History has shown that it is dictators who perish
S. Rouzbeh
۱۴۰۴/۱۱/۳۰

S. Rouzbeh argues that after bullets come words: the Islamic Republic’s leader uses language to stigmatise victims, shape the narrative and undermine the public’s right to mourn. The article examines how the regime classifies the dead, sanctifies violence and recasts protesters as misguided children.

S. Rouzbeh – The dictator once killed people with bullets; yesterday, with words. A bullet strikes the body; words strike the soul. And when the leader of the Islamic Republic, at the height of public mourning, says, “Some people have gone to hell”, he has not merely uttered a sentence; he is carrying out the second stage of the same repression: after the shooting comes the shaping of the narrative. They began this from the very outset, with all their might. After the bloodshed comes the erasure of its traces. After the massacre comes the humiliation and discrediting of the victims.

The speech begins with emotive words: “We are grieving; we are mourning.” But a few lines later, it puts the dead into “three categories”, as if they were administrative files. This is not a division of reality; it is a division of empathy, a division of the right to mourn. In other words, the government wants to decide for whom people are allowed to weep, who may remain in the collective memory, and who must be cast out.

This is the moment when society understands that it was not only bullets; the project is continuing. Its aim is this: people should lose not only their loved ones, but also the meaning and dignity of their grief.

The first pretext: the first shot is the bullet

In every dictatorship, the “first shot” is not merely the sound of gunfire. The first shot is the moment the government decides to see the people not as citizens, but as a threat. When it does not understand protest as a “demand” and calls it “sedition” and a “coup”, it takes the road from politics to security, from dialogue to orders, from responsibility to repression.

This view has one simple but deadly difference: human life has no value in it except where it serves the survival of the regime. The result is clear. Shots are fired, people are killed, and then the propaganda machine must give those shots a moral meaning, so that society cannot pursue the essential question.

The second pretext: the second shot is words

After the bullet, it is the turn of words. Words such as “have gone to hell” are not merely an insult or a momentary outburst of anger. They are an instrument of governance. Their purpose is to cast some of the victims outside the circle of those deserving of empathy. Once you strip a victim of their humanity, you no longer need to answer for their death. You no longer need to speak about the order, the shooting, the commander, the investigation, the court or the truth.

Here, language plays the part of a second bullet. The first bullet strikes the body. The second strikes dignity. And a society whose dignity has been wounded takes longer to find peace, because its pain is not only loss, but humiliation too.

The third pretext: classifying blood to engineer conscience

Khamenei says the dead fall into three categories: security forces, passers-by, and those who were “deceived”. The central technique is clear: if you can fit every death within your own frame, then no death can testify against you.

The third shot: sanctifying the trigger

In the first category, the forces of repression are presented as “martyrs” and even “the finest martyrs”. This is the sanctification of the trigger. It means that firing a shot is transformed from a “mistake” into a “virtue”. When shooting becomes a virtue, asking questions becomes a sin, and seeking justice becomes “siding with the enemy”. In such an atmosphere, the government does not merely defend violence; it gives violence moral status, so that society feels ashamed to ask questions.

The fourth shot: the passer-by as a shield for the narrative

In the second category comes a sentence that pours like acid over the truth: “Wherever this bullet may have come from … it happened in the context of the enemy’s sedition.” What does that mean? It means the killer does not matter. The bullet’s path does not matter. The camera does not matter. The commander does not matter. Accountability does not matter. Only one thing matters: the government’s narrative frame. Within that frame, even an innocent person’s death is turned from evidence against the government into evidence against the people. The victim is killed again, this time in language.

The fifth shot: humiliating the protester behind a paternal mask

In the third category, he describes the protester as “deceived, naïve, inexperienced”, and then says, “They are our children.” This is not kindness. It is humiliation wrapped in affection. It turns the protester from a political citizen into a delinquent child. The government then decides the way out: repent, write a letter, ask for forgiveness. In other words, the demand for justice must be turned into an apology.

This is the dictator’s mindset: he sees society not as a body of citizens, but as a collection of case files. Everyone must fit into a box. Outside the box, one is either an enemy or deserving of erasure.

Some questions rise up from beneath the earth. If this text is only a description, it will break the heart. But if it gives rise to questions, it gives pain meaning. And meaning is the first step towards peace. So we must ask:

-If you are truly in mourning, why do you treat people’s mourning as a security matter?

-If “they are all our children”, why can you not bear their names, photographs, graves and fortieth-day commemorations?

-If a passer-by is a “martyr”, why do you not establish the truth about the bullet?

-If the protesters are “misled”, why do arrests, torture and executions continue at the same time?

