Victor Mair quoting a colleague said:
"In 1998 when the reformist president, Mohamad Khatami, came to power he tried to eliminate this slogan from the political scene and he suggested to replace any 'marg bar' slogan with 'zendeh baad my opponent'."
Why would he try to do this if "marg bar X " neutrally means "down with X", not "death to X". Similarly:
"Alireza is right to try to downplay the slogan — for two reasons: 1) This is an early revolutionary slogan that is quite exaggerated. 2) Not many Iranians actually subscribe to this view…The official government uses this slogan, but not many actually take it seriously."
Again, why is your colleague /so concerned to downplay the significance of this slogan/ as "exaggerated" (whatever that means — do they mean "hyperbolic") and "not taken seriously" if it merely means "down with America?"
Frankly this piece reads like pure political drivel of the type that's increasingly infecting Language Log of late, when it seems perfectly obvious that:
1) Marg bar Amrika literally means "Death to America"
2) Native Persian speakers are perfectly aware of this fact, or else why try to euphenize/euthemize the expression or downplay how "seriously" Iranians take it?
Reza Mirsajadi's effort in sophistry reminds me of David Irving's attempts to prove that "ausrotten" doesn't mean "exterminate". And indeed, given what happened to the Shah, the fact that the phrase originated in the Iranian revolution is the opposite of comforting.
Violent metaphors have a long provenance in all langauges, but in the age of terrorism and the twitter soundbite every English speaker has had to learn to avoid them /precisely because/ you can never know if such threatening language is sincere or not. I fail to see why Iranians should get a free pass and a translational obfuscation courtesy of Mirsajadi on such language. Can anyone trust Mirsajadi to translate honestly after this particular effort?
Over 85% of protestors are in favour of such a council, and 33% of them believe Reza Pahlavi should be the representative of such a council (which places him as the most popular representative by far).
You can read more here (GAMAAN conducts the most rigorous surveys on public attitudes in Iran): https://gamaan.org/2023/02/04/protests_survey/
The Shah regime is still widely despised in the country.
If you're suggesting that we treat the revolutionaries as representatives of the people a la Chalabi and his motley crew in 2003, be prepared for disaster.
Also sorry but equating a bottom-up, grassroots revolution with the US invasion of Iraq is a gross misrepresentation of what's actually happening.
And there is also precedent of a "grassroots" revolution back in 1953 in this very same country. Sorry that I'm taking this claim with a pinch of salt.
The coalition being built in and outside of Iran is an organic, cross-class, cross-cultural network that is the result of years of activism. Within it, you will find figures like Masih Alinejad, a world-renowned journalist and women's rights activist, and Hamed Esmaeillion, a representative for the families of PS752 (the plane that was shot down by the Islamic Regime with 170+ souls on board). To equate this to a CIA-backed coup is not well-founded.
and first in line advocate to sanction Iran even in time of covid.
1. Any political movement will attract people who are hungry for power-for-power’s-sake or to inflate their own ego. Naiveté about this is malpractice in the same way that US naïveté about Chalabi was malpractice.
Iranians who are naive to the point of self-deception will be as misleading as those who are willfully deceptive. Discernment without undue cynicism is necessary but hard.
From the perspective of the US/UK, Iran and Iraq are pretty culturally similar. They are strangers to us. Lets not pretend to be more anthropologically/politically knowledgeable than we are.
2. We don’t have access to reliable intelligence. It is wise to be humble about our ability to sort fact from myth from falsehood.
3. If we want this to succeed, then we want marginal (in the sense of “swing voters”) and civic-minded Iranians to switch to supporting this. Those Iranians will have “CIA-backed coup” as a historical memory so it is worth empathizing with them.
Not only that, but all his addresses where through representatives, never publicly decided to speak, probably because he would fail without his DC speechwriters and you sit here and tell us that he has majority support? In which universe?
It's funny how everyone keeps shouting how great democracy is, but then when it comes to actually putting themselves up for vote, they're "naaah, why would I risk not being elected".
Speaking uncharitably (and ignoring vast theological differences…), the folks talking about violent overthrow seem pretty naive. ISIS was bad enough when they didn’t have the Zagros mountains to hide behind.
This sounds like a source of fear that is likely to motivate people to seek security and stability. I imagine it would remind people of the threat they've been told their community faces from the countries which created Stuxnet, and the weapons carried by Saddam Hussein's army, and the 1953 coup against Mossadeq.
I imagine it would motivate Iranian men to stand together to serve as protectors of the stability of their community and to tolerate the flaws of their leaders.
I imagine it would stand in the way of freedom-loving Iranians trying to create an alternate vision of Iranian civic virtue.