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Pezeshkian offers breathing room in Iran but his options are limited

“Iran’s Starmer” wins election by ditching political discussion


04/08/2024

In 2005, Reformist firebrand Mostafa Tajzadeh, gave a speech at the HQ of the Participation Front – the biggest party of Iran’s Reformist faction. He aimed to rally supporters for the upcoming presidential election. Tajzadeh related how the pro-Khomeini Islamic left, was kicked out of the government after Khamenei’s ascent, did an autopsy on their record and policies by looking at Clinton’s “triangulation,” Blair’s New Labour, and Anthony Giddens. It decided to renovate itself. That ‘Left’ was after all, just like every other social democratic party in the neoliberal era. Just like most of those parties in the West, the Reformists continued to triangulate with the right.

Since the mid-90s, Iran has held eight presidential elections. Of these seven were competitive, albeit neither free nor fair. The exception led to the 2021 presidency of Ebrahim Raisi, who was recently killed in the helicopter crash in the Northwest of Iran. Raisi’s path over a decade led from the margins to leading the religious and financial juggernaut Astan-e-Qods, to the head of Judiciary and then the presidency.

Raisi’s status as an arch Principalist (the hardliners in Western media), together with Reformists’ underwhelming performance in 2021 elections, led observers to pronounce the death of the Reformist faction. They also saw Raisi as a possible, or likely, successor to the 85-year old Supreme Leader. But in 2024 elections Reformists won the presidency for the first time since 2001 with Pezeshkian, a self-identifying Reformist. Former president Rouhani’s administration (2013-21) had been backed by Reformists but he himself came from the moderate wing of the Principalists and never identified himself as a Reformist.

Iran’s presidential elections are always interesting because of the complex factional politics which produces surprises. Recently the Spanish online newspaper El Diario compared it to how the Holy Spirit, supposedly, enlightens cardinals to choose the Pope.

The recent election saw for the first time, a competitive election without even a 60% turnout. There had been the 2021 brutal crackdown on the Women, Life, Freedom protests; the 2019 fuel hike protests, mismanagement of the COVID pandemic, and a miserably declining economic situation. The first round of the election saw a measly turnout of 39.9%, the lowest ever in the history of The Islamic Republic—a system priding itself on massive turnouts, and using those to gain legitimacy at a world stage.

Even with such a low turnout the candidates of the Principalist ruling coalition lost. After 1997 the Reformists appealed to the deep grievances of large sections in Iran, campaigning on cultural and social freedoms, minority issues, and a more liberal foreign policy. Assumptions were that the Reformists would hugely benefit from higher turnout, as their votes came from the educated urban middle class in bigger cities, or those sidelined by the post-1979 government. Supposedly the government enjoys the strong support of close to 20 million voters, and they will always show up to vote for the Principalists. But with a turnout lower than 40% they ended up losing. The 8% turnout in the second round of the parliamentary election in Tehran in early May suggests that the government is hemorrhaging supporters, including from its most ardent, always-turn-out-to-vote demos.

Another new aspect was that the Reformist Pezeshkian won, without appealing to the supposed Reformist base of women, the youth, and the educated urban middle class. His messaging, especially in the first round, was as apolitical as possible. He kept repeating “Let’s not fight” and “let the experts work”. That changed in the second round when facing off against the more “radical” Principalist candidate.

Iran’s political debates don’t really deal with the question of economy. It often comes down to “we should make the economy better” or “we should have growth.” The main dividing lines over 20 years has been on social and cultural freedoms, and foreign policy.

Pezeshkian is a devout Muslim, but he stood closer to the side of freedom of lifestyle. He criticized lack of ‘proper’ Hijab not unlike the Principalists. But he censured authorities for the youth retreat from religious norms; and for harsh measures against those without ‘proper’ Hijab. He famously criticized authorities in the parliament following Mahsa Amini’s death in the custody of Iran’s infamous Morality Police. He also talked about the need to build ties with the West and making concessions to enable agreements. Zarif, the previous foreign minister who is the face of the Nuclear Deal between Iran and the West,  was appointed as Vice President in Strategic Affairs on Thursday

Then there was Speaker of Parliament Qalibaf who stopped short of talking about freedoms. He based his fourth losing campaign as a “strong manager,” or strongman, and repeated calls for dealing with the ‘problem’ of Afghan migrants in Iran, including promises to build a massive wall on Iran’s Eastern border. He started the election riding high in the polls but once more, everything soon turned sour for him. He seemed to be mostly on good terms with Pezeshkian who was recently elected to a fifth-term as member of the parliament, and was one of few prominent Reformist MPs during Qalibaf’s mandate.

Former nuclear negotiator Jalili was clearly on the other side, having his main support base among the ranks of hardliner Endurance Front, presenting himself as a crusader against the West and against corrupt, entrenched business elites in the country; an Ahmadinejad redux.

The Iranian left mostly stayed away from the elections. The left opposition abroad almost entirely boycotted the elections, as usual. That included the Tudeh party or various offshoots of the People’s Fedai Guerrillas, massive organizations in a bygone era now turned to miniscule groups bickering over their legacy. Many of the well known union organizers inside the country, who risk jail or have been jailed for their organizing work, also boycotted the whole affair. Iran bans independent labor unions and has ramped up its crackdown in the last few years amid a visible increase in their number and activities.

The purported leftists who decided to take part were divided between Jalili and Pezeshkian. Trade-offs abound. One circle, organizing through a YouTube channel called Jedaal (struggle) voted for Jalili. They portrayed him as an anti-imperialist, pro-worker, loyalist to the ideals of the 1979 revolution, and voted for him. They ignored his affinity with the most conservative faction in the government, or visible reactionary figures around him.

A second group of mostly Reformist-adjacent or former Reformist activists voted for Pezeshkian. They cited his support for social and cultural freedoms and his declared opposition to privatization of health and education sectors. But they overlooked the horde of economists and business leaders close to him, or his appearance at the Chamber of Commerce supporting free trade and market economy. Members of the Chamber of Commerce played notable roles in his transitional team.

