11.07.2007
Giving excuses leads to active collaboration
Jim Moody on a new Iranian TV channel which panders to the Iranian state
Yet another satellite television channel hit the airwaves at the beginning of last week. But this was no cheapo station selling kitchen gadgets or screening yet more 'reality' programmes. Instead, it was the Iranian state Press TV's English language broadcasts, aiming to "break the global media stranglehold of western outlets". Iran's president Ahmadinejad declared: "Knowing the truth is the right of all human beings, but the media today is the number one means used by the authorities to keep control." And he should know, as part of the authority controlling Press TV.
Among Press TV's western presenters is Yvonne Ridley, former Sunday Express journalist, who converted to islam after being captured by the Taliban. She helped set up Al-Jazeera's English language news website, but after being sacked has more recently been presenting programmes on the Sky satellite's Islam Channel, where station fare is more concerned with religion than politics. In contrast, Press TV is an open propaganda vehicle of the mullahs. Ridley has taken her current affairs show, The agenda, to the new channel with her.
As readers will recall, Yvonne Ridley is no mere journalist. She is a leading member of Respect, having stood as its candidate in EU, UK parliamentary, and council elections. And Respect is very much the creature of the Socialist Workers Party. But it is no simple coincidence that Press TV has this link with Respect and the SWP.
Indeed, what is intriguing is that the SWP leadership has been quite keen to do what it can to help this organ of the Iranian state. Even before the channel started its broadcasts in English, Lindsey German pandered to the clerics running matters in Iran by appearing on screen wearing a hijab on the Farsi version (Jame-Jam Television Network).
None of this should come as a surprise. The approach of the SWP is of a piece with its involvement in Campaign Iran (Campaign Iran resulted from a merger late last year of Action Iran, Casmii UK and Iran Solidarity; it is part of the international Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran). Campaign Iran does not address the problems faced by the Iranian people, seeing it as its duty, since Iran faces the threat and reality of imperialist intervention, to counter imperialist propaganda by regurgitating that of Tehran. Campaign Iran stands accused of acting as an apologist for the reactionary clerical regime and excusing its barbarities.
You will search in vain in Campaign Iran's propaganda material and media statements for any criticism of the islamic republic. Campaign Iran fails to mention any of the struggles of Iranian workers, who are in the forefront of the fight against neoliberal economic policies instituted by the regime - at the diktat, ironically, of world financial centres. Nor are the demonstrations of Iranian women against misogynist laws and their daily battles against the forced wearing of the veil considered worthy of Campaign Iran's attention. As for the radicalism of the anti-war and anti-capitalist Iranian student and youth movements - you will read nothing about that in what this group produces.
There is no proof that Campaign Iran, or Casmii, receives money or other assistance from the Iranian embassies in London or Washington. However, it clearly functions to plead the Iranian state's case against the likelihood of attack from the USA and its ever subservient British junior partner. But in failing to attack the depravities that the regime carries out against workers, students, women and ethnic minorities, Campaign Iran merely serves as a liberal or left cover for the regime. The deceit of this cover is one that the SWP is endeavouring to enhance by its involvement with Campaign Iran.
So it is, perhaps, not so surprising that the SWP is keen to pander to the Iranian clerics by doing what it can to help along this new television venture. While SWP members may not be presenting the news on Press TV, I am sure there are plenty of other jobs in the back office for the media-savvy. While no-one has yet suggested that the SWP is going down the Workers Revolutionary Party road of accepting money from regimes like Gaddafi's Libya, its apologia for the islamic government is just as unprincipled.
Earlier this week, Ahmadinejad flew a kite through his henchmen, accusing Iran's media of trying to depose him in a 'creeping coup'. As a precursor to a further clampdown on opposition newspapers and websites, Ahmadinejad has set his aides the task of establishing a special team to counter "black propaganda against the government". No doubt Press TV is part of this. The new 24-hour channel is mainly aimed at the US and Europe, but no UK or US-based channels are currently broadcasting it. Ten satellites do broadcast Press TV at present: one covering Spain; one elsewhere over Europe shared with BT; one in North America shared with Merrill Lynch TV; and seven others covering Asia and Australasia. Elsewhere, viewers itching for a dose of mullah-news will have to make do with using the internet (www.press tv.ir/news.aspx).
