The Ghost of Tehran: Why Europe’s Left is Repeating a Fatal Mistake
How the European Left is laundering theocratic ambition through progressive language—and why the history of 1979 Iran suggests the "useful idiots" are currently building their own gallows.
Stand in Parliament Square on a Saturday afternoon, and you will see a strange and dangerous play being performed. Amidst the sea of placards and the damp grey of London, we are told it is ‘progress’. We see revolutionary Marxists, secular socialists, and gender activists marching side-by-side with hard-line political Islamists.
But this is not progress. It is a suicide pact.
Europe is currently paralysed by a single, fatal question: How does a pluralistic democracy navigate the tension between including all voices and surviving the rise of those who wish to destroy it?
Currently, the West is failing this test. In our desperate desire for inclusive political participation, we have forgotten the most essential paradox of a free society: if you extend unlimited tolerance to the intolerant, if you offer the protections of democracy to those whose explicit aim is to dismantle it, the tolerant society will be destroyed.
The Red-Green alliance flourishing in our streets thrives in this gap. They exploit the very liberal principles they despise—freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, and the protection of minorities—to build a movement that intends to end them. The Left, once the guardian of secular liberty, has abandoned its post to become the enforcer for a new theocracy; they have decided that inclusion is a higher virtue than survival and traded their principles for a seat at the table, not realising that the table is being set for their own funeral.
For anyone who has read a history book, this isn’t new. It is a depressingly accurate repeat of a pact made in the streets of Tehran in 1979.
Part 1: The Ghost in the Mirror – Europe Today
The Red-Green alliance is sold as a brave front against a common enemy. The ‘common enemy’ is no longer a single man. The new ‘Shah’ is the entire conceptual structure of the West: liberalism, the nation-state, and the capitalist order. And ‘Zionism’ has become the obsessive, singular flashpoint that, like the Shah, unites these incompatible forces.
The New Reds: They are not the Tudeh Party. They are a diffuse but powerful network of university academics steeped in post-colonial and critical theory, revolutionary socialist parties (like the UK’s Socialist Workers Party), progressive NGOs, and student activist groups. Their worldview is a simple, moral-free binary: Oppressor (the West) vs Oppressed (the Global South).
The New Greens: They are not the clerics of 1979. They are far more media-savvy. They are the well-funded and highly organised political Islamist networks, such as those linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, operating across Europe.
The Modern Blueprint: Stealing the Language
Just as the Islamists of the past stole the language of ‘class war’, the modern Islamists have masterfully adopted the entire lexicon of the progressive Left.
In public, they do not speak of Sharia or a Caliphate. Instead, they speak the language of the university campus. They talk of ‘human rights’, ‘social justice’, ‘decolonisation’, ‘systemic oppression’, and ‘intersectionality’.
And, most potently, they have forged their ultimate weapon: the term ‘Islamophobia’. This is a classic Orwellian Newspeak strategy. The terms ‘social justice’ and ‘human rights’ are not being used to clarify meaning, but to invert it. They are hollowed-out signifiers, used to provide a progressive cover for a deeply illiberal, theological project—the very definition of ‘War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery.’
Part 2: The Parallel Signs of Betrayal
This is not a future threat. The betrayal of the Left’s own values is already happening. But to understand how it is happening, we must understand the moral trap they have walked into.
Sign 1: The Humanitarian Shield and the Hierarchy of Oppression
To be clear, many marching in these crows are driven by a genuine, visceral horror at the loss of civilian life in Gaza. They look at the disparity in death tolls—1,200 Israelis versus tens of thousands of Palestinians—and see a simple, undeniable moral equation. This humanitarian impulse is valid.
But this impulse is being cynically harvested. It acts as a ‘humanitarian shield’ for the Islamist core of the protests. It allows the Left to suspend their judgement. Why do they willfully ignore the fact that their allies stand for everything they oppose? Because in the Modern Left’s ‘intersectional’ hierarchy, anti-imperialism is the trump card.
The logic is absolute: The West (and by extension, Zionism) is the primary contradictor. Therefore, any force fighting the West is, by definition, an ally. The ‘oppressed’ cannot be scrutinised. If the oppressed are homophobic or patriarchal, it is rude or ‘racist’ to point it out. They have convinced themselves that the fight for Gaza is so paramount that women’s rights and gay rights are acceptable collateral damage; in other words, a temporary price to pay for the ‘greater good’ of decolonisation.
