Thread by @GuyEmersonMount

#Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stated in 2015 that "black people are oppressed, disrespected & humiliated" in the U.S. Hey all you flag-waving #American
#patriots, are you gonna let him get away with that!? Why not support #reparations to prove him wrong? timesofisrael.com/iranian-leader…

And, yes, Khamenei is a hypocrite & has no moral authority to condemn the violent suppression of "minorities" when #Baha'is & other religious minorities in #Iran are systematically killed, jailed, excluded from society, denied passports, etc. But he ain't wrong about Black people

As #Twitterstorians and #BlkTwitterstorians know, it was this kind of geopolitical propaganda from the #USSR that shamed U.S. Cold War liberals into supporting the end of Jim Crow (long before U.S. popular opinion turned on this issue). #Reparations may come the same way. #AHA20

And, again, to be clear, none of this is an argument in favor of #war or the REASON to oppose empire or ignore Iran's crimes. We should oppose American #imperialism because that's the right thing to do (not as a utilitarian move to encourage #Iran to back #reparations)

The point is echoing a prediction by Gerald Horne years ago, namely, that #reparations will likely ONLY come as a response to an international geopolitical crisis when reparations are thought by statecrafters to benefit American empire in that conflict. @NCOBRA40 @Kamm29207971