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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   8889 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026

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The Iranian regime is built to survive. As a result of the unique story of its emergence and the very unlikely survival of the movement in the face of both the Iraq-Iran war and the (initially) much larger socialist/student/Tudeh movement that it and its predecessor(s) utterly crushed, the IRGC is one of the most competent military bodies in the world if you consider its primary purpose the pacification of the Iranian people.

Khomeini understood that the bourgeois class would never fully support an Islamist revolution. Unlike various historical socialist revolutionaries, though, he realized that at least some of them were necessary for the economic survival of the state. He therefore set in motion a series of events that would lead to them being policed, essentially, by the sons of the devout lower middle-class, often semi-rural (but occasionally urban or rural) who would form the nexus of the IRGC and be utterly loyal to the clerical class (without whom they would go back to being nobodies). The IRGC would enrich itself, but never quite to the extent of e.g. the Egyptian or Pakistani military states, where military control of the economy is so absolute that the private sector is entirely subordinate to it in most industries.

In general, if you look at the big 3 US ‘axis of evil’ states still around, they each have a different relationship to popular protest. North Korea has almost none, not only because of the absoluteness of ideological surveillance and the ubiquitous East German style custom of informing on neighbors but because the people are completely ideologically indoctrinated into dynastic worship of the Kim family. Cuba has middling protests every 25 years where one or two people get killed and someone prominent resigns or apologizes but the regime is never under serious threat; Cubans are too lazy for revolution and those smart and ambitious enough to try it either rise within the Party or flee to America.

Only Iran actually has regular violent protests; unlike the Cubans or North Koreans, they have real, serious interest in regime change. But the IRGC is a well oiled machine with no loyalty to the protestors, and it just keeps gunning them down, hundreds a day, until order is restored. Life in Iran is bad but not hell, and to the domestic middle and upper middle classes, with their email jobs and social media, this is not worth dying over. That is why the regime stands a good chance of surviving in some form.

This is generally true. I think you're underestimating how much the IRGC dominates the economy, but very accurate overall.

You're missing a few key variables:

  • Everyone knows the regime is defenseless against US/Israel aircraft, and that Israel believes it has unfinished business
  • Everyone knows Trump has made noises about the regime killing protestors
  • The rial is approaching ~0 value, as part of a general economic deterioration
  • Estimates are now that 10k plus people have been killed
  • The regime has said its giving the death penalty to most/all protestors it arrests

Absent external support or a preference cascade among security forces to stand down/switch sides, the regime might just simply kill its way out of this.

But if it does, it will still be weaker than it ever was before.

Estimates are now that 10k plus people have been killed

very likely bullshit to drown out eventual losses from the US/Israeli intervention. It's really hard to kill 10K people in days without heavy military operation with airstrikes and such.

The Rwandan genocide managed a comparable body count with mostly machetes. It seems more a matter of whether the regime's forces (who I'm sure have enough small arms) are choosing to use lethal force, either as a top-down policy or more local spontaneous decisionmaking.

Actually, no.

It's very, very fucking easy to kill 10k massed, unarmed people in mere hours with machine guns.

Reportedly, a regime official told Reuters it's 2k.

They could kill 12k people if they wanted to, you're right it isn't hard. But I don't think they want to, and 12k deaths seems to me to be inconsistent with videos/images and reports coming out of Iran. There'd just be more evidence if true.

If you're gunning down crowds, I guess. If it's riot suppression, normally you wouldn't get anywhere close to that number, people don't behave like an army and just disperse.

If you're gunning down crowds, I guess. If it's riot suppression, normally you wouldn't get anywhere close to that number, people don't behave like an army and just disperse.

If you're trying to kill them, you block their escape before machine-gunning them. As a bonus, you'll probably get even more killed from the trampling.

It’s certainly possible, but I would have expected the protests to disappear if the regime was willing to mow-down crowds of civilians like this.

That is what the regime hopes, yeah.

The protestors are, at a minimum, holding out for promised US support. That does seem to be what Trump has done at this point.

Horrifying to think that all these “stand with Iran” posts could be getting thousands of people killed.

You do realize that the populace of Iran has been largely incapable of reading those posts because their tyrannical government has shutoff the internet, right?

The "stand with Iran" posts are for the foreigners. The Iranians already know what's going on and what the stakes are.

The protestors are, at a minimum, holding out for promised US support.

Evidently they are unfamiliar with the US record in this regard.

Can you think of reasons why this is not very much like the Bay of Pigs at all?

Support would be more difficult? We're no longer in a cold war? We have an even more mercurial President?

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Cubans are too lazy for revolution and those smart and ambitious enough to try it either rise within the Party or flee to America.

Now I am wondering if the decision of the US to liberally grant asylum to any Cuban refugees resulted in stabilizing the Castro regime.

That isn’t wondering. It’s fairly much a fact. The Cuban regime hasn’t killed a lot of people. When tensions have risen they just put the people on ships and sent them to America. Which for a Cuban was a solid deal they would take.

When you think about it, taking all the people who really hate you and sending them off to be part of your highly-armed and very rich neighbour is a strategy with some long term risks...

Yeah, the Bay of Pigs.

And Marco Rubio, Trump's Supreme Global Overlord of All Things

Rubio’s family left before communism, although it’s an open question whether that matters given he’s so strongly identified himself with the exiles from communism.

I did know that, and it is a funny fact.

Though it's still radicalizing to see one's ancestral homeland devastated by communism and presumably have family and friends directly affected.

Undoubtedly but asylum alone isn’t the answer, huge numbers of Iranians emigrated and it’s easy for Iranians to claim asylum in Europe (or it was for a very long time anyway), but it didn’t stop a long history of protest.

easy for Iranians to claim asylum in Europe

The dynamics are weird. I've known Iranian refugees who settled in e.g. Hungary (which doesn't want any and makes it quite hard) while Germany often denies cases of conversion to Christianity, some official going after the family etc. but accepts gay people. (Tangentially, sex changes are a mandatory solution to homosexuality in Iran - by 1987 Molkara convinced the Ayatollah.) There is a huge brain drain of them going to grad school in Europe or Turkey, so many girls doing MAs or PhDs in STEM to escape. The wealthy have also largely fled - in some nicer malls in Turkey every woman has that fake nose...

is bad but not hell, and to the domestic middle and upper middle classes, with their email jobs and social media, this is not worth dying over.

This is true of many countries that are not Iran too.

Sure, and most of them aren’t prone to revolutionary violence.

most of them aren’t prone to revolutionary violence

How many have foreign intelligence services actively attempting to ferment totally organic 'revolutionary violence'?

Also as the current structure was the result of the Iranian Revolution / Islamic Revolution shouldn't the current thing be 'anti-revolutionary counter-revolutionary violence'?

Also as the current structure was the result of the Iranian Revolution / Islamic Revolution shouldn't the current thing be 'anti-revolutionary violence'?

Almsot 50 years of essentially uncontested rule later and you're no longer the Revolution, you're the Establishment. Whatever you call yourself.

Then you have revolutionaries fighting against the IRGC, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

It's revolutionary on revolutionary violence.

Counter-revolutionary was what I couldn't think of earlier.

Cubans are too lazy for revolution

Unfortunately for the US this did not seem to have been the case in 1959.

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