imperialist media at it again
So glad that Trump fucked this up and killed the leadership to be replaced with more hardliners.
Also told people to protest, “the US sees you, regime change Blabla” and then I guess dropping some bombs had to do. 10 to 50k dead… Oh well…
The orange turd could not have fucked it up worse on purpose.
Funny we can hear about how terrible Iranian prisons are but we don’t hear anything about how terrible the ice prisons are
ITT: Clowns shilling for a theocratic dictatorship that executes journalists, protesters, and gay people.
It turns out they are the same kind of people. The stupid, servile scum that bends the knee to authoritarianism.
Somehow I doubt better treatment of prisoners is part of the peace proposal
America should sit the fuck down. Everything in the article is happening on American soil RIGHT NOW in interment camps. There’s 40 dead prisoners. There’s children in cages.
Omg some of the responses here are so disregulated. Guys, it’s not that difficult, two things are true at once:
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The Iranian regime is horrible, it violates human rights, it stifles the legitimate aspirations for freedom and democracy of progressive Iranian people using brutal methods. The people at the business end of Iranian state violence deserve our sympathy and solidarity.
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The US and Israel should be defeated out of their illegal murderous war against Iran, and should be made to pay reparations for the horrible crimes they inflicted on the country.
In fact, motherfucker, the US and Israel are strengthening the Iranian regime’s political position. They are literally making it impossible for Iranian patriotic progressives to fight for a better Iran.
So yea, if we’re talking about the Iranian army kicking American and Israeli asses? Good on them. If we’re talking about the Iranian police and guard busting Iranian skulls? Fuck them to hell.
Don’t be campists kids, just don’t.
Dont be campist
Let the imperialist present both sides bad here and then let them vote for pro genocide party because muh less evil
Calling other campist is a trick by libs to lighten off the guilt they have for genocide they have carried out
The Iranian regime is horrible
I’ve been reading this propaganda continuously since I was old enough to pick up a newspaper.
Practically every Muslim nation gets this treatment to some degree. But countries we’re at war with get it extra bad.
Anecdotal I know, but I’m friends with several Iranian people, good friends with some of them. Every one of them and their families has nothing but bad things to say about that government. They’re a horrible dictatorial power that completely suppresses women’s rights, religious freedoms, and bodily autonomy. They rule on fear and terror and are genuinely awful.
They are still supported by small groups of extreme religious conservatives who will threaten and call the police on any woman exercising autonomy because that is what they believe their imaginary space friend wants.
This is not propaganda when it comes from people, especially women, who’ve lived their whole lives in fear of this regime and couldn’t wait to get out. Could my knowledge be skewed by only having spoken to Iranian emigrants? Yes, sure. But the facts they’ve talked about are still true.
Yeah, executing political prisoners and gay people and shooting protestors in the face is good, actually!
Huh, you conflate the Iranian regime with the Iranian nation. That’s not a reasonable thing to do. Hey, quick aside, why do you think middle eastern countries are mostly autoctacies? It’s not Islam, not by a long shot. Albania and Bosnia are majority Muslim. Who benefits from keeping the populations in the MENA countries muzzled up? Huh?
you conflate the Iranian regime with the Iranian nation
No, I don’t
why do you think middle eastern countries are mostly autoctacies
Go ask Mohamed Morsi. Ask Mohammad Mosaddegh or Chadli Bendjedid. Ask Thomas Sankara. Hell. Ask Ismail Haniyeh. Ask all the Middle East liberals what happened following the Arab Spring.
“Why is a country that’s perpetually under siege and threatened with regime change so militaristic and obsessed with self-policing?” should be self-explanatory. Particularly when “we’re under attack by evil outsiders, please surrender all your civil rights!” is a line I hear regularly in Western Media.
I guess I can bat the question back to you. Why are so many NATO member states autocratic oligarchies?
you conflate the Iranian regime with the Iranian nation
No, I don’t
Oh yes you absofuckinglutely do. You literally changed the noun here:
The Iranian regime is horrible
…
Practically every Muslim nation gets this treatment to some degree.
I wrote regime, you wrote nation. It’s literally right there for everyone to see.
