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I remember on October 8th the feeling of going online and seeing people celebrating the rape and murder of Israelis. It was a complete shock, I was totally unprepared for the sheer glee in the online progressive spaces, the instantaneous "pray for Palestine" posts combined with "this is what decolonization looks like" posted approvingly under dead bodies.
Two years later I am able to be a good deal more amused than traumatized by the repulsive shenanigans of the bot army. Partly it's because I am now more aware that much of it is a bot army, a carefully coordinated effort not organic sentiment. Partly it's because compared to when our hostages were still in Gaza I can breathe more freely now.
Partly it's because it's funny. /r/worldnews had multiple users posting their analyses about how Iran has these massive stockpiles of 50,000 missiles and 5,000 launchers that they're keeping hidden in reserve, they're just gonna wait until the defense stockpiles disappear and then theyre totally gonna unleash the hell they haven't managed to until now. (It's easy to imagine them gnashing their teeth as they write this.)
Meanwhile metafilter, which is a site that after its leftist death spiral is so tiny and inactive I'm not sure it's worth deploying a bot army to, had an (Australian) user immediately saying Death to America and discourse ensuing between the people who thought that was totally fine and the people who thought that wasn't "helpful" which yielded the following gem
I know this kind of stuff would have infuriated me two years ago. It would have made me so angry and depressed. And now I can't help it, I laughed out loud reading that comment. Wow, it truly is possible to be this level of distilled stupid.
That doesn't mean I wish well on these people — I don't, I think they're disgusting. I've had a post brewing in me for two years about how I find it so much easier to sympathize with some terrorist in Gaza who is attached to home and his family and hates me, then with some keyboard warrior in the west with a moral compass directed straight up his ass. The terrorist may also be wishing death upon me (and attempting to enact it) but there's something more morally clean about him.
We've had a much quieter week than expected (thanks to all those thousands of launchers the iranians are stockpiling for the right moment). There's at least 1-3 sirens a day but often not more than that, where I live (other areas of the country have much more because they're more in the flight path of debris). The very beginning of the war had the most, up and down and up and down and up and down like I described, by it's tapered off pretty dramatically.
The houthis don't appear to have joined in with their Iranian friends at all this time around. Hezbollah did join in, which has pissed off the non Hezbollah Lebanese enough we might, maybe, perhaps, if I'm being crazily optimistic, actually see some significant meaningful backlash against them there.
I've been working from home. We are hosting my siblings-in-law who don't have access to a bomb shelter near them and have a newborn, which comes with the expected tensions but has been ok overall.
My poor team lead is Muslim so he gets to have the rocket induced sleep deprivation and also fasting for Ramadan. At the beginning of the week he told me between those two things his brain was barely functioning, but as the rocket fire has decreased we've had more peaceful nights and he's been doing better, as have we all.
It's still uncomfortable and hard, my kids still struggle with waking up to sirens, I know people who lost their homes, I've read about the people who died although I don't know any personally. But I go online and read about all the dead my government has been allegedly covering up and it comforts me, I like not living in the alternate reality these people are living in.
Unlike many many people online who seem to know a tremendous amount about all sorts of things (so many bombs have hit us and been covered up so effectively that no one who actually lives here knows about them — but these people magically do) I know almost nothing. Just the daily experience here, and hoping things turn out okay.
Hope everyone here is ok as well.
The thing is, I could believe that (I personally enjoy talking about people being first against the wall when the revolution comes, Sirius Cybernetics Marketing Division style), except that I assume the people excusing your excerpt would also take significant offense at similar (or lesser!) directed from the wrong people at the wrong people.
The phrase is often taken out of context by neocon Americans to show that Iran is hellbent on America's destruction, and thus to justify their highly violent efforts to destroy Iran in turn. Given the context of not just the phrase but these politics surrounding it, I think it actually is meaningful to point out the translation issue, since 'death to America' isn't necessarily proof of what they claim or justification for their own destructive desires/rationale.
Basically it comes across as disingenuous to use the phrase as a basis for wanting to destroy Iran, when idiomatically it's supposedly weaker than it's presented as being. But then again this whole affair is hopelessly mired in bad faith.
I'm sure hardly anyone in Iran actually believes they are going to be able to literally destroy America (except in the sense that God will eventually do that for them, which no doubt a few true believers do sincerely believe). That they don't literally mean "We will kill 300 million Americans bwahahaha!" does not mean their sentiment is not very real, and sincerely intended against whatever Americans or American proxies they can get their hands on.
Likewise, we are not going to "destroy Iran." We might destroy their government. We are not going to nuke their cities and raze their crops and exterminate civilians wholesale (which their government would certainly do to us if they had the capability).
Reality check: Iranians say مرگ بر آمریک. The literal translation is "Death to America." The Arabic الموت لأمريكا likewise translates literally as "Death to America." There is no "translation issue" and while yes, it might have some more general "You suck!" meaning in the minds of some of the chanters who arguably don't literally want every last American dead, it's still pretty unambiguous in its meaning. There is no idomatic usage in either Persian or Arabic where you say "Death to you" and aren't literally (if not sincerely) wishing death upon you.
There have been cases of the chant being used about potatoes and traffic. After 9/11, when Khamenei condemned the terror attacks, large crowds of Iranians held vigils, and some chanted “death to terrorism”. This is not the behavior of a nation that actually wants death inflicted upon a country.
Well, by the same token, Netanyahu calls Iran “Amalek”, which in the traditional telling, must be fully destroyed along with “all that they have […] both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey”. Do Israelis take this commandment literally? No; every Israeli cleric will explain that Amalek is a symbolic representation of evil. But if you’re Iran, you know what they’ve done to Gaza, and Iraq, and Syria, and Libya… so even a symbolic transliteration is not reassuring.