Turnout was just below 50% in the second round. There were ridiculous attempts to link the turnout to foreign policy, both calling for and against voting. These forget that Iran was labeled a part of the Axis of Evil after massive turnouts for Khatami and Iran’s collaboration with US’s invasion of Afghanistan; or that the West and Raisi’s administration were reportedly very close to reviving the nuclear deal until some voices from the Iranian side killed it. Now that is not to say that Iran would not put up a more friendly face towards the West, especially the EU, at least until this year’s US presidential election.

With a failing economy Iran needs to strengthen its ties to every country it can. It needs big investments and lots of trade, just to keep the collapsing economy afloat. Former administration tried that with neighbors and with Russia and China. Biden kept the Maximum Pressure campaign that Trump’s administration started to cut Iran from the world. Some tiny tweaks followed with market volatility in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It wasn’t nearly enough.

Pezeshkian’s closest advisors were part of the team that brought about the Nuclear Deal in 2015. A second Trump administration might end all the possibilities for its revival or managing the friction between Iran and the West.Even given the most benign intentions and initiatives, the world that allowed for a nuclear deal might be over. As NATO feeds every last Ukrainian soul to the brutal Russian war machine to keep EU on its leash, the US shields its closest ally to enforce its apartheid rule and commit a genocide, to put the Middle East in its place. Taiwan might be next. The nuclear deal needed not only Iran and the US to sign onto the framework, but also France, Germany, and Russia and China.

In the region, the new government would follow the rapprochement with the Saudis and Emiratis to lower the heat so as to attract an inflow of investments from the other side of the Persian Gulf. But with tensions being at an all time high in the Middle East, it’s only a fool’s errand to predict what will happen. In the wake of Haniyeh’s assassination in Tehran, a full invasion of Lebanon by Israel, every day closer to reality, could upend not just Iran, but also the whole region.

Low turnout carries domestic consequences. Khamenei summed the numbers of voters in both rounds and called it 55 million, trying to hide how dismal the numbers were. Some on the left had predicted that the system would heal social wounds and recreate its ‘hegemony’ inside the country by shoring up votes with a serious reformist contender. If there were such a plan, it failed. To retake the lost hegemony the Islamic republic needs to do a lot more: curtailing its most rabid supporters, making serious concessions in terms of lifestyle, and pull off miracles in solving the economic downturn and re-establishing social safety nets.

Over the last two administrations there has been a visible erosion of state institutions. These were hollowed out first by US sanctions and then by domestic mismanagement and simple greed. It led to a shattering of state services and safety nets. It’s a big task to revive and rebuild what’s lost, especially with privatizers and business interests around the government. Pezeshkian, a medical practitioner himself, kept talking against privatization in the health and education sectors. That alone would be a major step. One could wish that the Islamic Republic in general and the Reformists in particular have learned their lesson. One may remember all the withered wishes.

The Reformists have traditionally been interested in relying on the Reformist-aligned Worker’s House and state-sanctioned Islamic Work Councils to deal with labor issues. However with the rise of independent-but-illegal unions and labor protest, that might not work anymore. Tactics are evolving and independent unions around the country are communicating much better than before. The Iranian Teacher Trade Association, in Tehran, can now consult with the workers organizing in Haft Tappeh Sugar Cane Mill in Shush. Oil sector contractors in Assaluyeh could learn from Heavy Equipment Production workers in Arak. Obviously, the state and its intelligence apparatus have also improved their tactics and harshened punishment for independent organizing. In a declining economy, workers have nothing to lose but chains. If Pezeshkian keeps promises to back freedoms, and provides some space for the activists and reduces the state’s repression, it could ease the labor movement efforts to organize and create opportunities for solidarity movements to form and move ahead. Pezeshkian and all other candidates promised to raise the minimum wage according to the official inflation rate. Though part of the law, over the years this has been neglected a lot. With inflation numbers around 40% or more, it would have a huge impact on the lives of the most marginalized.

Pezeshkian’s lack of ambitious, or even concrete, programs during the campaign was so apparent that he was criticized for it by both Jalili and those who boycotted the elections, and his own supporters too. He kept insisting on unity and reconciliation and referring to various limitations here and there. He envisages a technocratic government on good terms with all power centers, with vague promises of improvements.

Tajzadeh has just started his 10th year in jail in his second stint as a political prisoner. He boycotted the election and referred to Pezeshkian’s victory with low turnout as hollow. Had he outside prison, he might have described Pezeshkian as our own Starmer. It is, of course, a vastly different setting so a Starmer might be the best one could hope for in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Paris est une Fête, but who really gets to Celebrate?

The contradictory Olympics mix spectacle, gentrification and discrimination


03/08/2024

The Paris Olympic Games opening ceremony was far beyond my expectations and such a breath of fresh air in contrast with the intensified presence of the extreme right in the French media lately. Some of us commented that it felt like we lived in a country led by the left for a few hours before coming back to the harsh reality of a people resisting the rise of fascism via extreme right parties who threatened to win the last legislative elections. The extravagant opening ceremony encapsulated the diversity of France, its multiculturalism and rich history. 

Highlights of the show included the French-Malian singer Aya Nakamura performing alongside the orchestra of the Republican Guard. Nakamura has often received racist attacks from reactionary right-wing critics accusing her of humiliating the French language as she creatively mixes French with West-African dialects, as well as Arabic and English, in her songs. Her performance was all the more iconic that it took place in front of the highly symbolic French Academy, the conservative temple of the French language. One in the eye for her detractors. Other major moments included a re-creation of the Feast of Dionysus with drag queens paired with ballet and ballroom performances displaying an inclusive choice of models and dancers with body diversity. Feminism was also at the forefront of the ceremony with (cardboard) statues of ten French historic feminist figures including decolonial activists Louise Michel and Gisèle Halimi. 

And the show created by artistic director Thomas Jolly and his team did not stop on TV, since the second best part was the reaction of the right wing on social media. Outraged by the opening ceremony, they deemed the show to be embarrassing for the image of France abroad, not appropriate to be watched by children because of drag queens and a sequence showing a love triangle as an homage to Truffaut’s Jules et Jim. Some even considered the scene of a beheaded Marie-Antoinette bleeding figure while death-metal band Gojira inflamed the Conciergerie to be clearly satanic and obscene. Marie-Antoinette is thence still the #1 decapitated figure horrifying spectators on social media, but not an ounce of concern is expressed for the videos of actual decapitated children from Gaza that keep being shared online.

