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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
So you are unwigling to learn or just have problems reading?
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?
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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.
Yes, but then how might you learn to be a better person if we, your kind hexagonal comrades, don't help you?
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.
also can we just lose the "hexbear is so hostile for no reason" shtick. Every other instance is hostile and has its trolls, the only difference is that there are for more of us than you.
With the greatest of respect, and in my personal opinion, hexbear users have the reputation they deserve.
Lmao you only receive hostility when you're a condescending dickhead. Every time I see people complain about hostility I just look thru their comments and - yup - they started it by writing some smug gotcha, and then instead of engaging with people arguing in good faith, they kept going down that path. Why do you think you deserve to be treated in good faith, when you yourself cannot do the same? Civility is a two-way street
I completely agree civility is a two way street. I also agree that I have started to dismiss users from hexbear apriori. I’m a very courteous person generally and I’m not happy to engage in these discussions with hexbear users (I’ve done it a few times by now and my sole purpose isn’t to convince hexbear users that I’m right, which I never could, but to convince others that Lemmy isn’t just full of “so left-wing you’ve flipped to right-wing” hexbears. In some ways I feel it’s a fight for the soul of the wider Lemmy community. I’m but a drop in that wider ocean, but I wish more people would speak up against the extreme viewpoints you generally espouse. If the tone doesn’t change, I’ll probably drop off and see myself out.
lmao, distilled full of themselves redditor right here. Muh horseshoe theory both sides enlighted centrism too.
Oh no. Please don't go.
So you're only courteous to people you think agree with you? Neat! You're not courteous just because you say you are.
It's a niche forum made by marxists lmao, stop behaving like it's some noble fight, and if it was you're the one corrupting "the soul" you fucking dweeb. Go outside and organize, posting isn't praxis.
Ah yes extreme viewpoints like "people shouldn't starve" "war is bad" and "child labour should be illegal" and "the people responsible for children working and starving and being homeless should be held responsible for these actions". Very extreme.
You could also consider actually engaging with the arguments and learning something, but if you're incapable of that, good, fuck off. Go back to your echo chamber on reddit.
72 trillion runs the whole news mega, he knows what he's talking about
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.
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