Here’s the latest unappetizing news from Iran:
The organizer of the Iranian regime’s contest of caricatures trivializing the Nazi Holocaust has seized on a new theme — promoting the conspiracy theory that the US is behind the coronavirus pandemic.
Masoud Shojaei-Tabatabaei — an artist and veteran propagandist on behalf the Islamic Republic ‘s ruling clerics — told media outlets in Tehran on Wednesday that more than 2,000 submissions had been received from cartoonists in 68 countries for the regime’s “We Defeat Coronavirus” competition.
The accusation that the US deliberately unleashed coronavirus on an unsuspecting world and is now withholding medical and financial assistance to the same end appeared in many of the cartoons.
One entry showed a coronavirus missile being launched from the US with an accompanying note from US President Donald Trump that read, “To China and Iran, with my love.”
Another showed an Iranian man coughing while carrying a coronavirus microbe on his shoulder, as an enlarged hand draped in the American flag snatches vital medication away from behind his back.
Shojaei-Tabatabaei was the main organizer of the two contests staged by Iran in 2006 and 2016 showcasing cartoons that variously denied and mocked the Holocaust. More than 150 cartoons from the latter contest were exhibited at the headquarters of the Islamic Propaganda Organization in Tehran in May 2016.
“We held the Holocaust Contest to raise the question of why the Holocaust cannot be discussed in the West despite its claims of freedom of expression,” Shojaei-Tabatabaei explained at the time. He went on to praise the “pure nature” of the artists who submitted entries to the Holocaust cartoon contest, saying they were motivated by opposition to the “child-killing regime of Israel.”…
The contest is being sponsored by Iran’s Ministry of Health, which earlier this week summarily ruled out any role for foreign organizations in dealing with the chronic outbreak of coronavirus in the country….
Nothing signals the “pure nature” of “artists” like their ability to have some fun with the Nazi treatment of the Jews. It’s the stuff cartoonists dream about, to be able to poke a little fun at sacred cows, like the Holocaust, that you’re never supposed to joke about. But why not? That’s what we Iranians wanted to know. Why should one group of people, “the Jews,” be able to use the Holocaust for their own ends – which is to talk endlessly about their supposed suffering, in order to make people too embarrassed to bring up the “child-killing regime of Israel”? If you dare to discuss the Holocaust without any presuppositions, you are made to feel guilty. Why?
If the Holocaust existed at all – and of course no one is saying it didn’t, just that there might need to be more convincing evidence than we’ve been given so far – let’s face it, we still have no idea how many victims there were. Some people say a few hundred thousand, mostly from typhus in the work camps, which of course doesn’t excuse it, while others say a million or even more, and the estimates go all the way right up to six million as the tippety-top figure. We should always question authority. How do they come up with these numbers? One million, two million, four million, six million—come on, does anyone really know? We can all agree, can’t we, that some things were done by some people? Bad things, no question about it. But isn’t that enough? It was so long ago.
Now we wanted to give cartoonists a chance to focus on the coronavirus, to give us all a little comic relief at a time when so many people are walking around with long faces, or hiding in their houses until they get the all-clear. Ayatollah Khamenei, our Supreme Leader, spoke for a lot of us when he said “it’s not such a big deal.” And it isn’t. It will all be over way before the end of the year. He also said that he had a hunch – no, he was sure — that the Americans had created a kind of coronavirus that would attack only Iranians. Do you put it past them? Isn’t that worth bringing to the world’s attention? Why should that subject be off-limits to discussion any more than the Holocaust should be? We felt that the cartoon contest was the perfect way to focus the world’s attention on this matter. And if the Americans want to debate the issue, let them present whatever evidence they can come up with to prove that Ayatollah Khamenei’s claim was wrong. It’ll be a frank and honest debate. Just like what it says in your Declaration of Independence: “Let facts be submitted to a candid world.” Meanwhile, you can see many of the coronavirus cartoons on social media and can judge them for yourself. Enjoy!
Rarely says
It’s a bit weird that the Iranian religious leadership with denies that the Holocaust ever happened with one hand and then claims that they will destroy Israel and murder the +/- 6,000,000 Jews living there with the other.
gravenimage says
Rarely, this is actually *very* common with both pious Muslims and neo-Nazis.
Essentially, the Holocaust either never happened or was not a big deal, but now we’re going to finish the job…
mortimer says
Shi’ite Iran is the world capital of TAQIYA (sacred deception directed against non-Muslims).
As with any muck-spreading operation, some of the muck will stick to the wall. It’s an outrageous, bald-faced lie that the US produced a virus found by a published Chinese scientist and found by her in a bat cave in China.
A big lie like this one offsets the scale of our common sense. This is like loading a scale, that is made to weigh kilos, with tonnes. The scale stops showing the correct weight because the needle can go no farther. The indicator may even stop at zero. Hence, Hitler was right. The big lie is often believed better than a small one.
