How “24″ Helped Foment Velvet Revolution In Iran
Feb 9th, 2010 by pedestrian
How this:
created this:
What TV show will it be next? Friends? I Love Lucy?
I first covered Mr. Hassan Abbasi on July 3rd:
He had been missing for some time, and when he reemerged, I had this post:
And this is the translation of a speech he gave in October:
How About a Stint on Sesame Street?: UPDATE
As I’ve mentioned on this space before, the reason I take this man very seriously is that he seems to be one of the masterminds behind Iran’s current hostage crisis. His is a name we don’t hear often, but by following him for the past decade, he seems to be a very important player behind the scenes. At the same time, depending on the audience he’s playing for: the poor, those with strong criticisms of the West’s double-standards and hypocrisy, the basij, those with pro-Palestinian sentiments, etc he can be very convincing because his arguments are very simple to follow … if you don’t stop to think them through.
And now he’s back again, with a 14,000 word speech which is simply too long for me to translate in full.
According to RajaNews, He was speaking in Shiraz, as head of the “Doctorial Analysis Center for Security Without Border” in a ceremony to “commemorate the resistance in Gaza”.
The great chunk of the speech is dedicated to expanding on his theories of “soft war”:
In 2003, the supreme leader put forth a new term, “neo-colonialism” [as far as I know, this term was not the brainchild of the supreme leader]. In this form of colonialism, they do not come after your land and your country, they do not come to topple your government with a coup. In this form of colonialism, they come after you, the individual and change the way you think. Then, you go and topple your own government and you go and present your own country to them on a platter. This is called soft warfare, they influence your mind and your decisions so that you are the one to hand them everything. So unlike hard war, where your country’s lands are at stake, and even unlike semi-hard war where the financial institutions and the economy are taken over, in soft war, the individuals are under siege. You are the target, 70 million Iranians are the target, not the 1,900,000 square kilometers which composes the area of Iran. They [the Westerners] have an expression for this, “Mind & Heart Battle.”
In the past year, the Islamic Republic has entered a fourth paradigm … [here outlines the first three] … there are only two paths today … one leads to light, and the other to darkness [does this remind you of anyone?] In this soft war, they [the other camp] has given up their hearts and minds to evil, and thus they are infidels. This soft war is the war of the faithful against infidels. It is the war of accepting the rule of God against the rule of the devil. Those who come in the street and shout esteghlal, azadi, jomhooriyeh Irani ["independence, freedom, Iranian Republic" as opposed to the chant of the revolution "independence, freedom, Islamic Republic"] they are the ones who have chose the second path [rule of the devil]. Those who put forth ideas about changing the constitution, their problem is not with the supreme leader, rather, [their problem is that] they do not accept the rule of God. They want to destroy the rule of God.
This is a fight the devil himself has stirred.
[He then talks at length about teaching cinema at the University of Tehran, which took me by surprise. He talks about how American TV is one of the arms of this soft war and launches into a monologue about the series "24"]:
In our classes, we spend over two hours talking about a series which ran for 105 episodes. Each of these shows [American tv shows] has an underlying agenda. For instance, take the series “24″ which has 168 episodes thus far, and is now in its eighth season [he's pretty up to date, I don't watch 24, but I did google his facts to verify them]. This show is actually the reason why a black man got elected president in the U.S. In 2001, when the attacks of 9/11 took place during the first year of Bush’s presidency, this show started airing. And in that year, I said that a black Democrat will become president in the U.S. That is, for eight years, American TV channels set the frameworks for the rise of a black man. Do you think that someone just randomly ran for an election and won? In order to not let Mrs. Clinton win the presidency, in season 7 of “24″, they had a female actress who looked much like Mrs. Clinton play a president who was unfit for the job and so they [the show] influenced people not to vote for Mrs. Clinton, and to elect a black man, because they wanted it that way.
See, there is a large group orchestrating events from behind the TV screens, persuading people to act a certain way.
