Sebastian Wilde

Lektor @Rowohlt • Berlin

[Richard C Schneider @richardcschneider.bsky.social @rc_schneider]

Ab jetzt in den Buchhandlungen!

[Marco Herack @mh120480]

das problem mit fred pleitgen ist ein sehr simples: das iranische regime kontrolliert was er sieht und statt das kritisch zu thematisieren.. berichtet er ganz ausgeruht darüber, was er sehen darf.

dass deutsche journalisten das bejubeln, sagt va etwas über deutsche journalisten.

[Golineh Atai @GolinehAtai]

40th-day memorial for Majid Zangeneh, a 25 year old drama school student from Torghabeh near Mashhad, killed while raising Iran’s lion-and-sun flag during protests. Iran’s old anthem is sung. And Iranian diva Hayedeh’s “Brighter days” is played, in which she lamented her forced exile and the executions of the 1979 revolution, longing for the pre-revolutionary era.
#IranMassacre

[Golineh Atai @GolinehAtai]

I can’t stop looking at them. I can’t.
I keep staring at my screen and looping the video.

Behrouz Mansouri and Mansoureh Heydari were killed while protesting in Bushehr. They left behind two children aged 8 and 10.
#IranMassacre‌
[Video: Pooya Jahandar]

[Golineh Atai @GolinehAtai]

„After all, did the aggressors against Iran‘s land, our lives and our dignity ever need anyone’s command, guidance or call to react by commiting bloodshed? This explosion of endless, uncontrollable misery, even without any instigators, would have occurred at any other time and in any other form, and would have erupted and taken its toll on us even without calls to action.

Dear Mrs.Forouhar, our cycle of sacrifice has, for years, become an endless one. Each time, it has grown larger, and have our bloodsuckers become bloodthirstier.

If people have decided to end this endless, escalating misery at any cost, it is out of their patriotism. They know that the continuation of this cycle will end in Iran‘s ruin.

Your claim that you have pushed back this regime through ‚civil activism‘ is a lie - and you are lying knowingly. If there had been any retreat, the regime would not have reached such a stage in its evolution of terror - to a point that it can carry out a massacre on the scale of tens of thousands of people within 48 hours and rally and mobilize all its factions in unison behind this naked crime.

Mrs.Forouhar, you lie when you say that these villains could be taught civility through a peaceful ‚gardening‘ approach. We know noone more harmless, peace-loving and low-risk to these criminals than your parents - who had installed these criminals themselves , by the way - yet these criminals did not even forego the dismemberment of the lifeless bodies of your parents.

Crying crocodile tears for the killed protesters - who knowingly took to the streets and had experienced the danger firsthand time and time again but whose chanting and direction were no longer under your and your friends‘ control - is sheer evil.“

[Golineh Atai @GolinehAtai]

I‘ve translated an ongoing discussion between Iranians here that I think is central to the understanding of where we are. The first perspective gets quite a lot of coverage in Western media. The deconstruction of this perspective however gets less attention - but is essential to the debate 🧵
#IranMassacre

Iranian artist and intellectual Parastou Forouhar [whose parents were stabbed to death by agents of the Iranian secret service in what is known as the "Chain Murders" of Iranian intellectuals and activists in 1998] stresses in her latest interview with BBC Persian that true and lasting change in #Iran can only happen as a consequence of „civic maturity“ and „gradual practice“. She emphasizes that Iranian society has made great gains since the Woman, Life, Freedom - movement and has pushed back the regime. These achievements should not be sacrificed to foreign interventions or senseless violence.

In Forouhar's view, when protesters are called "soldiers" and the protests a "war“- as Reza Pahlavi effectively did in a CBS interview after having invited people to protest - this grants the regime a license to wage a war of suppression and stripping the people of their civic agency.

She considers Pahlavi‘s call to protest to be „irresponsible“. According to Forouhar an "imported democracy“ or one resulting from an "external regime change“ will never lead to popular sovereignty and prosperity. Only a path that emerges from within society, from „shared suffering“, and through „dialogue, solidarity, resistance and the strengthening of civil society“ would ultimately be more sustainable than a sudden change dependent on foreign powers.

@E_Aria_N , a critic of Forouhar, decries that Parastou Forouhar is „constantly glorifying and sanctifying people‘s pain“ as well as „advertising to endure pain and have ascetic patience“ - recommendations for a society whose misery and suffering have long exceeded any limits. „A society that has knocked on every door for a breath of air, that has tried every path time and again but has been plunged deeper and deeper into the abyss of Shiite savagery“. Forouhar‘s words were - at best - „mere comfort-seeking and moralising from a safe distance“:

„Mrs. Forouhar, the assassination of your parents did not happen in response to anyone’s call. But you - unlike millions of Iranians - had the opportunity to travel to Teheran once a year from Germany, and light a candle for your loved ones, within a completely ‚permitted and civil‘ resistance framework, and after signing security pledges and being provided guarantees for your own safety.

Please tell us: Iran‘s bloody student protests in 1999 were in response to whose call exactly? Were the callers of these protests allowed to provide a security protocol for the people who were invited to the streets? If not - and of course they couldn’t have done this - and the defenseless people were mowed down, with hundreds killed and wounded, why haven’t you condemned the callers of these protests? And why are you socializing with the friends and companions of the henchmen of those protests today?