Within Iran, the state broadcasting company, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB, http://eng.irib.ir), is the only authorised body in the country to have radio and television channels (as in pre-1955 Britain).
Press TV may be based in Tehran, but it has premises in Ealing and about 26 correspondents around the world. Mohammad Sarafraz, vice-president of Iran's state broadcaster, tried to suggest at its launch that it would offer an unbiased view, standing between the western media and supporters of Al-Qa'eda. He also attacked the Qatar-based broadcaster, Al-Jazeera, claiming it had supported the Taliban and Saddam Hussein's regime. Clearly, Press TV is hoping to take a chunk of Al-Jazeera's audience and, in order to add to the impression of impartiality, has commissioned a number of documentaries that are currently in production in Germany, Switzerland and the UK.
Showing the Iranian regime's commitment to press impartiality and freedom of expression, last week the reformist newspaper Ham-Mihan (www.hammihan.com) and the online Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA, www.ilna.ir), which have both been critical of Ahmadinejad, were suspended. So sensitive is the government to any criticism. Mohammad Atrianfar, Ham-Mihan's policy director, commented: "The government is angry because the media sees the difference between its slogans and its performance. But the number of critical newspapers is very low and cannot conduct anything against the government that could be described as a coup" (The Guardian July 9).
Most illuminatingly, Press TV's coverage two days after the Glasgow airport attack on June 30 included the following from its reporter, Hedieh Ghavidel, in Tehran: "It is as though Britain is trying to follow in the steps of the global arrogance [ie, the USA] using the same threadbare propaganda, 'blame the muslims', as an opening act in the new adventures. In the first act of this play, they enrage muslims by knighting Rushdie and then they orchestrate a terrorist attack on an airport, which has nothing to do with Rushdie or the ongoing war, claiming muslims are out to avenge Salman Rushdie's knighthood and the Iraq war." This sort of reportage is akin to blaming the attack on New York's Twin Towers on some kind of Zionist plot. It gives us an inkling of what to expect from Press TV.
The current Iranian clerical regime is the same regime that only a few months after the overthrow of the shah in 1979 moved to ban the secular press in Iran, suppressed freedom of assembly, declared all non-governmental political parties illegal, arrested militant workers, forced women to wear the veil and started a military campaign against national minorities. It is the same regime that in mid-1981 concertedly attacked socialists and closed all institutions of higher education, forcing students and lecturers to take an islamic purity test before they could return. And it is the same regime that in summer 1987 finally 'solved' the problem of jail overcrowding by massacring over 12,000 political prisoners.
This is the Iranian regime that the SWP alibis. This is the Iranian regime that the SWP and its associates in Respect consider it fine to work for, peddling lies and refusing to admit that this is an anti-working class, anti-women, anti-youth and anti-national minority regime. All that concerns the SWP is that the blood-soaked Iranian government is under threat from imperialism. Therefore it is anti-imperialist, full stop. Bizarre. In the SWP's bankrupt and twisted logic, 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend'.
By their fruits ye shall know them. And their fruits - propaganda that ignores what the Iranian regime does to its people - implies that in the greater scheme of things these deeply democratic questions are trivial. So, indeed, shall we know them: these special pleaders for a regime that oppresses human beings as workers, as women, as youth, and as members of ethnic and religious minorities. By playing down the recent bus strike in Tehran, the demonstrations by women and by students, and the attacks on the media, and claiming, in the words of the SWP's Elaheh Rostami Povey, that Iran is the "most democratic state in the Middle East", they abrogate their responsibility to the world working class, including in both Iran and the UK. The deceit that such comrades would play on us can only rebound against them.
Working class solidarity and democratic rights are indivisible and universally applicable. In this vein it is clear that a real fight to oppose the designs of imperialism against Iran must include the fullest support for the people of Iran in their struggles against the regime that oppresses them. While UK and US imperialism feigns a stance against oppression in Iran, the Iranian clerical regime feigns a stance against imperialism. Each needs the other. But the people of Iran need neither and it is our duty to stand with them against their twin enemies - imperialism and the Iranian regime.
This, not collaborating with the mouthpieces of Tehran, is the meaning of proletarian solidarity. And that is precisely why Hands Off the People of Iran was set up and is gathering support.