Very well said, Tyler.

I do not wish to enter into the debate about whether or not Ahmadinejad should be given a forum in which to speak, but rather, I would like to say a few things about the disturbing moves you make in making your case. In other words, I am not so much appalled by Davis's rejection of giving Ahmadinejad the opportunity to speak, I am appalled by the political implications of the grounds he offers for making this claim. I am troubled by his oversimplification and dubious framing of the political conditions in Iran and throughout the world. Of course, the dubious framing and oversimplification go hand in hand when you are virtually channeling directly the narrative posited by the Heritage Foundation on Iran. He begins the article by carelessly asserting that "liberals should know that Iranian society is an exact replica of Germany in 1930s." This unsubstantiated (and fallacious) generalization is precisely the kind of ‘preposterous’ speech for which he later goes on to rebuke Ahmadinejad. I doubt that Davis has sat down alone and reasoned that Iran and Nazi Germany are “exact replicas”, it is far more likely that he has digested well-worn neo-conservative narratives and lacks even the tact to suggest more modestly that they aren’t ‘exactly the same’, but rather ‘highly correlative.’ That he could make such a careless claim speaks both to his lack of understanding of both the conditions that brought fascism and the National Socialists into power and the concrete political conditions of Iran today. If he thinks that the rise of Nazism was concurrent with the rise of a “Catholic” leader (whatever that is supposed to mean), then I shudder to think what else he may have to say on the matter. If Davis is worried about the religious conservatism, racism, sexism and lack of progressive social values that Iran seems to embody, he would do well to consider many other regimes in the middle east, particularly Saudi Arabia which is governed by Sharia (Islamic Law). Of course, Washington is not planning an invasion of Saudi Arabia any time soon on the basis of their extremely regressive regime. The point here is that Davis's flawed framework for interpreting middle eastern politics reeks of the baggage emanating from a pointed attempt in our own country to substantiate a war with Iran. Another example from the article that makes this same mistake is his use of the Heritage Foundation term “islamofascism.” One function of using this term in particular to describe Iran and other ‘evil elements’ in the middle east is to refer us back to the last time in American history a war was waged with virtually unanimous support: WWII. The veterans of that war were hailed as the “Greatest Generation”; it is understandable why hawkish neoconservatives would be itching for that analogy to break into public discourse. It may be that there are a slew of precise, thoughtful and convincing arguments for why we ought to understand the politics of Iran as ‘fascist’, however, simply regurgitating a term like “islmaofascism” is not sufficient to make it so. I for one have yet to be convinced that the WWII/War with Iran analogy is anything but rhetoric. Davis writes at length about how careless Ahmadinejad is with facts and figures, but makes the same folly by providing virtually no backing for his attacks on the speech. Wouldn’t it do to provide a quote or two, or at least give some insight about what his speech was attempting to argue? It should go without saying that even suggesting or hinting at holocaust denial is not even worthy of debate; it should receive only the harshest rebuke imaginable. However, Ahmadinjead spoke at length on a variety of issues not easily abjured by reference to his views on the holocaust. Davis makes no attempt to explicate anything Ahmadinejad said, but only briefly mentions ‘meta-narratives’ without any further clarification. How is this helpful if we are to truly understand why the man is so intensely mistaken about everything? In fact, what support has he given to his original claim that Ahmadinjead is not even worth listening to if Davis has failed to provided any specific evidence that the speech was worthless? I disagree sharply with Davis that we don’t need to actually hear him speak to know what it is he’s arguing. The careless article he wrote has only served to convince me further of why we must try much harder to avoid simply regurgitating cable news commentary and equating it with critical thinking. If the only things being said on the matter are the trite generalizations of the sort he makes, if all we hear is the shoddily constructed propagandistic term ‘islamofascism’, if we expect the “newspaper or TV” to do critical thinking for us there is a serious problem. My guess is that if this is the careless process by which he arrives at conclusions about complex political matters, then this is virtually sufficient to explain the glib letter he has recently published in the Hustler.