Go ask Mohamed Morsi. Ask Mohammad Mosaddegh or Chadli Bendjedid. Ask Thomas Sankara. Hell. Ask Ismail Haniyeh. Ask all the Middle East liberals what happened following the Arab Spring.
Ah, but you misunderstood my question. You focus on the “anti-imperialist” side of the ledger, whereas I asked about all MENA countries. The “anti-imperialist” autocratic regimes are all degenerate cases that resulted from the defeat of movements, as a way to contain the population while continuing to exist in the imperialist order. Go and see what all the “anti-imperialist” autocrats, without fucking exception did to the communists, to the labour movement, to the radical youth. In Syria, in Lebanon, in Iran, etc. They all parrot/ed “anti-imperialist” platitudes while actually brutally suppressing the Left in all its expressions. And everytime a campist fool sings their praises, what they’re actually doing is revelling in the murder, torture and brutalization of Leftists. As if Iranian labour activists and feminist radicals owe your sorry ass to sacrifice themselves for your “anti-imperialist” abstractions.
Then broaden your view a little. Why are the western allies also autocracies? Qatar, UAE, Saudi, Jordan. Who do they also suppress? Right: the Left, the socialists, the labour movement, the radical youth. The same apparatus doing the same thing. If you boil it really down to brass tacks, none of these fuckers really care about imperialism, they care about their own regimes positioning themselves in the imperialist order. And how do you do that? Suppress the commies and the pinkos, suppress labour, suppress the youth. Same story, everywhere, whether with an “anti-imperialist” stick or a “royal” stick or a “national” stick.
If you actually want to be anti-imperialist, and live in the West as I assume you do, stop glorifying these assholes, focus on the class war in the imperialist core. If your heart bleeds for Iranians, stand in solidarity of the actual people bleeding from both american/israeli bombs and basij brutality, and if you can’t do both, if you can’t handle the heat, gtfo the kitchen.
I guess I can bat the question back to you. Why are so many NATO member states autocratic oligarchies?
That question is a gotcha only in your foolish campist framework. You really think I’m interested in …defending them?
You literally changed the noun here
The nation is its people. You don’t get to wiggle out by saying “I just hate the government, not the popular movement that formed the government”. Iran isn’t being occupied from the top by an invading army. It’s a super-majority Muslim nation that is governed by a popular clergy and democratically elected bureaucracy.
You focus on the “anti-imperialist” side of the ledger, whereas I asked about all MENA countries.
The pattern of imperial conquest, ethnic divide-and-conquer governance, and villainization of popular politics isn’t unique to occupied MENA states. What sets Iran apart from Saudi Arabia or Turkiye or Jordan or Egypt is its unaligned status.
What Americans claim they hate about Iran and Yemen but can’t be bothered to care about in Dubai or Kuwait or Azerbaijan is a series of tropes drummed into them by Christian Fascist national media.
Why are the western allies also autocracies? Qatar, UAE, Saudi, Jordan. Who do they also suppress? Right: the Left, the socialists, the labour movement, the radical youth.
Iran isn’t a leftist or socialist state in any meaningful sense. They’re as draconianly anti-socialist as any Saudi government. That’s a big reason why you have crowds of Iranian civilians gulled into supporting a nepo-baby from Maryland as their US-sponsored savior (which the US secretly backed a return of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a western proxy). This is not a conflict between Western liberals and Eastern socialists. It’s a fight between Western Christian Imperialists and Eastern Muslim Nationalists.
That question is a gotcha
Thought-Terminating liberalism at its finest.
You accuse me of …liberalism when you have swallowed hook line and sinker the romantic nationalism that is the foundation liberalism. I mean this is just out in the open:
The nation is its people. You don’t get to wiggle out by saying “I just hate the government, not the popular movement that formed the government”. Iran isn’t being occupied from the top by an invading army. It’s a super-majority Muslim nation that is governed by a popular clergy and democratically elected bureaucracy.
Ein volk, eh?
There is basically zero marxism in your diatribe. The only thing that has a “red” tint in what you’re saying is the word “imperialism”, but your framework differs extremely little from Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations. You use left-wing vocabulary, but the structure of your analysis is nationalist and civilizational rather than class-based.
I don’t see any point in continuing this discussion, we’re using fundamentally different paradigms and value systems here.
you have swallowed hook line and sinker the romantic nationalism that is the foundation liberalism
???
