The main misrepresented fact is that the current protests are not just about the public outrage over the downing of the Ukrainian plane, nor are they distinguishable from the protests of November 2019 or December 2017. [...]
On the contrary, the image of Iranians mourning for the death of IRGC top commander, Soleimani, was on the front page of almost every one of them. It is not a hard guess to figure out that under a totalitarian regime such a funeral is nothing but a display of power and therefore, participation is mandatory at least for civil servants, students, and soldiers. Yet it would be surprising to know that even children in primary schools and pre-schoolers had to participate in this “national mourning”. [...]
As in Europe, the left is largely losing the support of the working class and slightly gaining the support of the upper middle class, in the Middle East it has let the people down and sided with the regional dictatorship in the name of anti-imperialism or peace. The white western left tells the people of the MENA to choose the “lesser evil” in order to prevent war, yet it calls upon the people in the West to support them as the most progressive forces. [...]
This clear message of the Iranian students has been echoed in the demands of the Iraqi and Lebanese revolutionaries yet has not been heard by the western elite. The progressive forces in the MENA have proved many times that they are committed to the most essential principle of the left, i.e. internationalism. Despite the neo-orientalist view of many in the western left that, this time, exotifies suppressive regimes in the Global South as anti-imperialists, the progressive forces in the MENA still draw a clear line between themselves and the reactionary forces. But there is a limit to their influence on the society especially when they are betrayed, silenced and left alone by the western intelligentsia who could've been their natural allies.
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