Over the years, on the streets of London, I have heard so much praise for the Iranian regime and its brutish proxies. I’ve seen witless radicals cry: ‘We are all Hezbollah!’ I’ve seen leftists cheer the Houthis, that avowedly anti-Semitic army that does the mullahs’ bidding in Yemen. I’ve seen Islamists with placards featuring the face of Ayatollah Khamenei, praising him for being ‘on the right side of history’, as if he were some kind of god rather than a ruthless religious dictator.
There is a silent majority here that is sickened by Islamist tyranny. On Sunday, that silent majority will make some noise
Every time, I have felt mortified. Mortified that my city, this great, sprawling, modern metropolis, could be stained by such sick love for Islamist tyrants. Mortified that leftists who call themselves anti-racist are happy to laud an expressly racist movement like the Houthis, whose flag is emblazoned with the words ‘Curse on the Jews’. Mortified to see privileged genderfluid kids calling Hamas’s violence ‘resistance’, when Hamas would hurl them off the top of a tall building without a second thought.
But mostly mortified at how treacherous this must all seem to Iranians who long for liberty. There they are, sporadically rising up against their oppressors, only to look to London and see crowds of fools gushing over their oppressors.
Well, that changes this weekend. On Sunday, people will gather in London not to applaud the Islamic Republic and its cruel militias but to condemn them. We will ‘March for a Free Iran’, an Iran liberated from the chokehold of theocracy. And into the bargain we will hopefully remind the world that there remains a deep well of moral decency in Britain, where many of us have no truck with Islamist despotism or its craven apologists in our own towns and cities.
We will set off from BBC Broadcasting House at 2pm – where no doubt some choice words will be said about the Beeb’s thin, cagey coverage of the Iranian revolt – and head to Downing Street.
The aim is simple: to express solidarity with the unimaginably brave men and women of Iran who are facing down the regime. To let them know they are not alone. To make some noise that might echo across the continents and give a little solace to the valiant rebels. We will call on the government to proscribe Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and to sever ties with Tehran.
What a difference it will make from those depressing Islamo-left trudges through London. It was during the Israel-Lebanon War of 2006 that Islamists and leftists first cried: ‘We are all Hezbollah!’ Last year, Israel-hating leftists polluted the capital with yells of ‘Yemen, Yemen, do us proud, turn another ship around!’. They were referring to the Houthis, those virulently anti-Semitic stooges of Iran, who were bombing commercial ships in the Red Sea in supposed solidarity with Gaza.
Then there’s the annual Quds Day parade, an event sponsored by the Iranian regime with the aim of spreading hatred for the Jewish State. Every year in London, black-clad Muslims assemble to praise the ayatollahs and dream of an Israel-free world. Sunday promises to be the polar opposite: a colourful, joyous but concerned gathering at which the cry will go out for an Iran – a world, in fact – free of the baleful, reactionary influence of Islamic extremism.
I often wonder what Iranians must think when they see all this regime fanboying in London. Consider Hezbollah. Those bigoted goons don’t only do the regime’s bidding in Lebanon – they have on occasion been summoned to Iran itself to help put down protests. Imagine you are a 20-year-old Iranian woman who was beaten to a pulp by a Hezbollah brute for the crime of wanting freedom, and then you hear that lefties and countercultural types in London are essentially saying ‘Up Hezbollah’. The betrayal. It’s unconscionable.
I’ve seen so much excuse-making from the left as to why they marched incessantly for Gaza but can’t be arsed to march for the rebels of Iran. The aim of protest is to challenge one’s own government, says Mehdi Hasan, and ‘our government isn’t arming the attacks on protesters in Iran, doesn’t fund Iran, and isn’t allied with Iran’.
In other words, our government isn’t involved, so we’re not getting involved. We’ll carry on with our Sunday brunching plans, thank you very much, rather than offering solidarity to those men and women who are fighting for the freedoms we are lucky enough to enjoy. It is a testament to the myopic anti-Westernism of the modern left that they will only hit the streets to berate Western governments. What about hitting the streets to say ‘We are with you’ to a faraway people who only want what we have: liberty?
That’s why I’m marching: I want the good people of Iran to know the United Kingdom has not fallen. Morality still lives here. Liberty still has supporters here. There is a silent majority here that is sickened by Islamist tyranny and stirred by your revolt against it. On Sunday that silent majority will make some noise.
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