Ein volk, eh?
Scaring yourself by reading words in German will put you out of whole branches of modern political philosophy.
I don’t see any point in continuing this discussion
You forgot about the third thing that is most true: Iran is defending the entire region against genocide and imperialism from terrorist attacks by the West.
And if you truly think that the start of another Western genocide is the time to criticize the government of the genocided then you are fully on board with it.
The main point is that Iran was on the nose until Demented Donny made them into some sort of underdog hero. Totally underestimated them and screwed the world all for ego (and probably the Epstein files).
You’re throwing around the word genocide like it’s candy to the point where you’re conflating genocide with imperialism and terrorism. Sit down.
When the West starts off by bombing girls schools, hospitals and civilian infrastructure they are not waging war. All Western “wars” focus on destroying civilian infrastructure and raking maximum civilian casualties. Iraq, Afghanistan. all of them. That is why so many brave resistance fighters stand up and risk their life against the terror occupation instead of living a semi-comfortable life under the boot. Because the West murders their family they it “radicalizes” them into becoming “terrorists”. Is that language more familiar?
They are not “wars”. They are all genocides will be recorded in future history books as such.
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The Iran regime sucks, it’s authoritarian and brutal.
Yet I can’t help but having a nagging feeling that the reason we are hearing these stories, is to help justify the next move of Israel/USA.There is no doubt that USA is a huge part of the reason it is as bad as it is now in Iran, because half a century of sanctions against Iran has undermined their economy, and bad economy is a major factor of the internal problems of Iran. Life threatening poverty has a strong tendency to lead to violence.
Iran might have been on a path to a more civil society when moderates were at power. However this was against Israels plan to picture the local rival as force of evil… so Trump singlehandedly ended the nuclear deal Iran was kept word in and proved to the Iraninan leaders that ‘the West’ can’t be trusted. Next election saw a switch to more conservativism and repression, just as intended.
I’d say you’re right.
It is like condemning Hamas for violent resistance after Israel completely shot up the peaceful Hamas peaceful march of return against occupation in 2017 with full backing of the West, and so many other Palestinian attempts at a peaceful resolution which were met with bloody massacres from their oppressors.
Yeah oppressed people are going to learn a lesson. They will become “hardliners” who “no longer trust the West”. And they should be praised not falling for it again.
No doubt the sanctions and theft of Iranian assets have radicalized the country, both the regime and following that the opposition too.
The international community that participated in this are all guilty of crimes against humanity.
Deepa Parent at The Guardian has been churning these articles out at a steady pace, often pushing out inflated death tolls of Iranian civilians and citing unconfirmed sources. Any story from her should be considered highly suspect at best and consent-manufacturing propaganda at worst.
https://thegrayzone.com/2026/02/01/guardian-iranian-death-toll-concocted-monarchist-doctors/amp/
The Grayzone is a disinformation blog that exists to defend authoritarian regimes like Russia, Iran, al-Assad’s Syria, and China. They specifically e.g. whitewash China’s ongoing cultural genocide in Xinjiang, deny al-Assad’s chemical attack on Douma, and support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
You surely know this, of course, if you’re citing them. I’m just clarifying for others.
Oh now uyghur stuff is “cultural genocide”? lol
You may not be a fan of the source, but the facts in the article speak for themselves
- Parent went from being a fashion journalist to an Iran “expert” in a suspiciously short space of time
- She has published multiple articles making bold claims about the violence perpetrated by the Iranian regime that no other outlet has verified
- She has pushed 30,000 death toll figure based on little to no evidence
- Her articles often cite unknown or unverified sources, e.g. “a student in Tehran said …”
Other outlets that challenge the alleged death toll numbers, include Zeteo [link], just FYI.
You may not be a fan of the source
That’s an odd way to say that the source is uncredible and a mouthpiece for covering up and whitewashing the crimes against humanity of authoritarian regimes. You know, like the kinds of crimes being discussed here.
And outlets like The Guardian and The BBC are responsible for covering up and whitewashing the crimes against humanity committed by Israel and its Western allies.
Does that make every article written for them fundamentally untrue?