I'm sure Iranians (and everyone else) have said "Death to Pikachu" or "Death to my mother-in-law" at some point.
This argument is disingenuous and seems a lot like the whole "River to the Sea" debate, where whether it's actually an expression of violent intent depends on whether you hate Jews or not. As I already pointed out, not every single person who chants "Death to " literally wants to see an entire country exterminated, but you are well aware that Iranians chanting "Death to " in the streets mean what they say, even if they think it's figurative because they aren't actually in a position to inflict death.
Netanyahu's "Amalek" reference is in fact pretty loaded and I'm sure he knew what he was saying (and that he could waffle on whether he really has genocidal intent). That said, a politician using loaded rhetoric isn't the same as thousands of people chanting something in unison. If thousands of Israelis start chanting "Iran is Amalek," yes, I would assume that the general sentiment is that they would like to see Iran literally wiped off the map and that a not-insignificant fraction of them really and truly want and expect to do that. There are no doubt a non-zero number of Israelis who really mean it literally, and if I were Iranian, I probably would not be very charitable about interpreting an Israeli's use of that word.
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I was unaware that Israel was a big player in the NATO intervention there.
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Without taking a stance on what the Iranians actually mean when they say Death to America, I was just thinking a few days back how there exists an American relative equivalent in phrases that demonstrate ambiguity of rhetoric and the need to take cultural context into account in translation: the constant calls for "revolution" and uses of the word "revolution" as a description in politics (Ron Paul Revolution! The Reagan Revolution! Bernie's "Our Revolution!") with "revolution" basically just meaning electing a candidate within the existing system instead of its general historical meaning of a complete societal upheaval from the bottom to the top, often/usually through the force of arms (or at least an implication of the same).
You don't see the word "revolution" used the same way in Finland, for example, a country with negative experience of actual attempts at revolution (the left used the word when it was communist but basically doesn't any more, the right has approximately never used it in any sort of a positive sense).
Out of curiosity, I asked Google to translate "Industrial Revolution" from English to Finnish and got this: "teollinen vallankumous" Then I asked for just the word "revolution" and got this: "vallankumous" So I think that if there were Americans calling for a "MAGA-style revolution in Finland," I think it would be correctly understood.
Perhaps a better example is the word "kill" which, in English, has both a literal and a figurative meaning. (e.g. "last week the Yankees got KILLED by the Red Sox") Ok, so let's suppose that Benjamin Netanyahu announced - in English -- that Israel is going to KILL the Iranians. Under such circumstances, it would be reasonable to take this as evidence of genocidal intent. Even if Israel's defenders argued that the word "kill" doesn't necessarily mean to literally "kill." That what Netanyahu actually meant was that they would defeat Iran.
In fact, if Netanyahu actually were to say something like this, he surely would have known in advance how it would be interpreted. So if he did say it, it's pretty likely that he would have wanted -- to some extent -- for people to interpret it this way.
So too with "Death to America"
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Reality check: That's not how translation works.
Counter-reality check: I speak Arabic (poorly) and listen to what they actually say and mean.
The Russian translator from the linked example could speak English and listen to what English speakers say and mean.
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For what it's worth, I recall reading an article once that described a taxicab driver on a congested road somewhere in Iran shouting "Death to this traffic!".
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Also, the argument is weakened significantly because the phrase has a subject. If I say that sucks, sure it's fine. If I say "you suck", that's a little worse but not bad. But if I said "Dave sucks Bob off" then... yeah, it's the original meaning. If I say "damn", that's whatever. If I say "damn you" that's worse and more vitriolic. If I say "damn you to hell" then, yeah, that's like the original meaning again. As far as I can tell, this is a pretty universal rule.
I'm willing to buy that it's softer than US media presents it as, but it's total bullshit that it's lost all connotation. It's still quite hostile. Just like "fuck all republicans" is like, never going to be clean and always going to be something full of animus even if people drop a "fuck" all over the place in regular conversations.
"Peg the Patriarchy" may not be calling for the specific sex act, but the sentiment is correctly understood to be very negative all the same.
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I dunno man, if it came out that a common phrase translated really catastrophically aggressively into the language of a generational rival such that it means "we want to eradicate you" then I think it probably shouldn't be like, your country's slogan. If you decide to keep saying it anyways I think you are actually communicating very clearly. Like I had heard the phrase "nigger rigged" growing up a bit as a basic equivalent to "jerry rigged" but I'd have to be hopelessly naive to start a nigger rigging club and expect that not to be interpreted poorly by many people, if I did it anyways it'd only be possible with extreme contempt for the offended people, possibly rising to the level of just meaning what it sounds like it means.
Khrushchev's "we will bury you" line to the West might be a relevant example here: there are alternate readings from the literal -- "we buried my grandmother" doesn't suggest a murder -- but the English default is pretty aggressive. Perhaps some of our Russian speakers can vouch for the idiom.
The usual excuse for "we will bury you" is that Khruschev mean the Communist system was so great that the Soviet Union would move ahead by leaps and bounds. That's a plausible interpretation of the English also, especially preceded with "Whether you like it or not, history is on our side."
It's still bombastic and hostile, but not a threat of nuclear attack.
Language Log's take
The CIA's
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Well do you agree that over the last 20 years, Iran has had a lot of official events which included treading on and burning American and Israeli flags?
Can we agree that the most effective way to destroy Iran would be to take out their food and water infrastructure so that the population dies of hunger and thirst?
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