The Three Way Fight Debate

For over a generation, the decline of anti-colonial liberation struggles inspired by socialism has coincided with the rise of new forms of anti-imperialist mobilization in Western Asia. Beginning in 1979 with the Iranian revolution, and continuing in the present with national liberation struggles led by Hezbollah and Hamas, these movements have mixed religious fundamentalism with the hopes of millions striving for a better life. It is thus not surprising that leftists in the West have had a difficult time figuring out how to relate to these movements. On the one hand, they seem to represent the strivings of oppressed people seeking to free themselves from imperialist domination. On the other hand, the religious ideologues of the Iranian revolution tortured, imprisoned, and murdered tens of thousands of leftists and radicals. The program of these new Islamic movements has often been avowedly patriarchal and politically regressive.

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