cabbagequeen323

[cabbagequeen323]

The Aesthetic of Resistance: Why Some Western Leftists Support a Regime Which is Everything They Claim to Hate

(Dedicated with appreciation and admiration to literally every single Iranian person I've ever met for educating me.)

A vocal current within the Western Left has become inept at recognizing abuse of power…when it speaks in the language of 'resistance.'

Objectively, Iran isn't a scrappy underdog challenging imperialism. It's a repressive regime that embodies everything the Left claims to despise.

A Theocracy Run by Religious Extremists

If you believe in the separation of Church and State, the regime isn't an ally.

Iran is ruled by unelected clerics who claim divine authority and answer to nobody.

The Supreme Leader, currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is not an elected politician. He's a religious messianic figure with ultimate say over everything from military policy to women's clothing.

The Guardian Council is all male, conservative religious fanatics who regularly disqualify moderates, reformists, or women from participation in any public matters.

This is textbook authoritarian theocracy, a system where dissent is heresy and religious doctrine is law. There is no religious freedom in the Regime's Iran.

They Stone Women. Yes, Still.

The regime's laws on women would make the Taliban proud.

Women must cover their hair and bodies in public.

They cannot sing solo in public.

Their testimony in court is worth half that of a man.

They need male permission to travel, study, or even get a passport.

And yes, they have been stoned to death for adultery — in the 21st century.

When 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was arrested in 2022 by Iran's morality police for allegedly wearing her hijab improperly, she was beaten to death in custody. Her murder sparked mass protests, which the regime crushed with bullets and mass arrests.

There is no question what the response would be if a US state like Alabama enforced such laws. The outrage would be deafening and justified. So why does that same righteous fire for justice seem to extinguish itself somewhere over the Atlantic? What principle justifies this selective vision?

If you chant "ACAB" as a denunciation of state violence and the enforcement of oppressive norms as a moral principle, consistency demands you cast that same critical gaze towards the Regime and it's morality police.

These enforcers serve as agents of the state's ideological control. They target women for unveiled hair, arrest dissidents for defying religious codes, and violently suppress basic civil liberties.

If your anti-authoritarianism stops at Tehran's border because it feels geopolitically inconvenient to criticize a state opposed to Western influence, you're not anti-authoritarian and are not promoting moral principles. You're just performing selective, aesthetic outrage.

Solidarity, if it means anything, must extend to all those resisting state oppression, not just those who fit your aesthetic of revolution.

They Kill Gay People. By Law.

Iran's government executes gay people.

In public.

For being gay.

As state policy.

Consensual same-sex acts between men are punishable by death. Between women? Up to 100 lashes. The regime often forces gay and trans Iranians into exile, prison, or coerced surgery.

This isn’t some rogue judge. This is the actual legal code of the Islamic Republic.

Iran's LGBTQ+ rights record makes Putin look like RuPaul.

Yet somehow, the same activist movements that cover their feeds in rainbows during Pride Month can't seem to work up a single post about Iran's state-sanctioned homophobia.

If your pride doesn't cross al borders, it's not pride. It's an aesthetic, just branding and performance. You can't claim to support LGBTQ+ liberation while ignoring the regime's brutal state-led persecution...unless your solidarity is only for show.

Real allyship doesn't flinch when it's inconvenient or challenges your preferred villains. Pride isn't pride if it's selective and intersectionality is meaningless if you use it to excuse abuses in one nation...which you'd condemn in another.

They Crush Labor Movements and Workers' Rights

Iran doesn't just jail journalists and students. It jails bus drivers.

Labor unions are illegal. Strikes are illegal. Demanding back pay is treated as "national security sabotage."

Teachers, steelworkers, truck drivers — anyone who organizes is beaten, arrested, or disappeared. In 2023 alone, dozens of labor activists were sentenced to multi-year prison terms for trying to negotiate wages or demand safety protections.

You can't champion the "worker’s struggle" while turning a blind eye to a regime that jails, tortures, and executes labor organizers.

