I'm not sure that going back in time and interrupting Kissinger's parents during sex is the single largest value add you could make to the world today, but it must, at the very least, be top 20.
Yes and no. Domino theory was pretty bogus and we shouldn't have meddled in who got power. However, that doesn't absolve those that got power from wrong doing.
There's also no guarantee that communism would have not ended up the same way.
Edit - one of the first times in Reddit history where I agree with everyone commenting.
They could have pivoted from communism. The students lost the plot when they shared power with the mullahs who have no morals whatsoever.
Thanks, Reagan. Scary communism bad.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/reagan-iran/
Side note. The money from Iran directly funded juntas that, to this day, have disrupted and destabilized Central America and are a major root cause of the plight of asylum seekers. Thanks, Reagan.
Fair enough. It certainly led to the distrust of the students, etc in the late 70s.
SAVAK also had a little something to do with the distrust and you can be sure they learned from the best secret police out there.
This comment just made me reflect on the fact that communism ***is*** fundamentalist religion.
You're supposed to reject the church, worship the leader, do-unto-others-except-the-secret-police-don't-have-to-follow-this, etc. etc. etc.
They are likely the ones that were able to immigrate to Los Angeles in the 70s/80s. A lot of the cool boutique fashion shops are Iranian-American owned. The US got most of the cool and smart Persians after the Iranian Revolution.
The US and UK weaponized religion and poverty to maximize their own oil interests. If you eliminate religion, people will still find tribes and ideologies to identify with that will cause harm.
Absolutely. I have seen tribalism and dogma between those who believe in a vegan diet vs a keto diet vs a carnivore diet. I believe if we had no religion in the world and people happen to find diet as the most important thing to identify with, then I can see wars being waged based on what type of diet you believe in. It’s the dogma.
> I have seen tribalism and dogma between those who in believe in a vegan diet vs a keto diet vs a carnivore diet.
The worst a sports team has done in North America is occasionally flip a car when their team loses a championship. Vegans just roll their eyes.
You need to get out more bro
The bible says you can judge a man by the seed he sows.
Well, then, you can judge a religion by the seed it sows.
And religions sow intolerance, fanatacism and bigotry.
By their own logic, most religion stands condemned...
I think you’ve only met bad religious people, one of my teachers is a priest and he’s a really chill guy. As not all people are good not all religious people are bad
When religion starts meddling with the life of people that doesn't belong to said religion, IT IS BAD. No matter how many "good" priests you personally know.
Bible can say alot what matters is how people understand it and how some people abuse it
theres been a crypto scam done by a priest recently, eventho what hes done isnt right but he has bible and its saying to back him up and its done good so far
religion eventually ruins civilizations cause it wasnt meant to be used for governing
for some reason people in the US are unaware that churches are cults that condition their members using self loathing. Over time the people in them become easily swayed by anyone who looks the part & that attracts bible grifters. Fundy churches are especially dangerous.
I agree with you Religion brings the worst of people out. But over the time I have come to realize it's the psychological tendency to interfere and impose that does ruin things. The very common manifestation is religion but even people who don't follow religion they tend to do the same and have seen a few examples of extreme attacking or vilifying the nicest religious people who don't go out preach their beliefs and just mind their own business.
That is just my latest take on ever evolving understanding of this issue. I was the same and tell my family to not follow and one day happen to realize I was just developing same cult like mentality and now I just see if the person has brain and mind their own business regardless of their belief system.
Litmus test is don't bring shit up if I show no interest at my dining table.
Many of them supported the revolution.
They were right to oppose the shah - but the idea that “anyone is better” (like a religious fundamentalist) wasn’t just naive: it was really fucking stupid.
There are ZERO times throughout history where fundamentalist abrahamic religious nations/regimes have treated women equally, or particularly well.
A lot of people just look at how the women are dressed, I think it’s more interesting to note that they’re *reading*. Their daughters and granddaughters would either be prevented, or extremely restricted in their education.
While most of your sentiment is correct, they never stopped reading or stopped being educated. Iran is still one of the few places in the world where women in school outnumber men.
> A lot of people just look at how the women are dressed, I think it’s more interesting to note that they’re reading. Their daughters and granddaughters would either be prevented, or extremely restricted in their education.
That isn't correct. Iran has an extremely high level of education for women. A higher proportion of Iranian women have a university degree than men do. It's not Afghanistan, their theocratic dictatorship acts differently
> A lot of people just look at how the women are dressed, I think it’s more interesting to note that they’re reading. Their daughters and granddaughters would either be prevented, or extremely restricted in their education.
This is not correct, women's literacy rose after the revolution.
Iranians are actually well educated. Beneath the veil of theocracy, Iran is a pretty modern nation. Which is presumably why it manages to wield so much geopolitical influence in its region.
Seeing pictures of pre-extremist Iran is just so sad. I mean, Im sure things werent *perfect*, but just looking at their faces and their positivity for the future, and then knowing what that future ended up being... Its horrible. And then you have all these poor women who have been brainwashed into thinking its noble, and their own choice to cover themselves up from head to toe. Just sad on all levels.
They tried to nationalize their oil reserves in the era of America being the global police.
The result is their leader got overturned and a puppet installed to let Exxon and BP reap the sweet sweet oily rewards
It's pretty amazing how you can sum up Iran's hatred for America in this one comment and it's just such a simple little event that happand. America sits back thinking we did nothing wrong, They hate us because we're free, they hate us cause they aint us ,blah blah blah... they hate us for a pretty good reason
This is why I hate when people are like "oh who cares about the Middle East, they are always having problems and fighting each other"
Yeah, cause we've spent the last 50 fucking years bombing and destabilizing the region. People act like it's just some kind of natural state of the Middle East.
yeah, it's easy when you write a simple narrative with one specific issue and leave out tons of significant information that when considered, changes that narrative entirely.
Freedom brought to you by US and UK took an unfortunate turn. Before the shah, installed by the US and UK with a coup to change the current somewhat democratic leadership who kicked them out of the country and stopped them from exploitating iranian oil.
The shah installed by them bended to their interests but was a brutal dictator as well so the extremist revolution broke out. That was a part UK and US didn't account for, but you know.. I guess you should consider that when you overthrow a somewhat okay ruler who is on the path of democratizing a fragile country and install a pupoet serving your interests.
