US Imperialism Bad, Iran Regime Also Bad: An Open Letter From The “Left”

Hello, and welcome to or welcome back to Colonial Outcasts, the anti-imperialist podcast that right-wing Iranian diaspora human rights lawyers would dismiss as campist, intellectually reductive, and morally bankrupt, as we don't really engage in both side-isms when it comes to the US empire and foreign governments or nations that choose to, like, resist it.

Don't know why this is still a hot take.

Why is the question central to this episode? Because today we are going to address the infamous open letter.

I think you saw some of the...

And when I say infamous, I mean it just caused a huge controversy, uh, online over the past, like, five days.

Let me pull it up real quick.

Uh, and it's worth talking about.

It, it's actually really important talking about, 'cause a lot of things are happening in this article, uh, that have been happening and pr- uh, you know, academics like Edward Said and a bunch of other people have pointed out the problems inherent to Western academia when it comes to its support of imperialism and Orientalism abroad.

And of course, this opinion, it was an open letter, uh, to Iran's political prisoners, Trapped Between Two Blades of a Scissors, and it was signed by a bunch of academics, many of whom, as of today, have withdrawn their endorsement of this open letter.

Uh, yeah.

But before we...

It, it, you know, you might not think that this is a fun topic that you want to invest an hour of your life in, but it is.

It is.

Okay? It's not gonna be, you know, the flashiest episode, but we do have some imperial war movie propaganda that the Iranian government didn't like and exiled one of their actors for being in, called Body of Lies, so you're gonna see some explosions.

But we're really gonna be focusing on academia and how it contributes unwittingly, even when it claims to be anti-imperialist, to imperialism per force.