This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Fiery but mostly peaceful protests in Iran.
I don't quite want to take the position that the current unrest in Iran is bad, but I do want to consider it. There is a lot of discussion downthread about the insidious effects of pervasive and assertive civil disobedience on the legitimate exersize of state power, and I wonder why that same logic doesn't apply here. It's common in the American conciousness to assume that Iran = bad, but I get the impression that a lot of Iran's badness is exaggerated by Western media. Is the current government of Iran illegitimate? If so, why? Is it because Iran isn't a full democracy? The United States props up lots of countries that are less democratic than Iran. Is democracy in Middle Eastern countries even desirable? It doesn't quite feel right to categorically rule-out theocracy as a legitimate form of governance, even if most of us would find living under one alienating.
The elephant in the room is geopolitics. Iran is aligned with Russia and opposed to many US allies. It would be good for US geopolitical intrests for the current regime to fall. Does this somehow make angry mobs torching government buildings okay, another form of spooky moral action at a distance?
I am not an expert on Iran, so feel free to tell me if the Khamenei Regime is actually the second coming of the Khmer Rouge or Third Reich.
Given that our resident antisemites appear to be on vacation, I guess it falls to me to mention two relevant facts about the Iranian protests.
(1) Protesters are calling for the installation of Pahlavi as the Shah.
(2) There exists a Mossad operation to make Pahlavi the Shah (paywalled, Haaretz seems to be a mainstream Israeli newspaper.)
From an Israeli perspective, it makes a bit of sense. It seems highly unlikely that any democratically elected Iranian president would ever be as Israel-friendly as Pahlavi is, so why risk it?
For the West, supporting the Pahlavi dynasty over Iranian democracy is at least historically consistent. In 1953, CIA and MI6 backed the Shah's coup because the democratically elected government wanted to nationalize the oil industry.
Iran was then run for 26 years by a pro-Western autocrat until the Shah became deeply unpopular, at which point the Ayatollah took over, creating the Iran we all know
and love.Given that history, I would be surprised if Iranians wanted to go for a monarchy again. I would be even more surprised if they wanted a Pahlavi again. It would be like Germany saying "maybe we should give the Hohenzollern another chance", if the guy in question was also Putin's best buddy.
Of course, this is a result of the theocrats being stupid. Everyone knows that once you have disposed a hereditary monarch, his descendants will form natural rallying points for counter-revolutionaries. The Soviets certainly knew how to avoid having to deal with someone who would have a claim to the tsardom later on.
Having a pro-Israel leader sounds like a strict upgrade for ME countries.
I think that having a leader who is not fundamentally hostile to Israel would be an upgrade, yes.
However, most of the population in Muslim countries have long expressed some hostility towards Israel, and Bibi's war/peace in Gaza has done little to win their hearts and minds.
Any leader who is seen as a Mossad stooge will start with a 50 point penalty to stability, basically.
Given these circumstances, I now wonder a bit what Mossad is playing at. If they were serious about installing Pahlavi, one would think that they would keep their involvement non-obvious. They can keep a secret if they want to, so it appears they want the world to know that the Shah has their support. I do not have the context to know what their play is here, though.
The goal isn't to install Pahlavi, the goal is to collapse the country Libya style. Bait Iranian protesters into a hopeless slaughter after Trump said he wouldn't allow Iran to slaughter protesters as a pretense to drag Trump into it. If the goal was actually to support a revolution then loudly telegraphing their support makes no sense but if the goal is to get them killed so that Trump looks weak if he doesn't start dropping bombs then it makes perfect sense.
They're probably blowing a lot of assets in the process, but from their perspective it's better to go for broke while they still have total American support than to wait and risk an Iranian comeback under a future Tucker-like isolationist or even a Mamdani-like anti-Zionist Presidency.
That is plausible. Still, what does Israel gain by loudly backing Pahlavi? Presumably, the Ayatollah regime would crack down as hard on "we want to install the Shah" as they do on "we want to install the Shah, who is btw best buddies with Israel".
Plus, there is a general value to not announcing your astroturfing campaigns because it will make people who claim that a campaign is taking place look like delusional paranoids. 'Actually, Mossad was pretty open about their social media campaign against the Mullah regime' is not an argument you would your critics for free.
Then there is the signaling aspect towards both Pahlavi and future allies. "Oops, we leaked this by mistake" is not something anyone is likely to buy from them. They can have great opsec if they want to have it.
One thing which might explain their behavior is that it might be much more expensive to run an operation with good deniability. But in a world where the Trump administration calls Good a 'Domestic Terrorist', e.g. where statements are made for the sake of the most gullible 5% of the population, one would expect that any threadbare denial would be beneficial.
Perhaps the calculation is that the regime is much more likely to kill its opponents if they believe they are Mossad agents. Opposing the Ayatollah will probably earn you a long prison sentence, but being paid by Mossad will reliably get you executed. So telegraphing "btw, the protests are our doing and all the protesters are our agents", they are egging on the regime to kill them in large numbers, which will in turn force Trump to act, as you observed.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link