Author: Siyavash Shahabi

Siyavash Shahabi is an Iranian writer, journalist, and social researcher based in Greece. His work focuses on political and social developments in Iran, labor and women’s movements, migration and asylum, racism, war, and authoritarian politics.

On Iranian Political Prisoners: Two Blades, and Who Gets to Hold the Scissors

By: Siyavash ShahabiSeptember 4, 2026

The problem with the critics is not that they insist on the imbalance of power. The imbalance is real. The problem begins when the imbalance is used to give the Iranian state political priority over Iranian society. . . Once

Anti-Imperialism without the Working Class

Campism, the Defeat of the Western Left, and Inverted Orientalism

By: Siyavash Shahabi Summer 2026

Siyavash Shahabi critiques campism as an abdication of class independence and a symptom of the weakness of independent working-class politics today.

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The New Politics Summer 2026 issue is now in the hands of subscribers, featuring articles on Democracy versus Degeneration in the United States (with contributions by Dan La Botz, Ellen Schrecker on McCarthyism Then and Now interviewed by Elizabeth Rapaport, Ben Silverman on the fascism debate, Samuel Farber on free speech, Samuel Barney on rural prisons, and Raoul Cansino and Bill Kelly on nativism), Imperialism Around the World (with articles by Lisbeth Moya González on Cuba, Husam Mahjoub on Sudan, Siyavash Shahabi and imperialism and the working class, and Matt Benson on the Mapuche in Chile), interviews on labor struggles and Russian political prisoners, a history of the International Socialists, review essays by Frieda Afary on AI, Javier Sethness on Western Marxism, and Peter Drucker on Molly Crabapple, as well as reviews on Ukraine, the Teamsters for a Democratic Union, white rage, South Asia, and Afghanistan, plus a letter on women under the Taliban.

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