[he goes on for two more paragraphs about how 24 was the reason Obama got elected]
Now, this series, [24] gets a black man elected in the U.S., [in order] to create this catastrophe for us in Iran. Do you really believe that these allegations of “fraud” and “cheating” in the election came about on their own? Soft war means that [the Americans] influence Iranian youth to sit around and watch shows like Lost or 24. Compare this youth to his ancestors who at most read 5 books in their lifetime. Compare the amount of information he will have to process.
[After 7 more paragraphs, he moves on ...]
Do you even know that our educational system is based on Darwinism? Do you know that our university curriculum is based on Darwinism? Do you know that our ministry of health is run by policies which are based on Darwinism? The biology our children learn in schools are based on Darwinism. Do you see these computer games children play which show the giraffe’s neck becoming longer because he needs to eat from the top of the tree or the elephant’s ears growing longer? … this is all Darwinism and it is being sponsored and paid for with the money of this Islamic state. Playing around with the Koran and with the prophet has a heavy price. But this is soft war. Giving in 14 million students and 2 million teachers to the [Western] Darwinism on our own.
[For the next 20 paragraphs, he lashes out at the "Imam's old friends who have been bought by the West"]
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Darwinism (the theory of evolution) is a red line for me. People that the reject the theory based on religious or political considerations I cannot take seriously.
I consider Abassi a very rough equivalent to Glen Beck of Fox News (and I mean that in a negative way). But you know what? At least the Islamic Republic doesn’t give Hassan Abassi a TV talk show on IRIB an hour each day! Here in the US, we endure daily hate talks from the likes of Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh. Abassi couldn’t possibly even dream of the audience and power his American equivalents are provided with here in America.
Pirouz, Hassan Abbasi strikes me as one of the more important strategists within the Ahmadinejad camp, beyond his talent or (lack of) as a showman. Following him for the past few years has me believe that he’s a force to be reckoned with.
But this is one “at least” neither of us is going to win!
If you say: “At least the Islamic Republic doesn’t give Hassan Abassi a TV talk show on IRIB”… I would say: “you are right, Abbasi does not have a daily/weekly show on IRIB. BUT people like him do.” Just watch the talk shows after the 8:30, 9:00 and 10:30 p.m. news. There’s so much of this stuff on there every night. At the same time, in Iran, we are not allowed to have ANYTHING but IRIB. In the states, as much as they are harassed, limited and abused, there still are outlets like Democracy Now! and the like. In Iran, such reporters and journalists are suffocating in jail cells.
Not to say that good journalists in the States have an easy time – might be a good reason why there are so very few of them left.
I just mean I don’t think a comparison would work in this case.
Ohhh, geez. What on earth is this guy talking about? 24 may or may not have paved the path, but the black presidential character was a lot more qualified and had a much stronger spine than the current one occupying the White House!
hey Lola, thanks for clarifying! I’ve never seen 24, so I had no idea what he meant. I did guess however that there must have been an African American president on the show.
and lol to your comment on the current African-American president.
The important thing to note is that as cooky as he may sound, he has a large following, and he’s known to fire up the basij at universities very well. I guess as Pirouz said, similar to right-wing commentators in the U.S.
Do you know if they teach critical reasoning courses in Iranian high schools/universities?
It may sound strange, but I find that he gives a very good and convincing speech considering his assumed audience, of course it is still mostly non sense as one would expect.
Without knowing much about him admittedly, he strikes me as a person who pretends to be highly religious by being extremely radical and conservative, similar to the so called rock star evangelical priests they have on TV in USA.
lol Pensive Persian. The short answer is quite obviously NO! The long answer is that you have to choose between a couple of options in high school (mathematics, biology, humanities or art) and if you option in the humanities, you do get a couple of courses in logic … though you can just imagine the quality of a course taught by a teacher who was taught by someone like Abbasi!
oh … in in our dini (religious studies) textbooks there’s a short lesson on logic they use in the next lesson to prove the existence of god. If I remember correctly, they use the watchmaker analogy and it’s just one of the funniest lessons EVER. You gotta read it sometime.
