.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/14/business/china-oil-cars.html)
The West’s ‘Feed the Rich’ policies have failed. More money and power for the rich does not make a better economy even in crude GDP terms.
When Deng Xiaoping moved away from Mao’s policies, he did so as a much more orthodox Marxist. Used controlled amounts of capitalism and foreign investment to upgrade from what People’s China had learned from the Soviet Union during their 1950s friendship.
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China Not Short of Workers
“The average years of schooling for retirees around 60 years old in China are about seven to eight years, while the average years of schooling for young people newly entering the labor market has reached 14 years. This means that the increase in effective labor contributed by new workers far outweighs the reduction caused by retirements.” (https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202603/1356725.shtml)
Fewer but more in educated and more in tune with modern values. And China is also now way ahead in robots that can do tasks once done by humans.
And also remember that it was Mao who gave the entire population of China a basic education and a habit of working collectively. Turning peasant farming into collective farms went surprisingly smoothly, and boosted yields. This truth – evaded or ignored in current Western books about China – were the background for the over-ambitious higher-level collectivism of the Great Leap Forward.
For anyone interested, I’ve just done a long new study. “The Myth of Millions Killed By Mao“, https://gwydionmadawc.com/040-politics/the-myth-of-millions-killed-by-mao/.
The land remains owned and managed by entire villages. Families can work it independenly on long-term leases. But anyone who’s been working in the cities and has to return is given land to work themselves. Very different from the landlessness and landlord exploitation of India, and much of the rest of the global south.
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Goths as Mongrels?
“People from the two [culturally Gothic] sites were markedly different genetically, but both groups showed a mix of ancestries. The peoples were descended from populations as far afield as Scandinavia, the Caucasus, the Levant, Anatolia (modern Turkey), East Asia (modern Mongolia), Egypt and sub-Saharan Africa.” (https://www.newscientist.com/article/2519371-the-ancient-goths-were-an-ethnically-diverse-group/)
Just one of many DNA studies that show that people who currently speak one langage and have one culture may have very different origins.
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How To Fail Again in Afghanistan
“Russia’s Permanent UN Representative Vasily Nebenzia gave a powerful speech about Afghanistan in early March. He condemned the West’s ‘attempts to advance a selective approach, with an emphasis on matters that Western donors are willing to discuss’, which he expects ‘will not lead to the desired result’. He told them that ‘if you truly want to help the women and girls of Afghanistan not just with words but with deeds, then help create conditions for them to live in a stable and developed country.’…
“The US is reluctant to provide this and also still holds the occupation-era government’s nearly $10 billion assets that it froze in late 2021.
“Strings are attached to releasing this, however, such as the Taliban complying with its promise to assemble an ethno-regionally inclusive government and uphold the Western conception of women’s rights. The Taliban isn’t ready to do either” (https://korybko.substack.com/p/russias-top-un-representative-reminded.)
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Electricity Failure
“Seen by Margaret Thatcher as a relic, the CEGB was broken up and privatised in 1989. Labour warned that prices would rise. They did. The ‘privatisation premium’, according to an analysis by the Common Wealth thinktank, sees almost a quarter of the average household energy bill – roughly £450 – flow today into corporate profits. Other essential services are similarly hit. Nearly 30% of a water bill in the English privatised system goes to shareholder returns and paying debt. By contrast, publicly owned Scottish Water spends 10% of revenue on borrowing costs.” (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/08/the-guardian-view-on-ev-charging-china-took-the-right-lessons-from-britains-past)
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Gay But Sorrowful
“Leo Varadkar: LGBTQ+ rights in Europe face ‘chill wind’ from east and west
“Ireland’s former taoiseach warns of conservative Russian influence and says US is now ‘off the pitch’ under Trump”. (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/19/leo-varadkar-lgbtq-rights-in-europe-face-chill-wind-from-east-and-west).
It seems not to occur to him that this is caused by the expansion of Gay Rights having tragically become part of a malignant cultural package. One that from the 1990s has included the centre-left promoting inequality and a renewed bid for Global Western Hegemony.
Glad to be gay, greedy, and a fan of bullies?
Before the 1990s, the opposite was more commonly the case. Openly gay people were more often against inequality and against imperialism or hegemony. And many still are, but the right-wingers no longer hide their private lives. They are often more famous.
The shift among gays could be seen as a classic case of trying to kick away the ladder after you’ve been able to use it. And is also visibly failing, but Varadkar’s only answer is more of the same.
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Old newsnotes at the magazine websites. I also write regular blogs – https://www.quora.com/q/mrgwydionmwilliams
Labour Affairs 