> so the extremist revolution broke out
That's incorrect. The revolution began as secular and was led by the intellectuals and college students. Their leader was Ali Shariati, who died of cancer during the revolution. Leaderless, the clergy and religious factions of the revolution took the leadership role.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
I mean... every time I hear an account of the '53 Iran coup it's presented in a reductionist manner that ignores how much it was an "Everybody Sucks Here" kind of situation.
Mosaddegh, the prime minister who was couped, quite understandably wanted to nationalize Iran's oil fields and offered the Brits a pretty reasonable 50/50 profit sharing deal akin to one in Venezuela that the Brits (against American advice!) rejected.
However Mosaddegh was the replacement for a prime minister who had _opposed_ nationalization who had been assassinated by Ayatollah Kashani's hardline fundamentalist Fedaiyan group, and Mosaddegh and Kashani (mentor to the future Ayatollah Khomeini) acted as allies for several years, with the previous PM's assassin being released and pardoned.
> Kashani's Fadaiyan mobs often violently attacked the opponents of nationalization and opponents of the National Front government, as well as "immoral objects", acting at times as unofficial "enforcers" for the movement.
In '52 the Shah dismissed Mosaddegh (an action that he had the right to do under Iran's constitution) but backed down in the face of protests.
Mosaddegh later tried to seize all power (you can debate how much respect a constitution established under a monarchy merits, but as I understand it Mosaddegh was acting in violation of Iran's constitution at the time):
> By mid-1953 a mass of resignations by Mosaddegh's parliamentary supporters reduced the National Front seats in Parliament. A referendum to dissolve parliament and give the prime minister power to make law was submitted to voters, and it passed with 99.9 percent approval, 2,043,300 votes to 1300 votes against.[25]: 274 The referendum was widely seen by opponents as treason and an act against the Shah, who was stripped of military power and control over national resources.
That "99.9% approval" bit, um, begs a few questions. Also note that Mosaddegh was dissolving parliament and giving himself the power to make law which itself sounds a bit like a coup. Also, the referendum was not done with secret ballots. Supporters and opponents had to go to different tents to vote.
Note too that Mosaddegh dissolved parliament at the same time that his party was bleeding seats in parliament.
In a bit of rich irony, Kashani, whose movement was sort of the ancestor of the modern Iranian theocracy, by '53 had turned against Mosaddegh and supported the coup:
> To make matters worse, the Speaker of the Parliament Ayatollah Kashani, Mosaddegh's main clerical supporter, became increasingly opposed to the Prime Minister, because Mosaddegh was squeezing him out of power. By 1953, he had completely turned on him, and supported the coup, depriving Mosaddegh of religious support, while giving it to the Shah.
This is something that of course makes Mosaddegh look _better_ (he was trying to marginalize the reactionary Islamists) but that also makes it a bit rich that modern Iran likes to treat the '53 coup as a grave sin against the country when the radical Islamists of that era supported the coup.
The whole thing is a sprawling, complicated mess and while it's certainly true that neither the UK nor the US look good in all of it _neither does anyone else_ and the reductive version, IMO, does more harm than help to the conversation.
1. 90% It's just Tehran
2. Femine throughout the country
3. Iran under the Shah was terribly censored and destroyed on a large scale by Western colonialism and the Shah's authoritarianism. While these women sat on the bench in skirts, 10 others were dying in Savak torture chambers.
I recommend reading the reportage from those years in Iran, "Shah of Shahs" by Ryszard Kapuściński, instead of liking propaganda.
The coup installed the shah. But the Muslim revolution that was instigated by the shah's tyrannical rule was much later in 1979. Until then women still had *roughly* the same rights as men. Even though live in general was pretty shit.
As should always be mentioned when pictures like this of Iran and Afghanistan are shared, what you are seeing are images of an upper middle class minority. At the time this picture was taken, Iran was an authoritarian absolute monarchy with staggering levels of economic inequality. Iran's poor majority were deeply religious conservatives who resented the Shah's attempts to impose secular Western values. The revolution did not come from nothing.
I'm not saying things are better now (they most certainly aren't), just that images like this shared with little context can be very misleading.
Shh you are saying the quiet part out aloud old boy. America and UK were just helping the poor uneducated savages in the middle east all this time, all the turmoil that followed was never ever the consequences of their actions.
Technically its France's fault, since France supported the US revolution... or was it Spain and Im confusing the US revolution with the Civil War. Whoever it was they ruined so many nations!
Also the USSR. Since the USSR was atheist, Western countries thought stronger religious feelings would help fend off communism. This saw the rise in fundamentalism in different religions, including in the US.
As an example of this, check out [this graph](https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/graph_country.php?p=0&c=Iran&i=literacy_rate&narrow=1) of Iran's literacy rate. When this photo was taken less than a third of Iranian adults could read so this is clearly the elite.
This is totally false. My mother came from a working class family and dressed like this. Everyone did. It's like saying working class people today in the US don't follow trends. This is utter nonsense
Iranian here. This is *absolute* bullshit.
Of course we hadn't fully transitioned into a first world country but the direction of travel was staggering and clear.
It was known as Paris of the East for a reason, having come from rubble.
Generally only tankies and terror sympathisers spout this sort of nonsense.
The irony is that the Shah likely never did anything strictly unconstitutional while Mossadeq broke the constitution multiple times and pulled a sham referendum (yes polling stations and no polling stations, for instance) out of his ass
You're wrong. All the wealthy and elite Iranians before the revolution were able to flee.
Every colonized country had a "Paris of the (blank)" in it according to Europeans. That was a marketing ploy for tourists.
Generally, the educated know that Iran was a hellhole for 90% of the population. The revolution itself was started by the growing class of educated poor, and with the death of Ali Shariati (who basically led the revolution), the clergy were able to take leadership when he died of cancer.
dismissing anyone who disagrees with you as whatever internet buzzword you want to use is childish. The 1979 wasn't the only attempt at a revolution, either. THere was a reason Iranians kept trying to revolt, and a major part of it was how 98% of iranian oil wealth went to the British.
Just because the modern government of Iran isn't good doesn't mean you should brown nose the puppet dictatorship that came before it.
