Opinion
As I wrote recently, even the dim bulbs of the woke left are aware that shilling for the most regressive, misogynist, homophobic religious ideology in the world is an obvious and staggering hypocrisy.
So, what do most of them do? What the left always do when they’re caught out: lie, and try and shift the goalposts, however ludicrously. According to these screeching ninnies, pointing out that Palestinians will lynch queers on sight is the real homophobia. If that sounds utterly ridiculous to you, you’re right.
So ridiculous that even the few remaining semi-sane leftists can see right through it.
We have all, by this point, seen the displays of support for Hamas and radical Islamists from young Western leftists in response to the October 7th, 2023 attacks on Israel by Hamas. Disturbing though it is to see terror attacks, kidnappings, and brutal gang rapes condoned or even celebrated, what’s most troubling is that this isn’t the first unholy alliance between the Western far-left and the Islamic far-right.
It’s not, after all, the first time the “queer” left have tried cuddling up to the mad mullahs. French lefty nonce Michel Foucault made several trips to Iran shortly before the Khomeini revolution, in between buggering any of Tehran’s kiddies he could get his grimy paws on, Foucault heaped praise on the Islamic revolutionaries. He disappeared in a cloud of boiled lollies, though, as soon as the Mullahs actually took power.
Like the “Queers for Palestine”, he wasn’t exactly prepared to be “queer” in a fundamentalist Islamic country.
In the years leading up to the revolution, Iranian leftists, deeply influenced by revolutionary communist theories and literature, were also growing restless and impatient. Lacking the means to mobilize a people’s revolution independently, these leftists found allies in the Islamic clerical establishment. The mullahs, with their extensive network in mosques and influence over the populace, provided the perfect machinery for an uprising. Together, they were powerful enough to overthrow the system.
This ideological fusion between the secular left and the Islamic right, a phenomenon Mohammad Reza Shah referred to as the unholy alliance between the “black and the red,” (“red” signifying the communists and “black” the mullahs) lies at the very crux of the revolution. The “red” half of the alliance reframed, in the eyes of many Western left-wing thinkers, what would otherwise have been viewed as a reactionary religious uprising into a revolution against the detrimental impacts of colonialism and capitalism.
Three guesses what happened to the “reds” as soon as the “black” seized power.
In the very first year of the new regime, Ayatollah Khomeini decreed mandatory veiling for women at work on March 7, 1979. On March 8, International Women’s Day, women took to the streets in large-scale protests against the compulsory hijab. Women on the left, who once adopted the veil as a sign of resistance during the revolution, did not anticipate it becoming mandatory. “We didn’t have a revolution to go backwards,” crowds chanted.
No backsies, honey. You made your bed with the mullahs: sleep in it.
Including the biggest sleep of all.
Sadegh Khalkhali, a hardline cleric and Head of the Islamic Revolutionary Court after the revolution, was infamous for his harsh and often brutal judgments, including ordering the execution of many associated with the previous regime. In this, he was supported by the Tudeh Party (the Iranian communist party).
Imagine the communist “intellectuals” surprise when they once again found themselves first against the wall under an actual revolution.
In 1988, the Islamic Republic began coordinating extrajudicial mass executions of political prisoners, including the Tudeh Party and members and supporters of other leftist political groups. The main target of the killings was the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, also known as Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), a militant leftist group. Khomeini issued an order for their execution referring to them as “moharebs” (those who war against Allah) and “mortads” (apostates from Islam).
The wave of Iranian political killings in 1988 was one of the largest mass executions of the second half of the 20th century and one that has largely been forgotten outside of Iran or the Iranian diaspora. The exact death toll remains uncertain. Most sources agree that thousands were executed, with estimates ranging from 4,000 to 30,000 people — the majority of whom were loaded onto trucks in large groups, brought to designated sites, and hanged en masse. The Tudeh Party was completely eradicated.
Can we get a “whomp-whomp”?
Iran today ranks among the least free countries in the world. LGBT people have virtually no rights. Same-sex behavior between gay and bi men is a crime that carries a maximum penalty of death. Indeed, thousands of LGBT people have been executed by the Iranian regime since the 1979 Revolution. Women who refuse to wear the hijab risk brutal attacks, imprisonment, or even death, as the much-publicized case of Mahsa Jina Amini showed. And political and religious minorities live as second-class citizens or worse.
Queer Majority
Will today’s left learn anything from these harsh lessons of history?
Who are we kidding: if leftists were capable of learning from history, they wouldn’t be leftists.
No doubt they’re reassuring themselves that the alliance between the “queer” left and the swivel-eyed Mahommedans will work out just peachy, this time. Just like socialism will always work, next time.