Artanian, I’m an Abbasi expert
… I just mean, I’ve spent hours going through his speeches. What initially got my attention was hearing Ahmadinejad say something (don’t remember what exactly) but something which was highly similar to a sentence Abbasi had used in a speech (before Ahmadinejad was elected). So I spent a lot of time going through all the talks I could find. Anyways, I say this to say: I agree with you! He can be highly convincing. And I think that’s the crux of Ahmadinejad’s popularity and – part – of the failure of the reformists: Ahmadinejad’s ability to make simple arguments which are deeply flawed, but CAN go unnoticed.
Watchmaker analogy, eh. Good ol’ Paley…pretty tight argument…’til Charles D. hit the stage. So they need a Brit to help them prove the existence of God? heh I would have thought they’d use something more in line with Shia scholasticism, like the ontological argument, especially since Avicenna was the first to formulate it, before Anselm. (Avicenna’s Floating Man argument is awesome. Good topic for semi-drunk chats.)
This Abassi guy seems to be a consummate sophist. I’m really interested in the verbal and non-verbal rhetoric of the Iranian argumentative style. The intonations, gestures, analogies, matter-of-fact tone – you know what I mean? The way an old Iranian uncle reasons. It can be enchanting. (Hence, dangerous.)
“The way an old Iranian uncle reasons” you hit the nail on the head. That’s why it’s so dangerous. And I beg to differ with Pirouz, Abbasi is NO Glen Beck, He’s a real strategist, I’d compare him to Goebbels instead.
Yes! good ol’ Paley. The real funny thing is the way the argument is presented. In the same style you mention: very matter-of-fact, as they present the Koran, as if no one on this earth ever bothered to dispute or contest it. I’d go over the dini books some time. They are a good summary of that argumentative style.
lol on the floating man argument. Wasn’t he in some sort of prison when he came up with that one? He really might have been drunk at the time.
A dini book post sounds good.
Yeah, you’d probably have to have thrown back a few to come up with that thought experiment. But to his credit, it raised important issues about the relationship between conceivability and logical possibility, which are hot topics of discussion in contemporary philosophy of mind and metaphysics.
Isn’t philosophy trendy among the cafe crowd in Iran?
post? I wasn’t talking about a post
I’m the wrong person to ask, I was never part of Tehran’s “trendy cafe” crowd. I’ve been going to cafe naderi all my life (although, fortunately or unfortunately, cafe naderi is “in” nowadays) A few times I remember going with artsy friends, I remember people talking about art, and books and politics. But I don’t remember hearing any exciting philosophical debates.
Hmm going by his logic on how 24 influences people mind even going as far as to get a black man elected, can’t it also be said that if that was true it would also turn Middle Eastern people who watch the show into terrorists since that’s mainly the role they get in the show? A complete opposite of the effect he’s suggesting the show has on Iranian people.
interesting that he’s picked up western leaders’ use of the ‘hearts and minds’ catchphrase. i think he’s right that on one level it points to an assumption among those leaders that it’s possible to brainwash the population of ‘the greater middle east’ into adopting a euro-american worldview by exposing them to our superior cultural products.
ironically mr abbasi himself has clearly spent hours and hours watching american TV shows (and is also, i noticed when looking at the comments on one of your previous posts about him, a reader of this blog), but instead of enhancing his understanding of american society they basically serve as material to reinforce his paranoid theories…
Artanian, really? that’s what the show is about? I need to start watching TV just to know what these psychos are saying!
estemar-e pir, I do think that’s what it means partly – brainwashing. but yes, if you read the interview he talks about the “thousands” of hours he’s spent watching American TV! He claims he does it to develop “tools” for youth so they’ll know how to “decipher messages” they see on these shows!
(good excuse for 15 year olds to use if their parents nag them about spending too much time on the tube!)