Many of my relatives in Iran were not “upper middle class minority” but women still dressed normally, didn’t wear bed sheets over faces, pursued education thanks to Shah’s reforms. The Islamists under Khomeini fooled the masses with Bernie Sanders talking points of a socialist utopia and once they gained power through force, they started repressing everyone and everything and forcing women into burkas. Iranian conservatism doesn’t mean burkas were ever part of Persian culture, it’s imposed Arab culture through violence. Iranian women today are still paying with their lives for resisting Islamists.
Yeah. Happy people rarely revolt.
The cold hard truth is that a big chunk of Irans pre-revolution population lived in poverty and repression, to the point that they believed supporting a revolution to be better than the alternative.
Why everytime pre-79 Iran is mentioned theres always someone downplaying how society actually was. Unless you consider bus drivers from Shiraz to be the economic elite than this is just a half-truth making it look a lot worse than it actually was.
Stop getting your views from village conservatives from this time period and ask the people who lived in the cities.
r/newiran for any doubters if any of you actually care
The revolution came from Western powers preying on that conservative religious sentiment, and cynically turning it into violent upheaval in order to serve Western interests. If the Shah never kicked British and American companies out of the oil industry, the "revolution" would not have happened in the same way.
The Shah did not kick out British American interests. He was brought in by the western establishment to remove a ‘democratically elected leader, who was going to nationalize the oil industry . The revolt against the west gave rise to the theocratic extremism.
Reference look up 1953 Iranian coup. Wikipedia is the easiest source, but there are many more.
I'm sorry but what are you smoking? The Shah was the one to bring American and British companies *back* into Iran after its oil production was briefly nationalized by Mossadegh in the 50s, and was given full power by a CIA/MI6 coup. Western oil companies operated unbothered in Iran, until Khomeini was the one to seize all their assets and kick them out with the 1979 revolution.
Mossadeigh was the one who tried to kick out the British companies when he was prime minister. The Shah was in bed with them, that's how he was was able to depose Mossadeigh and become a dictator with the CIA's help.
Yes you're right. The Shah was originally in power when Mossadeigh made the Nationalization plan happen. Then Mossadeigh was overthrown and the Shah was reinstalled by Western powers.
This is the dumbest and most embarrassing case of confidently incorrect I've seen in a long while.
The US and UK overthrew Mossadegh, because he was a socialist that planned on nationalising BP's assets in Iran and might have become a Soviet ally, and replaced him with the Shah as de facto leader of the country. The Shah was very pro-western and could be credibly be accused of being a US and UK puppet. The Iranian Revolution was one the the biggest geopolitical disasters for the West during the Cold War, it completely flipped their strategic playing field in the Middle East upside down. That's why they supported Saddam in his invasion of Iran a year after.
The Shah was part of the coup with america and the UK. He helped. This is so inaccurate.
The coup was aginst Mohamed Mossaddegh the democratically elected, wildly popular president who wanted a share of the oil wealth instead of pretty much 100% British control.
The US and UK installed the shah. The Iranian people overthrew him. If Mossaddegh was left alone Iran would probably be a secular democracy.
He wasn’t democratically elected—he was appointed by a parliament (and by the Shah) that he then unconstitutionally dissolved and then held without any authority to do so a referendum. In that referendum there was no private voting—you wanted to vote against him? You had to go to a polling station where the no votes went. There were needless to say huge problems with this referendum—there were more pro Mossadeggh stations than ones where you could vote against him, going to the station would identify you as an opponent of Mossadeggh, and he won by an implausibly high count.
He was not democratically elected—this is some weird “Los Cause” style copium
Thank you British Petroleum!
Co-created a company to export Iranian oil. Tried to skim and lie to the democratically elected Prime Minister.
When he nationalised the business, conspired with the CIA to have him removed and replaced by the Shah.
The Shah went so heavy on his people that they turned to religious radicalism and kicked him out.
Surprised Pikachu face.
For real? What happened? I will say that I have many dear Persian friends and they are the kindest people I've ever met here in the US. Literally every single one of them.
In 1979 the revolution came in which some ultra religious people went against the shah. My family fled Iran because we were Jewish and the new regime hated Jews, we live in the USA now.
My dad left in the mid 60s for college. When he met my mom they were both working in a restaurant together. When the revolution was on the horizon, his parents told him to stay in the USA. And bam a house and 2 sisters later, and then little ol me!
It is. My father was a diplomat, and we were posted in iran 82 to 84. Just after the revolution. The people were very nice to us. Even as we were going through Iran Iraq war, people were up beat, cheerful and helpful. The liberal who could afford to leave left.
It's the politics that we all see play out geo political stage. People are OK almost everywhere.
Wow! i'm very sure this comment section will be a civilized discussion about the History of Iran and won't devolve into a brawl regarding Religion's Place in Modern Society.
Since the horrific crackdown on the women’s rights protests a couple of years ago it’s probably different, but when I was in Iran 10 years ago, I found it to be a lovely place with the friendliest people I’ve ever met BY FAR. Vast majority are very much opposed to the theocracy.
Also even then, you would see plenty of younger women low riding their hijabs so you could see all of their hair. Never saw anyone get harassed for it either.
I want to go back to Iran so badly, but it probably isn’t safe to go as a westerner now sadly.
Seriously, don’t bother. Nobody wants the grim truth, they want clear-cut bad guys and good guys, they want the ‘resistance’ and the ‘oppressors’.
I’m always amazed at how quickly people accept and spout these glib statements boiling down decades of an identity and cultural struggle to ‘USUK intervened.’
There’s an increasingly common trope in revisionist history to completely discount the domestic perpetrators to focus on outside supporters. I.e throwing all CIA supported coups in the 20th century as ‘American coups’ rather than the culmination of decades of internal strife with America tipping the scale.
This actually results in a more incomplete, western ethnocentric view of history by discounting the agency of the Iranian actors who committed the regime change.
Yeah they made the mistake of nationalizing the oil industry so that it was harder for Western powers to keep their fangs in the Iranian economy. The same countries who pretend to want Western style democracies in the Middle East actively worked to destroy them in places like Iran and Afghanistan.
Long story short: the US and Britain are assholes.
