Ahmadinejad quite sensible - shock!

[zion]

Hi Nino,

Yes. I don't think that "Ahmadinejad is another Hitler". I think that he shares with neo-Nazis a pronounced anti-Semitism and a tendency to underplay the Holocaust, but is of course different from neo-Nazis in other ways.

Insofar as former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed is concerned, I do recall him making anti-Semitic remarks, in which case he, like Mel Gibson, would share that tendency with neo-Nazis and with Hitler. That doesn't make him Hitler any more than it makes Mel Gibson Hitler, but it does make both of them anti-Semites and therefore, to my mind, not sensible. Are we clear yet?

Here we have another example of people going beyond what I'm saying. By saying that Ahmadinejad is a non-sensible anti-Semite and Holocaust revisionist, I am NOT saying the following -

- Ahmadinejad is the worst anti-Semite in the world
- Ahmadinejad is the only person in the modern world who has underplayed the Holocaust
- Anyone who opposes Ahmadinejad is an angel and he himself is a devil
- Israel or the US need to bomb Iran immediately in revenge for his anti-Semitism and Holocaust revisionism.

Indeed, why would you or anyone else presume that I am saying these things?

 

[nino_savatte]

Hi Nino,

Yes. I don't think that "Ahmadinejad is another Hitler". I think that he shares with neo-Nazis a pronounced anti-Semitism and a tendency to underplay the Holocaust, but is of course different from neo-Nazis in other ways.

Insofar as former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed is concerned, I do recall him making anti-Semitic remarks, in which case he, like Mel Gibson, would share that tendency with neo-Nazis and with Hitler. That doesn't make him Hitler any more than it makes Mel Gibson Hitler, but it does make both of them anti-Semites and therefore, to my mind, not sensible. Are we clear yet?

Here we have another example of people going beyond what I'm saying. By saying that Ahmadinejad is a non-sensible anti-Semite and Holocaust revisionist, I am NOT saying the following -

- Ahmadinejad is the worst anti-Semite in the world
- Ahmadinejad is the only person in the modern world who has underplayed the Holocaust
- Anyone who opposes Ahmadinejad is an angel and he himself is a devil
- Israel or the US need to bomb Iran immediately in revenge for his anti-Semitism and Holocaust revisionism.

Indeed, why would you or anyone else presume that I am saying these things?

On the one hand you say "Yes. I don't think that "Ahmadinejad is another Hitler", then you compare him with neo-Nazis.

As for Mahathir Mohammed, he did make some quite nasty anti-Semitic comments but he hasn't got nuclear power - has he? Nor is he on the US's shit list.

Here we have another example of people going beyond what I'm saying.

What? And you don't? Leave it out.

 

[zion]

First, Mahathir Mohammed is out of power anyway.

Second, if somebody is an anti-Semitic Holocaust revisionist, then those are traits that they clearly share with neo-Nazis and it is not hyperbole to state that.

Third, it doesn't matter to me whether the person we're discussing is currently on the US shit list or not. Many US allies, like the Saudi royal family and former dictator of Zaire Mobutu Sese Seko, are pretty unpleasant people and I am happy to say that. What I don't, or shouldn't, need to do is to pre-insulate myself from allegations of hypocrisy by saying everything that I am not saying as well as everything that I am saying. That would quickly make discussion impossible. Can we simply proceed on the basis of an assumption of some shared rationality?

 

[bluestreak]

This thread is essentially about whether Ahmadinejad is a sensible guy.

i thought it was about ahmadinejad getting a new scriptwriter that made it harder to present him as an evil man in needing of military scourging (rightly or wrongly, until i can understand spoken arabic i have to remain neutral).

remember kids, just because ahmad fucks off the neocons doesn't make him a goody.

 

[ViolentPanda]

ViolentPanda,

I think strong statements about the risk Hitler posed are not unreasonable. It's hard to imagine that a world in which the Axis had won the Second World War would be a world worth living in.

What does that have to do with your anile statement that
"Do you not know? Do you not remember? Hitler nearly destroyed everything that made life worth living on Earth."?
For the life of me I can't see any mention of Axis winning WW2, just juvenile hyperbole.

 

[laptop]

i thought it was about ahmadinejad getting a new scriptwriter that made it harder to present him as an evil man in needing of military scourging

That's what I thought it was about, too - practical politics, not demonology.

And I started the thread.

The demonology angle is depressing.

