Iran has banned a weightlifter from sports for life and dissolved a sports committee after the athlete greeted an Israeli counterpart on a podium.
Mostafa Rajaei, a veteran weightlifter, finished second in his category in the 2023 World Master Weightlifting Championships in Poland and stood on a podium with an Iranian flag wrapped around him on Saturday.
On anther step of the podium stood Maksim Svirsky from Israel, who finished third.
The two athletes shook hands and took a picture together, which led to the Iran Weightlifting Federation banning Rajaei from all sports for life due to what it called an “unforgivable” transgression.
Usually take Iran’s side on stuff, but this is kinda pointlessly petty tbh
the Iranian government? the one killing citizens who speak out against it or women who don’t wear a headscarf?
Truly, the most dastardly invention of the Iranian government was killing people who oppose it. No government before or since, especially not in the West, has steeped to such lows.
Some governments are more willing to resort to violent repression against their domestic enemies than others, though.
For instance: In 2022, Iran had minimum 596 executions (likely more), Saudi Arabia had 146, the US had 18,
e.g., places like Iran, Saudi are quicker to do so than most, even for internal enemies of equivalent threat to the state itself.
For instance:, during the Jina Ahmini protests over 300 were killed in only a month.
All states and all governments use violence or the threat of it to uphold their rule, but some are more reliant on violence versus other methods of control than others…
Plus some are more willing to use violence in foreign policy vs domestic policy.
US pigs killed nearly 1100 people in 2022 and we’re not even getting into all the social murder committed by our for profit medical and housing industries. I can’t believe I’m seeing this whitewashing of American government malfeasance from a Hexbear user.
I wasn’t referring to the US as one of the ‘less murder-y’ ones because it is a settler-colonial state. Though those killed by law enforcement in Iran are still considerably higher, e.g., during the Jina Ahmini protests over 300 were killed in only a month. This is even if you count literally every US police murder as part of a campaign of political repression, of which plenty were but certainly not all.
I don’t know why you thought I was as I didn’t even remotely begin to say it?
IDK how anyone-whether Hexbear or not-can possibly deny the fact that different governments rely on coercion to differing extents to maintain control.
Well you edited your original response right after seeing this but your original comment talked about how the US only killed 18 people last year but these foreign countries in the middle east were more violent and killed hundreds, and how, even if you include police brutality this still “stands true.”
It’s hard for me to include your exact words since you took steps to obscure them but I think if you’re honest with yourself you can admit you were downplaying the violence committed by the US on its populace relative to Iran.
The edit was to edit the number of people Iranian police killed during the Jina Ahmini protests because I read it wrong. IDK how to confirm it.
If you do not think that some states are more violent in their methods of control than others then I don’t know what to tell you tbqh.
Nah, you’re lying. I do specifically remember you comparing official execution numbers of Iran, Saudi Arabia and America (~600, ~100, and 18, respectively) to try to make it sound like the US was less murderous. I don’t know why you’re doing this but you’re being dishonest in a way that both paints the US to look less violent than it’s foreign enemies (and it’s allies too, as long as their foreign enough. They’re certainly not as bad as Iran though, right?) and then obfuscates the fact that you’re doing that and I don’t know why a multiple year old Hexbear account would do that but I do remember the general thrust of the original comment.
EDIT: actually I was wrong, we can confirm that you’re lying, look at this quote from GarbageShoot’s response to you
Over the last decade, police in America have killed at least between 950 and 1250 people a year.
The actual numbers are probably higher because police don’t report all the people they kill, so statisticians are limited to searching news stories that contain the relevant data.
I wasn’t referring to the US as one of the ‘less murder-y’ ones because it is a settler-colonial state. Though those killed by law enforcement in Iran are still considerably higher, e.g., during the Jina Ahmini protests over 300 were killed in only a month. Saudi not so much as the level of political opposition is lower. This is even if you count literally every US police murder as part of a campaign of political repression, of which plenty were but certainly not all.
I never claimed otherwise?
IDK how anyone-whether Hexbear or not-can possibly deny the fact that different governments rely on coercion to differing extents to maintain control.
The US had in excess of a thousand killings by cops that were officially reported that year as well (likely more that were unreported, and I have at least some evidence for my claim).
I wasn’t referring to the US as one of the ‘less murder-y’ ones because it is a settler-colonial state. Though those killed by law enforcement in Iran are still considerably higher, e.g., during the Jina Ahmini protests over 300 were killed in only a month. Saudi not so much as the level of political opposition is lower. This is even if you count literally every US police murder as part of a campaign of political repression, of which plenty were but certainly not all.