Sign 2: The ‘Zionist’ Obsession (The New ‘Great Satan’)
This ‘greater good’ relies on a mutual delusion.
The European Leftist sees the anti-Zionist cause as a secular, anti-colonial struggle for a binational state.
The Political Islamist sees it as a non-negotiable, theological struggle—a jihad to reclaim Dar al-Islam (the House of Islam) from ‘infidels’.
The Left believes their Islamist allies share their vision of the future. This is a delusion. They are marching for two completely different, and entirely incompatible, revolutions.
Sign 3: The Tactical Silence (Sacrificing Their Own)
The result of this hierarchy is the bizarre spectacle of progressive groups, who built their entire identity on feminism and queer rights, falling completely silent when their new ‘Green’ allies are the ones speaking.
When Islamist preachers call for the death of homosexuals, the Left is silent.
When women’s rights are systematically crushed within hard-line ‘allied’ communities, the Left is silent.
When secular, liberal, or ex-Muslim reformers from within those communities beg for help, the Left attacks them, branding them ‘native informants’ or ‘racists’.
They are actively sacrificing the most vulnerable—women, gay people, apostates—on the altar of their ‘anti-imperialist’ alliance. This is the exact moral rot of the Tudeh, which sacrificed Iran’s liberals to appease Khomeini.
It is a perfect, functioning example of Orwellian Doublethink: the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs at once. ‘I am a feminist’ and ‘I must ally with and protect an ideology that is fundamentally anti-feminist’ are held simultaneously. The cognitive dissonance is resolved by silencing all criticism, which is the alliance’s first demand.
Sign 4: The New Purge (Weaponising ‘Islamophobia’)
This is the most critical parallel. The Left has become the enforcer for a new blasphemy law. They have enthusiastically embraced the weaponisation of the term ‘Islamophobia’, twisting it from its proper meaning—’bigotry against Muslim people‘—into a new, fascistic tool to mean ‘any criticism of Islam as an idea.’
To criticise the subjugation of women in Sharia is ‘Islamophobic.’
To defend the right to free speech that offends religious dogma is ‘Islamophobic.’
To point out the existence of the Islamist ‘Greens’ is ‘Islamophobic.’
Just as the Tudeh supported the ‘Cultural Revolution’ that purged ‘liberal’ thought, the modern European Left leads the ‘no-platforming’ campaigns and digital mobs to silence any dissent. They are doing the ‘Greens’‘ dirty work for them. They are purging the very ‘liberals’ and ‘heretics’ who dare to point out the tiger in the room.
They have become a volunteer Thought Police, hunting down the new Thoughtcrime, the heretical act of pointing out the alliance’s glaring, fatal contradiction.
Part 3: The Blueprint – Iran, 1979
For anyone who has read a history book, this isn’t new. It is a chilling repeat of a pact made in the streets of Tehran. The secular Marxists who made that deal believed they were clever. They believed they were ‘using’ the religious masses to win their revolution. They were not clever. They were fools. And their mistake was paid for in torture chambers and on execution cranes.
The 1979 Iranian Revolution was never a simple Islamist coup. It was a messy, temporary coalition of rivals who all wanted one thing: the Shah gone. The two most important groups in this fight were the Marxist-Leninists and the Islamists.
The ‘Reds’: The Tudeh Party and the MEK The Tudeh Party was Iran’s pro-Soviet, orthodox communist party. For them, this was a cynical game. Following Moscow’s orders, they saw the Shah as a US puppet. Ayatollah Khomeini, they thought, was a primitive but objectively progressive tool to smash American influence.
They fatally translated his religious cry of ‘Great Satan’ into their own dull jargon of ‘anti-imperialism.’ They thought his talk of a holy state was a ‘non-viable fantasy’ that would burn itself out, leaving them—the ‘real’ revolutionaries—to pick up the pieces.
The Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) was even stranger, a bizarre mix of Shia Islam and Marxist theory. They, too, thought they could ride the religious tiger and steer the revolution’s ‘social justice’ talk toward socialism.
The ‘Greens’: Khomeini and his Faction Khomeini was no one’s tool. He was a ruthless political operator who understood the Left perfectly. He didn’t just ally with them; he stole their language. He didn’t just talk about ‘class warfare’; he reframed it as the mostazafin (the religious, oppressed poor) against the mostakbarin (the arrogant, Western elite).
The ‘alliance’ was a sham. It was a pact between one group (the Left) that thought it was in control, and another (the Islamists) that knew it was.