I suspect it is connected to US politicians discovering scientifically that swing voters don't listen to their policies, they want to know whether they'd go for a beer with the man. So they play to the stupidest 5% who bother to vote. And people who aren't that stupid fall in with the general tentency to ask not "what will this person do?" but "are they evil?".

 

[zion]

It's you all that are making this link between "being evil" and "being in need of military scourging" (what a phrase!).

I am trying to make clear - obviously without much success - that I am not
"demonizing" Ahmadinejad. He may, for all I know, be nice to puppies. I do consider it evil to indulge in Holocaust revisionism, and therefore I think that that's a thing about him that makes him not sensible. I don't see why that's a hard thing for other people to accept.

If we're changing now to a discussion of whether it was smart practical politics for him to indulge in Holocaust revisionism, then frankly it probably is. He has ridden that wave to gain greater popularity and a greater perception as a leader of world Muslim opinion. He has used an evocation of something deeply irrational to rationally build up his own power. In that confined, practical political sense, it was rational for him to do it.

 

[ZAMB]

There's a separate thread on whether the Holocaust justifies the actions of the State of Israel which is being pretty vigorously debated. This thread is essentially about whether Ahmadinejad is a sensible guy. I'd like to keep the two discussions from blending, if that's OK. People who deny or underplay the significance of the Holocaust are bigots wilfully ignoring a mountain of historical evidence, and that's what I'm faulting Ahmadinejad for here. He would still be wrong on this if the State of Israel was never founded at all, and I don't think you're really engaging with that point.

It wasn't me that started ranting about the holocaust in this thread. I was just trying to bring some reality and historical perspective to the discussion. Threads wander off topic here all the time - are you the new censor or topic police here??

Too many people seem to accept that Iran could, or even should, be bombed by Israel, based largely on what their president is reported to have said about the holocaust

I have never heard that argument made before. You must pay closer attention to radical elements in Israeli society than I do. But whether or not that would be sensible - and I don't believe it would be - you're still getting off the point of whether Ahmadinejad is sensible or not.

Not just Israeli society - this phenomenon also is prevalent in the US. If we are going to debate whether Ahmadinejad is sensible or not - I think it is relevant to look at the accusations against him and his government put across by the US. Whether you like him or not, he is being put under enormous pressure at the moment, with more articles predicting war every day, and I think this is relevant to his perceived state of mind. When you actually get the authority to dictate what is discussed here in each thread, let me know - otherewise I will write what I think is relevant based not only on the OP but on previous posts in the thread.

However, I am interested in this notion that Ahmadinejad's comments have been mistranslated. What is your evidence for that?

There are dozens - and they have been posted before - try
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?itemid=10373
http://www.juancole.com/2006/08/ahmadinejad-we-are-not-threat-to-any.html

Also CNN is barred from reporting in Iran after their mistranslation helped the warcries of the neocons against Iran. The problem with this is that you can't unring a bell, apologies for such things are usually hidden away [in newspapers] or tagged on at the end of something. No media company makes the lead story that they made a mistake, even when it's about something that may cost lives.

Iran's Culture and Islamic Guidance Ministry announced today that CNN has been indefinitely barred from working in the country, the Associated Press reports. The reason: Over the weekend, CNN reported that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had said his country has the right to build "nuclear weapons." In fact, he said it has the right "to nuclear energy."
CNN has acknowledged it mistranslated Ahmadinejad's statement.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2006/01/iran_tells_cnn_.html

 

[zion]

Not trying to be the topic police. Just a suggestion. Pax?

It wasn't me that started ranting about the holocaust in this thread.

No, but it's not me that tried to connect the Holocaust with the current actions of the State of Israel. Of course, everything is connected in some way. I'm truly just less interested in the latter than the former.

Not just Israeli society - this phenomenon also is prevalent in the US.

Well, I'm here in the US, and have never heard that argument made, even though I monitor current events pretty closely.

If we are going to debate whether Ahmadinejad is sensible or not - I think it is relevant to look at the accusations against him and his government put across by the US.

Given that those are a source of such contention, I feel that it is simpler to assess whether he is a Holocaust revisionist. I have not attempted to discern whether he is attempting to build nuclear weapons under cover of his nuclear energy programme. All we can tell for sure is that he definitely wants to continue that programme using Iranian facilities for purposes that are, at present, unclear. That doesn't say much about whether he is sensible.

The links you have supplied do not speak to Ahmadinejad's Holocaust revisionism. They speak to his intentions towards the State of Israel. Do you have evidence that his comments about the Holocaust in particular have been mistranslated?