I never claimed otherwise?
IDK how anyone-whether Hexbear or not-can possibly deny the fact that different governments rely on coercion to differing extents to maintain control.
If you’re talking about violence used to uphold their rule, you can’t separate domestic and foreign violence. All those people living, working, and dying young in atrocious conditions outside of the US for US prosperity, all those people gunned down in the dark or in protests against their government’s subservience to the US, and all those people murdered in wars and ‘conflicts’ and by sanctions to further US interests must be counted.
Otherwise you’re doing that thing where you redefine violence in such a way that distorts the picture. It doesn’t matter whether you now explicitly mention the US because by nature of a comparison, the US is implicated, anyway. Likewise, replace US for every other government in the above equation for the true figures of how violent a state is in its own protection.
The logics of violence are fundamentally different between the two. Both are violent, yes, but the US invades Iraq for different reasons than Iran executes political prisonrs, for example. One is about the survival of the state, one is about advancing the conditions for capital accumulation.
The latter wasn’t what we were talking about.
I never liked the pig. It’s gross :(
Me, a murderer? Like nobody’s ever killed before! Your honor, the defense rests.
Hey! So I very much understand wanting to take the side of people who are oppressed in some way.
I think a way to do this without supporting oppressive regimes is to specifically support the people, and not the government.
Your comment was unclear, and because of that people are taking it as you supporting the government of Iran. I think most sane people agree that they suck. The people though - they are some of the kindest people I have ever met, and do not deserve the violence that they have experienced.
In various circumstances critical support of problematic governments is support of the people when harm to their state by outside actors will bring harm to those people. Most communists have a general understanding that the way Iran is today is in fact America’s fault and that the change it needs won’t come from outside of it, particularly when the people using various problems as a political weapon do not have the improvement of the lives of the people as their goal but instead various other geopolitical and resource interests.
The most recent historical example of this would be Syria, with Libya a close second and Iraq a close third. All of which are objectively worse off thanks to western interventionism.
You can and should oppose interventionism and outside actors fucking with the situation there if you do care about the people, while also not defending the theocracy and support real local political movements for change (ie the ones not funded by NED or various other cia or nato affiliated intermediaries).
I’d only change one thing and say most of the problems for Iran started because of the UK/US being imperialistic and has never recovered as a result
I’m not sure what I said differently here, I was referring to the historical events of US backed revolution and bombings that led to the existing Iran when I wrote the above. Modern Iran exists because America wanted to stop us socialists from getting power there. Everyone on this website should remind themselves of this when they see anticommunists screaming about “tankies”. Anticommunism leads to backing the far right consistently throughout history.
On Hexbear we have seen this line of reasoning a hundred thousand times and so we just laugh now whenever we see it; I thought you were making a joke until I saw your instance.
The cause of so much of the suffering of “repressive regimes” like Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, the DPRK, etc is specifically because of the sanctions that the West puts on it that are designed to impoverish the people and try and make them overthrow their government, because they refuse to engage in the global economy according to the United States’s rules, and not really because of those “regimes” themselves. Of course, it’s taken for granted that what the United States wants is what everybody should want, but considering the billions being exploited abroad for tiny wages in hostile working environments for the West’s benefit, perhaps America’s “international rules-based order” isn’t the best for anybody except for the West themselves! Of course, America has all the military bases, and those countries do not, and bullets and bombs tend to be quite persuasive.
For liberals, which I assume you are, these sanctions exist in a weird doublethink space. Working through it, liberals basically end up saying something contradictory like “The suffering that the people here are experiencing is because those countries are Bad. We need to put sanctions on Bad Countries. The sanctions aren’t what’s causing the suffering, it’s the Bad Countries’ fault (which thus implies sanctions don’t work and have little to no effect), but we still need to put sanctions on them to punish them (thus implying that sanctions do have some negative, disciplinary function).”
Sanctions both do and do not function depending on the rhetorical frame you’re taking at any particular time. When you’re talking about the repression that Iranian women feel and why that sparked the protests, the sanctions will never be mentioned - this is purely Iran. When you’re talking about the fact that Cubans struggle with food insecurity and don’t have enough fuel and sometimes some of them protest or complain, then what caused those shortages is, again, never mentioned - it’s purely the Cuban regime. If, on the other hand, you’re talking about how repressive regimes must be punished in general, then westerners online clamour and shout for sanctions, sanctions, sanctions.
