Baby Keem speaking about how he became an Arsenal fan, and how he compares Mesut Özil to being a versatile artist in musical terms ⤵️
“I watched Mesut Özil play. That’s how I became an Arsenal fan. He’s so good that he has a play style, which is like…you have to be double great.
In music terms, that's like the greatest rapper making a [great] rock album. This guy is like, ‘I’m going to be unselfish. I’m not going to be known as this [one thing], but I can do all of these things.’
He makes the game look beautiful. He exemplifies what the sport is to me.”
That Özil metaphor is crazy, cause it’s so true. He’s always been one of my fav players since he was at Real Madrid. Baby Keem must be going crazy after seeing Arsenal FINALLY win the premier league this year after 22 damn years 😭
Part of the hostility toward Marjane Satrapi is b/c she occupies an uncomfortable position for multiple audiences at once. For many Western readers she became a symbol of the Iranian woman who defies stereotypes, but in the process she was often turned into a different kind of stereotype: the secular liberal Iranian woman whose story could stand in for an entire society. People tend to struggle with that kind of complexity forgetting that one woman’s story is exactly that, one person’s account!
There is also a gendered dimension. Iranian women who achieve extraordinary visibility (whether Marjane Satrapi, Golshifteh Farahani, or Iran Daroodi) have often attracted a particular kind of scrutiny and resentment that their male counterparts do not face.
At the same time, some Western academics are uneasy with the way Satrapi’s work has been received. Her narratives have often been embraced by liberal audiences as evidence of women’s resistance to religious and political authority whereas scholars influenced by works such as Politics of Piety have challenged the assumption that Muslim women’s agency must take secular or liberal forms. The result is that Satrapi can become a flashpoint in larger debates about feminism, secularism, Islam, and representation.
So the criticism comes from different directions: diaspora misogyny, discomfort with her symbolic status in the West, and genuine intellectual disagreements about how women’s agency and freedom should be understood.
Something real is shifting in the Iranian American community right now. I keep onboarding defecting pahlavists and former Trump supporters to NIAC.
The anti-hardline-IRGC sentiment was always there, understandably, so many of our families fled Iran for the U.S. because of it.
But what folks didn’t have was the political fluency to translate that into policies …like opposition to war and support for diplomacy & sanctions relief to help ordinary Iranians get through tomorrow . That translation is finally happening. Undeniably.
Two wars later and NIAC’s positions are now undeniable right—especially that military escalation accomplishes nothing in the struggle of Iranian or American people for freedom.
The Pahlavists promised clean regime change via U.S. & Israeli intervention + Iran International broadcast it. The pro-war-with-Iran crowd swore these actions would topple the Islamic Republic. They were wrong. Hardliners got stronger. Ordinary people have been devastated. And those voices lost every shred of credibility they had.
I overstand that many folks are beyond repair in their delusions. But others just aren’t versed politically. They blow with the wind. And right now the wind is with anti-war, anti-sanctions, anti-hardline advocacy.
So many Iranian Americans who were (justifiably) saying “free Iran” after the January massacre are now vehemently opposed to the war, especially because they’ve seen how much hardliners in Iran have been strengthened and how shortsighted pro-war advocates have been.
While I don’t advocate for anyone to put themselves in unsafe situations, basic outreach works.
Despite years of state-backed attacks fomented by Iran International, Pahlavists and Emily Schrader-types…NIAC’s network is growing every week.
So even if you’ve been burned before, if you’re antiwar I encourage you to at least try and approach people who may be swayable, especially with basic anti-war/anti-sanctions/anti-hardline advocacy.
More of them are out there than you think.
found the coolest bronze cuff at the thrift store. handmade in 1988. and it’s actual bronze. i can’t find a copy of this anywhere and i can’t believe i only spent $8