-If someone is a “coup plotter” and a “corruptor”, where is the public trial? Where is the evidence? Where is the lawyer?

Why is the government afraid of cemeteries? Why is it afraid of candles? Why is it afraid of a bouquet of flowers?

These questions are not dangerous. They are dangerous to the government, because the answer to each one is a step towards accountability.

Deprived of mourning, millions suffer psychological trauma

The government does not just kill people. It kills ceremonies, too. For grief to become bearable, it needs rituals: gathering together, saying prayers, commemorating the fortieth day, visiting one another, offering comfort. When this path is blocked, grief is locked in and returns in the form of chronic anger, anxiety, sleeplessness and psychological exhaustion.

What is breaking the hearts of millions today is not only loss. It is a sense of helplessness. A feeling that even the right to weep must be granted by permission. And this is where society suffers a shock: a moral shock. People see that there is not only no accountability, but humiliation as well. This combination deepens the wound.

But there is one vital point: when the government tries to silence grief, it unwittingly admits that grief has power. Grief builds networks. Grief keeps names alive. Grief creates collective memory. And collective memory means a historical case file.

What is Khamenei thinking?

We cannot read his mind, but his pattern of speech and behaviour lays bare the engine of his thinking. We do know, however, that dictators think alike.

First, he puts the survival of the system in place of human life. In this logic, the system is sacred and human beings are tools. So if the system feels threatened, violence becomes a “necessary measure”. Then he creates sacred words to justify that necessary measure: “security, the wellbeing of the system, martyr”.

Second, he dissolves responsibility so that the trail leading to the order is cut off. Phrases such as “wherever the bullet came from” are made for precisely this purpose: to stop the chain of questions from reaching “Who gave the order?”

Third, he appropriates the truth. Not only politics, but morality too, must bear his signature. He decides who is a martyr, who is a passer-by, who is misled, who deserves to be insulted. In other words, he takes from families the right to name their dead. And once you have taken the name, you have taken half the truth.

Fourth, he creates a moral story to justify violence. Without a moral story, fear turns into anger. So the killer must be a “defender” and the person killed must be “to blame”. This is the same inversion repeated after every act of repression.

Why does the repression continue at the same time?

Because in the dictator’s mind, public mourning is more dangerous than protest itself. A protest may disperse, but if mourning becomes collective, it turns into commitment. It becomes a vow. And vows endure.

The regime only wants to frighten people. But even more than that, it wants to isolate them. It wants every family to think it is alone, every mourner to think their grief is illegitimate, every protester to think they are without support. This is the psychological architecture of repression: fragmenting society so that no one can stand beside another and turn mourning into a demand.

Conclusion

This pain is not only one family’s bereavement. It is a bullet to the heart of millions of Iranians. Phrases such as “they perished” are intended to break society’s spirit and strip people of the right to grieve and the right to truth. But on the very day the ruler wounds with words, people turn the wound into evidence through remembrance and the naming of the dead. Perhaps, through this, they multiplied the power and strength of people in Iran and abroad tenfold in their struggle.

The fortieth-day memorial showed that despite the restrictions, threats and arrests, people stood firm as far as they could, held ceremonies, lit candles, spoke the names aloud and refused to let their loved ones be erased in silence. This, in itself, is power—a power that bullets cannot silence.

And this must be said plainly, so that the reader of this text can breathe: you are not alone. Your voices are heard beyond the borders. Iranians abroad, the diaspora, the media and human rights networks each reflect this account as far as they are able, and do not allow bloodshed and mourning to be buried in silence. This is what the government fears: that the truth will travel from the streets to the world, and that it will no longer be able to distort it with a single speech.

History, too, has a simple rule, and this rule offers hope rather than slogans. Dictators always imagine that by humiliating people, they can buy the future. But the humiliation of a people writes the end of their rule. In 2011, when Gaddafi chose the language of hatred and threats instead of listening to society, he ultimately fell beneath a wave of public anger and the collapse of his apparatus. When Saddam ruled the country through fear, he eventually reached a point where neither bayonets nor propaganda could keep him in power. Ceaușescu, too, who imagined that he could stop time through killings and lies, collapsed within a few days.

The examples all carry the same message: no dictator can build legitimacy by insulting the people, securitising their mourning and continuing the repression. Sooner or later, this path reaches a point where neither bullets nor words can do the job. And know this, too: Khamenei and his lackeys will answer for the consequences of their actions. They will answer before a people’s court, because the names endure, the stories endure, and the memory a nation creates is larger than all the prisons.

Source: https://srouzbeh.com/en/posts/archive-1a5f2566-e392-2164-5e24-ed846eeda818
Please credit the author and link to this edition.