Although it’s hard to distinguish between what was imposed on Jolly by the French government and the IOC and what falls under his actual artistic choices, some moments in the ceremony clouded the picture. Some might say that the ceremony was altogether hypocritical for showing an idyllic France when minorities are constantly endangered, it can also be understood as an artistic decision to foreground resistance against our politicians and an opportunity to show an alternative French society, one possibly based on human values. 

As singer Juliette Armanet sang one of the Olympic ceremony’s classics, John Lennon’s Imagine,  “We stand united for peace” appeared while French commentators highlighted the anti-capitalist nature of the song. Quite a jarring description to highlight anti-capitalism when LVMH, the official sponsor of the games, made sure to showcase its products throughout the whole ceremony and most importantly, a very discordant message on our screens when the Israeli delegation was allowed to take part in the Olympics despite the ongoing genocide in Gaza—an asymmetrical principle when Russian athletes are banned from international competition. The Palestinian delegation, rather small as about 400 Palestinian athletes were murdered by the Israeli state, has been enthusiastically acclaimed by the public during the ceremony. 

That said, it didn’t refrain the French government from heightening the repression against Palestinian support during the games as the display of Palestinian flags has been banned with a fine of 135€ for whoever defies the ban, when supporters of other countries are free to wave their flags. This ban happens in a context where France was already under fire for its racist and Islamophobic ban on the hijab for competing athletes, a liberty supposed to be secured by the French secular law. Some women are therefore prevented from competing for arbitrary reasons, but the IOC allowed Steven van de Velde, a convicted rapist, to play on the Dutch volleyball team. 

It should also be pointed out that the ceremony almost did not happen, as a strike threat initiated by the union for performing artists (part of CGT) loomed over the Olympic Games. Strikers’ demands included the transfer of image rights and reimbursement of transport and accommodation considering their total salary would have gone to those expenses given Paris’ housing prices. Added to this, a difference in treatment for performers who would dance side by side was denounced between intermittent artists directly hired by the production company and other artists hired for the ceremony through their own company. The strike call was eventually lifted shortly before the opening ceremony day after artists obtained more satisfying working conditions. 

Critics of the Paris Olympic Games don’t only concern themselves with the opening ceremony. The organization of the event and the social cost of the Olympics highlighted by the collective Le Revers de la Médaille, as on each occurrence of the games, is no minor consideration. Students were one of the first groups impacted, with 3200 student accommodation units being requisitioned for the event, and out of 1400 rehousing applications only 100 students received a new accommodation. The police officers from other regions in France, for whom the studios were requisitioned, were able to get the units cleaned and disinfected after the intervention of the police union since a lot of accommodations were unsanitary and infested with cockroaches —a demand student unions voiced in vain for years, but which happened instantly for the police staff. 

Numerous abusive evictions also took place in a city with skyrocketing rent prices, as greedy landlords hoped to make a profit by renting their apartments on Airbnb during the event, leaving hundreds of tenants in very precarious situations. To give a perfect postcard rendering of Paris for tourists, about 12,500 homeless people were also swept from the streets, squats, and shanty towns and sent to other French regions by bus. And when the government sees evictions of homeless people as a necessity and a minor issue since they are already in the streets, the reality is strikingly different. A lot of those people lost their jobs as a result, and were uprooted from their social ties in neighborhoods where people knew them and cared for them, or from their solidarity networks for those living in squats. 

When locals are not evicted, their already shrinking commons and highly necessary natural spaces, vectors of biodiversity in dense urban concrete areas are being appropriated to build more amenities for the event. It has been the case of the Aubervilliers Workers’ Gardens where 4.000 square metres of gardens were destroyed to make way for a solarium adjoining an Olympic pool, a project that was eventually aborted. Similarly, the sex worker community already facing difficult work situations, physically and mentally endangered by French laws penalizing both sex workers and clients, is also targeted with greater anti-prostitution campaigns putting them in even more danger. 

Under the pretext of security, the Olympic Games have also been the perfect excuse to implement mass surveillance measures with algorithm-driven smart cameras until 2025, way after the end of the competition. These measures pose considerable threat to personal liberties since our biometric data could be collected and machines are being trained to detect absolutely normal behavior— such as walking in a different direction than others or standing in a place for too long — and deeming them suspicious. 

The Olympic Games also mark the return of the infamous QR code zone system, a bitter memory of Covid times no one was pleased to see return. The system announced in advance made Parisians flee the city before the games, but not everyone can afford to leave their homes, creating Kafkaesque commute situations all over the city for local workers. Some patients are unable to reach their doctor’s office when located in restricted areas even with a proof of appointment. Nor can ambulances and taxis access the red zones, and some patients have been asked to walk and use public transportation after receiving surgery. 

The price of transportation tickets also doubled and no free transportation tickets have been offered to spectators as was first advertised. For disabled people living in Paris, a city already hostile to them, with only 3% of public transportation accessible in normal times, the daily headache of getting from point A to point B intensifies with the QR zones. No exceptions have been made for them, even when they have to make long detours because pedestrian crossings are closed. And as pointed out by feminist disability awareness collective Les Dévalideuses, the newly accessible housing infrastructures built to host athletes will probably end up being owned by private investors looking for return on investment with unaffordably high rents for a disabled population in severe lack of accessible housing and often in financially precarious situations, as disability often leads to financial difficulty and vice-versa. 

Beyond city accessibility, the actual format of the Olympic Games deserves to be scrutinized. Pierre de Coubertin, the ‘inventor’ of the modern Olympic Games was a major racist, sexist and colonialist, preventing people of color and women from participating in the games and the heritage of the discriminatory ‘past’ of the games lives on. Paris 2024 marks the first Olympic Games supposedly achieving a 50/50 male to female parity, but is that really the case? 

The Olympics are definitely a capitalist tool crystallizing into a worldwide event the glorification of idealized able bodies fitting a certain norm, perpetuating a cult of performance and meritocracy. Paralympic athletes still don’t perform on the side of the ‘real’ athletes, they don’t take part in the main opening ceremony with them, often don’t get paid, tickets for the events are cheaper, no one knows their name and this year cuts have been made in the size of the French Paralympic delegations to save money, which probably wouldn’t have happened in the regular olympics. 