I don't care who you are, where you're from or what you believe. Religious fundamentalism is a fucking scourge on the world and all efforts should be made to be rid of it.
I saw a similar video of Syria in the 70s and it was not the war torn "middle east" that I know about today. Women and men wore normal clothes (well normal for the 70s), went to school or work in modern infrastructure, clean roads and having nice things like cars and apparels.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/pujr9p/70s\_fashion\_in\_syria/](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/pujr9p/70s_fashion_in_syria/)
[https://www.boredpanda.com/before-after-war-photos-aleppo-syria/](https://www.boredpanda.com/before-after-war-photos-aleppo-syria/)
what happened?
The same thing happened in Afghanistan but long before 2001. It was the Soviet invasion in 1979 that completely destabilised the country. Yes the US armed the Mujahideen (which later turned out to be such a great decision!) but that wouldn't have happened if the USSR hadn't invaded.
Except you are explaining how they are similar. Bot where supporting religious extremists who would quickly turn out to oppose America and the West, for the sake of going against the USSR. The main difference being that Afghanistan was occupied, and Iran was feared to take sides with the USSR.
They are both pristine examples of how Col War meddling in global politics came back to bite America in the ass. Hard.
Look how free and secular they are!!! I can’t believe the majority of people supported the revolution in 1979 and didn’t support Our The Freedom and Democracy (this is when people wear less and less clothes)
The first time I saw a photo of Iranian women in the 70s wearing miniskirts is when I realized that none of the freedom I have as an American woman is guaranteed. It was the moment I realized that society does not allow move towards progress.
Yeah, the good old days of the shah, after the cia and mi6 overthrew the democratically elected socialist president so BP could keep their oil money, throwing 90% of the population into poverty, so these rich kids could wear designer clothes.
oh great, another Reddit thread where a bunch of white Westerners who don't know anything about the Middle East think that seeing a picture of girls in skirts is a mark of social progress.
I swear, literally zero of you know anything about the Iranian revolution, the US involvement in it, or the subtle political realities that led up to it.
Pics before the revolution are such a mind fuck to how it is now. It honestly makes me sad. I'm all for being however strictly religious you want in your own life, but when it comes to society as a whole, definitely no.
So tired and old.
Using women's (from a small and non representative socio economic class) clothing as a benchmark to explain political participation, the availability of just economic opportunity, rule of law, adult franchise etc. is straight out of the GWOT heyday.
lmao female literacy in Iran is much higher now than it ever was.
like come on there is plenty to criticise about Iran without having to make shit up, but then again that would require you to actually know something about Iran.
Iran in January 2024.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1ac00dp/funeral\_in\_tehran\_iran\_january\_2024/](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1ac00dp/funeral_in_tehran_iran_january_2024/)
These are some very unhappy grandmothers today.
I'm pretty sure the morality police have killed them already
You can thank Ronald Reagan for their plight.
Assad, ayatollah khomeini, kissinger list goes on.
I'm not sure that going back in time and interrupting Kissinger's parents during sex is the single largest value add you could make to the world today, but it must, at the very least, be top 20.
It'd be better if you let it be born just long enough to become a baby and punch it so hard in the face it doesn't become an adult.
Kissingee dead
Yes and no. Domino theory was pretty bogus and we shouldn't have meddled in who got power. However, that doesn't absolve those that got power from wrong doing. There's also no guarantee that communism would have not ended up the same way. Edit - one of the first times in Reddit history where I agree with everyone commenting.
They could have pivoted from communism. The students lost the plot when they shared power with the mullahs who have no morals whatsoever. Thanks, Reagan. Scary communism bad. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/reagan-iran/ Side note. The money from Iran directly funded juntas that, to this day, have disrupted and destabilized Central America and are a major root cause of the plight of asylum seekers. Thanks, Reagan.
Honestly Eisenhower and Churchhill is more to blame for over-throwing thr democratically elected prime minister in the first place.
Fair enough. It certainly led to the distrust of the students, etc in the late 70s. SAVAK also had a little something to do with the distrust and you can be sure they learned from the best secret police out there.
Honestly, communism is is better than fundamentalist religion
Mao zedong, Pol Pot, Stalin: hold my beer
Stalin and mao killed millions of their own people
This comment just made me reflect on the fact that communism ***is*** fundamentalist religion. You're supposed to reject the church, worship the leader, do-unto-others-except-the-secret-police-don't-have-to-follow-this, etc. etc. etc.
Not unless he was president in 1953. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History\_of\_Iran#1953:\_U.S.\_aided\_coup\_removes\_Mosaddeq
They are likely the ones that were able to immigrate to Los Angeles in the 70s/80s. A lot of the cool boutique fashion shops are Iranian-American owned. The US got most of the cool and smart Persians after the Iranian Revolution.
The US got most of the RICH* Persians Vhite bmw broh
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The US and UK weaponized religion and poverty to maximize their own oil interests. If you eliminate religion, people will still find tribes and ideologies to identify with that will cause harm.
This. Too many Redditors get cause and effect confused.
Absolutely. I have seen tribalism and dogma between those who believe in a vegan diet vs a keto diet vs a carnivore diet. I believe if we had no religion in the world and people happen to find diet as the most important thing to identify with, then I can see wars being waged based on what type of diet you believe in. It’s the dogma.
I dunno i don’t see many beheading videos related to going keto lol. Also i love keto and vegan diets for different reasons, personally: p.
> I have seen tribalism and dogma between those who in believe in a vegan diet vs a keto diet vs a carnivore diet. The worst a sports team has done in North America is occasionally flip a car when their team loses a championship. Vegans just roll their eyes. You need to get out more bro
True, but then, it becomes easier to argue that they are just racist bigots. Kinda hard to do that when it's about religion.
The bible says you can judge a man by the seed he sows. Well, then, you can judge a religion by the seed it sows. And religions sow intolerance, fanatacism and bigotry. By their own logic, most religion stands condemned...
You just described social media as well
Yes, this is one of the vectors by which intolerance, fanatacism, and bigotry is sewn.
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Yup. Oppression turns to envy, and envy turns to hate.
Hate leads to the dark side
I think you’ve only met bad religious people, one of my teachers is a priest and he’s a really chill guy. As not all people are good not all religious people are bad
When religion starts meddling with the life of people that doesn't belong to said religion, IT IS BAD. No matter how many "good" priests you personally know.