Okay, so you just fundamentally don’t understand or care about how source credibility, bias, or anything outside of a black-and-white binary works. Taken in the extreme, I can’t say “Hey guys, check out this InfoWars source*” and then claim “but mainstream outlets are biased and lie too!!” when I’m rightly called out for it.
Yeah, sources like BBC News are biased for e.g. Israel’s genocide in Palestine. That’s why we normally treat them with a grain of skepticism when they report on things like that; for BBC News specifically, I’d probably just find a better source if I want reporting on Israel in Palestine or Lebanon. Nonetheless, it’s not ridden with unhinged conspiracy theories about how e.g. al-Assad never carried out an illegal chemical attack on his own people or AI-hallucinated disinformation about Alexei Navalny.
The Grayzone is a quintessential mouthpiece that exists effectively solely for that purpose.
* Edit: I guess I actually can cite them now and it’d be kind of funny. God bless you, Tesseract.
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The International Association of Genocide Scholars has condemned the Chinese policies in Xinjiang as genocide.
One can’t in good conscience cite the IAGS as an authority when they condemn the genocide in Gaza and then ignore them when they condemn the genocide in Xinjiang.
One can’t in good conscience cite the IAGS as an authority when they condemn the genocide in Gaza and then ignore them when they condemn the genocide in Xinjiang.
Then it’s a good thing I’m not doing that.
Is there a genocide happening in Gaza? And if your answer is yes, on what basis are you saying that?
Yes, there is. Based of a plethora of sources - some more reputable than others.
The signatories included Algeria, Cuba, Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates
Wow, I’m so impressed that bastions of human rights like checks notes Russia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Pakistan, and Qatar found China’s cultural-genocidal “achievements” “remarkable”.
Was this actually meant to sway anyone, or were you just hoping copy–pasting this would get people to zone out, not read it, and just passively agree you’d said something convincing?
Edit: Anyway, here’s a good debunk of that article by Modern Chinese historian and socialist David Brophy. I disagree with Brophy on the subject of “genocide” because it’s very clearly a cultural one (whereas he’s using the one about killing off etc. of a group), but he nonetheless compellingly points out that the article you linked is a crock of shit. Even disregarding that they used AI to write it and provably hallucinated sources, it’s still a sloppy piece of propaganda.
David Brophy
western “democratic socialists” are dogs of empire, who cares for their label?
Wow, I’m so impressed that bastions of human rights like
Right back atcha
Oh, okay, so you’re pulling a disingenuous whataboutism for someone who wasn’t even being discussed.
I didn’t offer Adrian Zenz’s opinion for the same reason I wouldn’t have offered Saudi Arabia’s. You decided to offer the opinions of countries like Saudi Arabia which is why I criticized you for doing so. I instead offered the opinion of David Brophy excoriating that piece of AI slopaganda but who you completely sidestepped because his article competently and credibly drags the Monthly Review one into the street and puts it out of its misery.
It’s actually kind of hilarious that you’re (unsurprisingly) doing one of the main things Brophy criticizes Prashad and Chak for in the debunk I seriously doubt you cared to read.
Edit: And by the way, just because I didn’t even think to earlier because I was more frustrated with your invoking someone never discussed here than I was with what he said: here’s the full context.
He was replying to Michael D. Swaine, who wrote:
Other than the fact that “he” alone did not do this, that many CN actually like greater surveillance, and that the camps are a gross overreaction to a real problem, no. But I was thinking more of the BRI nonsense, “quasi-emperor for life,” “play by its own rules,” MIC 2025, etc.
Zenz replied:
Many Germans liked Hitler’s control mechanisms. They reduced crime and rid society of unpopular minorities. @Dalzell60
You deliberately took this out of context. He’s literally using Hitler to describe how many people liking bigoted authoritarian measures doesn’t make it a good thing.
He’s still part of an expressly right-wing think tank, so I’m not suddenly endorsing things he’s written about China’s cultural genocide. What I am saying is that this is the dumbest possible way you could’ve smeared his credibility – by picking out a quote where he’s obviously and fully criticizing Hitler.
Coming into a comment thread that is calling out the manufacturing consent against Iran, and bleating “but Xinjiang!” is whataboutism if I’ve ever seen it.
And yes, you are parroting Zenz. He is the source of this myth - via countless western sources regurgitating the same claims he’s been making since 2018.