The Paralympics, the main, if not only, televised competition showing disabled bodies turned out to be quite detrimental to the representation and inclusion of disabled people. How so? It entertains a discourse centered on the idea that disabled people can only be valued if they overcome their handicaps, teaching us a normative life lesson. But disabled people are not meant to be a life inspiration for an abled public, and disabled athletes are athletes like others who deserve the same coverage as given to the regular Olympics. 

Relegating disabled bodies to subaltern ranks outside of the main competition is surely a way to reinforce the concept of the ideal body for each gender. Yet the presence of trans and intersex athletes weakens the notion of the gender binary, illuminating these categories as fictions perpetuated by the competition. In French podcast Les Couilles sur la Table focusing on masculinities, socio-historian Anaïs Bohuon underlines the interesting fact that only women’s (natural) testosterone levels are tested to assess their right to compete in the women category — as has been the case with South-African runner Caster Semenya or more recently with Algerian boxer Imane Khelif — but this is not the case for men. The obsessive need to carefully examine women and define what their bodies should or shouldn’t be, in addition to objectifying them, reinforces the alleged weak nature of women.

Khelif who faces intense waves of transphobia from the likes of bigots like J.K. Rowling and Elon Musk has a variation of her sex traits called DSD (differences of sexual development). The National Institutes of Health maintains that it does not under any case question the fact that she is a cis woman and Khelif does not consider herself as trans or intersex. But even athletes without this variation face transphobic discrimination. French tennis player Amélie Mauresmo’s opponents and the media often questioned her gender, this coupled with lesbophobic attacks since she was open about her sexual orientation. The most famous female tennis player to have constantly faced transphobia remains Serena Williams, highlighting the fact that black women are overly discriminated against. 

The deviance from a gender division highly based on a ‘performance’ of femininity absolutely negates the diversity of bodies in nature. US swimmer Michael Phelps was not discarded from competing on account of his double-jointed ankles and hyper-jointed chest for instance, because this deviation from a norm is valued in men but seen as suspicious in women. Bohuon also brings to light the fact that no one is equal in competition and that when biological characteristics are always the major factors questioned in sports, socio-economic inequalities or the confidence gap between men/women are also highly influential factors. Even within categories of disabled athletes, some disabilities are so different that creating homogeneous groups turns out to be impossible. 

Bohuon also reminds us that under the false pretense of ensuring a fair game, women have often been discarded from competing with men, and not always out of ‘fairness’ but because sports represented (and still do) a tool of oppression justifying men’s physical superiority over women. It was long inconceivable that women could compete with men and sometimes beat them. The case of the infamous double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius competing in the regular Olympics is also interesting considering this double treatment. Subaltern categories need to exist to sustain the myth of a natural superiority of able-bodied men, yet when the subalterns prove themselves to be as successful as the latter category, they are cast aside and accused of unfair advantage. 

But should the Olympic Games be canceled altogether? The values that these sports bring — such as respect, team spirit, solidarity or tolerance — are honorable, but how could we further improve the Olympic Games to make them inclusive for all of us? Should we rethink gender categories as gender is a social construct? Ableism? How could this be implemented? Or is the very idea of competition actually doomed if we only focus on performance and not on the beauty of the game, on good treatment of horses for equestrian sports, on team cohesion, on outstanding performance in adversity for athletes of the refugee team, for instance, or on so many other aspects that could be assigned more value? The 33rd Olympic Games have achieved a façade of parity for the first time, but purple washing has good days ahead if the IOC doesn’t engage in a deeper reflection on its myriad disparities. 

Jeremy Corbyn’s Independent campaign in Britain’s 2024 General Election

A View from the Inside


02/08/2024

The outcome of the 2024 British General Election was never in doubt. A Conservative Party lurching from crisis to crisis, from leader to leader, was staring at a heavy defeat. Opinion polls up to 24 hours before the election consistently gave Keir Starmer’s Labour a lead of 15-20%. 

Starmer dreamt of winning a landslide victory over the Tories but equally important to him were two other dreams: the marginalisation of left-wing opponents within the Party, and the total vanquishing and humiliation of the left-wing former leader of the Party, Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn was standing this time as an Independent candidate in his innerLondon, Islington North Constituency that he had represented for the Labour Party since 1983. Independents, however well-known, rarely succeed in breaking through Britain’s archaic “first past the post” election system dominated by big party machines. 

Starmer won his landslide: 64% of the seats in Parliament but, astonishingly, on less than 34% of the vote share (far fewer than the 40% vote share Corbyn achieved in his first attempt to win a General Election in 2017). Despite the Tories’ disastrous campaign, their vote held up at 24%. The surprise in the pack was the far-right populist Reform Party, led by Nigel Farage, which collected more than 14% of the national vote share and won five seats in Parliament, taking votes from both former Tory and Labour supporters. 

In absolute numbers, combined votes for the Tories and Reform outstripped Labour. In Starmer’s own seat, his personal vote went down by more than 18,000. A large chunk of those votes went instead to an excellent Independent left-wing candidate, Andrew Feinstein, a South African born anti-Zionist Jew who at one time served as an ANC MP under Nelson Mandela. Many of Starmer’s closest right-wing allies saw their personal vote fall massively in their constituencies. Jonathan Ashworth, one such ally who would certainly have held a Cabinet post, suffered a shock defeat to an independent. And Starmer’s new Health Minister, Wes Streeting, defending a majority of more than 5,200, saw that shrink to barely 500. This was due to an Independent challenge from 23-year-old Leanne Mohammed, a British-Palestinian who focused significantly on Labour’s shortcomings in its stance on the Gaza War. 

Starmer’s dream of finally destroying Corbyn turned to a nightmare. The ever-energetic veteran left-winger won a comfortable majority of 7,500 over his Labour opponent, Praful Nargund, a young multi-millionaire who has made his fortune as director of a set of private health and venture capitalist companies, and is an unimpressive local Labour councillor in the neighbouring constituency of Islington South. 

A week before the election was announced, the Labour hierarchy had started a nomination process in Islington North from which Corbyn was barred. Nargund was one of a few names put forward. Once the election was declared, that internal process was abruptly ended and Nargund was simply imposed on the local party, with local members having no say. 

Newspapers claimed that despite Corbyn’s campaign as an independent starting positively and energetically, opinion polls suggested that Nargund was 5% ahead in that seat as the election day approached. The media described exit polls on the day as “too close to call”. They and Starmer were equally in denial about Corbyn’s continued appeal and the nature and effectiveness of what he had described as a “people-powered campaign”.