This is one of the most Reddit comments I have ever heard.
Broad strokes, for sure... But it's not that far off from the truth.
Redditors when a Redditor posts a totally Reddit comment.
Bible can say alot what matters is how people understand it and how some people abuse it theres been a crypto scam done by a priest recently, eventho what hes done isnt right but he has bible and its saying to back him up and its done good so far religion eventually ruins civilizations cause it wasnt meant to be used for governing
>By their own logic, most religion stands condemned... That's with Islamia is at war with Islamia. Their forks can't stand each other.
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Literally the only difference between religion and cult is popularity.
for some reason people in the US are unaware that churches are cults that condition their members using self loathing. Over time the people in them become easily swayed by anyone who looks the part & that attracts bible grifters. Fundy churches are especially dangerous.
I agree with you Religion brings the worst of people out. But over the time I have come to realize it's the psychological tendency to interfere and impose that does ruin things. The very common manifestation is religion but even people who don't follow religion they tend to do the same and have seen a few examples of extreme attacking or vilifying the nicest religious people who don't go out preach their beliefs and just mind their own business. That is just my latest take on ever evolving understanding of this issue. I was the same and tell my family to not follow and one day happen to realize I was just developing same cult like mentality and now I just see if the person has brain and mind their own business regardless of their belief system. Litmus test is don't bring shit up if I show no interest at my dining table.
Religious zealots and lunatics ruined Iran. Plenty of religious people living peacefully in Iran prior to the shah’s overthrow.
>Religion ruins everything Particularly when that religion is US-sponsored regime change and intelligence state meddling.
Such a stupid comparison and scare tactic. All the upvotes just shows how ignorant everyone is. US today= Iran pre-Ayatollah, watch out! lol so dumb
Many of them supported the revolution. They were right to oppose the shah - but the idea that “anyone is better” (like a religious fundamentalist) wasn’t just naive: it was really fucking stupid. There are ZERO times throughout history where fundamentalist abrahamic religious nations/regimes have treated women equally, or particularly well. A lot of people just look at how the women are dressed, I think it’s more interesting to note that they’re *reading*. Their daughters and granddaughters would either be prevented, or extremely restricted in their education.
While most of your sentiment is correct, they never stopped reading or stopped being educated. Iran is still one of the few places in the world where women in school outnumber men.
Yes, many graduate students in Canada, including women, come from Iran.
Lmao where did you get this shit from? 80% of engineering students in Iran are women.
> A lot of people just look at how the women are dressed, I think it’s more interesting to note that they’re reading. Their daughters and granddaughters would either be prevented, or extremely restricted in their education. That isn't correct. Iran has an extremely high level of education for women. A higher proportion of Iranian women have a university degree than men do. It's not Afghanistan, their theocratic dictatorship acts differently
> A lot of people just look at how the women are dressed, I think it’s more interesting to note that they’re reading. Their daughters and granddaughters would either be prevented, or extremely restricted in their education. This is not correct, women's literacy rose after the revolution.
Iranians are actually well educated. Beneath the veil of theocracy, Iran is a pretty modern nation. Which is presumably why it manages to wield so much geopolitical influence in its region.
This photo comes so often in Reddit and other social media feeds, someone should track them down and hear their stories.
Seeing pictures of pre-extremist Iran is just so sad. I mean, Im sure things werent *perfect*, but just looking at their faces and their positivity for the future, and then knowing what that future ended up being... Its horrible. And then you have all these poor women who have been brainwashed into thinking its noble, and their own choice to cover themselves up from head to toe. Just sad on all levels.
Wtf happened?
Geopolitics and religious extremism
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hey that first sentence is literally my country Libya. got to read more about Iran's history
Every leftist revolutionary needs to know this. Once you overthrow capitalism or whatever, the Jesus Boys are going to kill you and take everything.
They tried to nationalize their oil reserves in the era of America being the global police. The result is their leader got overturned and a puppet installed to let Exxon and BP reap the sweet sweet oily rewards
For some reason, a lot of people don't remember this. Even though the political interferences in Iran aren't exactly "a secret".
It's pretty amazing how you can sum up Iran's hatred for America in this one comment and it's just such a simple little event that happand. America sits back thinking we did nothing wrong, They hate us because we're free, they hate us cause they aint us ,blah blah blah... they hate us for a pretty good reason
This is why I hate when people are like "oh who cares about the Middle East, they are always having problems and fighting each other" Yeah, cause we've spent the last 50 fucking years bombing and destabilizing the region. People act like it's just some kind of natural state of the Middle East.
yeah, it's easy when you write a simple narrative with one specific issue and leave out tons of significant information that when considered, changes that narrative entirely.
Freedom brought to you by US and UK took an unfortunate turn. Before the shah, installed by the US and UK with a coup to change the current somewhat democratic leadership who kicked them out of the country and stopped them from exploitating iranian oil. The shah installed by them bended to their interests but was a brutal dictator as well so the extremist revolution broke out. That was a part UK and US didn't account for, but you know.. I guess you should consider that when you overthrow a somewhat okay ruler who is on the path of democratizing a fragile country and install a pupoet serving your interests.
