21st Century Iran Sounds Like 1930s Germany Contributed by Bill Faith
Der Spiegel checks with the to determine whether the radical nature of the mullahcracy has any support from its citizenry. The responses sound depressingly familiar -- wan assurances that the hostile rhetoric and fascist statements are just for show:
Like most of the people one meets in Tehran, population 15 million, Abash is disarmingly friendly and hospitable. Indeed, even the lawless, lane-less highways are absent of road rage. But next to the highways, one sees evidence of the other Iran -- the Iran that concerns many in the West. On the left, a steady stream of posters passes by depicting Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah thrusting an automatic rifle into the sky. On the right, painted murals flash by glorifying Iran's young martyrs who died in the country's devastating war with Iraq in the 1980s.
[...]
Sound familiar? It should; Germans made the same mistake about the Nazis when they first came to power. Forget the shouting and the demonstrations, they would explain; that's just for show, a motivational display intended to unify a demoralized nation.
[.]
Contributed by Bill Faith on August 21, 2006 at 08:46 PM in , , |