The Ties That Bind Islamists and Progressives

In the West, the politics of the Gaza war features a strange marriage between political Islam and the twenty-first-century Western left. For instance, the Democratic Socialists of America party simultaneously supports making New York a national hub for transgender youth medicine but also wants to globalize the intifada. It supports the bleeding edge of social progressive values while throwing its full support behind the fanatic fascists who filmed their mass murder of Jews and proudly posted the videos to Telegram.

The first example of this cognitively dissonant red-green alliance arose during Iran’s Islamic revolution in 1978 and 1979. Inside the country, many of the socialist and liberal factions ultimately accepted the leadership of the radical Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, but they did so for cynical reasons. Khomeini’s politics were extreme and reactionary, many of Iran’s socialists and liberals knew, but they believed he lacked the political skills to really take over the country.

It was a very different story in the West. For Americans and Europeans, Khomeini was a relatively unknown figure in 1978 when the revolution began. He was a blank slate. But the decision of Iraq’s tyrant, Saddam Hussein, to exile Khomeini to a suburb of Paris in October of 1978, gave international media access to the austere cleric they hadn’t had before. Khomeini and his handlers took full advantage of their time in front of the camera.

While staying at a modest home in Neauphle-le-Château, Khomeini conducted 132 interviews with major newspapers over three months. He was portrayed as a pious democrat, perhaps even a progressive figure.

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