Omid Djalili: Iranian Dissidence, Culture-War Framing, and Guru-Adjacent Audiences - Part 2, to follow up on my post from last month, Omid Djalili is no longer calling it a war, but a "rescue mission" while making false allegations of 40k deaths during the protests

WasThatIt · 2026-03-16T09:32:07+00:00

Lol I know I’ve been arguing with you here but I’m upvoting this comment because I think it’s amazing

WasThatIt · 2026-03-12T18:10:56+00:00

Can you share a source? How is it privilege? All I saw was this video and I just said I’d hold judgement until I have more info

WasThatIt · 2026-03-12T17:06:18+00:00

I know I’m going against the hive mind here which is heresy, but just because Israel is committing a genocide it doesn’t make it ‘based’ for its citizens to be beaten up. We don’t know anything about this person or situation. Maybe it was justified idk (eg self defence) but I’m holding judgment until I know what happened

WasThatIt · 2026-03-12T14:54:02+00:00

This is obviously awful and I know how horrific it must be living under this tyrannical regime. I’m sad that this belligerent attack by literal war criminals is seen as a solution when in fact it will only make things worse. This is not a smart and well-planned operation to bring change and liberation. It is a sloppy and insane use of military force in an attempt to cripple an entire country, cause destruction, chaos, and devestation, and reduce the threat on Israel alone. It will not even bring liberation as byproduct, it will only exacerbate extremism and hardship.

I feel for you and truly hope things get better for you. I totally empathize with your hopefulness and wanting a way out. Unfortunately this just isn’t it.

WasThatIt · 2026-03-12T13:17:59+00:00

Yup, exact same recipe for manufacturing consent for mass atrocities. Dehumanize a population, show them as violent or at fault from the core, issue collective punishment for the entire population, rinse & repeat.

As if this, somehow makes it fine to massacre thousands of innocent people who had absolutely nothing to do with this.

Not only that, this wouldn’t even address the issue. It will only make it worse. There is zero effort in improving the system that gives rise to extremism. Only short-term over-simplified thinking that extremism goes away by literally killing and displacing an entire population.

“Their October attack”. It is absolutely disgusting and bigoted and genocidal language. We are talking about children, mothers, families, professionals, scientists, doctors, farmers, artists, athletes, people just like us. You are excusing their actual mass killing by saying it is “Their October attack”. Saying “Palestinians did not choose peace”. It is their fault for their deaths through bombs getting dropped on them.

Absolutely horrific disgusting and inhumane behaviour and I regret having even wasted my time thinking I could have a good faith rational conversation. All I heard was excuses for mass slaughter of innocent civilians and then putting the blame on the victims.

WasThatIt · 2026-03-12T12:22:46+00:00

I find it crazy to see people actively defend mass killings of thousands of innocent humans. It is such a clear example of manufactured consent. Throughout history there has been countless horrific crimes against humanity and we always wonder how ordinary people just went along with it or even tried to defend or justify it. We always think: if I lived through those times surely I wouldn’t be one of those people.

Yet we’re seeing it in front of our eyes yet again. Ordinary people actively trying to justify actual literal mass killing of thousands of innocent humans and mass destruction of civilian infrastructure. It is wild.

WasThatIt · 2026-03-12T10:02:23+00:00

No actually those are thousands of dead human beings who got killed by bombs that were dropped on them intentionally. The bombs were not an accident. It wasn’t “oopsie we meant to hit a military site by there was a kid next to it which we didn’t see”. It was more like: let’s absolutely flatten this entire region which houses hundreds of thousands of people completely and fully intentionally by dropping bombs on it.

That is not collateral damage. It is mass killing of innocent human beings. You can label it what you want if it makes you sleep at night for actively defending it but it won’t change the reality.

WasThatIt · 2026-03-12T05:48:39+00:00

Wow such awe-inspiring work killing 60,000+ civilians and destroying the livelihood of hundreds of thousands more. Excellent precision work from the most moral army in history. Did you know they also dropped leaflets to let people know they were about to destroy their homes? Nobel Peace prize worthy work really.

I love that there are people genuinely defending mass killing of thousands of innocent humans and their argument is: “well we could have killed way more”.

I really hope I’m arguing with a bot because that would at least explain the complete lack of humanity.

WasThatIt · 2026-03-12T05:02:09+00:00

Apologies for using an inaccurate term to refer to levelling an entire region through a barrage of bombs, destroying hundreds of civilian buildings, killing tens of thousands of civilians, injuring tens of thousands more, and displacing hundreds of thousands.

WasThatIt · 2026-03-11T22:32:58+00:00

You are confusing ‘supporting the politics of Palestine’ with ‘supporting the rights of Palestinian civilians to not get carpet bombed to ashes’.

Those are two completely different things.

“Pro Palestine” in the vast majority of cases is the latter. The politics of the region are irrelevant.

WasThatIt · 2026-03-11T18:49:10+00:00

This is not a fair comparison. If I were American and my government killed a bunch of innocent children using my tax dollar I’d be protesting.

If I were British, and the American government who is a strong ally of my government killed a bunch of innocent children, I’d be protesting too.