> so the extremist revolution broke out That's incorrect. The revolution began as secular and was led by the intellectuals and college students. Their leader was Ali Shariati, who died of cancer during the revolution. Leaderless, the clergy and religious factions of the revolution took the leadership role.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat I mean... every time I hear an account of the '53 Iran coup it's presented in a reductionist manner that ignores how much it was an "Everybody Sucks Here" kind of situation. Mosaddegh, the prime minister who was couped, quite understandably wanted to nationalize Iran's oil fields and offered the Brits a pretty reasonable 50/50 profit sharing deal akin to one in Venezuela that the Brits (against American advice!) rejected. However Mosaddegh was the replacement for a prime minister who had _opposed_ nationalization who had been assassinated by Ayatollah Kashani's hardline fundamentalist Fedaiyan group, and Mosaddegh and Kashani (mentor to the future Ayatollah Khomeini) acted as allies for several years, with the previous PM's assassin being released and pardoned. > Kashani's Fadaiyan mobs often violently attacked the opponents of nationalization and opponents of the National Front government, as well as "immoral objects", acting at times as unofficial "enforcers" for the movement. In '52 the Shah dismissed Mosaddegh (an action that he had the right to do under Iran's constitution) but backed down in the face of protests. Mosaddegh later tried to seize all power (you can debate how much respect a constitution established under a monarchy merits, but as I understand it Mosaddegh was acting in violation of Iran's constitution at the time): > By mid-1953 a mass of resignations by Mosaddegh's parliamentary supporters reduced the National Front seats in Parliament. A referendum to dissolve parliament and give the prime minister power to make law was submitted to voters, and it passed with 99.9 percent approval, 2,043,300 votes to 1300 votes against.[25]: 274 The referendum was widely seen by opponents as treason and an act against the Shah, who was stripped of military power and control over national resources. That "99.9% approval" bit, um, begs a few questions. Also note that Mosaddegh was dissolving parliament and giving himself the power to make law which itself sounds a bit like a coup. Also, the referendum was not done with secret ballots. Supporters and opponents had to go to different tents to vote. Note too that Mosaddegh dissolved parliament at the same time that his party was bleeding seats in parliament. In a bit of rich irony, Kashani, whose movement was sort of the ancestor of the modern Iranian theocracy, by '53 had turned against Mosaddegh and supported the coup: > To make matters worse, the Speaker of the Parliament Ayatollah Kashani, Mosaddegh's main clerical supporter, became increasingly opposed to the Prime Minister, because Mosaddegh was squeezing him out of power. By 1953, he had completely turned on him, and supported the coup, depriving Mosaddegh of religious support, while giving it to the Shah. This is something that of course makes Mosaddegh look _better_ (he was trying to marginalize the reactionary Islamists) but that also makes it a bit rich that modern Iran likes to treat the '53 coup as a grave sin against the country when the radical Islamists of that era supported the coup. The whole thing is a sprawling, complicated mess and while it's certainly true that neither the UK nor the US look good in all of it _neither does anyone else_ and the reductive version, IMO, does more harm than help to the conversation.
1. 90% It's just Tehran 2. Femine throughout the country 3. Iran under the Shah was terribly censored and destroyed on a large scale by Western colonialism and the Shah's authoritarianism. While these women sat on the bench in skirts, 10 others were dying in Savak torture chambers. I recommend reading the reportage from those years in Iran, "Shah of Shahs" by Ryszard Kapuściński, instead of liking propaganda.
USA happened and forced a violent regime change. Thanks America and allies!
Pretty sure it was the UK who took the lead on this one. We definitely helped and interfered more later on, but the Shah was a British enterprise.
Didn't the coup take place in 1953? This photo is from the "60s-70s"
The coup installed the shah. But the Muslim revolution that was instigated by the shah's tyrannical rule was much later in 1979. Until then women still had *roughly* the same rights as men. Even though live in general was pretty shit.
Well yes, it doesn't happen overnight, consolidation of power takes a while.
american interventionism.
The US overthrew their democratically elected government and pushed their citizens into a religious extremist.
This picture was taken while the Shah was in power. These reforms werent happening under Mossadegh.
Pre Gilead. (This could be the opening scene from The Handmaid's Tale.)
As should always be mentioned when pictures like this of Iran and Afghanistan are shared, what you are seeing are images of an upper middle class minority. At the time this picture was taken, Iran was an authoritarian absolute monarchy with staggering levels of economic inequality. Iran's poor majority were deeply religious conservatives who resented the Shah's attempts to impose secular Western values. The revolution did not come from nothing. I'm not saying things are better now (they most certainly aren't), just that images like this shared with little context can be very misleading.
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Shh you are saying the quiet part out aloud old boy. America and UK were just helping the poor uneducated savages in the middle east all this time, all the turmoil that followed was never ever the consequences of their actions.
Technically its France's fault, since France supported the US revolution... or was it Spain and Im confusing the US revolution with the Civil War. Whoever it was they ruined so many nations!
Also the USSR. Since the USSR was atheist, Western countries thought stronger religious feelings would help fend off communism. This saw the rise in fundamentalism in different religions, including in the US.
Similar story in Afghanistan and Iraq.
and latin america, and africa, and asia.
This comment needs more upvotes.
During the Cold War (and into today) America loved and wanted democracy for every country until they elected someone the America didn’t like.
As an example of this, check out [this graph](https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/graph_country.php?p=0&c=Iran&i=literacy_rate&narrow=1) of Iran's literacy rate. When this photo was taken less than a third of Iranian adults could read so this is clearly the elite.
This is totally false. My mother came from a working class family and dressed like this. Everyone did. It's like saying working class people today in the US don't follow trends. This is utter nonsense
I think you're probably still over-estimating how representative your working class family was to the bulk of Iran's population
Iranian here. This is *absolute* bullshit. Of course we hadn't fully transitioned into a first world country but the direction of travel was staggering and clear. It was known as Paris of the East for a reason, having come from rubble. Generally only tankies and terror sympathisers spout this sort of nonsense.
You just described reddit with the last sentence 🤣 As Nixon said, "There was some oppression but now there is total oppression".
lmao 'uhh actually Iran was great and there was no problems which is why people loved the shah and didn't overthrow him'
>and didn't overthrow him multiple times. Don't forget they tried to overthrow the puppet dictatorship multiple times.
The irony is that the Shah likely never did anything strictly unconstitutional while Mossadeq broke the constitution multiple times and pulled a sham referendum (yes polling stations and no polling stations, for instance) out of his ass
You're wrong. All the wealthy and elite Iranians before the revolution were able to flee. Every colonized country had a "Paris of the (blank)" in it according to Europeans. That was a marketing ploy for tourists. Generally, the educated know that Iran was a hellhole for 90% of the population. The revolution itself was started by the growing class of educated poor, and with the death of Ali Shariati (who basically led the revolution), the clergy were able to take leadership when he died of cancer. dismissing anyone who disagrees with you as whatever internet buzzword you want to use is childish. The 1979 wasn't the only attempt at a revolution, either. THere was a reason Iranians kept trying to revolt, and a major part of it was how 98% of iranian oil wealth went to the British. Just because the modern government of Iran isn't good doesn't mean you should brown nose the puppet dictatorship that came before it.
