How Upsetting

Believing What You See: Iran’s ‘Gay’ Hangings

Yesterday a report that four gay men in Iran were due to be executed for being gay went viral. I read the report, firstly in Pink News and then beyond, with some suspicion. The reports were vague, relying largely on responses from nameless sources and Western activists. Despite Pink News quoting two sources for the story, the latter source seemed to rely on the first. In fact, every single report of the story relied on ‘reports’ from something called the “Human Rights Activist News Agency”. Given that the vast majority of readers are going to be ignorant of this organisation (I certainly was) you would expect some context as to its reliability, but there was none. There was remarkably little variation in the reporting, suggesting no independent verification. From past experience, I thought it reasonable to assume that many of the writers of these reports had made no effort to verify the story or even ascertain further details. Indeed, it’s not the first time that there has been a horror story about gay executions in Iran - and it wouldn’t be the first time that such a horror story had spread across the world with little evidence behind it.

Today, a photo purporting to show the four men’s execution (EXPLICIT CONTENT) was widely shared on social media. Again, I was suspicious. If such an event had taken place with so many onlookers, surely we would be beyond relying on a single report? Surely we would have further details of the men aside from some names in inverted commas? The fact that people sharing the photo couldn’t even agree on which day it was taken further troubled me. So this evening I did some googling. I found this great article. You must read it but in short it argues that many Western gay activists (notably Peter Tatchell) are so eager for ‘gay victims’ that they completely abandon any attempts at objectivity or rationality. It goes on to examine the reports regarding the four men and finds them wanting, to say the least. Unlike, I imagine, pretty much all of those who disseminated the story, the writer actually attempts to find out further information from HRANA and fails.

I then noticed something else: the image purporting to show the men’s execution had ‘2008’ in its file name (at least on the site I first found it linked to this story). Finding that odd, I put the image into Tinyeye search, which aims to find other instances of any picture you input. And there it was - sites using the image in 2008. Notably, they give next to no details about it, observing only that it shows a public execution in ‘Borazjan 2008’.

That search literally took seconds. The fact that none of the hundreds, thousands of people who have shared it, including some professional journalists, noticed this is worrying to say the least.

However, what does it matter? Maybe there are four men as described and Iran certainly has demonstrable form in human rights abuses and executions, including against gays. It is undoubtedly a brutal regime.

The problem is that it was a brutal regime last week and it will be a brutal regime next week. As the image shows, it was a brutal regime in 2008 when it executed four men who are anonymous to the world, preserved forever in that grim image. Yet the issue was not that it’s a despotic regime, or that it uses capital punishment (something it shares, of course, with America). The issue was that it was killing people merely for being gay. That was what made so many suddenly take notice.

This raises troubling issues. Not least, it raises the issue of how easy it can be to manipulate people into believing a certain narrative about Iran - a narrative which, of course, aids the manipulation itself. Given the drumbeats of war sounding for Iran in many powerful quarters, it’s not difficult to imagine how dangerous this could be. I saw many comments, mostly on American sites, demanding that ‘we’ bomb Iran. Some had a tone of ‘alright, now I’m in’, suggesting that previously they had not been eager to support a war but had been convinced by this barbarity. Given the lies and manipulation which led us into the Iraq war, you would surely expect us to be more wary of these emotional responses and, moreso, of whatever information led us to them? There has been a steady drip of stories about Iran’s barbarity over the past year or so - the fact that they so neatly serve powerful interests should put us on guard. It’s a sinister insight into how the softening of public opinion for an attack on Iran could happen (if it’s not happening already).

The very interesting thing is that many of the stories have concerned totemic liberal values such as gay rights and women’s rights. The ‘everyday’ oppression in Iran rarely inspires much ire - it’s these issues which get people worked up. It’s reminiscent of when we have been encouraged to support war in Iraq and Afghanistan on the grounds that it would improve the lot of women. You don’t have to spend long reading about either conflict to see that these claims are, at best, problematic.