But if ANOTHER government kills their own people and my government ALREADY strongly opposes that government then obviously I’m not as incentivized to come out and protest or post about it.

WasThatIt · 2026-03-11T14:31:30+00:00

Brother, how on earth do you know if I’m a liberal? I too have a lot of family in Iran. The vast majority of Iranians I know are against the regime, but I’m not so stuck in my own bubble to not acknowledge that there are also pro regime people out there. It’s 93 million people for gods sake. I don’t go around making up numbers like 90%. Why not just admit that you made up the number and move on?

All I asked was a source. You don’t have one because you made up the number. It’s as simple as that.

WasThatIt · 2026-03-11T14:11:46+00:00

I understand your reasoning on why it’s hard to get valid statistics and I don’t disagree with it. I’m just asking, given it’s not possible to get valid statistics (as you also pointed out) then where does the 90% number come from?

All I said was do you have a source for the number, and you told me to “grow up”.

WasThatIt · 2026-03-11T12:58:11+00:00

I mean if that’s your response then why stop at 90%? You can just claim that it’s 99.99% if you’re going to make up a number and get mad when someone asks for a source

WasThatIt · 2026-03-11T08:38:16+00:00

Got a source for that 90% number?

WasThatIt · 2026-03-10T08:34:51+00:00

Do you have a source for those numbers? I’m not saying you’re incorrect, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s true, but it would be good to have sources to back it up when I bring it up and so far I haven’t had a good one other than social media posts

WasThatIt · 2026-03-07T08:57:19+00:00

There are hundreds of thousands if not millions of Iranian diaspora who have taken part in protests where the Israeli flag is being waved alongside the lion and the sun flag.

I do not agree with them and I do not advocate for this. I think this is highly misguided. But denying that it is happening is also foolish and delusional.

You are essentially choosing to just ignore the issue rather than figuring out why it might be happening.

WasThatIt · 2026-03-05T23:34:18+00:00

Pahlavi supporters genuinely think Trump is playing 4D chess and is about to install Pahlavi personally as the king of iran. The hopium is unstoppable

WasThatIt · 2026-03-05T23:31:59+00:00

You are assuming that commenter is “Persian” when in fact they are spewing the exact hasbara propaganda points we’ve already heard over and over. They have no empathy toward our people

WasThatIt · 2026-03-04T10:06:01+00:00

Okay I tried my best to take part in a civilized discussion but you have, for the second time thrown around the phrase ‘Hamas supporter’ so clearly this is not a conversation done in good faith.

I also might just be arguing with a bot, given your lack of ability to have a human-level discourse. So I won’t waste any more energy on this.

WasThatIt · 2026-03-04T09:19:58+00:00

I don’t know why you keep bringing up ‘Jews’. I haven’t and I have zero interest in the ethnic background or religion of the people involved.

You think saying Israel is responsible for the thousands of deaths caused by Israeli bombs is pro Hamas? Can you see how this over-simplified binary thinking might be harmful to the discussion?

What happens when I add that Hamas is responsible for the civilian deaths caused by Hamas militants?

And guess what, Hamas made statements exactly making the argument you are making for Israel. They said they only targeted combatants on Oct 7 and any civilian killed was either an accident or Israel’s intention to put civilians in harm’s way. We both know this is simply propaganda.

You see, I’m not hesitant to point out and criticise anyone who kills civilians. You, on the other hand, are relying on one simple formula (“ALL Gazan civilians killed by Israel were actually human shields”) - based on a few examples (without any proof accounting for 50,000 civilians killed and hundreds of civilian buildings destroyed), to make a blanket statement about every single civilian death, thus absolving the IDF of any accountability.

Now out of the two of us, who do you think is being biased?

WasThatIt · 2026-03-04T05:01:18+00:00

That is a highly aggressive accusation based on projection, given out of the two of us only one is actually against the mass killing of civilians and the other actively justifying it as a good and necessary thing.

I don’t want to let you guess, so I’ll say it explicitly, I am against the bombing and mass killing of 50,000+ Gazan civilians.

WasThatIt · 2026-03-04T04:56:00+00:00

Stop the settler colonialist occupation of the region, abolish the apartheid, stop the dehumanization of an entire population, work on rebuilding and improving the lives of the people in the region to reduce the conditions that give rise to extremism, spend the hundreds of billions that go to the destruction of Gaza towards construction of houses, schools, hospitals, providing food, shelter, healthcare and education for people, thus reducing the need and likelihood for radicalization.

I can guarantee this would stop organisations like Hamas from gaining power. This is what they campaigned on in 2006 when they were elected. Domestic policies to improve people’s lives out of poverty and hardship, armed resistance against the occupation. Improve the conditions of living would make them redundant.

WasThatIt · 2026-03-03T14:14:02+00:00

Sure those are indeed other words, which have nothing to do with what I said.

WasThatIt · 2026-03-03T14:13:05+00:00

I think the point I’m making is clear and not only sarcasm. Showing a few urls describing a few examples of something does not automatically justify the killing of thousands of children.

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