{"id":16698,"date":"2018-07-19T07:39:07","date_gmt":"2018-07-19T12:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=16698"},"modified":"2018-07-19T07:39:07","modified_gmt":"2018-07-19T12:39:07","slug":"just-like-a-mirror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2018\/07\/19\/just-like-a-mirror\/","title":{"rendered":"Just Like A Mirror"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’ve seen how the new Republicans have been loudly proclaiming their allegiance to President Trump as they advance their candidacies for various elected positions, and thereby proudly brandishing a populist conservative \/ right wing extremist position new to the Republican Party. But how about in … Iran? Rohollah Faghihi reports<\/a> in AL Monitor<\/strong><\/em> on the new generation of Iranian hard-liners<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\n

Hard-liners in Iran face the key challenge of\u00a0a new generation\u00a0questioning the approach being taken\u00a0by the old guard. Members of the younger generation, unlike their older peers,\u00a0are challenging anyone who acts against their expectations, even including when that person happens to be\u00a0Qasem Soleimani,\u00a0commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’\u00a0Quds Force, the most popular figure in the conservative camp.<\/p>\n

Traditional Iranian hard-liners are broadly characterized by their anti-Americanism and\u00a0opposition to engagement with the West, desire for\u00a0“revolutionary” foreign relations and\u00a0opposition to any form of liberalism\u00a0promoted by Reformists<\/a>. In short, they have\u00a0a general\u00a0intolerance toward cultural and political change.<\/p>\n

The new generation, however, espouses the hard-line\u00a0discourse,\u00a0yet do not adhere to the Principlist camp of\u00a0conservatives. They call themselves “innovative revolutionaries,” on a mission to lead a renaissance in their camp. They\u00a0accuse the old guard of being overly\u00a0cautious\u00a0and of\u00a0betraying\u00a0the spirit of Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini,\u00a0founder of the Islamic Republic. This generation tends to be more uncompromising than their predecessors, viewing\u00a0their rivals as sworn enemies with whom forming alliances is unthinkable. …<\/p>\n

The innovative revolutionaries vehemently oppose\u00a0any cooperation with the Reformists, whom\u00a0they consider\u00a0promoters of liberalism and secularism<\/a>, considered\u00a0anathemas to the Islamic Revolution’s principles.\u00a0In this regard, during\u00a0Rouhani’s tenure, the new generation has criticized him for various reasons. They loathe older, pragmatic conservatives, including former Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati and parliament Speaker Ali Larijani, for backing Rouhani in the past two presidential elections. When it comes to the Reformists and Rouhani, the new generation accepts no compromise\u00a0and has no qualms about challenging those moving\u00a0closer to\u00a0their declared\u00a0enemies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Their movement is failing to win elections and the affections of the people, it must be a lack of purity, so let’s kick out the old perverts<\/em>. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? A good old RINO<\/strong><\/em><\/a>\u00a0expungement in action. The GOP<\/strong><\/em> didn’t control every single elected seat nationally or in the states, so let’s kick out some of our more moderate members for being impure, and bring in those who more explicitly embrace the Holy Writ<\/del> ideology, and that’ll bring us to victory. That’s been the activity since at least the time of Reagan, although I see Newt Gingrich as a big signpost on that Trail to Oblivion. (As I’ve noted before, though, Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) saw this coming<\/a>, and with a sense of foreboding, no less.)<\/p>\n

Iran is best described as a managed democracy, meaning that there are those holding unelected seats of high power who control the list of who may vie for elective seats of power, and then, via the Supreme Leader, controls those who’ve won the elections. This new generation of hardliners will need to find ways to capture those unelected seats before they can have realistic hopes of capturing those elective seats, and the power that goes with them.<\/p>\n

I think they realize that. It’s certainly suggested in the following:<\/p>\n

In a May\u00a0interview, Payam Fazlinejad, a young hard-line analyst, said of the new\u00a0generation, “We are faced with\u00a0‘innovative revolutionaries’<\/a>\u00a0who have distinctly critical thoughts, which are based on the originalist\u00a0remarks of the Imam [Khomeini] and the [supreme] leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei]. [They] think about\u00a0reforms and renaissance to help the [Islamic] Revolution overcome challenges.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Returning to the words of the founders, as if they are without flaw and will always apply. Thus do fanatics avoid the need for intelligent thought. We’re starting to see that in the American candidates who embrace Trumpism. However, we may be more fortunate than the Iranians, as the analogy is imperfect and Trump continues to commit error after error, alienating more and more of the moderate Republicans. If their team politics discipline can be broken for the terrible curse that it truly has become, we still have a chance of avoiding the apparently inevitable fate of the Iranians – controlled by those who dare not think, dare not learn, dare not adapt.<\/p>\n

Because adaptation is compromise, and compromise is unthinkable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’ve seen how the new Republicans have been loudly proclaiming their allegiance to President Trump as they advance their candidacies for various elected positions, and thereby proudly brandishing a populist conservative \/ right wing extremist position new to the Republican Party. But how about in … Iran? Rohollah Faghihi reports \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16698"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16703,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16698\/revisions\/16703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}