this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2026
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Off My Chest

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I'm horrified at the number of people who think protests in Iran should be put down (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 6 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) by Yeho@sh.itjust.works to c/goodoffmychest@lemmy.world
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I'm fucking stunned at the number of people who claim to be "Progressive" but sincerely believe protests in Iran are a vast Mossad operation that should be put down.

Intelligence Agencies don't operate like that. Mossad agents don't go around distributing bags of money to thousands of protesters in 40 different cities.

Ali Khamenei's regime has committed human rights abuses and crimes against humanity since 1989, including killing thousands of protesters, rape, ethnic persecution, torture, systematic political repression.

If you get arrested in Iran, this is what they do to you:

On 11 July 2003, nineteen days after she was arrested, Kazemi died in Iranian custody in Baghiyyatollah al-Azam Military Hospital.

Shahram Azam, a former staff physician in Iran's Defence Ministry, released a statement saying that he examined Kazemi in hospital four days after her arrest and found obvious signs of torture, including:

Evidence of a very brutal rape

A skull fracture, two broken fingers, missing fingernails, a crushed big toe, and a broken nose.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zahra_Kazemi

Just because Iran opposes Israel doesn't make it a good government:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-62793573

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/iran-executes-2-gay-men-sodomy-charges-rights-group-says-rcna14540

Saddam Hussein was a murderous psycho who also opposed Israel.

Hafez El Assad was a butcher who screamed "Syria stands against Israel"

I'm genuinely horrified at the number of people who think Iran's regime is right to shoot protesters because "they are paid by the Mossad". Or those who say "it's a Western conspiracy theory, they aren't killing anyone"

I know a woman who kept quoting Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International reports about Gaza for months.

But now, strangely, she thinks Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are no longer credible sources:

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/01/iran-massacre-of-protesters-demands-global-diplomatic-action-to-signal-an-end-to-impunity/

https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/01/12/irans-internet-blackout-concealing-atrocities

Fucking tankies.

Sorry for the rant

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[–] couldhavebeenyou@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 hour ago

Check out their sites: the gradbears are salivating over the prospect of mass executions of those who dared to protest

[–] unknownuserunknownlocation@kbin.earth 1 points 2 hours ago

Hear, hear.

Every authoritarian government has its supporters, without they would never survive.

And that's the thing: those people are absolutely maddening to argue with. In Gaza, the war crimes were (and still are being) live streamed, and the question was how is there still any doubt. Some of those same people see videos of the protests and the people identifying bodies in makeshift morgues and somehow argue their way around it.

I hope the protesters are successful. I know a Syrian family who fled the war. I coincidentally met some of them on their shift the day the Assad regime was toppled. One of them said, "we can breathe now". Meanwhile in the middle of the city the people were celebrating. It's hard to describe how happy I felt for all of them.

[–] mrmaplebar@fedia.io 3 points 4 hours ago

Some people (particularly terminally stupid people and/or tankie sock puppets) seem to think that being pro-Palestine also means being pro-Hamas, and by the transitive property of Islamic extremist power-brokering, pro-Iran.

[–] AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 1 points 4 hours ago

[–] BeanGoblin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Here's a crazy statement.

What if... all governments are bad?

[–] skeezix@lemmy.world 6 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

Then I’d say you have an insular knowledge of the world, and are probably an American whose knowledge only extends as a far as what’s been fed to him by nightly news.

[–] mrmaplebar@fedia.io 3 points 4 hours ago

Between the UK prostrating themselves to Donald Trump while trying to regulate consensual adult sexuality, Denmark rallying the EU to eliminate digital communications privacy, France still arresting people for cannabis, Italy oscillating between incompetent governments every few years, Greece being broke, Hungary being ruled by nazis, etc., I'm not so sure the smug Europeanisms are really warranted anymore.

America is, without a doubt, a fucking mess run by evil fascist idiots. But when it comes to strength, democracy, civil rights, and standing for something, I'm also not overwhelmingly impressed by the leadership I'm seeing elsewhere on Earth.

[–] TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today 2 points 4 hours ago

If anything I think it just shows that it's impossible to reduce something like a government into something as binary as good and bad.

You could accurately claim that all governments do bad things.... But claiming all governments are bad or even that there is such a thing as a good government is pretty nonsensical imo.