Before massacring the protesters of 2009 Ali Khamenei repeated your very same logic, from his Friday sermon pulpit: that the responsibility for the bloodshed lies solely with the ‚inciters‘. Why didn’t you point out this logic to the ‚inciters of 2009‘ back then? If foreign support and interference is a bad thing, why didn’t you object that the 2009 protesters shouldn’t have asked President Obama to support them?

And please tell us whose call turned the nationwide mass killings of 2017-2018 and 2019 into a national tragedy? And what about the reproduction of this terror in the crackdown of the 2022 protests?

[Golineh Atai @GolinehAtai]

Every day in the past eight days I have heard someone telling about a dear one killed in #Iran. A brother, a sister, a cousin, a friend. A friend just visited. She had lost her mom to cancer recently. Now she learned that her uncle, who had taken care of her mom, was killed when protesting. The hospital declared the official cause of death was a “heart attack”.
I am so tired of this world.

[Golineh Atai @GolinehAtai]

Messages from #Iran

„I don’t know how to live with so much pain and grief“
„you cannot imagine what happened“
„nothing will be like before“
„is the world even ready to face this calamity? Is it capable of not turning its eyes away?“
„at night their storm private houses, kicking the doors“
„all of us are in pain, in anger, and full of hate“
„there are floods of people in Isfahan‘s cemetery. They brought the corpses in refrigerated trucks. Blood was dripping from the trucks“
„I am utterly hopeless and exhausted. I cannot imagine something happening from within. They have infiltrated us more than you think. They have everything to kill each and everyone of us“
„The Islamic Republic was right when it promised to feed the people. Yes, they fed us bullets“
„The situation reminds me of Orwell‘s 1984. Everywhere you hear and see their propaganda while you’ve lost the ability to speak because of the terror they have imposed on us“
„They killed the protester. He had a tattoo on his middle finger that showed a crown. They also shot through this finger“

[Golineh Atai @GolinehAtai]

Hey world. Do you see what is happening? Or have you become numb to the bloodbath in #Iran?

[Golineh Atai @GolinehAtai]

“My cousin, in the middle of his chat, casually said: ‘Don't worry. We've made a tag and wear it on our chests. So that we don’t get killed anonymously. It's got our name and a contact number.'
I fell silent. I couldn't put my feelings into words.”
#IranMassacre

[Golineh Atai @GolinehAtai]

To some ivory-tower analysts out there who maybe feel smarter than the people in the streets of Iran: Do not pretend to have numbers about
- how many Iranians do or do not want foreign powers to attack after this tragedy
- how many Iranians approve or disapprove of a monarchy as a future form of governance
- how many Iranians approve or disapprove of the son of a monarch as a national leader.
Please put your own dogmas and your own bias aside. Your previous out-of-nowhere estimates have turned out to be wrong. You were left behind.
Try to feel the pulse of the people instead.

[Golineh Atai @GolinehAtai]

What stays on my mind today.
An eyewitness describing a state of deep shock in Teheran.
Another one describing how, in Teheran’s Behesht-e Zahra cemetery, he witnessed small body bags thrown from trucks - and recognized that they were the bodies of killed children.
The angry chants of a large crowd of people in Abdanan, Western Iran, mourning a slain protester and demanding the fall of the clerical regime.
And…this unknown lady. She is standing in front of the Cologne cathedral every day, for hours, in forced silence. The truest depiction of Iran’s lonely suffering.

[Golineh Atai @GolinehAtai]

Alas, I am seeing this again and again. Syria. Ukraine. Iran. People calling for freedom in an oppressive dictatorship - and being denied agency by leftist dogmatics living comfortably in the West. Disheartening if it weren’t for the fact that it’s always the same useful idiots and/or regime agents with zero credibility.

[Golineh Atai @GolinehAtai]

Last night in Mashhad. My heart goes out to all those locked away in prison there. May they all hear the sound of the people in the streets. May all be freed soon. May I hear Fatemeh Sepehri’s voice again 🤲🏼

[Peter R. Neumann @PeterRNeumann]

Wer mehr zu Wilders und dem Vormarsch der Rechtspopulisten in den Niederlanden wissen will: @rc_schneider und ich stellen das ausführlich in unserem neuen Buch dar. 👇 https://t.co/onrt1rKxKo

[Richard C Schneider @richardcschneider.bsky.social @rc_schneider]

Neumann und Schneider zeigen in analytischer Schärfe anhand von sechs Staaten, wie der Parlamentarismus von innen erodiert und was den Populisten dabei hilft. - https://t.co/tSf3NoWSJV ⁦@PeterRNeumann⁩ https://t.co/pJ3GGy5ypT

[Richard C Schneider @richardcschneider.bsky.social @rc_schneider]

Voilà. Und Dank an @PeterRNeumann für die tolle Zusammenarbeit

[Peter R. Neumann @PeterRNeumann]

Kleiner Hinweis, weshalb dieser Thread aktuell und wichtig ist. 👇

[Peter R. Neumann @PeterRNeumann]

Grußkarten-Marathon -- fast so anstrengend wie das Schreiben vom Buch. 😅📚✍️ https://t.co/mZGkEV6JSZ