If your solidarity skips over Iranian workers because it complicates your anti-imperialist narrative, that’s not internationalism, it's performative ideological convenience. You don't get to wave the red flag for workers' rights while ghosting the ones bleeding for it under a theocratic police state. Labor solidarity isn't real if it ends where the slogans get uncomfortable.

They Colonize and Militarize Their Neighbors

The Islamic Regime of Iran is not just a local bully. It's a regional empire.

It bankrolls and controls violent militias in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen not to support anyone's liberation, but to spread its own political and religious dominance.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah functions as an Iranian outpost that undermines democratic politics, murders critics, and uses civilians as human shields.

In Syria, Iran helped Assad murder hundreds of thousands of people, including with chemical weapons, just to keep Assad in power as an ally on Israel's border.

In Iraq, Iranian-backed militias have assassinated reformists, hijacked politics, and turned protests into bloodbaths.

In Yemen, Iran arms the Houthis, prolonging one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises so it can poke Saudi Arabia from afar.

If any other country did this, the Left would call it neo-imperialism. When Iran does it? It's "resistance."

You can't claim to stand against imperialism and ignore Tehran's regional warlords. If empire is wrong when it’s Western, it's still wrong when it wears clerical robes and claims to operate under the banner of "resistance."

They Practice Ethnic and Cultural Domination

Iran itself is not a culturally unified state. It's a multi-ethnic empire where Persian Shi'a identity is imposed from the top down.

Kurds are surveilled, imprisoned, and gunned down in the streets.

Baluchis live under occupation-like conditions, with entire towns attacked by the military.

Ahwazi Arabs are denied clean water and education in their own language — in the very province that produces most of Iran’s oil.

Azeris, Turkmen, and others are pressured to assimilate and punished for cultural expression.

Baháʼís, Sunni Muslims, Christians, and Zoroastrians face discrimination, harassment, and systemic exclusion from public life.

The regime bulldozes indigenous cemeteries. Bans non-Persian names. Executes poets and religious leaders.

And yet the Western Left doesn't call this apartheid or colonialism.

If your anti-colonialism skips over this because it clashes with your chosen narrative, then it's not principle. It's just performance.

The Iranian Regime Censors Everything and Jails Everyone

There is no freedom of press. No freedom of religion. No freedom of speech. None.

Journalists are imprisoned for reporting the truth.

Filmmakers are banned or exiled.

Internet access is filtered, throttled, and monitored by the state.

Peaceful protests are met with bullets and mass arrests.

Torture is standard. Forced confessions are routine.

When students protest, they get shot. When families demand answers, they get threats.

Iranian prisons are filled with feminists, union leaders, teachers, students, environmentalists, atheists, reformists, and even children.

Where is the Western Leftist solidarity for them?

You rally for free speech and civil liberties at home, so why the silence when Iran shoots students and jails teachers for demanding the same?

A regime that censors art, criminalizes dissent, and tortures activists is authoritarian.

If your solidarity evaporates the moment it's inconvenient for your narrative, it was never about justice. It was about fashion.

You can't be both pro-liberation and mute about the Regime's prisons overflowing with feminists, filmmakers, and kids. Either stand with the oppressed everywhere or stop pretending you have any moral principles.

If the Regime Wasn't Anti-American, You’d Hate It

The reason some progressives give Iran a pass is because it opposes the US and Israel.

That's it.

If it were a Christian theocracy executing gay people, torturing minorities, and colonizing its neighbors,they'd see it for what it is: a violent, fascist, patriarchal, ethno-nationalist police state.

But because it wears the right aesthetic, they (either through dishonesty or pure ignorance) mistake the Regime as seeking justice.

It’s not.

The Regime Is What the Left Says It's Fighting

It's everything they claim to stand against:

Misogyny

Homophobia

Theocracy

Anti-labor authoritarianism

Militarized ethnonationalism

Colonial violence

Censorship, repression, torture, and propaganda

So the next time someone chants slogans lifted from Tehran, ask yourself: do they know what they’re endorsing? Or are they just cheering for the empire they want to believe is innocent...because that narrative appeals to them.