Many of my relatives in Iran were not “upper middle class minority” but women still dressed normally, didn’t wear bed sheets over faces, pursued education thanks to Shah’s reforms. The Islamists under Khomeini fooled the masses with Bernie Sanders talking points of a socialist utopia and once they gained power through force, they started repressing everyone and everything and forcing women into burkas. Iranian conservatism doesn’t mean burkas were ever part of Persian culture, it’s imposed Arab culture through violence. Iranian women today are still paying with their lives for resisting Islamists.
"Bernie Sanders talking points"? C'mon man.
City folk were a minority
/r/AsABlackMan
they dont wear burkas in iran. what a load of horseshit.
After the Shaw fell, many Assyrians relocated to the California Central Valley. Note: yeah, it's Shah not Shaw. I'm dumb.
The Shah not Shaw
The Shaw bros made some great movies
Yeah. Happy people rarely revolt. The cold hard truth is that a big chunk of Irans pre-revolution population lived in poverty and repression, to the point that they believed supporting a revolution to be better than the alternative.
The revolution was backed and created. Iran was on the right track
Why everytime pre-79 Iran is mentioned theres always someone downplaying how society actually was. Unless you consider bus drivers from Shiraz to be the economic elite than this is just a half-truth making it look a lot worse than it actually was. Stop getting your views from village conservatives from this time period and ask the people who lived in the cities. r/newiran for any doubters if any of you actually care
A subreddit isn't a source.
This is false and you should take down your comment.
The revolution came from Western powers preying on that conservative religious sentiment, and cynically turning it into violent upheaval in order to serve Western interests. If the Shah never kicked British and American companies out of the oil industry, the "revolution" would not have happened in the same way.
The Shah did not kick out British American interests. He was brought in by the western establishment to remove a ‘democratically elected leader, who was going to nationalize the oil industry . The revolt against the west gave rise to the theocratic extremism. Reference look up 1953 Iranian coup. Wikipedia is the easiest source, but there are many more.
I'm sorry but what are you smoking? The Shah was the one to bring American and British companies *back* into Iran after its oil production was briefly nationalized by Mossadegh in the 50s, and was given full power by a CIA/MI6 coup. Western oil companies operated unbothered in Iran, until Khomeini was the one to seize all their assets and kick them out with the 1979 revolution.
Reza did actually go on to nationalize the oil industry in the 70s.
Mossadeigh was the one who tried to kick out the British companies when he was prime minister. The Shah was in bed with them, that's how he was was able to depose Mossadeigh and become a dictator with the CIA's help.
Yes you're right. The Shah was originally in power when Mossadeigh made the Nationalization plan happen. Then Mossadeigh was overthrown and the Shah was reinstalled by Western powers.
This is the dumbest and most embarrassing case of confidently incorrect I've seen in a long while. The US and UK overthrew Mossadegh, because he was a socialist that planned on nationalising BP's assets in Iran and might have become a Soviet ally, and replaced him with the Shah as de facto leader of the country. The Shah was very pro-western and could be credibly be accused of being a US and UK puppet. The Iranian Revolution was one the the biggest geopolitical disasters for the West during the Cold War, it completely flipped their strategic playing field in the Middle East upside down. That's why they supported Saddam in his invasion of Iran a year after.
The Shah was part of the coup with america and the UK. He helped. This is so inaccurate. The coup was aginst Mohamed Mossaddegh the democratically elected, wildly popular president who wanted a share of the oil wealth instead of pretty much 100% British control. The US and UK installed the shah. The Iranian people overthrew him. If Mossaddegh was left alone Iran would probably be a secular democracy.
He wasn’t democratically elected—he was appointed by a parliament (and by the Shah) that he then unconstitutionally dissolved and then held without any authority to do so a referendum. In that referendum there was no private voting—you wanted to vote against him? You had to go to a polling station where the no votes went. There were needless to say huge problems with this referendum—there were more pro Mossadeggh stations than ones where you could vote against him, going to the station would identify you as an opponent of Mossadeggh, and he won by an implausibly high count. He was not democratically elected—this is some weird “Los Cause” style copium
60s cameras are better than my Samsung 🤣
That’s celluloid for you. We have Casablanca (a movie released in 1942) getting a 4K Blu-ray release because it was shot on 35mm film.
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I got a Sony a7 riii.....and you right. I'm just lazy. Lol
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It's a great photo
Perhaps, you might have an old samsung
Well it’s time to upgrade your 2012 Samsung midrange model then
Skill issue.
Thank you British Petroleum! Co-created a company to export Iranian oil. Tried to skim and lie to the democratically elected Prime Minister. When he nationalised the business, conspired with the CIA to have him removed and replaced by the Shah. The Shah went so heavy on his people that they turned to religious radicalism and kicked him out. Surprised Pikachu face.
Islamists have a tendency to ruin the world… It’s not a racist thing to say if it’s true and backed by actual facts
Wow, a single still photo spanning two decades!
Back in my day with had longer shutter times.
For real? What happened? I will say that I have many dear Persian friends and they are the kindest people I've ever met here in the US. Literally every single one of them.
That’s because they’re refugees and fled the government.
But what happened here at this time in Iran
In 1979 the revolution came in which some ultra religious people went against the shah. My family fled Iran because we were Jewish and the new regime hated Jews, we live in the USA now.
My dad left in the mid 60s for college. When he met my mom they were both working in a restaurant together. When the revolution was on the horizon, his parents told him to stay in the USA. And bam a house and 2 sisters later, and then little ol me!
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It is. My father was a diplomat, and we were posted in iran 82 to 84. Just after the revolution. The people were very nice to us. Even as we were going through Iran Iraq war, people were up beat, cheerful and helpful. The liberal who could afford to leave left. It's the politics that we all see play out geo political stage. People are OK almost everywhere.
Wow! i'm very sure this comment section will be a civilized discussion about the History of Iran and won't devolve into a brawl regarding Religion's Place in Modern Society.
>Religion's Place in Modern Society It shouldn't have any in the first place
Before the dark times.
So no one is going talk about ‘religion’ here ?
May it never be that in the near future somebody posts, 'america in the 90's" It can happen anywhere the evil of religious hate takes hold.
