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January 12, 2020

With Iranians facing down the mullahs, Trump gives the gift of truth

By Andrea Widburg

Even as Progressives double down on their claim that Trump was somehow responsible for the Iranians shooting down a passenger plane, Iranian protesters are rising up against their government because Trump has told the truth and is actively supporting them.

In mid-2009, shortly after President Obama took office, Iran had its own presidential election. Voters believed (reasonably) that the election was rigged and started protesting. For months, hundreds of thousands of people were on the streets in protest. Over nine months, the government arrested at least 10,000 people and killed over 100.  Never once did Obama give the protesters a single word of support.

Obama’s silence was deadly. The famous Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky explained in The Case For Democracy: The Power Of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny And Terror that, for people living in a totalitarian dictatorship, reality is a very fragile thing. As in Orwell’s 1984, tyrannies force people to deny reality. Even as they starve, they are told that they are not hungry.

That’s why it was so important when Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an Evil Empire. While the Western media sneered, the dissidents got a reality check that enabled them to keep fighting. As Sharanky explained:

In any place where dissent is banned, society fractures into three groups. One group is composed of those who remain committed to the prevailing order because they agree with it — the true believers. Another group is made up of those who are willing to defy the prevailing order despite the risk of punishment — the dissidents. For members of these two groups, there will be little or no gap between their private thoughts and public statements. Unlike true believers and dissidents, members of the third group do not say what they think. This group is comprised of people who no longer believe in the prevailing ideology, but who are afraid to accept the risks associated with dissent. They are the “doublethinkers.”

[snip]

Doublethinkers live in constant tension from the gap between their thoughts and words. They always avoid saying what is not permitted but also try to avoid saying what they do not believe. But fear societies generally do not leave their doublethinkers such a luxury. They demand from their “cogs” constant expressions of loyalty. In kindergartens, schools, universities, workplaces, religious institutions, public meetings, and elsewhere, doublethinkers must parrot the ideology of the regime and hide their true beliefs. This constant self-censorship can be such an inseparable part of a doublethinker’s existence that it becomes so habitual that the tension between thoughts and words is almost no longer felt. Indeed, only when doublethinkers are free are they fully aware of the extent of their previous self-imposed intellectual servitude.  (pp. 43-46.)

The only salvation for “doublethinkers,” said Sharansky, was truth, especially truth from political leaders who understood that only lies and violence prop up tyrannies:

Fortunately, there were a few leaders in the West who could look beyond the facade of Soviet power to see the fundamental weakness of a state that denied its citizens freedom.  Western policies of accommodation, regardless of their intent, were effectively propping up the Soviet’s tiring arms.  Had that accommodation contined, the USSR might have survived for decades longer.  By adopting a policy of confrontation instead [as Reagan did], an enervated Soviet regime was further burdened.  Amalri’s analysis of Soviet weakness [Andrei Amalrik’s 1969 dissident treatise explaining the fatal cost to a dictatorship of having to “physically and psychologically control[] millions of its own subjects”] was correct because he understood the inherent instability of totalitarian rule. (p. 11.)

President Trump has cut through the lies. He has said that Qassem Suleimani was not a respected, “austere,” elder statesman. He said what Iranians already knew, which was that Soleimani was a mass murderer.

From the minute he targeted Suleimani, Trump has spoken the unvarnished truth, and has done so in undiplomatic language: Iran is a dictatorship that spreads terror throughout the world and that practices this terror on its own people. When Trump invited the Mullahs to lay down their arms, he was telling the people of Iran that he will support them as they fight for liberty.

American Progressives reject this message. They call Trump a warmonger and blame him for the Ukrainian crash. But the Iranians know better and again are taking to the streets.

The videos below show that, while the Iranian protesters' numbers are small, they are growing -- and all are showing remarkable courage given the Mullah's propensity to kill. Moreover, Trump, unlike Obama, is telling the Iranian people, in English and in Farsi, that he supports them and that he will show them a way out of doublethink and into Truth:

Meanwhile, the Democrats have had a different message:

We are at a pivot point in the history of the Middle East. The beleaguered Iranian people need all the truth and moral support they can get.

