"The Cold War served as a good justification for almost any outrageous action. One could use the Cold War to justify throwing one’s grandmother under the bus." "The obvious difference between present-day populism in the United States and in Iran is that while the former is a threat to the whole planet, the latter is a detriment mostly to its own people." " Economists began predicting the imminent demise of the regime almost as soon as it was installed in February 1979. The main reason their predictions did not come true is precisely because the regime established a fairly comprehensive welfare state. The gradual but consistent shift to the right in recent years naturally erodes this welfare state and thereby undermines the social basis of the regime." I don't agree with the use of the word "populism". Nowadays, liberals and neoliberals use it to describe progressive and leftist movements and leaders in order to vilify and discredit them...
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51