Those filled with an emotional surplus of hate will be willing accomplices is spreading untrue stories about the US. It is irrelevant to haters if there is compelling evidence or not.
We see the Red Chinese and the Green Muslims are truly ‘united in hate’ (as Jamie Glazov wrote in his book of that title).
As tens of thousands of Iranians are needlessly dying through the incompetence of the mullahocracy, we see they are stepping up their taqiyya.
The demoralized Iranian people surely don’t believe a word that comes from the mullahs.
mortimer says
This fine article by Fitzgerald calls for a response from another Irish intellectual, James Joyce.
Writing in ‘The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’, Joyce exposed the difference between true art and propaganda:
“The feelings excited by improper art are kinetic, desire or loathing. Desire urges us to possess, to go to something; loathing urges us to abandon, to go from something. The arts which excite them, pornographical or didactic, are therefore improper arts. The esthetic emotion (I used the general term) is therefore static. The mind is arrested and raised above desire and loathing.”
The key difference is between KINESIS and STASIS. Whereas KINESIS stimulates a desire for power and selfish gratification, STASIS stimulates a quality within the soul.
KINESIS is the basis of all propaganda … such as the mullahs are promoting. STASIS is the basis of all art … the urge to be more generously human. Muslims are not permitted to be generous to kafirs, unless it is to bribe them to cooperate with Islamic supremacism.
Islam is based on KINESIS, since its goal is enslavement and exploitation of the other. Islam (submission) is a euphemism for enslavement.
There is no respect or love for persons in Islam, but there is a love of deception, mind-games, word-games and a love of trickery.
– “Taqiyya permeates almost all the activities and dealings of Muslims with non-Muslim societies…” – a former sheikh Sam Solomon
mortimer says
There are now almost half a million Iranian expats and their children living in the ‘Great Satan’ the United States.
The US mustn’t be all that bad, then, in spite of the hate propaganda of the mullahs.
About 40% of American Iranians live in or near TEHRAN-GELES in California.
Boromir's Horn says
Muslims and wacky conspiracies go together like peanut butter and jelly
Goofy says
Facts are not important after all when the “holy” Koran commands to you to hate and humiliate the target!
In our day and age when information flows freely the more we learn about Islam the less likely it is that anyone will stay in that evil cult were it not because of the personal danger of leaving.
Without the Islamic rules of apostasy almost everyone would have left already.
A Gnostic Agnostic says
The House of Islam continues to scapegoat their own botched bioattack onto Trump,
hoping the sheep masses will “believe” the conspiracy theories.
The House of Islam religiously scapegoats their own actions onto others,
they have been doing it to the Jews for 1400 years: it’s the Jews!
The conspiracy theory is “it’s the Jews” because
it is actually the House of Islam blaming “Jews” for
precisely what the House of Islam is doing.
‘the accuser is the accuser’ and Islam is a Marked House:
their pathology is truth-in-plain-sight scapegoating
their own crimes against humanity onto others.
A Gnostic Agnostic says
‘the accuser is the accused’ = Mark of Cain (tiller of soil)
House of Islam is a Canaanite ideology of scapegoats.
FYI says
We should have our own infidel-sponsored cartoon contest:muhammed and buraq,his Winged Flying Donkey with a woman’s face ,but that might upset the adherents of the religion of “peace”.
Surely Iranians,in spite of ayatollah khomeni’s insistence that “There is no humor in islam” can take a joke:like the fact that their ARAB god allah doesn’t speak their language, Farsi.
Or that muhamed was a prophet.
Or that their “perfect” koran is so full of errors{Logical,Theological and Scientific and even in the Arabic itself}that by the koran’s own criterion of koran 4:82 it cannot possibly come from God {as such imperfections show }and so it must be “from other than allah”:Of entirely human origin.
James Lincoln says
In order for a country to effectively deal with a pandemic like coronavirus, its leaders need to put together a highly effective team that uses factual evidence-based logic.
The United States is using that approach – which will help to minimize the morbidity and mortality rates.
This type of thinking is not even permitted in islam – and the consequences for the Iranian people will be horrific…
gravenimage says
So true James.
unbeliever1 says
I wonder which country these paranoid rulers of Iran would seek refuge in when this mullahcracy comes crashing down. Lets see: China, Yemen,Iraq,Turkey,Venezuela——.
gravenimage says
Iran Sponsors Another Cartoon Contest, This One About the Supposed Coronavirus Conspiracy
……………………
What a bunch of morons.
Meanwhile, the shrine-licking continues…
Lynette Gaye Chase says
My God! muslims killed many people for making cartoons about mohamad now muslims are creating some themselves! islam’s double standard with deceit thrown in. I hope they all
suffer in HELL!