Sure, but these are kind of unanswerable questions. Plenty of Russians supported the Communist party/Central Committee in 1991. The country didn’t have to be “entirely on board” to make a change. I have no idea what the actual public opinion is in Iran, and there may not be an accurate way to judge considering the circumstances.
Do we know if this woman supports the regime in her heart, or is just coerced into it? If it’s OK that she toes the line for the ayatollahs out of safety, then would it be bad if she suddenly used her public platform to challenge them, and felt the consequences? That is what we typically consider heroic action, isn’t it?
But that’s kind of like saying fox news/Sean Hannity isn’t political…nobody elected the POS and nobody can deny his role in politics. Elected or bought and paid for are one and the same to me.
I agree with you on the Iran bashing sideshow but I see as just plain old hypocrisy that happens to be in Iran, a double standard is a double standard whether it’s butt naked or dressed up like a nun in hip waders. The costume doesn’t matter but the double standard does. .
No, I’m really not making those assumptions. Quite the opposite. I’m recognizing that there may be mitigating circumstances, but I’m not assuming those exist to preemptively excuse her actions.
Everyone who enjoys a privilege because they are the public face of backward theocratic propaganda is subject to heightened criticism and charges of hypocrisy. This criticism may be modified by mitigating circumstances, but not presumed.
But after all of this, you still haven’t been willing to answer my original question. In the abstract, (i.e. without presuming mitigating circumstances), do you agree that if someone chooses to be a public face of a propaganda apparatus intended to advance some rather retrograde theocratic aims, while also choosing to not subject one’s self to those same kinds of restrictions, you’re open to some level of criticism?
I think we tend to forget with our “free speech” that not all people in the world can say whatever comes to the top of our head without consequences. In places like Iran it is not unusual to mouth the party line to avoid prosecution and act different in private.
Look at christians who preach one thing and do the other. I see no difference other than she will likely have physical consequences.
Personally I consider her brave for defying the theocrats.
She’s not being criticized for drinking beer without a hijab. She’s being criticized for doing those things after lecturing others about same.
It’s like Trump’s frequent golf trips or Geraldo wearing hoodies or all those anti-gay Christian pastors getting caught with gay lovers or Newt Gingrich getting extramarital blowjobs while impeaching Clinton or Strom Thurmond’s illegitimate mixed-race daughter or Ayn Rand collecting every cent she could in government welfare benefits. The issue isn’t that they did those things, it’s their “do as I say not as I do” hypocrisy.
I think the point is that we’re talking about two different circumstances, though. All of this is happening in much more freedom for the individuals involved. The people you note here are even more culpable because they live in a much freer society and are in fact people who are incredibly privileged. I’ll agree that the woman in question probably has some privilege that others in Iran don’t, but she’s not the beneficiary of living within in a freer society than Iran. It may seem like a piddling difference, but I think it matters in the case. And I also really agree with @Katryn that now that this is out, she’s likely to be on the receiving end of some serious state oppression.
I’m not at all sure that’s responsive to what I was saying. I’m not arguing that she should oppose the theocrats. I’m saying that if she is an active participant in advancing their aims, she is subject to criticism when she enjoys the privilege of not being held to the same kinds of restrictions she advocates for others.
Genuine non-snarky question: do you also consider Larry Craig brave for moralizing against gay people in public while also engaging in gay sex in private?
ETA: perhaps the better analogy to avoid complicating issues would be to ask whether you think a religious conservative pundit who advocates for harsh mandatory minimums for drug possession is brave for having a nice stash of cocaine at home that he enjoys from time to time.
Please note that I didn’t address any of that, I’m not really interested in taking sides on this. I just really think it’s a shame that a simple pleasure like that is open to judgement at all, by her or anyone else.
Larry Craig had the freedom to live his life as an openly gay man, with far less repercussions, and he made the decision, for whatever reason, to stay closeted AND to actively advocate against gay rights. Once again, Craig had a set of options open to him that this woman likely does not. I think the difference is the choices available to the people in question. I think that we can agree that someone in Iran has more limited options than someone in the US, right?
But to turn this around a bit, if this had been a case of her engaging in a same sex relationship, would you still think her a hypocrite, given the realities of being gay in Iran?
I was pretty surprised to see people defending this act of hypocrisy even calling Namdari brave for going on vacation to Switzerland where she enjoys a freedom she would deny to her countrywomen. She then treated them like fools with a pathetically transparent fiction of an excuse.
Let’s be clear, she is a well paid authoritarian who uses her position to tell women that they are not to do the very thing she has done. Very few of the women whom she encourages to always cover themselves could even dream of taking a vacation to a place like Switzerland. To paint this as a women with very few choices to me seems to trivialize the millions of women who have even less thanks to people like her and the policies she props up but clearly does not support. Let’s not pretend she isn’t a wildly successful and well paid mouthpiece for oppression who could live pretty much anyplace she chooses.
A tweet from an account attributed to the pro-government cleric Abolfazl Najafi-Tehrani read: "The problem is not #Azadeh_Namdari or people like her. The problem is the ideology, culture and the system that forces individuals in society to have dual-behaviour for some reasons."
An American conservative pundit is not likely to face jail or lashings for saying, well, almost anything that he/she wants to. He or she is not brave for acting in ways contradictory to what he or she preaches.
When the option is to tow the party line or else, most tow the party line in public and do what they want when they can.
I’d agree with you that she has more choices than other woman in Iran. But many women with less choices (working class or rural Iranian women) would probably be more likely to be supportive of the regime. The biggest block of women who oppose the regime are more likely to be elite and privileged women.
I’d disagree with other posters in comparing her to American politicians (especilaly men) who spout religious dogma and act in ways that they rail against.
There is a meaningful difference between accepting the ruling ideology to the extent you must to get by and not face repercussions, and actively promoting the ideology that harms others while not subjecting yourself to the same rules. I believe you are ignoring that difference to make a point not at issue.
