I’m reading a book. Nothing unusual in that. Except it’s non-fiction!!! And, NOT a sporting biography!!! I’m breaking all the rules. It’s called ‘Forty Autumns’ and, to be honest, Mel thought it was a novel when we downloaded it. But it ain’t. It’s the story of a woman in 1945 in Germany who ‘fled to the West’ as the Russians took over the east of her country. Left her big family (9 siblings) and, at 19, she ‘escaped’. At the time of reading (about 1979, the book follows all the unfolding events in her former home and compares them to her life in, eventually, America), East Germany was simply fucking hell. Never mind the lack of absolutely everything, from food to cars to, in many homes, running water, the worst of all was the state’s total domination of thought. Because no totalitarian state wants ‘free thinking’. It doesn’t want ‘opposition’, be it political or even philosophical. You simply don’t ‘question’. It’s Marxism or die. And it was the non-Marxists who died. In vast numbers. Because such places are great at ‘disappearing’ people who they don’t like. Rewards in such an horrendous society come from adherence to ‘the Party’, nothing else. Total repression. Encouraging kids to report their own parents for saying something against the rule. There’s no trust, no debating allowed, there is absolutely no freedom whatsoever. And for that reason, Jeremy Corbyn would fucking love it there.

Pretty much like Iran under the Ayatollahs. Another fave of Corbyn’s. Ok, there was also Russia after their revolution and China during their ‘cultural revolution’, possibly the greatest misnomer of all time.

But Iran is not a proclaimed ‘communist state’. It’s an Islamic Republic. But it runs in exactly the same manner. Repression. Compliance or death. Removal of all freedoms; travel, political opposition, listening to music, (The Clash classic 1982 song was their protest about that), even saying ‘bad things’ about the rulers. You wear a headscarf (compulsory) the wrong way and you’re dead. No trial. No jury. The ‘cultural police’ just end you; BOOM! Because totalitarian rule means no accountability whatsoever. The rulers, and their ‘dedicated followers’, do precisely what they please. And answer to no-one. The irony of a ‘religious state’ condoning murder and torture is just lost in Ayatollah-land.

Obviously life under the Shah, pre-1979, was no bed of roses. He was a dictator too. But one who wanted progress for his country. Not saying that in the building his nation into a quasi-USA there wasn’t corruption and problems for the masses, but free speech was allowed. Women had rights. Yet the majority of Iranians backed the revolution. A serious case of ‘careful what you wish for’.

Totalitarianism is a closed society. They prevent any external influence. Particularly from… ‘The West’!!! Mainly because such societies are always economic failures and they don’t want you to see how well others outside live by comparison. But it also allows better ‘control’ of the people. Religion, according to Marx, is the opiate of the masses. Presumably in 1979 Iranians became addicts.

So from the totally repressive Soviet-era East Germany to modern day Tehran; all the same shit. But what amazes me is that people here, like Corbyn and many others, in their toxic anti-American, anti-capitalism bubble, see both of those as aspirational. Whereas normal people simply shudder in horror.

We need to sort out that fucking Ayatollah. For the sake of his people.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx