The president of Iran, according
to a recent report, wants to meet with the proponents of Occupy Wall Street. This meeting will occur as President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad goes on a media tour during his visit in New York for the
United Nations General Assembly.
In a sense this is an understandable
political move because such a meeting with American activists will
give him an opportunity to highlight discontent within the United
States. On the other hand... it seems as if Ahmadinejad may not
understand the Occupy movement any better than American politicians.
Who exactly would he plan on meeting with? Occupy Wall Street has
never had any centralized leadership and having a hundred members of
that movement asking him questions or having a dialogue with him
would really not be representative of that movement as a whole. This
is even assuming the particular occupiers he meets with are not
somehow screened in advance for the purpose of political theater.
Occupy Wall Street was largely
initiated by anarchists and with anarchistic principles. To a large
extent the movement remains anarchistic despite being watered down
with milquetoast liberals and Ron Paul fanboys. So what in the world
could the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran expect to find in
common with such a movement? The corruption of Wall Street and the
U.S. government does not at all suggest that the movement is on the
same side as, or in favor of, a repressive theocratic government.
And let's face reality... if this sort of movement had manifested in
Iran it
would have been attacked by the government of that land, and it's
media, just as the movement was attacked by the U.S. government and
it's media. Quite arguably the attacks on such a movement would have
been worse in Iran. Also, certainly, the
participation of women would have served as extra motivation to
crack down on this movement if it had manifested in Iran.
