Juno News - October 11, 2022


Why does the progressive left struggle to condemn Iran's Islamic regime？


Episode Stats


Length

3 minutes

Words per minute

218.4919

Word count

679

Sentence count

36

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In the wake of the massive protests in Iran, many have wondered if there is a double standard when it comes to criticism of the Islamic Republic of Iran. What is the role of the left in this situation? Is there a lack of concern about the human rights situation in Iran? And what role does the far-left have to play in the situation?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 You know, I've actually been struck by the fact, and I don't know if you share this view,
00:00:03.680 but that, you know, many politicians in the West, notably here in Canada,
00:00:09.040 I found that their response to what's been happening in Iran, which is pretty significant,
00:00:14.020 has been rather tepid.
00:00:15.780 And I would also say that the same could be said about the progressive left,
00:00:21.200 you know, which at the drop of a hat will criticize Israel and other countries,
00:00:26.000 but, you know, are not really taking note on what is going on in Iran.
00:00:31.460 How do we understand this? Do you feel like there's a double standard at work?
00:00:35.000 Like, where are the trending, I stand with the Iranians hashtags?
00:00:39.160 Yeah, you know, I've been so busy in terms of planning protests and, you know, writing op ads and so on.
00:00:44.960 I haven't had a ton of time to look at kind of what famous left-wing figures have been saying about this protest.
00:00:50.820 So I can't speak and tell.
00:00:51.800 They haven't really been saying much.
00:00:53.680 Maybe they haven't. Yeah.
00:00:54.960 I'll take your word for that.
00:00:57.180 If they have not, then that's entirely consistent with past practice.
00:01:01.820 And if they have been saying it, then, you know, bless them.
00:01:03.940 But that's not what they've done in the past.
00:01:06.820 Regrettably, much of the progressive left in the last, I don't know, few decades,
00:01:11.360 has come to view the world solely through the lens of, you know, anti-imperialism.
00:01:16.080 And what that means, essentially, is that they're willing to hold their fire.
00:01:20.420 I don't want to say they want to ally themselves with, but they certainly will not outwardly criticize regimes that are in conflict with the United States or Israel.
00:01:31.340 And that's why you find these weird coalitions of left-wingers, for example, sometimes even praising the Islamic Republic of Iran or talking about Russia in positive ways.
00:01:40.700 It's very bizarre.
00:01:43.420 You know, this is a phenomenon that happens, I have to admit, also on the far right, but it's been much more prominent on the left.
00:01:49.600 Yeah.
00:01:49.740 And, yeah, I mean, that's been the issue.
00:01:52.020 It's, you know, Iranian people, Iranian women especially, for a long time have been saying the way we are being treated is really apartheid.
00:02:00.880 It's gender apartheid. 0.98
00:02:02.200 Women under the Iranian law are considered half of men, literally.
00:02:07.040 They are horrendously treated, subjected to awful violence, the kinds of things that any Western progressive would be horrified by and would never want to, you know,
00:02:16.700 a situation they would never want to actually live under themselves.
00:02:19.740 But when people come, you know, an activist, for example, like Masi Ali Najat, who, you know, hopefully your readers know,
00:02:25.760 she's really a prominent Iranian activist who speaks out for women's rights.
00:02:29.500 You know, they accuse her of being an Islamophobe all the time because she's saying, look at what is being done in the name of Islam to women in Iran.
00:02:36.520 That has been the position of the left.
00:02:38.960 Regrettably, this has seeped into a lot of our institutions, our, you know, our prime minister's office, for example.
00:02:44.820 I suspect, I mean, I can't say this for sure, but I suspect a lot of this thinking has clouded their judgment about what sorts of positions they ought to be taking with respect to theocracies like Iran's.
00:02:56.120 We are doing this.
00:02:57.400 We are doing this for sure, but we are doing this for sure.
00:02:58.840 We are looking to be doing this for sure, but that's the kind of story.
00:02:59.240 I agree with you.
00:02:59.300 My plan is so much about this.
00:03:00.440 We think it is time to be outside, but we wonder want to impact.
00:03:00.720 We are certainly not within the самый of the drone's on Omar Yarra실� whale, we are now on an online basis,
00:03:03.340 so you can find the way he wears un demonstrations into the drone's on a podcast,
00:03:04.780 we're looking to overlook that after this, the operation is maintained in the world with respect to which it is mostly before winning hours of the time,