The regime isn't the voice of the oppressed.

It's just another boot on 90 Million Iranian necks...and millions more in the region.

Sources and Further Information:

[cabbagequeen323]

After the sun

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I understand that it is silly that the Anglican Church was started by Henry the 8th- but doesn't it make sense? Does God love to use an unfortunate beginning to make something beautiful? Redemption is, after all, in the heart of the Gospel.

why do anglicans still exist like their entire church is built on the fact that some guy wanted a male heir. or do anglicans believe that this isn't rly why their church came about

Okay, I do love clowning on my Anglican friends, but there are a few angles (da dum tss) that we can look at in terms of why the Anglican Church is a distinctive tradition.

Theologically, the Anglican Church might have started off as "Catholic without the Pope," so to speak; the Anglican Church was essentially Gallican in nature, meaning that the head of the church wasn't the seniormost bishop, but the head of the state. But even if it started off simply being in schism with the Roman Church, it didn't take very long before Reformed theology started entering the Church through the efforts of Anne Bolelyn, Thomas Cromwell, and especially Edward VI. There were preceding documents, but the Thirty-Nine articles passed by Queen Elizabeth I in 1571 helped to solidify a distinctively Anglican identity.

But it's a little more than that, too, because in addition to this Protestantization of the Anglican Church, there have also been movements within to.... "Latinize" might be the wrong word, but to bring back some traditional Catholic elements. We see this, for example, in the Oxford movement of the 1830s; many of its members would end up converting to Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy, but those who remained behind started the Anglo-Catholic movement which still has a strong presence. (My girlfriend goes to an Anglo-Catholic parish, and our city has at least three other ones).

This kind of dual accommodation of Reformed and Catholic theological ideas has created a unique situation for the Anglican Church; Bishop J. Neil Alexander tries to articulate this by distinguishing the Anglican Church as a "pragmatic church," in contradistinction with "confessional churches" (Catholic & Lutheran, which focus on creeds and councils) and "experiential churches" (Baptist and other groups whose memberships require a born-again moment):

What, then, does it mean to be pragmatic? It means that within the generous capacity of the Episcopal [American Anglican] Church, we do not always agree on matters of biblical interpretation or theological definition. It means that we have all gotten here by way of hundreds of different and often unique experiences of God's presence in our lives. It means that those things which other churches depend to hold themselves together will never be a central feature of our common life. We find our life together driven by our willingness to stand together at the table of God's gracious hospitality. […] That, I believe, is the pragmatism at the heart of what it means to be an Episcopalian. We are a variegated tapestry of theology and experience, and we are all the richer for it. But no level of theological agreement or experiential commonality will ever be the basis on which Episcopalians will live together well. What is possible is that we will be pragmatic —we will keep our differences in perspective— and we will recognize that ultimately nothing will divide those who are willing to stand together before God's altar to sing, to pray, and to receive the gift of God's eternity.

Now, this is a very fascinating situation, because it means that the Anglican Church has a lot of diversity in religious thought and doctrinal opinion. On an official level, that means you will have bishops aligning with different theological orientations working side by side — and, in theory, the office of Archbishop of Canterbury is supposed to alternate between Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical holders. On a more personal level, I have found that the Episcopal clergy who I interact with have varying spiritualities and theologies; one priest I know has Catholic sympathies that are so strong that he was referred to as "the Papist" in seminary, while another clergymember I know doesn't think Confession is necessary and is ambivalent about her parish's practice of Eucharistic Adoration. And they work at the same church.

Liturgically, they are also distinctive. The current bedrock of Anglican prayer is the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which is clearly inspired by Benedictine spirituality, but with continuing liturgical revision and innovation that kind of fits with the 'pragmatic church' mindset explained above. Some Anglican parishes even preserve pre-Tridentine traditions (remember, they split before the Council of Trent), like the Sarum Use.