This is why we laugh about such “support the people, not the government” rhetoric a lot of the time. Of course, in the case of Iran and similar countries, they aren’t left-wing and so we only really have critical support (in the sense of “they are better than those they are opposing, but they are not good in a vacuum”) and there is genuinely nuance about how the Iranian bourgeoisie are worsening conditions by exploiting the people, and repressive religious institutions, etc, but by and large American sanctions are the larger factor. In the case of Cuba, or the DPRK, such a line about supporting the people, not the government is quite ridiculous. Liberals (usually of the chud variety) who just come right out and say what they really mean - that, yes, the sanctions are explicitly designed to make the population overthrow the government so that Western compradors and corporations can loot it of its resources and exploit its people - are horrific monsters, but at least slightly refreshing compared to the mental knots that most liberals tie themselves in to not say that line explicitly, invoking “restoring democracy” and “fighting authoritarianism” and other such meaningless cliches instead.
You didn’t need to write all that. You could have just said “I’m on hexbear” and you could have saved yourself and us some time.
Apologies, the Hexbear motto is usually to be Polite, Precise, and Brief (our writeup of our PPB motto can be found here, only a hundred words or so) so I went a little overboard!
Why’d you bother writing this reply then lib?
Should have just said “I’m an ignorant lib”
I made a comment on a Hexbear post and somebody from Hexbear replied back and now I’m angry.
In future we will add a disclaimer:
CONTENT WARNING THE FOLLOWING REPLY REQUIRES THAT YOU CONSIDER YOUR ASSUMPTIONS AND THINK CRITICALLY
Is that a reasonable compromise?
This way you can maintain your thought free information bubble and we can still point out the ways in which mainstream propaganda shapes your world view, and you can just comfortably ignore it.
Yes, but then how might you learn to be a better person if we, your kind hexagonal comrades, don’t help you?
Someone takes the time to write out a well-thought out and civil response to foster a good faith discussion, and this is how you answer? Why do you people wonder why you’re treated with hostility by hexbear users? Why do you choose to remain obtuse and condescending? Why are you this afraid of challenging your worldview?
The discussion isn’t in good faith, though, and almost nothing is achieved. I would argue, without anything but personal observation as a basis, that 99% of non-hexbear users see 99% of hexbear comments as extremely inflammatory and that 99% of hexbear users see 99% of non-hexbear users as “libtards and chuds”.
I am sure I could drink a couple of sensible pints with some hexbear users and have a good discussion in the pub, but online the greater internet fuckwad theory comes into play (from both “sides”). I would argue both hexbear and non-hexbear Lemmy were happier before you federated again. There is almost zero basis for finding consensus and an online forum isn’t the place to find it.
On a personal level, as soon as per-account instance banning is possible, hexbear will take pride of place in my ban list. And I know what hexbear users think about that - that I’m swimming in a sea of US hegemony propaganda and I’ve got everything wrong and I’m totally fine with that. The judgment of hexbear users concerns me not one iota.
btw, we don’t in fact use ableist insults.
Says the person who just wrote a dismissive one sentence gotcha. You weren’t acting in good faith. Saying you were doesn’t matter, what matters I your actions.
All the other stuff: it’s not that you’re wrong - everybody is wrong. It’s not that you disagree - everybody disagrees. It’s that you’re being a condescending dickhead that fails to engage with the arguments presented.
If you behave the same way in person I doubt there’s any people willing to talk to you for an extended period of time.
You could argue that hexbear users were wrong, but I wouldn’t give a shit about your argument, because it’s based on anything but your feelings. If that was something you actually cared about, you would have looked thru the thread discussing federation currently, and you’d see the consensus is that federation is a good thing.
Oh no! What will we do without your smug condescension! What will we do without your inputs based on no research! What will we do without your ableist language!
I war really looking forward to your next idiotic sentence dismissing a long and thought out post.
We would never say “libtards” and we don’t have to. Liberal is enough of an insult on its own.
So you are unwigling to learn or just have problems reading?
If you don’t want to talk to someone from Hexbear don’t reply to someone from Hexbear’d comments for a start.
Of course since you’re not OP it’s really not your place anyways to say which instances can and can’t respond to them.
The person you were replying to before is also on Hexbear (and so am I, just to save you the trouble of pointing it out). It seems like we’re working with inconsistent standards here.
Yeah usually I find it absurd when anti Israel (Israel, for the lobs reading this, is a murderous fascistic apartheid state actively doing a genocide) stuff is painted as antisemitism, but this is sure seems to be
What makes this antisemitic? As far as I can tell, the issue is that the other competitor was an official representative of Israel, not that they were Jewish
should have specified that it was purely vibes based analysis, i apologize for my liberalism
Like what?
Israel has a history of employing incredible violence against Iran in the most literal sense of that phrase.
https://archive.ph/23MNT