defending ahmedinejad (apparently)

Is Ahmedinejad anti-semitic, is he holocaust denying - and does it matter? Should we bother to defend him if we think that he is not?

I think we should. Partly because he deserves, as any human being does, to be considered innocent until he has been found guilty, but mostly because this story about Ahmedinejad is being used to sell another war. Whatever he is, he is not deserving of a war, nor are the people in his country who will suffer it.

No-one can fail to notice the daily build up in Iraq-style propaganda, 6 1/2 years later, almost identical in style, but this time about Iran and Ahmedinejad. It is almost certainly being used to justify, at best, the imposition of a crippling sanctions regime - just as with Iraq - and at worst, military force - as with Iraq. A key part of the propaganda is that Ahmedinejad is a rabid anti-semite and poses a threat to Israel; and key to building up that story is the claim that he denies the holocaust. For a lot of people, that 'denial' seems to make extreme measures excusable, even justifiable.

I've posted his interview with Katie Couric on CBS news because I think it shows - in addition to his other speeches, and the attitude towards the Jewish population in Iran - that Ahmedinejad does not deny the holocaust. What he appears to deny (if that is the right word) is the story being told about the holocaust, and the importance being given to that story; and perhaps most importantly, the way that the story is used to justify - or at least, to prevent discussion of - crimes being committed against the Palestinians today. That denial-story is fairly significantly different from the media's denial-story - and it becomes very significant when it may also make the difference between popular support for punitive measures against Iran (and the Iranian people), and the west putting its guns away. It's in the attempt to highlight the difference that I thought the speech worth posting.

My understanding of Ahmedinejad's position is that a story has been told, a myth created, that the Jewish suffering in the holocaust was unique, and uniquely horrible; and that any questioning of this story, any criticism of the victims of this story, is deemed to be unacceptable1. He denies that story, or at least its usefulness (as do I). And - to continue 'his' position - given that the story (about the holocaust) is itself being used to justify crimes today against Palestinians, and that the story therefore isn't just false, but criminally false, it is vital that we ignore, step out of it, and do not lend it our support.

I can't really explain why he won't come out with a direct denial of his (so-called) denial that the Jews suffered, which is all the media are really accusing him of. But I can make 2 suggestions - neither of which is necessarily adequate, but at least I find them understandable.

The first is that by engaging in the media's discourse about the holocaust, he would be buying into it. Imagine you were living in the Soviet Union and a journalist had asked: 'Do you agree that Stalin raised productivity in this country and that under his leadership, we beat the Fascists?'. Would you 'agree'? Or would you see that the journalist was in fact asking a bigger question about the Stalin regime, and whether, taken as a whole, it was a positive event. Even if you had no fear for the consequences, you would probably want nothing to do with the game, and you (probably) would not want to engage with them while they were playing it. One answer from you would be an acknowledgement that they were setting the story - and that you had accepted that.

In the case of the west pressing Ahmedinejad on the holocaust, the game is that they mean one thing by the holocaust, and he means another. Whatever his answer (unless he gives no answer), their meaning will be made to stick. It's their story, and the meanings are built into it. In fact - the only way I can imagine (and I'm speculating here) that he might spike the media's guns would be for him to get them to step to the edge of the story and ask, for example: 'do you agree that 6 million Jews suffered abominably?'. I would have thought he might be able to answer that in the affirmative (while adding that so did several million others, abominably). But they probably won't ask it, because it isn't the same as the holocaust question.

The second suggestion concerns the fact that myths are difficult things to dismantle, and apart from the myth I've been discussing, a further myth has been built up in our media, which is that Ahmedinejad is a holocaust denier. In the same way as the holocaust myth, this one is also being fed and circulated with criminal ends.

I think that the Ahmedinejad myth is also more or less embedded, and whatever he says now will be presented in the context of the Ahmedinejad-the-holocaust-denier myth. And he knows that. If he 'concedes' (as KC put it to him in the interview) that the holocaust happened, then he will still be taken to have not believed it previously, and his concession will be seen as a sign of weakness - and probably as a lie. Psychologically, and given the futility of doing so, I can easily see why one might refuse to play games with Katie Couric.

That's all a long way of saying that I think I can see what Ahmedinejad is saying about the holocaust, and I can begin to see why he is saying it - both in the sense of what led him to start out on this different story, and in the sense of why he fails to dampen speculation about his own beliefs. I don't see that in order to make his behaviour understandable, we need to add in that he is a holocaust denier. And I would think that both for his sake, and also in light of the likely terrible consequences of feeding the (second) myth ourselves, the presumption should be that he is not.

Finally: I do not support Ahmedinejad. I think the regime in Iran is detestable (just as I think ours is) and I would be delighted if the Iranian people - without CIA support - managed to dismantle it. For me, whether or not he denies the holocaust is relatively immaterial: the regime which he heads needs removing, whatever he believes about Jews. But it's none of our business to do so, and all of our business to make sure that those who want to do so by brutal means should not be given cause - again, whatever he believes about Jews.

• 1. he says: 'There are many historical events, similar historical events. Why is this one in particular so important to you?' and later: 'in WW2, 60 million people were killed. Why are we just focussing on this special group alone?'