It’s everywhere. Listen. Listen. Listen. Here come the drums. Here come the drums.
As you may have heard, Iran had their presidential election last Friday. This would come as a surprise to most people who base their knowledge of Iran on the news coverage they receive in the United States, because President Ahmedinejad is frequently referred to as a dictator in the press. We also get the impression that the president of Iran would be in a position to authorize military attacks against other countries. We also get the impression that Iran has been exceptionally belligerent since the 1979 islamic revolution.
None of those impressions are particularly true, but that hardly matters. When the official results were announced, the leading opposition candidate Mousavi cried foul. Credulous bloggers and tweeters around the world stood at attention and immediate cries of election fraud were echoing through the Internet. Ahmedinejad couldn’t have won! 75% of Iranians are under 27 years old! The youth hunger for reform! Mousavi is the great hope for democracy in Iran! Where is my vote! Holy shit, people got shot at the riots!
I’m a knee-jerk skeptic at heart, so I took all of this with a grain of salt and a bit of caution. When storefronts are being vandalized in the midst of a massive political protest, there’s going to be teargas. There are going to be policemen in scary riot armor. People are going to get beaten. This happens in any country over any issue. In most parts of the world, when protests of this scale and character take place, somebody gets shot. Unfortunate, but true.
The main problem I see with the outside world’s reaction to Iran’s election results, whether on blogs or Twitter or CNN or my local newspaper, is that we’re getting the same echo chamber effect I’ve seen before. This is the kind of coverage we got about Panama before we invaded to snatch up Noriega. This is the kind of coverage we got about Iraq before each time we invaded there. This is the kind of coverage we got about Serbia before we started bombing Belgrade and putting soldiers into Kosovo.
Step away from your keyboard for a second. Take a deep breath. Count to ten slowly. Exhale. Think for a second about the tone you’re adding to the public conversation of this matter. Are you being constructive? What are the foreseeable consequences of what you’re contributing to? Are you speaking to the facts, or echoing and amplifying rumor and propaganda?
“Where is my vote?” is a question asked by many in Tehran this week. It was asked by many in Ohio in 2004 and Florida in 2000 and Texas in 1960. In modern democracies we vote anonymously to avoid undue pressure, but anonymity removes accountability and requires some element of trust. Let them work it out.
related:
all the heard-like twitter do-gooders are just that. coloring your avatar green or changing your time zone is an idiotic way to make yourself feel good about something you have no idea about. I unfollowed all green-faced people.
I now next to nothing about this subject and what I do know has been from the media. I have no advantage point. My only personal opinion to the chatter is that people are dissapearing in greater numbers, it makes me think of (La noche de los lapices) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0193355/
Funny how folks will gladly jump on the “good-cause” bandwagon when it hits t3h Intarwebz. It’s very easy to act patriotic – even for a country in which you’ve never set foot – when doing so poses no risk to your own well-being.
Bored now. NEXT!
“[…]People disappearing in greaters numbers” is the kind of rumor-echoing I was referring to. Who disappeared? When? Who said so? I’ve seen news reports alleging that “some people” were reporting hundreds of arrests at a university, but at that point I’m already at third-hand information confirmed by nobody. Not even the name of the school was mentioned. Maybe it really happened, but there are a lot of people with axes to grind on this topic. There’s even less accountability on this kind of reporting than there has been on the vote count itself.
Oh, and @MV: this is one of those situations where a bunch of people taking to the streets (in the country in question, mind you) could potentially yield some actual change. As opposed to the land-of-a-thousand-causes omnibus protests we tend to see here in the U.S.
there are a lot of parallels to the orange revolution in ukraine, and rose(?) in georgia. both got people excited here, money was poured to help “democracy”. both resulted in crappy leaders and lots of regret AND resentment of the outsiders (i.e. US) who supported it out of spite for the previous regime.
Funny you should mention the rose revolution. Seems they’ve been having massive public protests and riots for months on end, but when you don’t see many people coloring their online avatars when it’s a western “ally” being protested against. I guess it just doesn’t fit cleanly with the “Putin is bad” narrative.
http://www.registan.net/index.php/category/caucasus/georgia/