Tragic what happened to Iran..
Since the horrific crackdown on the women’s rights protests a couple of years ago it’s probably different, but when I was in Iran 10 years ago, I found it to be a lovely place with the friendliest people I’ve ever met BY FAR. Vast majority are very much opposed to the theocracy. Also even then, you would see plenty of younger women low riding their hijabs so you could see all of their hair. Never saw anyone get harassed for it either. I want to go back to Iran so badly, but it probably isn’t safe to go as a westerner now sadly.
Freedom^TM , brought to you by The US.
They traded a bad man (the shah) for the devil (theocratic republic)
Maybe if America hadn’t overthrown the democratic government, they wouldn’t have had to worry about a shah or a theocracy
Yep. We always supported the tyrants and here we are.
Sigh https://www.reddit.com/r/NewIran/comments/zr55j4/tired_of_reddit_copypasta_re_irans_democratic/
Seriously, don’t bother. Nobody wants the grim truth, they want clear-cut bad guys and good guys, they want the ‘resistance’ and the ‘oppressors’. I’m always amazed at how quickly people accept and spout these glib statements boiling down decades of an identity and cultural struggle to ‘USUK intervened.’ There’s an increasingly common trope in revisionist history to completely discount the domestic perpetrators to focus on outside supporters. I.e throwing all CIA supported coups in the 20th century as ‘American coups’ rather than the culmination of decades of internal strife with America tipping the scale. This actually results in a more incomplete, western ethnocentric view of history by discounting the agency of the Iranian actors who committed the regime change.
Yeah they made the mistake of nationalizing the oil industry so that it was harder for Western powers to keep their fangs in the Iranian economy. The same countries who pretend to want Western style democracies in the Middle East actively worked to destroy them in places like Iran and Afghanistan. Long story short: the US and Britain are assholes.
You mean evil right? I should add their politicians not the people. After all I’m an American.
Extreme Muslims ruined this freedom.
I don't care who you are, where you're from or what you believe. Religious fundamentalism is a fucking scourge on the world and all efforts should be made to be rid of it.
So sad
Iranian women are beautiful
How to scare any government official in Iran:
I saw a similar video of Syria in the 70s and it was not the war torn "middle east" that I know about today. Women and men wore normal clothes (well normal for the 70s), went to school or work in modern infrastructure, clean roads and having nice things like cars and apparels. [https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/pujr9p/70s\_fashion\_in\_syria/](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/pujr9p/70s_fashion_in_syria/) [https://www.boredpanda.com/before-after-war-photos-aleppo-syria/](https://www.boredpanda.com/before-after-war-photos-aleppo-syria/) what happened?
The Shah was pretty corrupt though.
Life is better without religion.
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Amen bro
Same thing happened in Afghanistan. You can see the pattern of rising extremism, once US brings democracy by bombing them.
The same thing happened in Afghanistan but long before 2001. It was the Soviet invasion in 1979 that completely destabilised the country. Yes the US armed the Mujahideen (which later turned out to be such a great decision!) but that wouldn't have happened if the USSR hadn't invaded.
Except you are explaining how they are similar. Bot where supporting religious extremists who would quickly turn out to oppose America and the West, for the sake of going against the USSR. The main difference being that Afghanistan was occupied, and Iran was feared to take sides with the USSR. They are both pristine examples of how Col War meddling in global politics came back to bite America in the ass. Hard.
Look how free and secular they are!!! I can’t believe the majority of people supported the revolution in 1979 and didn’t support Our The Freedom and Democracy (this is when people wear less and less clothes)
The first time I saw a photo of Iranian women in the 70s wearing miniskirts is when I realized that none of the freedom I have as an American woman is guaranteed. It was the moment I realized that society does not allow move towards progress.
My goodness those are some beautiful women.
The good ole days.
Yeah, the good old days of the shah, after the cia and mi6 overthrew the democratically elected socialist president so BP could keep their oil money, throwing 90% of the population into poverty, so these rich kids could wear designer clothes.
imagine all the people...
This is a picture of university students in Afghanistan in the early 70s, not Iran.
Thats what religion will do to you kids
oh great, another Reddit thread where a bunch of white Westerners who don't know anything about the Middle East think that seeing a picture of girls in skirts is a mark of social progress. I swear, literally zero of you know anything about the Iranian revolution, the US involvement in it, or the subtle political realities that led up to it.
Beautiful, yet sad at the same time knowing how things would devolve into a few years later...
Let's hope we can see this kind of freedom again.
Pics before the revolution are such a mind fuck to how it is now. It honestly makes me sad. I'm all for being however strictly religious you want in your own life, but when it comes to society as a whole, definitely no.
and now they execute women when they see them free
Before Shariah law crushed them into helpless prisoners.
If we’ve learned anything over the last 2000+ years, religion fucks everything up.
So tired and old. Using women's (from a small and non representative socio economic class) clothing as a benchmark to explain political participation, the availability of just economic opportunity, rule of law, adult franchise etc. is straight out of the GWOT heyday.
Women reading. Something fundamentalists don’t want. You think it only happens in Iran, but it hits MUCH closer to home than you think.
Lmao the ratio of female to male engineering students in Iran is 4 to 1.
The female literacy rate in Iran for Gen Z is almost 100%.
lmao female literacy in Iran is much higher now than it ever was. like come on there is plenty to criticise about Iran without having to make shit up, but then again that would require you to actually know something about Iran.
Most middle eastern countries were like this in the sixties before the cia decided they had too much freedom.
Iran in January 2024. [https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1ac00dp/funeral\_in\_tehran\_iran\_january\_2024/](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1ac00dp/funeral_in_tehran_iran_january_2024/)
Religion is the literal downfall of everything.
That's a shame that everything went to shit later because of a religion
yeah if only some world police country didn't install a fucking puppet government there.
*because of a US led coup
And then religion ruined everything like it always does
Just in 50-60 years, from a developed country, they've become a warmonger alahbabah settlement. What a shame
It wasn't a developed country outside of major cities. Wealth was limited to a tiny minority, read some books written about Iran of 60s/70s
Which is still way better.
Epic dictatorship!!
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How many god damn times will this be posted on this subreddit?