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.

  • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I think a way to do this without supporting oppressive regimes is to specifically support the people, and not the government.

    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.

      • MultigrainCerealista [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        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.

      • SoyViking [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        I made a comment on a Hexbear post and somebody from Hexbear replied back and now I'm angry.

      • Farman [any]
        ·
        1 year ago

        So you are unwigling to learn or just have problems reading?

      • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Yes, but then how might you learn to be a better person if we, your kind hexagonal comrades, don't help you?

      • Egon
        ·
        edit-2
        3 months ago

        deleted by creator

          • Egon
            ·
            edit-2
            3 months ago

            deleted by creator

          • BelieveRevolt [he/him]
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            On a personal level, as soon as per-account instance banning is possible, hexbear will take pride of pace 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.

            smuglord

            btw, we don't in fact use ableist insults.

          • GreatWhiteNope [she/her]
            ·
            1 year ago

            We would never say “libtards” and we don’t have to. Liberal is enough of an insult on its own.

      • TheLepidopterists [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        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.

      • GarbageShoot [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        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.

      • Catradora_Stalinism [she/her, comrade/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        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.

        • sunbeam60@lemmy.one
          ·
          1 year ago

          With the greatest of respect, and in my personal opinion, hexbear users have the reputation they deserve.

          • Egon
            ·
            edit-2
            3 months ago

            deleted by creator

            • sunbeam60@lemmy.one
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              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.

              • Egon
                ·
                edit-2
                3 months ago

                deleted by creator

              • BelieveRevolt [he/him]
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                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.

                lmao, distilled full of themselves redditor right here. Muh horseshoe theory both sides enlighted centrism too.

                If the tone doesn’t change, I’ll probably drop off and see myself out.

                Oh no. Please don't go.