I rejoined the Labour Party in 2015, when Corbyn stood for the Labour leadership. I resigned in 2022 in protest of their attacks on democracy, their anti-left witch-hunting and the utter dishonesty of their supposed campaign against antisemitism which was anything but, having resulted in many left-wing Jews being pushed out of the Party. 

I was excited, and not at all surprised, when Corbyn declared that he was standing as an Independent. And having been heavily involved in that campaign at different levels, I can identify some of the key factors that made it successful, and how that might inspire other successful campaigning from the Left.

At its heart was:

  • accessibility – valuing people and enabling them to contribute their skills and energy in a way that was possible for them.
  • egalitarianism – an absence of unnecessary hierarchies, and a strong collective spirit built on working together, and online channels of communication between activists that enabled a free flow of ideas, reflections and suggestions.
  • principle – a campaign that was unafraid to express its radical political messages in straightforward language, as they related to both local and global issues.

These values were modelled by Corbyn himself. As a politician who is completely unafraid to engage directly with the public, he is an increasingly rare species in Britain. He constantly seeks to talk with people, listen to them, and work alongside them. He urged us to keep to positive messages, not to descend into the gutter with opponents when they abused us.

We knew that, should he stand as an independent, people would travel a long way to support him. I took part in one of several canvassing sessions on the first weekend after the election was called. Around 25 of us formed a circle at our meeting point and people briefly introduced themselves. The two people running the canvass were in tears as they explained they had resigned from the Labour Party that very morning after many, many years, in order to work to elect Corbyn again.

Several people in the circle were local but then the areas named became more distant, until one man, a train driver, said he had travelled from Hull (290 kilometres away) that morning to join the campaign! That seemed astonishing, but later in the campaign we encountered people from all over England as well as Scotland, Wales and Ireland. In the campaign’s final days, one of the most hostile anti-Corbyn journalists claimed that Corbyn campaigners were being bussed-in with expenses paid to flood the constituency. This was ridiculed by many on social media who described taking their own decisions to travel hundreds of kilometres at their own expense, to campaign for a politician they loved and believed in.

A hub was created close to the offices of the Peace & Justice project that Corbyn founded in 2021. That hub operated almost round the clock. Each time I visited I could feel the positive buzz within – people of all ages, ethnicities and backgrounds, phone-banking, stuffing envelopes, organising canvassing teams, inputting canvass data, dealing with press enquiries and social media, all while consuming tea, donated biscuits and small treats in abundance.

Much of the operation followed a traditional pattern – leafleting voters, returning to hold a conversation with them, inputting data captured, chasing up definite and undecided voters close to election day, and of course on the day itself. But, especially on weekends, canvassing sessions were held immediately after a short rally with guest speakers, including Corbyn himself, focusing on key issues such as housing, health, poverty and the environment. These swiftly arranged local rallies often attracted hundreds, and a good proportion stayed to join canvassing teams.

Corbyn was in the constituency every day, but combined that with his vital campaign work for Palestine in which he had been prominent for several months, as well as attending public meetings for the local candidates to face questions on issues such as the environment, housing and health. Those attending these meetings were unimpressed to see two empty chairs – both Labour and the Tories instructed their candidates not to attend these events, and Corbyn’s labour opponent made the feeblest of excuses.

Responses on the doorstep, to be honest, were mixed. Enthusiastic constituents would describe how Corbyn had helped them solve difficult problems with great determination; but we met others so alienated by politics in 2024 Britain, they were refusing to vote at all. And in a country that in fairly recent times had witnessed the establishment’s sustained character assassination of Corbyn, in which the media, who repeated false accusations trying to label Britain’s most prominent anti-racist parliamentarian an antisemite, we met some families taken in by these lies. Nevertheless, canvass teams were reporting that Corbyn had a lot of support especially on the bigger housing estates.

Three weeks into the campaign, a new element was added: “dynamic canvassing”. This took place outside tube stations and supermarkets, where lots of people passed by who you could try to engage in a conversation about the election. They would tell you about how they met Corbyn in a particular campaign or through being involved with a community group, and why they valued him so much. When Corbyn himself appeared on “dynamic canvassing” forays, he would soon be surrounded by people asking him questions or taking selfies with him!

Outside supermarkets we were also confronted with sometimes aggressive behaviour from those who had had their minds poisoned by anti-Corbyn media propaganda in recent years, but if you could get into a conversation it was possible to challenge their beliefs. In one instance a heavily built angry young person was shouting at me that he couldn’t vote for Corbyn because Corbyn was “an antisemite”. I responded, “well I’m Jewish and I’m supporting him; lets chat about this.” He continued to pour out accusations littered with “terrorist”, “Hamas” and so on, but I stayed calm and gradually drew him into a conversation, and pointed to other people leafleting for Corbyn nearby. I suggested we could ask them to join the conversation, “because she’s Jewish… and that one, she’s Jewish too…” I told him some truths about Corbyn’s support for Jewish people through his anti-fascist work. Then I told him about an old Jewish cemetery that, in the 1990s, the local council was allowing to be sold off to developers to build on the land. Corbyn worked with Jewish groups to save the cemetery. I added a further detail implicating the then leader of the council, Margaret Hodge, prominent in later years for accusing Corbyn of “antisemitism”. Our conversation ended with this constituent calm but somewhat confused. And of course other passers-by were listening in.

Alongside daily canvassing of households and “dynamic canvassing”, the campaign organised a team doing specialist work among the different communities, especially the large Muslim communities locally. Over the decades, Corbyn has built up very positive relations with religious/ethnic minorities, community campaigns and local trade unionists. This “community engagement team” worked through the campaign period to strengthen support from those groups. Lots of work was done with local mosques. Trade unionists who knew Corbyn from their picket lines came from far and wide to canvass for him. 

In the last 10 days of the campaign a letter was made public, especially on social media, with more than 70 signatures of local Labour Party officers who had resigned from the Party in order to campaign openly for Corbyn. In the final week of the campaign, embarrassing material about the Labour candidate’s involvement with private health was getting an airing.  He did not refute these himself, though his supporters described it as a “smear campaign”. It wasn’t. It simply contrasted direct evidence of his vocal support for further privatisation in the health service with Corbyn’s decades of support for the National Health Service.