The response also reminded me of the response to the murder of Stuart Walker in Scotland last year. There was another case where liberal-minded and I’m sure well-intentioned people rushed to judgement based on little information. That case also quickly went viral with many expressions of disgust and demands that something be done. Within hours, however, it became clear that the case was far more complex and Stuart’s sexuality might not have played a part in his death. As quickly as the outrage and concern arose, it vanished. I didn’t see a single person correct themselves or even admit that they might have got it wrong. Everyone moved on and I sincerely doubt that even 1% of the people who wrote about it have any idea of, or even interest in, what happened in Stuart Walker’s case since.

As with Stuart, we know absolutely nothing about these four Iranian men (assuming the case is real). They have immediately become ‘four gay men’ and that is the extent of their identity. The problem with that is that it becomes the extent of their usefulness. If it transpires that they were executed for, say, rape, the outrage and concern vanishes, people move on, no-one spends any time thinking about why they were so quick to get it wrong. As the Paper Bird piece argues, they are useful ‘gay victims’ for advancing certain agendas and world views and nothing else matters:

But don’t you see? Marking them “gay” means they are not “innocent,” not in the Iranian judiciary’s eyes. You know nothing about these four men, nothing at all. But you’re still content to call them names that convict them. What gave you that right?

The truly sad thing is that someone, somewhere, deliberately decided to deceive in finding the 2008 photo and linking it to this story. The fact that this deception has so easily and so quickly spread around the world only serves to obscure the real brutalities of the Iranian regime; it serves to bolster the idea that the West will stop at nothing to discredit Iran and so strengthens the regime. More immediately, of course, it serves to obscure the reality surrounding the four men or, if they do not exist, others like them. Others like, in fact, the men in the 2008 photograph.

No one would doubt Madonna’s commitment to gay rights but more importantly, few would doubt that she’s an archetypal American liberal. This is underlined in this speech to GLAAD, the American body which is widely seen (outwith American liberal circles, anyway) as the hobby horse of privileged white men. The American version of Stonewall, if you will, and as such hugely averse to radicalism and any meaningful discussion of inequality and the use of power. Madonna’s speech pushes all the right buttons in this regard: the American enemies of the great and the good gathered in the room are religious bigots who fixate on sexuality; some truth to this, of course, but neatly feeding the sense of victimisation which many of these people thrive on while obscuring wider and more complex inequalities.

If Madonna had restricted her comments to the Boy Scouts and religious bigotry in America, however, there would have been little wrong with this speech. Where it becomes worthy of criticism is when she moves onto the wider world with some banal but damaging observations on inequality and oppression. Israeli apartheid becomes a question of two mothers sitting down to speak to each other, the pervasive and pernicious fiction that the conflict is one of two equal ‘sides’ rather than one of oppressor and oppressed. Worse, there is a throwaway reference to “an Iranian gay man being hanged for falling in love with a man.” This is a favoured trope of liberals, even in situations where there is absolutely no evidence to support it, and it is unforgivable as it serves to increase the drumbeat for ‘intervention’ in Iran while completely ignoring America’s own complicity in and hypocrisy regarding the Iranian regime (and indeed support of regimes seen to be even more oppressive).

The reference to Malala Yousafzai and the Taliban at first seems straightforwardly ‘good’ - who could have an issue with this, after all? Yet it undeniably further serves American fantasies of promoting equality and justice in the world against dangerous, dark, barbaric enemies. It’s easy to be horrified when the Taliban attempt to kill a child - it’s braver to use your platform to draw attention to your own government murdering hundreds (at least) of children with its drone strikes and sanctions.

