On the latest episode of our weekly BINJ Live show on YouTube, Chris Faraone and I unpacked our thinking about covering various actions against the Iran War around Massachusetts being something we can reasonably do as local news publishers with no “boots on the ground” in any countries directly affected by the conflict … so very recently started by the governments of the United States and Israel.
At one point in our conversation, we started hashing out how protest both for and against this war is different than other wars prosecuted by the US in West Asia (the geographic region that includes “the Middle East,” as it was self-servingly dubbed by European colonial powers) over the past several decades—because various American antiwar factions do not seem to have agreed to oppose the war from a classic “war is bad for everyone, stop the fighting” perspective that we support.
We also remarked that most pro-war celebrations/protests are not being organized by the usual hyper-patriotic and militarist true-believer conservatives in the US. Understanding that there are far fewer Americans with such views today than there were during previous conflicts, according to the latest polls. I then reviewed the different coalitions we’re already seeing attempting to put numbers on Boston (and Worcester and Amherst, etc.) streets and noted several distinct camps—mentioning that in this war maybe the role our news organization can play is covering protest of all types as an important part of American democracy that the mainstream press usually doesn’t take seriously. Rather than just covering antiwar protests.
On the antiwar side, we see what one might call “traditional” antiwar groups (including left-wing Democrats, Marxists, Greens, left-wing libertarians/anarchists plus right-wing libertarians in and around the Libertarian Party, and various kinds of religious and nonreligious pacifists).
Then we see some Marxist groups that are against the war, but believe the current Iranian government is anti-imperialist and therefore should be defended against attacks by the US, Israel, and any allied nations that end up getting involved. Naturally, there are many religious Muslims from Iran and all over the world who are against the war, but fully support the current Islamic Iranian government and hope for its military victory against the US, Israel, and their allies. There are also religious Muslims who are against the current Iranian government, but want the war to stop with or without a military victory by Iran.
On the pro-war side, we see Iranian and Iranian-American royalists and their American allies who support the idea that the US and Israel can destroy the current Iranian government with air attacks (and possibly a ground invasion). After which time, the American-based son of the former Shah of Iran can be installed by the conquering militaries, making the country back into a monarchy.
We are also aware that there are Iranian and Iranian-American (“small-d”) democrats of various stripes who are working for a popular uprising in Iran capable of unseating the current Islamic government and replacing it with a democratic one. This group seems to be pro-war, but we have heard scattered voices from such quarters that are antiwar.
As readers may now apprehend, even keeping our coverage restricted to Massachusetts and even planning to focus our journalism around the Iran War mainly on local protest groups—it’s a very complicated thing to cover both the “war is always bad” antiwar groups we agree with editorially and all the other types of antiwar or pro-war groups that either already have taken to or might conceivably take to the streets of Boston and other Bay State cities and towns. Especially when none of the groups on either side seem to be able to attract enough people to their banner to make a really newsworthy showing on Commonwealth streets either to date, fielding merely dozens or hundreds of activists, not thousands or tens of thousands. Making them a mere footnote to the vast majority of news organizations who don’t take street protest seriously to begin with.
Which is why I am making a point to tell all the factions that are protesting or likely to protest in the coming days and weeks that any Massachusetts-based organizations that can put together a solidly-written and cogently-argued opinion article on why they are undertaking extraparliamentary actions in support of their views are welcome to submit them to BINJ.News at info [at] binj [dot] news. Publication is never guaranteed, but we approach each submission with an open mind—our antiwar editorial line taken as given.
This editorial was produced for BINJ.News, the independent weekly magazine of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, and is syndicated by BINJ’s MassWire news service.