The Anglican Church has had a developing liturgical patrimony for the past five centuries; one of the reasons why the Catholic Church created the Anglican Ordinariate was because it recognized that fact, and wanted former members of the Anglican Church to be able to preserve their traditions even after re-entering communion with Rome.

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So, like, the Anglican Church may have started off as a more-or-less Catholic particular church that was in schism with Rome, a schism orchestrated by a king who wanted fuller control over the Church in his country, but the Anglican Church has had five centuries of development. And, as much as I like to clown on my Anglican friends, I can definitely see why the Anglican communion has a deep appeal.

[cabbagequeen323]

wouldn’t it be so funny if we as normal americans reclaimed the american flag from the fascist “patriots” on the alt-right

[cabbagequeen323]

a lot of things get on my nerves. im constantly annoyed. and i also have a deep love of humanity and the world but everything is really annoying

[cabbagequeen323]

Tchaikovsky was inspired to create the piece, ‘Swan Lake’ after watching the film, ‘Barbie of Swan Lake (2003)’. Close friends of Tchaikovsky reported him saying it was, “one of the most emotionally thrilling and aesthetically divine” films he’d ever seen.

[cabbagequeen323]

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The Christian life, from one angle, is the long journey of letting our natural assumption about who God is, over many decades, fall away, being slowly replaced with God’s own insistence on who he is. This is hard work. It takes a lot of sermons and a lot of suffering to believe that God’s deepest heart is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger.” The fall in Genesis 3 not only sent us into condemnation and exile. The fall also entrenched in our minds dark thoughts of God, thoughts that are only dug out over multiple exposures to the gospel over many years. Perhaps Satan’s greatest victory in your life today is not the sin in which you regularly indulge but the dark thoughts of God’s heart that cause you to go there in the first place and keep you cool toward him in the wake of it.

—Dane Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly

[cabbagequeen323]

something that i think most leftists fundamentally do not understand is this: the basic seed of white supremacism is not and has never been “white people are good and everyone else is bad”. the basic seed of white supremacism has always been “white people are capable and everyone else is incapable”. when explicit arguments in favor of white supremacy are put forth, they are almost always take this form. never “white people are the kindest and the most virtuous” always “white people have achieved, they have conquered, where no others have”. this is why the liberal idpol thing of “all badness in the world is the result of european imperialism” actually more or less supports a white supremacist narrative. sure, the value judgements are different, but the basic belief that white people are the driving force of history is almost identical. stop it! this shit is not helpful!

[cabbagequeen323]

when i say “girl” randomly as an interjection i’m speaking to the omnipresent all knowing being of Girl. asking her for mercy. taking girl’s name in vain

[cabbagequeen323]

That's a really interesting question. He was enabled by the temple/Jewish religious leaders, wasn't he?

One (of many) interesting thing about Paul is that he was persecuting Christians as a Jew (rather than as a Roman citizen) in the mid-First Century when, as far as we can tell, there really wasn't that much persecution of Christians by anyone going on.

Like, I'm inclined to believe Paul when he said he was a persecutor, but I'm really curious about the specific context that enabled it.

[cabbagequeen323]

I'm not going to bother reading the article to find out if this actually works or if anyone is actually trying it. I'm just happy we as a society are showing proper reverence for Orbs.

[cabbagequeen323]

The thing about the pro-life movement is that legislation is the least important thing about it and anti-abortion legislation can actually be recognized as harmful even by pro-lifers.

[cabbagequeen323]

a wandering knight, drawn to the quiet of the forest. her touch may be a blessing or a curse.

[cabbagequeen323]

“The word ‘naked’ is a translation of the Hebrew erom, which is used to describe a state of being stripped or vulnerable, and is without sexual connotation. […] Called out by God, Adam says: ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.’ His nakedness, erom, merely implies vulnerability. Perhaps Adam and Eve hid from God not because they were suddenly prudish, nor because their disobedience had been found out, but because they realised their fragility and insignificance. They were exposed, not as sexual beings but as mortal ones.”

— Anne Enright, The Genesis of Blame