As details of the death toll for January’s protests continue to emerge, three students explain why they are resisting a return to normality

As details of the death toll for January’s protests continue to emerge, three students explain why they are resisting a return to normality

More than 45 days after a brutal January crackdown that left thousands of Iranian protesters dead, students across several universities are protesting again. As Iran’s new academic term began on Saturday, students in Tehran gathered on campus, chanting anti-government slogans, despite a heavy security presence and plainclothes officers stationed outside university gates.

The Guardian spoke to protesting students about why they were rallying despite the fact that thousands had been killed and tens of thousands arrested in the January demonstrations.

“Our classrooms are empty because the graveyards are full,” said Hossein*, 21, a student at the University of Tehran. “It’s for them – our friends, classmates and compatriots, who were gunned down in front of our eyes, that we decided to boycott the classes.”

    • insight06@lemmy.worldEnglish
      15·
      3 months ago

      OP actually has hundreds (thousands?) of comments over the past few years, but all but the most recent are listed as deleted by creator. I won’t speculate as to the reason for this, but just note that their current comment count doesn’t reflect their historical contributions.

      I’ll also just leave this quote from one of the comment chains they’ve recently commented on:

      @MicroWave@lemmy.world I just want to say thanks for posting quality links so frequently. You’re one of the few who isn’t posting click bait junk like Raw Story and Daily Beast.

      I don’t personally keep track, but it seems some others do feel they make valuable contributions. I for one don’t want to see anyone too quick to torch the relative few individuals putting content on Lemmy.

        • 7101334@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          3 months ago

          You’re not wrong about the Guardian but also like… the Iranian government is fucked. Yes, this is probably propaganda to manufacture consent, but that doesn’t mean it’s not also a real story of real students fighting a real struggle. It’s a tough line to walk.

            • 7101334@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              3 months ago

              “It’s not a tough line to walk, I just think that students facing oppression, violence, and mass killings by a theocratic government should shut up and be quiet in case their struggle might be perverted to further imperial interests.”

              I don’t know, from where I’m sitting, you seem to be struggling a bit to walk that line as easily as you proclaim.

                • 7101334@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  3 months ago

                  And on that, I agree with you 100%, but this specific article doesn’t do that. It’s implicit, I agree with you, but how do you suggest combating that? I think the solution has to be using every news article post as a platform to denounce that military intervention and promote critical thought, rather than decrying the mere existence of those posts and suggesting that people will be too stupid to discern the truth if they’re faced with propaganda. (Which is, of course, accurate lmao, but it’s also a self-fulfilling prophecy. If people are never taught how to think critically and presented with opportunities to do so, they will remain stupid forever.)

                  Also in my opinion, Americans oppose military action in Iran for financial reasons, which always takes precedence over moral concerns. So, in this case, both fortunately and unfortunately, Americans will not be motivated to support military action because of another government’s brutality against student protestors imo. It’s a tired old talking point out of the War-on-Terror and Hasbara playbooks, but even older people barely buy that shit anymore - and even if they do, they’re probably more concerned with why every trip to the grocery store is $250.

    • Dasus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      I mean, a large portion of Lemmy is Russians.

      I find it the funniest when actual Russians like Davel@lemmy.ml, pretend to be Americans and go “why would Russian propaganda even care about something as small as lemmy?” Oh hmm let me think, an open unregulated and uncontrolled platform for spreading whatever, whenever and how much ever, why would that interest anyone pushing an agenda hmmm…

      It’s crazy how many people defend these propaganda bots

            • Dasus@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              2 months ago

              Look at profiles like Davel@lemmy.ml

              Literally pretending to be a red-blooded American while doing comments like “reality has a well known Russian propaganda-bias”, and having several comments on his profiles in fluent Russian.

              If you were a Russian online in today’s atmosphere, would you admit to it, or pretend to be from another country?

              No matter how much I’d like to make up shit against Russia, there’s no need. Unlike Russians, we Finns don’t feel the need to lie for our despotic leader. Mainly because we don’t have one. Haven’t had one since 1809 pretty much. Well, arguably a bit from 1809 to 1917, but I wouldn’t make that argument.

              So yeah. Feel like reasoning your feelings out at all? Could help others figure out what you’re thinking.

                • Dasus@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  2 months ago

                  Oh, getting a bit mad, huh? Where were you born and raised?

                  A whole essay shifting your goalposts. You said I’m making up Russians pretending to be Americans. I give you a every clear example, and you just kick off a tantrum about how “European propaganda” this and that. Clearly setting sort of teams here. And implying I’m on one (European) and by implication that you’re on another.

                  I’m really not up to writing an essay where I answer all your whataboutism and shitty implications.

                  If you’re pretending like “European propaganda” exists, that there’s some hegemonic culture which unites all the countries and thus all their intelligence apparatuses as well and they share coordinated disinformation campaigns equal to those of Russia? Get fucked, you know how ridiculous of a notion that is. Europe isn’t a hegemony, unlike Russia, which is absolutely infamous for its disinformation campaigns, all over the world. Objectively.

                  As social media gained prominence in the 2010s, Russia began to use platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube to spread disinformation. Russian web brigades and bots, typically operated by Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA), were commonly used to disseminate disinformation throughout these social media channels.[24] In late 2017 Facebook estimated that as many as 126 million of its users had seen content from Russian disinformation campaigns on its platform.[25] Twitter stated that it had found 36,000 Russian bots spreading tweets related to the 2016 United States elections.[26] Russia has used social media to destabilize former Soviet states such as Ukraine and Western nations such as France and Spain.[27] It has been suggested that since 2019, Russian-sponsored troll accounts and bots have formed and taken over prominent left-wing and right-wing subreddits on Reddit, such as the antiwar, greenandpleasant, and aboringdystopia subreddits, “suggest[ing] a Russian-led attempt to antagonize and influence Americans online, which is still ongoing.”[28] Canadian subreddits have also been directly targeted by Russia. [29]

                  Social media companies have moved to limit Russian disinformation on their platforms. In October 2019, Facebook moved to take down accounts connected to Yevgeny Prigozhin used to interfere with African political affairs.[30] Cameron Hudson, a senior fellow of the Africa Center at the Atlantic Council at the time, said Russia’s aim is to make its presence felt in the same way it did during the Cold War, but with a much smaller investment using disinformation campaigns.[30] In 2020, the United States State Department identified several “proxy sites” used by Russian state actors “to create and amplify false narratives”. These sites include the Strategic Culture Foundation, New Eastern Outlook, Crimea-based news agency NewsFront, and SouthFront, a website targeted at “military enthusiasts, veterans, and conspiracy theorists”.[31] Russian influence operations, such as the Pravda network, have increasingly spread content that serves as training data for large language models in order to influence the output produced

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