Social media was flooded with photos from the canvassing campaign. Nargund’s campaign photos featured very few recognisable faces from the local Labour Party, but he did have several featuring organised support from the “Jewish labour Movement“ (JLM) – an explicitly pro-Zionist group affiliated to Labour but firmly on its right wing.  It had played a key role campaigning within Labour against Corbyn when he was leader and worked overtime to get members critical of Israel/Zionism disciplined and expelled from the party. JLM openly boycotted the 2019 election, save for a few seats. Effectively they were seeking a Labour election defeat to the Tories, the party of the Hostile Environment towards migrants and refugees. Well known and deeply unpopular right wing members of the Labour Party, such as Peter Mandelson, Margaret Hodge and Tom Watson publicly canvassed for Nargund. This may not have helped him!

In the early hours of 5th July, news came from the count that Corbyn’s camp were becoming quietly more confident while Nargund’s camp were more circumspect and preparing themselves for a disappointment. The announcement of the result, followed by Corbyn’s defiant but respectful acceptance speech, was a joy to watch. When we heard over the coming hours that a number of other left-wing Independents had succeeded, that joy was doubled.  This election has done much more than simply end Tory rule. It has shown that there are ways to successfully challenge the machine politics of right-wing labour, and we intend to build on that. 

German Culture must Confront its Past

How Palestine turned a classical musician and recovering child prodigy into a revolutionary


31/07/2024

I was hired some months ago by the Münchener Bach Orchester to lead the viola section during a performance of Mendelssohn’s monumental Elias. I’m suffering from dysthymia these days and being as I barely made it Munich with clean laundry and a packed suitcase, I started preparing this juicy work the night before the first rehearsal. I found myself in a chic budget hotel that I booked myself with some of the last morsels of bank credit that I have left, my credit card already maxed out to the tee. After being forced to pay four years of taxes in one year after handing in my 2021 taxes on time according to a deadline given by German the government, I’m currently a starving artist to say the least.

I opened my computer and began practicing with a recording from Spotify in the comforts of my peaceful, air-conditioned room. The references to Israel began increasing as the tracks went on. After some time, my heart started racing and I felt as though I was going to have a panic attack. It turns out I had been hired to play a seemingly endless and majestic ode to Israel, one which the German government surely funded and paid for. The sponsors of the Münchener Bach Orchester include the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München and the Landeshauptstadt München Kulurreferat.

Had I not invested nearly 300€ in a hotel and been dependent on this very gig to pay my rent in a few days, I would certainly have been the first person on a train back to Cologne. My heart was clearly beholden to my rebellious, rule-smashing nature and to my lifelong misdiagnosed ADHD, because I was ready to flee and will always be ready to flee such situations, my life circumstances be as they may. The only thing I could do at this point was to reattach my Socialist Worker’s Party “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” button to my handbag. 

The location for the rehearsals could not have been more surreal. The gaping, humid mouth of the cathedral that we rehearsed in, the painfully Catholic St. Jakob am Anger, is located in the vicinity of both the Jewish Museum and the Ohel Jakob Synagogue, the latter donned with two proud and imposing Israeli flags on either side of the entrance. I innocently sat next to the Sinai-Ganztagiges-Grundschule playground during a break to escape the pelting rays of the sun and set my keffiyeh on the back of a bench, only taking in the full breadth of the vicinity after I spotted Restaurant Einstein a few feet away. My resolve to wear my keffiyeh to the workplace in the name of “never again for anyone” had never felt more urgent, particularly during one of the most brutal and indescribably dehumanizing weeks for Palestinians. Eight schools had been bombed in Gaza and the Poliovirus had been found in water supplies. Hundreds of people had been brutally exterminated.

As Mendelssohn’s Biblical references to Israel carried on during our rehearsals, the physical weight of the viola hung heavily on my arm. My decision to wrap my keffiyeh around my neck during the dress rehearsal felt like a massive mistake as buckets of sweat poured onto my instrument inside of the steamy cathedral, but its resistance offered me strength. It provided me emotional support as my body was tugged to the ground and my childhood trauma was deposited into my viola’s wooden weight, my ears wincing through earplugs at the sound of Mendelssohn’s monstrous work. I can’t help but wonder if my hyperacusis and permanent over-sensitivity to sound is not only a result of working in major symphony orchestras, but also from being beholden to the caustic sounds of a career that I never wanted and I was never given a voice to fight against as a child, as gorgeous and profound as the music itself can be. 

Our buses for the concert in Ottobeuren left aptly from HMTM München, Hitler’s old headquarters that have been converted into the central building of the Munich Music Conservatory. It’s the building from which I received a master’s degree in historical performance practice as well as a sponsor of the Münchener Bach Orchester. A #niewiederistjetzt flag currently flaps silently before the genocidal, life-sucking stare of Hitler’s former outpost. Just a few feet away, a rainbow pinkwashing flag dons the right entrance of the building, all of it serving as a revolting illustration of the evil glibness of Germany’s state-sponsored, performative guiltwashing narrative and its continued failure at denazification.

In Netanyahu’s bone-chilling speech before US Congress this week, he exclaimed “After October 7th never again is now!” It is no small coincidence that this very same appropriated slogan which is being used to persecute and arrest Palestinians, Jews and their allies in this country stands peacefully against the backdrop of a building that used to house Hitler’s stolen art, much of it looted from Jewish collectors over the course of WWII. With the NRS Holocaust Memorial Center situated just behind this old Gestapo garrison, it is indeed hard to fathom the insane absurdity that Wagner, a known antisemite and Hitler’s favorite darling composer, is still allowed to resonate from rehearsal rooms within the Nazi bowels of the Führerbau, even if it is banned from being performed there. 

Felix Mendelssohn and his family were certainly no strangers to antisemitism. Though they converted to Christianity, they were of Jewish heritage and Moses Mendelssohn, Felix’s grandfather, was one of Germany’s greatest thinkers of the Jewish enlightenment. Felix converted at a time when many Jews did so to circumvent racism. The problem is indeed not that his music is being performed in Germany. The problem is that Elias is being programmed at a time when Germany has decided who is a good Jew and who is a bad Jew, the latter facing widespread cancellations, discrimination and police violence. Choosing to program Felix’s monumental work about Israel in this current moment and in the context of German state funding is a political decision to place him in the ahistorical framework of Zionism before a concept of Jewish Zionism even existed. It is precisely this reductionist, narcissistic lack of self-awareness that prevents Germany from seeing that “never again” means “never again for anyone.”