In March 2017, the Jamestown Foundation (Washington DC) published a three thousand-word report on “Xinjiang’s Rapidly Evolving Security State” written by Adrian Zenz and James Leibold.1 A few months later, the same writers published another report, this one slightly longer at nearly five thousand words, with the more aggressive title, “Chen Quanguo: The Strongman Behind Beijing’s Securitization Strategy in Tibet and Xinjiang.”2 At that time, there was not much interest in these stories. Zenz came from the Victims of Communism Foundation, a nonprofit organization set up by the U.S. Congress in 1993 and funded by various right-wing sources, including the Heritage Foundation.
You decided to offer the opinions of countries like Saudi Arabia
And, ya know, a plethora of others that you decided to ignore for some reason… Associating a large swath of Muslim and Arab nations with human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia really lets your racism show.
They are showing evidence that the leading Muslim countries in the world support China’s policies in Xinjiang.
Disagreeing is one thing but you should at least demonstrate reading comprehension.
you should at least demonstrate reading comprehension
I did comprehend, and I’m not falling for it; citing e.g. Saudi Arabia on any matter of human rights is patently ridiculous. The fact the Uyghurs are predominantly Muslim doesn’t automatically mean nakedly corrupt predominantly Muslim nations with extreme records of human rights abuses are going to stick up for them, and dressing it up that way to give it a veil of credibility is frankly disgusting.
Well presumably these nations care about Muslim culture. Are you saying they dont actually care about the Muslim people in Xinjiang? Thats a lot of Muslim countries listed, and you cherry picked a few out of them. Are they all wrong? Why would they defend the genocide of a Muslim group?
Nah, the kind of violence we are talking about here has nothing to do with sanctions/Israel/USA. It’s the regime against the people, not people against each other. And this is 100% the regime’s responsibility. Israeli and US leadership is bad, but it has nothing to with the regime’s brutality. Also the sanctions are international, they hit Iran’s economy, but the regime could get rid of them at any time. It’s just that war and nuclear weapons are more important to them. Plus they run a very corrupt and inefficient economy anyway.
It’s the regime against the people
Iran is bordered on one side by Afghanistan, and on the other side by Iraq. Anyone with two brain cells can see what happened there after the Epstein regime invaded. Trying to help the Epsteinites kill your own people goes beyond even treason; it is some sort of death wish or misanthropy. I cannot blame the Iranian government for cracking down on this.
Also the sanctions are international
No they’re not; they were imposed by the Epstein coalition with the threat of secondary sanctions, and sometimes even violence.
the regime could get rid of them at any time
Yes, but the Epstein regime wants those sanctions, so as to hurt Iran’s economy.
It’s just that war and nuclear weapons are more important to them.
Nuclear weapons are, sadly, one of two things the Epstein regime fears, so they are a necessary evil if you want to be a sovereign nation.
And we all know who started this war.
Plus they run a very corrupt and inefficient economy anyway.
A very corrupt and inefficient economy that somehow produced enough weaponry to drive the biggest military in the world out of West Asia. I suppose when your efficiency stat is too low, it underflows and becomes insanely high?
Also the sanctions are international, they hit Iran’s economy, but the regime could get rid of them at any time. It’s just that war and nuclear weapons are more important to them.
They had already agreed to not pursue nuclear weapons, and let international observers in to verify, in the talks that ended apruptly when the US and Israel started bombing them.
And before that, there had already been a deal in place, which the US unilaterally pulled out of.True. But only one part of a bigger picture.
The bigger picture in which the Iranian regime has had a top level ban on developing nuclear weapons for decades, and stayed compliant with the deal years after the US unilaterally ended it?
“Corrupt and inefficient economy” they are able to fight the world’s most expensive army while still actively selling munitions to Russia while also at a food surplus while also managing to punish a dozen US allies that picked sides poorly. Even the CIA admits they could keep this up for YEARS.
They have a far more efficient economy than any country in the west – all developing countries do by necessity.
Ok, this is just blatant propaganda. Everything you just wrote is hilariously false or a misrepresentation of the issue at hand. But by all means, continue believing that fucking Iran’s economy is superior to that of the “western world”…
Calling everything that disagrees with your owners’ world view “propaganda” is just pure slavebrained behavior.