Part 4: The Purge – The Price of Delusion
The moment the Shah’s plane left the tarmac in January 1979, the alliance’s clock began ticking. The Left, in its fatal vanity, believed this was the dawn of its victory. In reality, the consolidation of theocratic power had already begun. The betrayal was not a spontaneous event; it was a cold, methodical, multi-phase extermination.
Phase 1: The Purge of the ‘Liberals’ (1979─1980)
Khomeini did not move against his armed ‘allies’ first. He went for the soft targets: the secular liberals, the human rights lawyers, the feminists, and the Western-educated intellectuals.
In 1980, he launched the ‘Cultural Revolution.’ This was a violent, systematic purge of universities, media, and government offices to eradicate Gharbzadegi—’West-toxification.’ Secular professors were fired, independent newspapers were shut down, and women who protested the new mandatory hijab were beaten in the streets.
And what was the Tudeh Party’s response? They applauded. In their dogmatic blindness, they saw this as a ‘necessary anti-imperialist’ action. They cheered the destruction of these ‘bourgeois’ and ‘liberal’ elements, fatally convinced that this was clearing the path for their socialist revolution. They were, in effect, holding the executioner’s coat while he sharpened his axe, never imagining it would soon be for their own necks.
Phase 2: Annihilation of the Armed Rival (The MEK, 1981)
Once the liberals were silenced, Khomeini turned on his most significant armed rivals, the MEK. The ‘alliance’ was formally shattered in June 1981 when the MEK, seeing their power stripped away, declared an armed struggle against the regime.
This was the pretext Khomeini needed. He unleashed the full fury of the state. The Revolutionary Guards (Pasdaran) hunted the MEK in the streets. The charge was no longer political; it was theological. The MEK’s hybrid ‘Islamic-Marxism’ was branded a profound heresy, and its members were designated monafeqin—’hypocrites’ and enemies of God. This gave the regime carte blanche for mass arrests, torture, and public executions.
Phase 3: The Humiliation of the Useful Idiots (The Tudeh, 1982─83)
Throughout the slaughter of the MEK, the Tudeh Party remained grotesquely loyal. They continued to support Khomeini, publishing articles that condemned the MEK as ‘counter-revolutionaries’ and ‘agents of US imperialism.’ They were the ‘good’ Marxists, the ‘loyal’ anti-imperialists.
Their loyalty bought them one year.
In 1983, with the MEK crushed and the Iran-Iraq War providing cover for ‘national security,’ the regime turned on the Tudeh. The party was banned overnight. Its entire leadership and thousands of its members were rounded up. But they were not simply executed; they were broken.
They were taken to the torture chambers of Evin Prison and subjected to ‘confessions’ that were broadcast on national television. The Iranian people watched, stunned, as the most powerful Marxist leaders in their history—men who had dedicated their lives to dialectical materialism—shuffled onto screen, their bodies broken, and ‘confessed’ their ‘treason.’ They wept, renounced Marxism as a ‘false Western ideology,’ and proclaimed the ‘divine truth’ of Islam and the ‘Imam’s line.’ It was a complete and total psychological destruction.
Phase 4: The Final Solution (The 1988 Massacre)
The final, horrifying act came in the summer of 1988. With the war against Iraq ending, Khomeini issued a secret fatwa to ‘cleanse’ the prisons. ‘Death Commissions’ were formed.
Over several months, thousands of political prisoners—the last remnants of the MEK and the Tudeh who had survived the initial purges—were dragged before these commissions for ‘trials’ that lasted mere minutes. The questions were simple: ‘Do you still believe in the MEK?’ ‘Do you believe in God?’ ‘Are you willing to walk through a minefield for the Islamic Republic?’
Those who failed these tests of absolute submission were led to gallows and hanged in batches, their bodies dumped in unmarked mass graves. The ‘Red’ half of the revolution was not just defeated. It was erased.
The Lesson Unlearned
The European Left, in its profound historical ignorance and intellectual arrogance, believes it is the vanguard. It believes it is using the ‘authentic, anti-colonial’ energy of political Islam to dismantle the Western order.
They are not in control. They are a non-viable fantasy.
They are providing the popular front and the intellectual justification for an ideology that holds every single one of their core values—secularism, feminism, queer rights, and free expression—in absolute contempt.
The lesson of Tehran is not subtle. It is a scream. The tiger they are riding is not their friend. They have forgotten that once the shared enemy is gone, the alliance is over. And the useful idiots are the first to be devoured.