 

[ZAMB]

The links you have supplied do not speak to Ahmadinejad's Holocaust revisionism. They speak to his intentions towards the State of Israel. Do you have evidence that his comments about the Holocaust in particular have been mistranslated?

This OK???

But what if the pronouncements by Ahmadinejad that cast him as this season’s baddie incarnate had been a) mistranslated and b) taken out of context?

When properly translated the Iranian president actually calls for the removal of the regimes that are in power in Israel and in the USA as a goal for the future. Nowhere does he demand the elimination or annihilation of Israel. He called for greater governance for Palestine. The word map does not even feature. And the president makes plain that the Holocaust happened, but, he argues western powers have exploited the memory of the Holocaust for their own imperialistic purposes. What the mainstream ran with is complete deception.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12949.htm

 

[zion]

ZAMB,

No, I'm afraid that won't do. What you've got is an assertion by Information Clearing House that Ahmadinejad was merely talking about imperialistic exploitation of the memory of the Holocaust, with a link to what is presumably his text in Persian.

There are two problems with this. One, I can't read Persian, and two, as described above, it's not as if he has only talked about the Holocaust once.

What I'm looking for is specific information on the word or words that were mistranslated, and information on why they don't mean what they have usually been translated to mean.

Maybe if I could read Farsi it would all be crystal clear, but (given that I'm guessing you don't read Farsi either), what makes it crystal clear to you?

 

[ZAMB]

ZAMB,

No, I'm afraid that won't do. What you've got is an assertion by Information Clearing House that Ahmadinejad was merely talking about imperialistic exploitation of the memory of the Holocaust, with a link to what is presumably his text in Persian.

He would hardly be talking about the memory of the holocaust if he contended it never happened, Use some logic. I have listened to him talking about it using his own interpreter - he makes the point time after time , not that the holocaust didn't happen, but that it was a european phenomenon, and therefore it is unfair that the Palestinians should be the ones to suffer when they had nothing to do with the event.
But I'm tired of digging up sources for you - make an effort and research it yourself if you want more sources - or just backtrack the posts about this in different threads on U75.

 

[nino_savatte]

First, Mahathir Mohammed is out of power anyway.

Second, if somebody is an anti-Semitic Holocaust revisionist, then those are traits that they clearly share with neo-Nazis and it is not hyperbole to state that.

Third, it doesn't matter to me whether the person we're discussing is currently on the US shit list or not. Many US allies, like the Saudi royal family and former dictator of Zaire Mobutu Sese Seko, are pretty unpleasant people and I am happy to say that. What I don't, or shouldn't, need to do is to pre-insulate myself from allegations of hypocrisy by saying everything that I am not saying as well as everything that I am saying. That would quickly make discussion impossible. Can we simply proceed on the basis of an assumption of some shared rationality?

You're being a little selective here. Mobuto was given carte blanche by the US to run Zaire as his own personal fiefdom.

Oh and it is hyperbole. There ought to be a law against folk who use the word "Nazi" as a pejorative or who use the word in order to smear and demonise their opponents.

 

[Demosthenes]

Actually, when you think about it, the holocaust is quite unbelievable.

So it doesn't surprise me that people who don't have the same cultural background as most of us don't believe it.

Actually, I think it's quite sensible not to believe it. Even though unfortunately it happened. I don't think it tells us anything about whether or not ahmadinejad is sensible or not that he doubts the holocaust, if indeed he does: the truth of this I don't know; - he would be bound to be painted as a hitlerist nutjob whatever he's like given the current circumstances.

A lot of what people believe does depend on the culture in which they grow up in, and in a way, the kind of things ahmadinejad says about zionists are not entirely unlike the classic american views of socialists, where socialists are evil slavemasters whose aim is to destroy freedom and democracy and impoverish everybody except themselves, - and in mainstream US politics, you can't really say much positive about socialism and get on.

And yes, the speech said to be adapted from Hitler was a top speech. Thanks to Zion for showing it to us.

Just thinking about the nazis:
Apart from their extermination project, the nazis imprisoned and enslaved a great many people in camps, to fund their war effort, and made them work for nothing, and compete with each other for food. The world economic system has imprisoned a great many more people within their own countries, to act as our slaves, but the camp commanders who the west frequently funds and sometimes installs are called their governments, and the perimeter guards- border controls: - the difference is, you're allowed to leave, so long as you've got the money.

A tenuous analogy, I know, but, worth considering I reckon.