Indeed, the sense that you should hold your own government to account before deigning to wag your finger at others looms large in one inexcusable omission from Madonna’s speech. She speaks of Putin and Pussy Riot - again, a worthy cause but one which flatters Western notions of superiority. It is ‘insane’, she says, that Pussy Riot have been locked up ‘because they criticised the government’. Further, she notes that she doesn’t ‘know many brave people’ and draws attention to the line in ‘Nobody Knows Me’ which observes that “it’s so hard to find someone to admire”. You have to wonder, then, if Madonna (and indeed GLAAD) is aware of Bradley Manning, a truly brave (gay) American who has spent over 1000 days in prison and faced torture precisely because he wanted to draw attention to his government’s horrendous abuses of its power. I’ve written before about the silence of ‘Gay Inc’ on Manning and it is truly inexcusable for this room to loudly whoop and applaud their sense of righteousness over Pussy Riot while they continue to turn a blind eye to their own government’s persecution of someone who courageously spoke up. It’s possible to go further still, as Glenn Greenwald does here in a piece on Anwar Awlaki, an American citizen who was subject to extrajudicial assassination (ie murder) by the CIA. Greenwald argues that:

What prompted my opposition from the start to the attempted killing of Awlaki was that it was very clear he was being targeted because of his anti-American sermons that were resonating among English-speaking Muslim youth (sermons which, whatever you think of them, are protected by the First Amendment), and not because he was a Terrorist operative. In other words, the US government was trying to murder one of its own citizens as punishment for his political and religious views that were critical of the government’s policies, and not because of any actual crimes or warfare. (my emphasis)

You may have to read that a few times to fully take in its shocking message - one which completely demolishes liberal fantasies of a superior, secular America which can afford to cast its eye over the abuses of other governments and find them wanting.

Predictably, Madonna’s speech is proving popular with many; it’s being described as ‘courting controversy’ and ‘brave’. Yet what was difficult or shocking about it? It flattered the egos of everyone present, assuring them that they were on the side of ‘right’ and ‘good’ while still facing oppression from wicked religious people. The man the speech honoured is a mainstream journalist who waited until he was firmly embedded at the top of his profession before choosing to come out and there seems to be little that is truly ‘brave’ about his overwhelmingly conventional views. What would have been truly brave, truly shocking, truly controversial, would be if Madonna had challenged the smug complacency of GLAAD and, indeed, of the wider American liberalism and exceptionalism which she so perfectly embodies.

EDIT - A response to this blog I’ve had several times now is for people to state that the differences between Pussy Riot and Manning are obvious; that the former case is clear-cut and indefensible while the second is ‘controversial’ and ‘disputed’. The first point to be made here is that within Russia, the Pussy Riot case isn’t remotely clear-cut. It is in fact as ‘controversial’ and ‘disputed’ as these people present the Manning case as being. A cursory Google of Russian public opinion on the case will reveal this. Following on from that, the second point is that the reasons these cases are so disputed in their countries of origin are worth focusing on in themselves. As this piece puts it:

There are some U.S. citizens who see Manning as a hero (I am one of them), and some who see him as a traitor. Manning’s target population was and still is all of the rest. Yet the sad truth is most of this remainder doesn’t care much about Manning’s fate and will, in the end, accept the government’s verdict on him. This is how I reasoned out the situation back in 2010, and I think my conclusion is still sound. On the assumption that most people are locally focused and apolitical I conclude that this vast majority are unconcerned about the Manning case because it seems not to touch their lives. And, on the assumption that the government and its allied mass media control the information flow, I conclude that most of the minority who are aware and concerned share the official view that Manning is a traitor. (my emphasis)

Indeed, the fact that the one line repeatedly wheeled out to me is that Manning ‘put American lives at risk’ would tend to confirm the notion that people are blindly parroting what the authorities have told them.

The third and most crucial point is that support for freedom of expression, for freedom of conscience, for opposition to government and for bravery in opposing and exposing its abuses means nothing if it must be uncontroversial and widely accepted. This is precisely why I write above that Madonna’s speech served the dominant narratives of power - it is both fed by and feeds ideas and causes which are acceptable to the American liberal ‘elite’. The idea that raising the cause of Manning would have been too ‘controversial’ is to argue that no-one should ever make a meaningful stand for justice. There is never a ‘time and a place’ for that - that’s kind of the point in calling such actions ‘brave’.