As we arrived in Ottobeuren amid this farcical repetition of history, it felt as though we were descending upon a fairytale from the hills beyond. The monastery’s stupendous Baroque facade and breathtaking inner ornamentation were erected in the eighteenth century. Ottobeuren itself, however, was once a self-ruling imperial abbey of the Holy Roman Empire and I couldn’t help but envision the genocidal, colonialist blood that stained its parochial, rampart-like towers. After walking around in this phantasmagorical, white colonial landscape and receiving some accusatory, panicky looks from a small group of concertgoers after placing a keffiyeh over my head to protect it from the burning sun, there was a short dress rehearsal. I subsequently found myself unpacking my things upstairs in a binary gendered dressing room before the concert. As one of my colleagues was brought dark tights to cover her immodest legs peaking out from under her short dress and everyone was concerned about covering their elbows and bare shoulders, I forced myself to pull on my concert clothes in a bathroom stall. I didn’t even bother with makeup. I just wanted to survive. 

The concertmaster approached me just before we were about to go on stage. I’ve clearly never been very good at hiding my emotions and my struggle the last days had been visible. She asked, “Macht es dir Spaß? Ich finde was du machst wirklich toll!” Just the day before, she had yelled at me harshly for not paying attention to the conductor while answering my stand partner’s bowing questions. I answered, “Willst du eine ehrliche Antwort bekommen?” After beating around the bush, I eventually got right to the point. My interest in politics had already started making the rounds and I felt she might be onto my escape plan. “Ich habe diesen Beruf nicht ausgewählt. Ich habe nur Musik mein ganzes Leben gemacht. Ich habe auch viel Trauma von der Musik erlebt. Ich war auch nie in der Schule vor 19 Jahre Alt, also konnte ich wirklich nicht anderes machen.” I pause for a second and think I’ve made a terrible mistake. She tried to convince me to keep my career options open, but as the concert raged on endlessly, I knew this would be the last time I would ever play such a loud, grandiose piece in my life—a piece about the Biblical Israel that the antisemetic, evangelical right-wing Christians of my childhood are using to justify the first life-streamed genocide in history, no less. 

The words of the concertmaster, one the leaders of a world-famous Baroque orchestra in Germany, were once my dream. They fell on my increasingly deaf ears and an emotionally dead body. Emotional deafness is the only thing that allows me to survive such performances now. I performed with so many kind people that day, including old classmates and a former professor who can only be described as one of the best in the bizz, but the silence of the church after the performance while the bell tower clamored proudly and repressively confirmed my resolve to quickly phase out my music career of over thirty years, my eyes having unsuccessfully grazed the audience to find a single Person of Color.

My mind wandered in this moment to when I was a soloist on the Disney Channel with the Disney Young Musicians’ Symphony Orchestra when I was just ten years old. I thought of the time I played through an entire violin concerto from memory for my teacher, Robert Lipsett, in the sweltering heat in Hudson, Ohio and he said nothing afterwards excepts that I’d swiped a fly off of my leg while performing it and I should never, ever do anything like that ever again. My crystal clear actualizations relived the emotional imprint of Emanuel Borok, my childhood teacher in Dallas, TX, who “discovered” me when I was seven. Once his favorite pet student, he coldly dismissed me decades later after I was no longer able to serve his narcissistic narrative. I was reminded of the vile Jascha Brodsky, of the sexual abuse stories that I had personally heard from his former students and of Lara St. John’s harrowing account of rape that led to her attempted suicide. My family moved to Philadelphia for me to study with this very pedophile when I was twelve years old. Luckily, he died a month later. I recalled the email my alma mater, the Curtis Institute of Music, sent us in response to Lara St. John’s report, urging us to remain silent and to not discuss this topic with anyone. 

Most importantly, I remembered my classmates from Curtis, Chris Falzone and Rachel Serber, both of whom have tragically committed suicide. Chris had been a soloist with the DYMSO orchestra just one year before me. When we wandered the halls of Curtis together his pallid, gray, pimply complexion caused him to look like a frail ghost of his former vibrant child prodigy self. We all attended the same conservatory that is tuition-free, has a student body of ca. 160 students, hired a tax advisor for us every year and had a psychiatrist on site, but offered me no substantive emotional or psychological support after my mother tried to commit suicide during my first year of studies. When Lara St. John approached Dean Fitzpatrick after her completely dehumanizing sexual abuse as a minor, she was told “Oh, for God’s sake, who do you think they’re going to believe? Some 15-year-old kid or someone who has been here for decades?” This very same school later hired me to play a concert for one of the worst war criminals of all time, Henry Kissinger, at the American Academy in Berlin. 

As I continue to have flashbacks of the Encore School for Strings that I attended with Hillary Hahn, Brodsky the pedophile’s world-renowned student, and I think of Kit Armstrong, who was both a music and math prodigy and was just ten years old when we attended Curtis together, I wonder how many careers of horribly abusive and self-serving pedagogues we have all built up with our talent, served graciously on a platter of genius on a banquet table busying itself beneath the sword of Damocles. The story of Jaqueline du Pre, one of the most legendary cellists of all time, is one that Dr. Gabor Mate always recalls fondly. He is convinced she developed MS because, just like me, she never wanted to be a musician. She was so afraid of being a disappointment she became a willing human sacrifice to the cello. Jacqueline told her sister when she was just nine years old “Don’t tell Mum but … when I grow up, I won’t be able to walk or move.” She died paralyzed from MS when she was just just forty-two. It was completely self-evident to me as a young girl that I would eventually be free from the relentless practicing and emotional isolation and pain that I endured every day, but that deep thorns would have to be removed from my body and soul.  

