Recently, Iran’s Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi made an address to the Iranian people, who have been protesting against the brutal Islamist regime currently ruling the country. The message, emphasising the need for greater solidarity and cooperation among Iranians fighting against the regime, was well-received by many both inside and outside of Iran. It also provoked a predictably furious response from not only regime apologists, but also adherents of leftist, republican, and ethnic movements who opposed Reza Pahlavi to begin with.

Such people had been in opposition to the Pahlavi monarchy in Iran before 1979, but quickly discovered that there would be no place for them under an Islamic theocracy. In truth, they are no more than the Iranian versions of movements that have brought chaos and misery to the Middle East since the 1950s in the name of ‘anti-imperialism’, whether leftist or Islamist.

In today’s Middle East, the spirit of the Abraham Accords is increasingly sweeping away this negativity. The most resilient governing system in the region has been monarchy, in such countries as Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman. These are a stark contrast to what has been seen in Libya, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen over the past six decades. All of those countries fell under the spell of one or another variant of malignant ideological currents, creating brutal police states that not only terrorised their populations, but also exported terrorism and committed atrocities against whole groups of people. The Islamic Republic regime ruling Iran today was part of that trend.

Much like Eastern Europe after communism, the Middle East is rejecting the ideologies which have terrorised it for decades and produced chaos, misery, and obstacles to peace and security in the region. The nations of Eastern Europe and the Middle East take an increasingly dim view of developments in Western democracies which have become the last refuge of increasingly rejected ideologies.

Much of the West’s discourse on race, history, migration, and multiculturalism is increasingly being dictated by the same ideological currents described above, not least because discredited Marxist and Islamist ideologies have found refuge in Western political systems, media and academia, and the lobbying networks connected to the Democratic and Labour movements. The 1619 Project and Black Lives Matter, thus, did not appear in a vacuum but are simply manifestations of the same ideology.

The danger that Western democracies face is subversion by these ideologies, determined to turn every area of our life including sport and entertainment into an instrument of the ideology of the governing power. Nowhere is this better showcased than the taking of the knee and virtue-signalling by highly-paid professional athletes, who are little more than exponents of this insidious ideology.

Migrants from Eastern Europe, Iran, and other places have become the bulwark of opposition to this development in the West, and inevitably will form the backbone of a conservative pushback in the Anglosphere. They appreciate the values of the West more than increasingly restive and ungrateful local populations have done.

David Votoupal can be found writing here.