Yes, the fact they are able to feed themselves while under crushing sanctions and even have a fucking space program means they have a more efficient economy than say, the US with it’s 1% hunger rate or the UK which is starting to kick people out of housing because they ‘can’t afford it.’ They are able to accomplish the same thing every society has as a goal – taking care of its people better than if they were on their own – with 1/10,000th of the resources.
Developing countries that aren’t in famine are indeed better economies than developed countries, because they don’t have developing countries to exploit to prop up their economy.
So do you complain in stories about Trump doing stupid and evil things with “a nagging feeling that it’s just to help justify the next move of Iran?”
You admit the Iranian government “sucks” yet news of them doing bad things surely must be American propaganda? Even from a British paper?
Conspiracy thinking does us all no good.
The British with help by the Americans are pretty much the reason why the current regime is in charge
Yes - conspiracy theorists are great at finding any and all possible supporting evidence no matter how poor. Just vague general “relationships” is sufficient.
They’ve worked together in the past != The guardian ran this to support Trump.
WTF? This is in no way a conspiracy, this has been known for decades, USA instated the Shah to get control of the Iranian oil.
And your false equivalence is outright stupid.That isn’t the conspiracy. The conspiracy is therefore this article is propaganda.
No you are way off, the nationality of the outlet has very little bearing on whether it might be American propaganda or not.
Claiming that because it’s a British outlet it can’t be American propaganda is outright moronic.Edit:
Why is this downvoted? He claimed exactly this, if you look 3 of his posts up he wrote:bad things surely must be American propaganda? Even from a British paper?
That’s not what I’m claiming. Thanks for playing.
It can be true but also propaganda, or just coincidentally the kind of news Zionists would like to see (truthfully). It’s hard to tell.
I think it’s worth including this meta context when discussing the article.
It can also just be an article about an objectively totalitarian regime doing horrible things.
Sometimes a banana is just a banana.
You don’t think it’s both true and useful to bad actors?
Nothing is “just” anything. We live in a society etc
Nothing is “just” anything. We live in a society etc
The cry of the conspiracy theorists!! “THERE ARE NO COINCIDENCES” “FOLLOW THE MONEY”!
The cry of the conspiracy theorists!! “THERE ARE NO COINCIDENCES” “FOLLOW THE MONEY”!
Please stop with this disingenuous strawfolking. If you have questions about what I said you can just ask me.
I’m not fighting you. I’m not even debating you. Let’s just talk.
Why do you think I’m saying the Guardian is involved in a conspiracy? I agreed they can be just doing factual reporting and also that this reporting happens to be useful to people who want to justify the US and Israel’s actions.
That’s the context of how nothing is ever “just” a pure piece of reporting, released into a vacuum only read by 100% politically neutral readers.
Why do you think I’m saying the Guardian is involved in a conspiracy? I agreed they can be just doing factual reporting and also that this reporting happens to be useful to people who want to justify the US and Israel’s actions.
This is the “I’m just asking questions” wing of conspiratorial thinking. What you’re missing is that there’s absolutely no reason to be bringing any of this up at all. The connections you’re making are spurious. It’s also super common (and annoying) in on-line conversations of any sort when politics is being discussed. When maga does it leftists cry “conspiracy theory” (rightly so). When leftists do it and I point out the conspiracy thinking I get “you’re so naive! you can’t see that these things are related!?!”
BoTh SiDeS are absolutely guilty of conspiracy thinking. They just like their conspiracies and feel justified. Introspection is not a common talent.
Straw man argument.
Cool. Now do Israel and the US
If it helps I had no idea which country it was until competing the sentence.
Oh hey blatant Hasbara made by a UK website that justified the UK’s slave trade as a positive thing for the slaves. What a surprise.
And posted by a UK account that justified killing journalists and children.
I wonder what their dual nationality is.
Honey wake up time for your daily portion anti-Iran propaganda by TheGuardian
Honey wake up, it’s time to shill for a omnicidal theocracy
Trying so hard to manifacture consent.
I didn’t read the headline fully and only midway through the article i realized it was about Iran, not Israel.
It is written by a notorious Zionist as well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFdDoez4Is4
I was going to post a satirical comment about how the Mossad must be involved in this. Never mind. No need to highlight how warped many of the viewpoints here are.
