Iran has banned a weightlifter from sports for life and dissolved a sports committee after the athlete greeted an Israeli counterpart on a podium.

Mostafa Rajaei, a veteran weightlifter, finished second in his category in the 2023 World Master Weightlifting Championships in Poland and stood on a podium with an Iranian flag wrapped around him on Saturday.

On anther step of the podium stood Maksim Svirsky from Israel, who finished third.

The two athletes shook hands and took a picture together, which led to the Iran Weightlifting Federation banning Rajaei from all sports for life due to what it called an “unforgivable” transgression.

  • figaro@lemdro.id
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    1 year ago

    Hey! So I very much understand wanting to take the side of people who are oppressed in some way.

    I think a way to do this without supporting oppressive regimes is to specifically support the people, and not the government.

    Your comment was unclear, and because of that people are taking it as you supporting the government of Iran. I think most sane people agree that they suck. The people though - they are some of the kindest people I have ever met, and do not deserve the violence that they have experienced.

    • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      In various circumstances critical support of problematic governments is support of the people when harm to their state by outside actors will bring harm to those people. Most communists have a general understanding that the way Iran is today is in fact America’s fault and that the change it needs won’t come from outside of it, particularly when the people using various problems as a political weapon do not have the improvement of the lives of the people as their goal but instead various other geopolitical and resource interests.

      The most recent historical example of this would be Syria, with Libya a close second and Iraq a close third. All of which are objectively worse off thanks to western interventionism.

      You can and should oppose interventionism and outside actors fucking with the situation there if you do care about the people, while also not defending the theocracy and support real local political movements for change (ie the ones not funded by NED or various other cia or nato affiliated intermediaries).

      • Acid@startrek.website
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        1 year ago

        I’d only change one thing and say most of the problems for Iran started because of the UK/US being imperialistic and has never recovered as a result

        • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Most communists have a general understanding that the way Iran is today is in fact America’s fault

          I’m not sure what I said differently here, I was referring to the historical events of US backed revolution and bombings that led to the existing Iran when I wrote the above. Modern Iran exists because America wanted to stop us socialists from getting power there. Everyone on this website should remind themselves of this when they see anticommunists screaming about “tankies”. Anticommunism leads to backing the far right consistently throughout history.

    • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      I think a way to do this without supporting oppressive regimes is to specifically support the people, and not the government.

      On Hexbear we have seen this line of reasoning a hundred thousand times and so we just laugh now whenever we see it; I thought you were making a joke until I saw your instance.

      The cause of so much of the suffering of “repressive regimes” like Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, the DPRK, etc is specifically because of the sanctions that the West puts on it that are designed to impoverish the people and try and make them overthrow their government, because they refuse to engage in the global economy according to the United States’s rules, and not really because of those “regimes” themselves. Of course, it’s taken for granted that what the United States wants is what everybody should want, but considering the billions being exploited abroad for tiny wages in hostile working environments for the West’s benefit, perhaps America’s “international rules-based order” isn’t the best for anybody except for the West themselves! Of course, America has all the military bases, and those countries do not, and bullets and bombs tend to be quite persuasive.

      For liberals, which I assume you are, these sanctions exist in a weird doublethink space. Working through it, liberals basically end up saying something contradictory like “The suffering that the people here are experiencing is because those countries are Bad. We need to put sanctions on Bad Countries. The sanctions aren’t what’s causing the suffering, it’s the Bad Countries’ fault (which thus implies sanctions don’t work and have little to no effect), but we still need to put sanctions on them to punish them (thus implying that sanctions do have some negative, disciplinary function).”

      Sanctions both do and do not function depending on the rhetorical frame you’re taking at any particular time. When you’re talking about the repression that Iranian women feel and why that sparked the protests, the sanctions will never be mentioned - this is purely Iran. When you’re talking about the fact that Cubans struggle with food insecurity and don’t have enough fuel and sometimes some of them protest or complain, then what caused those shortages is, again, never mentioned - it’s purely the Cuban regime. If, on the other hand, you’re talking about how repressive regimes must be punished in general, then westerners online clamour and shout for sanctions, sanctions, sanctions.