I came across a great line recently, - The problems of the world are hopeless. There are just too many people who need to be fed, - and too much food for it to be possible to feed them profitably.

 

[bluestreak]

that's quite a good post demosthenes, stuff in there worth thinking about i reckon.

 

[slaar]

A tenuous analogy, I know, but, worth considering I reckon.

That's all you really need to know about that. And agriculture has never driven mass profit-creation by itself, it's always in tandem with manufacturing. So that quote is pretty far off too.

I agree with the poster that said Ahmadinejad argues that the Holocaust was a European phenomenon. Many commentators have argued that it showed a complete breakdown of the European Enlightenment project, so as far as it is argued that the memory of the appalling events should not be used as justification for oppression of people elsewhere, that is true.

 

[1shmael]

Mistranslating Ahmadinejad

A detailed article showing how the Iranian president has been mistranslated and misinterpteted has been written by Virginia Tilley:

http://www.counterpunch.org/tilley08282006.html

For example:

The most infamous quote, "Israel must be wiped off the map", is the most glaringly wrong. In his October 2005 speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad never used the word "map" or the term "wiped off". According to Farsi-language experts like Juan Cole and even right-wing services like MEMRI, what he actually said was "this regime that is occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time."​

The misquoting of Ahmadinejad is so consistent & unanimous in the Western media that it amounts to a deliberate & concerted campaign to demonise him.

 

[zion]

1shmael,

I am quite prepared to believe a mistranslation of the "Israel wiped off the map" quotation. As you can see from the previous discussion, I am most concerned about his Holocaust revisionism, and I don't think that the Counterpunch article adequately addresses it.

In summary, the article's argument on that matter is: yes, he said it was a myth, but (a) he was talking only about the ways people use the Holocaust and not the Holocaust itself, and (b) we should excuse him because he doesn't know enough about the Holocaust to believe that it happened, just like Americans deny the deaths of Vietnamese and French people deny the deaths of Algerians.

(a) is not credible. In repeated interviews with Der Spiegel and other sources, in his actions in convening a conference of Holocaust revisionists, Ahmadinejad has made it clear that he thinks that the Holocaust's effect on Jews has been exaggerated.

(b) misses a crucial point. Insofar as Americans deny the deaths of the victims of the Vietnam war and French people deny the deaths of Algerians, those denials should be condemned on the strength of the evidence. It's not too serious if an ordinary American or ordinary Frenchman has misconceptions about history, because said ordinary people are not in a position to make policy on the basis of those misconceptions. Ahmadinejad's position is more akin to the Turkish politicians who say that the Armenian genocide was exaggerated. It is wilful bigotry which may, just conceivably, be explained by gross ignorance and incuriousness about issues on which he has chosen to express himself to the world. I don't think that that is excusable in a leader. Bush exhibits plenty of arrogance in ignorance about world affairs, but never to my knowledge has he claimed that historical genocides were exaggerated, which is why the Turkish example is, I think, the most appropriate here.

 

[ZAMB]

You are missing the obvious connect of logic - by referring to the holocaust, as he often has, as a European phenomenon, he is de facto admitting that it happened, otherwise wouldn't he be denying that it even happened in Europe.

 

[zion]

ZAMB,

You're missing two things: first, he tends to say that if it happened, it happened in Europe; and second, I am accusing him of Holocaust revisionism, not Holocaust denial. In that sense, I am being lenient and presuming, in spite of his caveats, that he accepts that something happened.

 

[zion]

The latest from this "sensible" man

Ahmadinejad's comments on his own speech at the UN:

For 27-28 minutes all the leaders did not blink. I am not exaggerating when I say they did not blink; it's not an exaggeration, because I was looking. They were astonished as if a hand held them there and made them sit. It had opened their eyes and ears for the message of the Islamic Republic.

Source: http://www.baztab.com

Ahmadinejad's speech on al-Qods Day, October 19, 2006:

"If the Holocaust is real why are those who have the opposite opinion about it being arrested and jailed? If it is true, where did it happen? If it was in Europe, why should it be paid for in Palestine?"

As a believer in free speech, I do think that Holocaust denial should be legal, and that he has the right to say whatever he thinks. However, we shouldn't pretend to ourselves that he only believes that the Holocaust did happen as historians say but was misused to oppress Muslims. He does not believe that it happened as historians say it did. It's as if his world view cannot allow the Holocaust to be true.

 

[zion]

Sorry: Source of the second quote is the Iran News Daily, http://www.irannewsdaily.com/