Soup

How then can a distinguished culture, which has withstood violent conquest from external enemies for centuries, now be responsible for violence towards its own? How much easier then to assert “It is not us, it’s them.”

State news this week quoted a statement by the current head of Iran’s Basij movement which blamed violence and public damage on individuals who had worn clothes associated with the organization in order to damage its reputation.

Hosein Ta’eb complained that it was “too easy for people to join the basij and carry out ugly and undeserving acts which damage the image of the children of the nation.”

A measure of genuine bad conscience can perhaps be detected behind the usual recourse to external infiltration and subterfuge. Civil unrest and state suppression is no source of national pride but projecting blame on an external other is — like the Friday prayers speech by Ayatollah Khamenei — a diversion from more troubling truths.