The Unacceptable Face of Protests In Iran (And Elsewhere)

There is an acceptable face of protest in Iran, in Venezuela and the myriad other countries marked for western regime change, and there is an unacceptable face.

You, as a consumer of western media, will always see the acceptable face.

You should know what I’m talking about, because we’ve been fed a continual stream of this acceptable face from Iran over the last few days. The people protesting in opposition to the Iranian government, the people chanting anti-government slogans, the people burning pictures of Iranian leaders.

Conversely, you, as a consumer of western media, will never see the unacceptable face.

You will never see the pro-government protests, the people chanting in support of their governments and against imperialism, the people burning pictures of the exiled national elites who claim to be the rightful leaders of the country.

You will never see the huge marches in cities across Iran defending the government and the revolution.

You will never see images of the young women burning pictures of Reza Pahlavi, the exiled prince and son of the corrupt Shah who was overthrown by the revolution but claims himself to be the saviour of the country.

You will never see images of the young woman calling Reza Pahlavi “a dog who we kicked out of Iran and must never return.”

To a western mind, these kinds of young Iranian women may as well not exist.

You will never see these images because Pahlavi is our man, the guy who would hand the country over to the west, and collaborate with Israel and the Zionists, like his father did.

The only young Iranians, (and women in particular), western media permits us to see are the ones who slot comfortably into an imperial narrative.

You will never see the faces of people protesting against the revival of the grotesque spectacle of monarchism.

These faces are banned in western media.

The shah with his son, the now-exiled crown prince, after his 1967 coronation

And it should be obvious why.

Showing Iranians defending their current leaders and opposing a return to monarchist rule serves no imperial purpose.

The images we see are deliberately chosen to soften us up for imperial violence and regime change.

When the missiles begin to launch from US fighter jets and warships, it’s imperative that we understand that Iranians want this.

When the leader backed by the west assumes the throne (literally as it would be in the case of Iran) it’s imperative that we see this as a victory for the people.

Which people this is a victory for is never explained.

The same goes for Venezuela.

We haven’t seen a glimpse of the massive week-long marches in defence of Maduro across Venezuela on any of our screens.

You would never know that millions of people in Iran or Venezuela or Cuba or the myriad other countries on the regime change list don’t actually want their governments to collapse.

You would never know that millions of people don’t want regime change, and especially not via western intervention, because they have a commodity that is rare-to-extinct in the west: a revolutionary consciousness.

Both modern-day Iran and Venezuela are products of a revolution that kicked out corrupt ruling elites aligned with neoliberal western leaders.

Richard Nixon with the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

The Iranian Revolution of the late 70s and the Bolivarian Revolution of the 90s were popular revolutions that brought together disparate cross-sections of society.

People know what was suffered to achieve them.

They know who the real enemy is.

This context will always be fully omitted by the pro-regime change crew within the western media and political class.

As will any context that implicates the west in fomenting unrest.

The most obvious example of this, of the US and western countries creating the conditions for unrest and chaos, are the punitive sanctions levelled against the non-aligned global south.

US and western sanctions on Venezuela, Iran and all those countries marked for imperial regime change have had a devastating impact on the lives of ordinary people. And this devastation is the goal, sometimes even stated explicitly.

In 2019, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went on CBS News and said: "Our sanctions make things much worse for the Iranian people and we're convinced this will lead them to rise up against the regime.”

Sanctions against Iran have caused critical shortages of medicines, including cancer drugs, and have made basic goods increasingly expensive for ordinary Iranians. The same is true of Venezuela, where, like in Iran, sanctions have been deliberately designed to cripple the economy and spur an uprising.

Any analysis that ignores the role of the west in fomenting chaos and destitution through economic warfare in the non-aligned global south is full-on imperial DOGSHIT.

The intervention Iranians really want is not one you’ll hear about in empire media. The intervention the people of Iran want above all else, according to Iranian journalists and academics, is the lifting of US sanctions.

Which makes something else clear: governments that western elites denounce and condemn as failures are never, ever left to fail on their own terms.

The imperial hand is always on the scale. And when, under immense and crushing pressure, the scales tip, this is seen as an organic victory for the forces of freedom and democracy.

It’s actually embarrassing that anyone believes it. Totally embarrassing. But many westerners in the imperial core, glugging down a daily digital diet of western propaganda, really do believe it.

This is not to say that everyone in Iran, or Venezuela or Cuba is happy with their government. Some Iranians, Venezuelans and Cubans, want, of course, to change their governments. Just like some people in the USA, the UK, Germany, Canada and every other country on the planet want also to change their governments.

But it is only the arrogant west, led by the US, that assumes the moral authority to dictate to the citizens of other countries who their leaders should be. It is only the west that abuses its power to position itself as the arbiter of change. Only the west, which launches illegal war after illegal war, which finances and participates in genocide, which murders millions of people, including its own, has the temerity to climb a moral high-horse over state violence.

And of course, when it comes to boosting alternatives, western elites always favour opposition leaders who will sell off their industries and flog their natural resources to the west.

Only an imperialist or a bird-brain thinks this is a coincidence.

And yet, the government of Venezuela persists.

The government of Cuba persists.

The government of Iran, surrounded by enemies, with a bunch of nuclear-armed psychopaths and fascists to its west, persists.

It is a testament to the spirit, fortitude and organising power of anti-imperialists in Iran, Venezuela and Cuba, that these revolutions, under such pressures, have yet to be defeated.

But even some leftists haven’t been able to resist putting the boot in over Iran, haven’t been able to resist reproducing regime change propaganda.

It needs to be made very clear: it’s not for compromised westerners reclining in the imperial core, dripping in blood and stolen treasure, to pronounce on the wrongness of a revolutionary process they’ve never had the guts for.

It is not for aesthetic leftists watching their own governments jail anti-genocide activists and kill protestors, to pronounce on freedom and rights anywhere in the world.

Our job is to get our own house in order, while resisting propaganda that attempts to decide for us who, and who doesn’t, exist.

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