“It’s possible to oppose this war and oppose the Iranian regime. You can denounce both.”
Sure you can. But you shouldn’t.
You should not do this. You should not be a pro bono Pentagon propagandist in the middle of a US war of immense consequence. You should not do the hasbarists’ job for them. Make them do their own job themselves.
This war already has a huge number of propagandists screaming “regime” at the top of their lungs in order to ensure that the slaughter continues. You don’t need to add your voice to the chorus, and you shouldn’t. You should not help them manufacture consent for more human butchery. You should be using your voice solely and exclusively to end the butchery your government and its allies are inflicting on human beings.
All your “regime bad” sloganeering accomplished was paving the way to the carnage you see before you today. Your self-righteous denunciations of the Iranian government failed to expand the rights of a single Iranian woman or LGBTQ individual. All you accomplished was helping to grease the wheels for a war of unfathomable horror, ensuring that all Iranians now live under more fear and misery than ever before.
If you live under the western empire, you have an ethical obligation to use your voice responsibly in that context. You don’t get to just irresponsibly feed into an active war propaganda campaign by regurgitating the same regime change narratives about an empire-targeted government as the US and Israeli governments, and then pretend this doesn’t make you culpable for the consequences of your actions. If your words help grease the wheels of the war machine, then you bear partial moral responsibility for what the war machine does with your assistance.
You don’t get to just pretend that responsibility doesn’t exist. The families who are being torn apart with the help of your pro bono war propaganda efforts do not care about your anarchist or Trotskyist “all tyranny is equally bad” political philosophy or how good your virtuous purity posturing makes you feel about yourself. All they experience is the consequences of your actions.
As a westerner, your one and only duty is to oppose the depravity of the western empire. That’s your only job. Don’t lean out the window of the Empire of Perpetual Bloodlust to wag your finger at empire-targeted countries in the global south. It’s obnoxious.
Curb the murderousness of your own government and its allies. That’s your job. If you get your job done, then come talk to me about how bad and wrong some random government in west Asia looks to you. Until then, shut the fuck up and do your job.
Olle Bengtsson 