Personally, I consider the Cultural Revolution a civil war, and people weren't really protesting, so it doesn't count.
The Rabaa Massacre and the Andijan Massacre are the most comparable events, and they were much lower.
This seems very plausible given pre-war public opinion polling. And the giant massacre of protestors. I believe it was the largest mass killing of political protestors since WW2 except the cultural revolution.
Why is the Iranian regime setting up street kiosks where children and civilians are being shown how to handle rifles and guns, and broadcasting these scenes repeatedly on state television?
This is not military training against an external enemy; it is a domestic intimidation campaign. Rifles do not bring down drones, intercept missiles, or defend Iran from air attack. This is symbolic politics: a message aimed not at the external enemy, but at Iranian society.
The regime knows the gulf between itself and the majority of Iranian people is immense. It also knows that, as the costs of war deepen, protests and uprisings may return. These images are meant to send two signals.
First: we are prepared to repeat the January 2036 massacre and again shoot Iranians in the streets. The civilians at these kiosks will not carry out that repression. Their purpose is to show that a committed pro-regime minority still exists and will stand behind it.
Second: a warning to parents and older family members watching state television. Keep your children off the streets.
This is not national defense. It is preparation for domestic terror.
@ryu0000000001@celestepoasts My undergrad college does have a good econ program, but I took politics there instead which was very Marxist. My intro to econ prof was an 85 y/o and it turned me off econ. Later hitting the real job market and policy world changed my perspective.
@ryu0000000001@celestepoasts Tbc, I wasn't some doctrinaire Marxist-Leninist revolutionary. I just went to a left college where they taught a lot of Marxism, and I was gradually realizing it didn't map to how the world works, but good econ does. Reading the sequences helped resolve the conflict.
@ryu0000000001@celestepoasts It happened to me! Less wrong played a big role in convincing me that Marx's thought is mostly wrong and useless for mapping the territory. My real life experiences had been developing in that direction, but reading Yud lead to a decisive change in my beliefs.
@MarioNawfal Probably ignore it. The Iranians mostly have not inferred with the gulf states' land trade routes, and the blockade is a tit-for-tat.
Also the U.S. has no good way to stop this behavior obviously.
The oil also can't go out by land from Iran due to it's price/weight ratio.