      This is why we laugh about such “support the people, not the government” rhetoric a lot of the time. Of course, in the case of Iran and similar countries, they aren’t left-wing and so we only really have critical support (in the sense of “they are better than those they are opposing, but they are not good in a vacuum”) and there is genuinely nuance about how the Iranian bourgeoisie are worsening conditions by exploiting the people, and repressive religious institutions, etc, but by and large American sanctions are the larger factor. In the case of Cuba, or the DPRK, such a line about supporting the people, not the government is quite ridiculous. Liberals (usually of the chud variety) who just come right out and say what they really mean - that, yes, the sanctions are explicitly designed to make the population overthrow the government so that Western compradors and corporations can loot it of its resources and exploit its people - are horrific monsters, but at least slightly refreshing compared to the mental knots that most liberals tie themselves in to not say that line explicitly, invoking “restoring democracy” and “fighting authoritarianism” and other such meaningless cliches instead.

      • sunbeam60@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        You didn’t need to write all that. You could have just said “I’m on hexbear” and you could have saved yourself and us some time.

        • MultigrainCerealista [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          In future we will add a disclaimer:

          CONTENT WARNING THE FOLLOWING REPLY REQUIRES THAT YOU CONSIDER YOUR ASSUMPTIONS AND THINK CRITICALLY

          Is that a reasonable compromise?

          This way you can maintain your thought free information bubble and we can still point out the ways in which mainstream propaganda shapes your world view, and you can just comfortably ignore it.

        • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Someone takes the time to write out a well-thought out and civil response to foster a good faith discussion, and this is how you answer? Why do you people wonder why you’re treated with hostility by hexbear users? Why do you choose to remain obtuse and condescending? Why are you this afraid of challenging your worldview?

          • sunbeam60@lemmy.one
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            1 year ago

            The discussion isn’t in good faith, though, and almost nothing is achieved. I would argue, without anything but personal observation as a basis, that 99% of non-hexbear users see 99% of hexbear comments as extremely inflammatory and that 99% of hexbear users see 99% of non-hexbear users as “libtards and chuds”.

            I am sure I could drink a couple of sensible pints with some hexbear users and have a good discussion in the pub, but online the greater internet fuckwad theory comes into play (from both “sides”). I would argue both hexbear and non-hexbear Lemmy were happier before you federated again. There is almost zero basis for finding consensus and an online forum isn’t the place to find it.

            On a personal level, as soon as per-account instance banning is possible, hexbear will take pride of place in my ban list. And I know what hexbear users think about that - that I’m swimming in a sea of US hegemony propaganda and I’ve got everything wrong and I’m totally fine with that. The judgment of hexbear users concerns me not one iota.

            • BelieveRevolt [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              On a personal level, as soon as per-account instance banning is possible, hexbear will take pride of pace in my ban list. And I know what hexbear users think about that - that I’m swimming in a sea of US hegemony propaganda and I’ve got everything wrong and I’m totally fine with that. The judgment of hexbear users concerns me not one iota.

              smuglord

              btw, we don’t in fact use ableist insults.

            • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              the discussion is in good faith.

              Says the person who just wrote a dismissive one sentence gotcha. You weren’t acting in good faith. Saying you were doesn’t matter, what matters I your actions.

              All the other stuff: it’s not that you’re wrong - everybody is wrong. It’s not that you disagree - everybody disagrees. It’s that you’re being a condescending dickhead that fails to engage with the arguments presented.
              If you behave the same way in person I doubt there’s any people willing to talk to you for an extended period of time.
              You could argue that hexbear users were wrong, but I wouldn’t give a shit about your argument, because it’s based on anything but your feelings. If that was something you actually cared about, you would have looked thru the thread discussing federation currently, and you’d see the consensus is that federation is a good thing.

              I’m gonna ban you all.

              Oh no! What will we do without your smug condescension! What will we do without your inputs based on no research! What will we do without your ableist language! ooooooooooooooh I war really looking forward to your next idiotic sentence dismissing a long and thought out post.

        • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          The person you were replying to before is also on Hexbear (and so am I, just to save you the trouble of pointing it out). It seems like we’re working with inconsistent standards here.

        • TheLepidopterists [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          If you don’t want to talk to someone from Hexbear don’t reply to someone from Hexbear’d comments for a start.

          Of course since you’re not OP it’s really not your place anyways to say which instances can and can’t respond to them.