Even as Progressives double down on their claim that Trump was somehow responsible for the Iranians shooting down a passenger plane, Iranian protesters are rising up against their government because Trump has told the truth and is actively supporting them.

In mid-2009, shortly after President Obama took office, Iran had its own presidential election. Voters believed (reasonably) that the election was rigged and started protesting. For months, hundreds of thousands of people were on the streets in protest. Over nine months, the government arrested at least 10,000 people and killed over 100.  Never once did Obama give the protesters a single word of support.

Obama’s silence was deadly. The famous Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky explained in The Case For Democracy: The Power Of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny And Terror that, for people living in a totalitarian dictatorship, reality is a very fragile thing. As in Orwell’s 1984, tyrannies force people to deny reality. Even as they starve, they are told that they are not hungry.

That’s why it was so important when Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an Evil Empire. While the Western media sneered, the dissidents got a reality check that enabled them to keep fighting. As Sharanky explained:

In any place where dissent is banned, society fractures into three groups. One group is composed of those who remain committed to the prevailing order because they agree with it — the true believers. Another group is made up of those who are willing to defy the prevailing order despite the risk of punishment — the dissidents. For members of these two groups, there will be little or no gap between their private thoughts and public statements. Unlike true believers and dissidents, members of the third group do not say what they think. This group is comprised of people who no longer believe in the prevailing ideology, but who are afraid to accept the risks associated with dissent. They are the “doublethinkers.”

[snip]

Doublethinkers live in constant tension from the gap between their thoughts and words. They always avoid saying what is not permitted but also try to avoid saying what they do not believe. But fear societies generally do not leave their doublethinkers such a luxury. They demand from their “cogs” constant expressions of loyalty. In kindergartens, schools, universities, workplaces, religious institutions, public meetings, and elsewhere, doublethinkers must parrot the ideology of the regime and hide their true beliefs. This constant self-censorship can be such an inseparable part of a doublethinker’s existence that it becomes so habitual that the tension between thoughts and words is almost no longer felt. Indeed, only when doublethinkers are free are they fully aware of the extent of their previous self-imposed intellectual servitude.  (pp. 43-46.)

The only salvation for “doublethinkers,” said Sharansky, was truth, especially truth from political leaders who understood that only lies and violence prop up tyrannies:

Fortunately, there were a few leaders in the West who could look beyond the facade of Soviet power to see the fundamental weakness of a state that denied its citizens freedom.  Western policies of accommodation, regardless of their intent, were effectively propping up the Soviet’s tiring arms.  Had that accommodation contined, the USSR might have survived for decades longer.  By adopting a policy of confrontation instead [as Reagan did], an enervated Soviet regime was further burdened.  Amalri’s analysis of Soviet weakness [Andrei Amalrik’s 1969 dissident treatise explaining the fatal cost to a dictatorship of having to “physically and psychologically control[] millions of its own subjects”] was correct because he understood the inherent instability of totalitarian rule. (p. 11.)

President Trump has cut through the lies. He has said that Qassem Suleimani was not a respected, “austere,” elder statesman. He said what Iranians already knew, which was that Soleimani was a mass murderer.

From the minute he targeted Suleimani, Trump has spoken the unvarnished truth, and has done so in undiplomatic language: Iran is a dictatorship that spreads terror throughout the world and that practices this terror on its own people. When Trump invited the Mullahs to lay down their arms, he was telling the people of Iran that he will support them as they fight for liberty.

American Progressives reject this message. They call Trump a warmonger and blame him for the Ukrainian crash. But the Iranians know better and again are taking to the streets.

The videos below show that, while the Iranian protesters' numbers are small, they are growing -- and all are showing remarkable courage given the Mullah's propensity to kill. Moreover, Trump, unlike Obama, is telling the Iranian people, in English and in Farsi, that he supports them and that he will show them a way out of doublethink and into Truth:

Meanwhile, the Democrats have had a different message:

We are at a pivot point in the history of the Middle East. The beleaguered Iranian people need all the truth and moral support they can get.