Midway through the concert, a wave of emotions flashed over me as I envisioned the liberation on other end of this journey. I will be forever grateful to Palestine because it broke the final chains of an illusory, propagandized world, a world I instinctively knew I needed to be freed from before I had ever heard of Palestine. It liberated me from a heteronormative, colonized existence and will continue to demand that I fully explore what the music and fundamentalist Christian homeschooling industries have hidden from me all of these years. Perhaps my optimism is also an illusion, perhaps it’s not. Maybe I will end up in the Twilight Zone, alone and eternally weeping over my broken glasses in the midst of apocalyptic piles of books like Henry Bemis, but the light at the other end of the tunnel doesn’t feel like a train. I feel full of great hope. 

JD Vance: A Parvenu Liberal Apostate and a Threat to Democracy

JD Vance exemplifies the grimy realities of climbing the American social hierarchy. He is willing to watch the world burn if only for a chance to rule the ashes.


While his background and upbringing in poverty may make him seem like an enigma in the Republican party, he is as routine as they get. His rise highlights the failure of the liberal establishment’s strategy of adopting identity politics after they knew they couldn’t rely on class-based interests anymore and still receive big donor funding. This upbringing is merely a tool deployed to reach the upper echelons of elite power and appear as an average Joe, likeable. The collapse of the American economy and the haemorrhaging of jobs from the industrial heartland meant that liberal parties could either represent those who had been abandoned by capital or create new lines of attack to sustain the very corporate backers who left these Americans suffering. They chose the latter. JD Vance may seem like he is part of the former, but he is not. He represents how extreme these power-hungry elites have become.

Helpfully, the piece of work that brought him fame also charted his life story. Raised in Middletown, Ohio, alternately by his mother and grandmother, he describes a life marred by tragedy, disadvantage, and stress. He includes some genuinely charming anecdotes about his grandmother and his affection for her, making the best out of their lives in a town and a region forgotten by the American state. Some of his anecdotes were harrowing accounts of his mother’s struggle with addiction, offering young JD first-hand experience of the opioid crisis and the pain that corporate greed can inflict upon working families. 

The podcast “If Books Could Kill” re-released their discussion of this book and it is well worth a listen. As soon as JD decides to join the marines, however, the book and, presumably JD himself, takes a familiarly sinister, and for the book’s part, boring, turn. He then takes on the role of American social climber. By serving in the Marines for a few years, and by Marines we mean the Marine press corps, he can climb through those barriers otherwise unavailable to most people with his background. 

This totally unproblematic means of social mobility provides him with the ability to attend Yale Law School. He then takes great glee in pointing out all the differences between the upper classes and his own culture, like the class dynamics pointed out in the movie Titanic, set over 100 years ago. He is also in an inexplicable rush to get out of university, finishing it two years earlier than is usual. Probably, this is because his background precluded him from fitting in, so he could have had a cogent diagnosis of the problem of exclusive culture at elite universities, but instead he turns back to look at his own community and blame them for their own misfortune. This is the truly bizarre turn, as he presumably doesn’t think he has these personal deficiencies supposedly endemic in his rural Ohio town himself, but still feels excluded in Yale to the point where he wants to get out of there as soon as possible. 

It isn’t the exclusive culture or the high barriers to entry, or the over-reliance on mega-donors or the intellectual hegemony of these universities that are the problem, it’s just the woke students and the Marxists that are the problem. You could wonder sometimes when exactly the change took place in JD’s mind, but at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter. He is well and truly on his way to becoming a Republican. 

But this doesn’t mean he skips the chance to punch down at the community that raised him, instead deciding to point out some examples of what he calls weakness of character amongst the population of Middletown. These include pointing out that using food stamps to buy groceries and cash to buy alcohol is somehow some sort of dishonest scheme instead of plainly being the rules of the program itself. Apparently, there is no racial element to Ohioan’s scepticism towards Obama, but rather they resent him because he wears a suit to work. But his own suit-wearing success in that state would suggest otherwise. One story about a man regularly showing up late for work was apparently the entirety of explanation JD needed for why so few companies located there anymore. Not the expansion of these corporations into cheap labour markets like China or the heavy reliance on automation, the inherent laziness of working-class Americans was to blame.  

This book received universal acclaim from liberal and conservative media alike. Always a cause for suspicion. Written around the time of the 2016 election, liberals were casting around for an explanation, an excuse for how they missed the rise and popularity of Donald Trump. Anything to shift blame from themselves and their own failed policies. A book like this deprived them of the need to take any responsibility. The rise of Trump was fuelled by the lazy incompetents outlined in this book by one of their own. Phew. On the conservative side, this is exactly the position they hold towards poor people in general. JD checked out as one of their own.  

His transition into politics was also familiar. Going to Silicon Valley, ostensibly as a venture capitalist, but without doubt a career in politics also in mind. At the time of his candidacy for the Ohio Senate, I remember one of the Chapo Trap House guys imitating how Vance would sell his time working with billionaires to the masses of Ohio, spending his entire time there saying things like “A latte? Huh, I’ll have a beer”. This strategy seems to have worked. Attracting the attention of Peter Thiel (hopefully not too much), he received $10 million for his Ohio Senate race. How a gay man can offer so much support to someone who opposes same-sex marriage is not too much of a conundrum when you remember that Peter Thiel is a billionaire. Even Mayor Pete can see that. 

These same liberals reacted shocked when, despite being one of the last to resist the temptation, he came out in support of Donald Trump, having previously compared him to Hitler. Now, he possesses the zeal of the converted. He is determinedly anti-trans rights, anti-abortion, and recently wrote an introduction to a book written by the mind behind Project 2025, a project that hopes to radically reshape all aspects of American society, from migration to education. A 2021 interview resurfaced where he stated that people with children should get more votes. This is just what it takes to be a member of the Republican party in 2024. 

Someone like this reveals what the liberal establishment really feel about the working class. They allow him to be elevated to a position of prominence and act surprised when he turns out to be racist. There is no difference between JD Vance the marine, the venture capitalist, the Senator, the VP pick, the Republican. Those who like to think otherwise or act surprised are going to have a lot more surprises coming their way if him and Trump win the election in November. In 2016, there was an element of surprise amongst all political actors to Trump’s victory. Not this time. The conservative movement are ready for power now, and, at 39, Vance represents the potential horror they can inflict upon Americans and the world for years to come.

JD Vance represents what the Republican party has gone through under Trump as well as its xenophobic, fascist future. He also represents the output of a liberal establishment too blind to see their own role in bringing about a figure like Trump, and their eagerness to explain away their own failings.