Are Authoritarian Rulers Receiving Pushback? Now Iranians Are Protesting Against Regime

Remember how I mentioned last week that, surprisingly, the Cuban people have begun to protest against the communist Cuban regime for its authoritarianism which restricts the liberties of the Cuban people, and likely also for its inability to properly handle the Chinese coronavirus pandemic? Seemingly, the people of Iran are also taking to the streets due to the regime’s inability to properly manage water and electricity.
 
According to The Daily Wire, for the past several weeks, “Iran has experienced worsening energy and water shortages,” which the regime claims are the result of “reduced rainfall” and people using air conditioning units to stave off the summer heat. However, according to the BBC, “many locals say the problem is mismanagement and corruption.”
 
Considering we’re talking about the world sponsor of terrorism, I’d be more inclined to believe the words of the Iranian people as opposed to the government.
 
Now, one might argue that the biggest reason for these protests is that very mismanagement and inability to produce adequate amounts of water and electricity. That would be correct only in a small way. Thing about that is that there has to be a reason for such an inability and that reason is, as the locals said, mismanagement and corruption. According to videos on social media, there are protesters who can be heard chanting “Death to the dictator” and “Death to Khamenei”.
 
They’re not “Death to the poor management which would be solved with more government regulation” chants. They are chants of open defiance against the Islamic regime. Doesn’t necessarily mean the Iranian people are done with being Muslims, but it does mean that they are standing against their government, not merely because of the issues presented by the media.
 
The BBC reported last weekend: “The water crisis has devastated agriculture and livestock farming and led to electricity blackouts. Earlier this month, protests broke out in a number of cities across the country. The authorities blame reduced rainfall for the situation, saying many hydroelectric power plants are not operating and electricity consumption has surged as people use air conditioning to cope with the intense summer heat.”
 
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani acknowledged this, saying: “I apologize to our dear people who have faced problems and suffering in the past few days and I urge them to cooperate [with cutting back electricity use]. People complain about power outages and they are right.”
 
Despite this seemingly humble response from Rouhani, police forces in the nation have been far harsher and more tyrannical than what this response would suggest.
 
Masih Alinejad, an Iranian-American journalist who was once nearly kidnapped by the Iranian government while on American soil, reported on the protests, also calling them “anti-regime demonstrations.”
 
“Anti-regime demonstrations are still underway in Iran’s #Khuzestan province. This video is from #Susangerd where security forces are seen shooting at innocent protesters asking for water. Khuzestan doesn’t have water and the regime is to blame for wrong water policies,” Alinejad tweeted alongside a minute-long video depicting exactly what she described.
 
Reportedly, at least one protester has been killed.
 
But this, as I mentioned earlier, is another massive protest against an authoritarian regime. To my count, three countries seem to be either protesting their authoritarian regimes or heading towards outright civil war: South Africa, Cuba and Iran. The one closest to an actual civil war, and might actually be in the beginning stages of one, is South Africa where two entire provinces, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, have been hit so hard as to resemble warzones. There, the government has already sent 25,000 troops to try and quell the violence which has come as a result of extended lockdowns and other authoritarian actions.
 
Are these protests/riots/potential civil wars an indication as to where the world is headed? Can’t say for certain at this point, but one thing is for sure: these are not the socialist/communist revolutions Marxists and Leninists would hope that they are.
 
One reason is that at least one of those countries has already gone through one such revolution and is currently facing backlash from its citizens after 60 years of a communist dictatorship. So what we are witnessing, if they lead to anything at all, would be the opposite of what the communists would desire.
 
Of course, there could be those who would incite a revolution in one of these places for the purposes of replacing the communist/authoritarian governments with their own communist/authoritarian government, but things could also go the opposite direction from that, towards something more akin to an actual liberation like the American Revolution.
 
Granted, such a revolution is historically rare, as most other revolutions only led to a new tyrannical regime replacing the prior one (Tsar to Bolshevism, King Louis XVI to Robespierre and then Napoleon, etc.). However, there is some reason for optimism at the very least because of the situation in Cuba.
 
People are fed up with authoritarians taking away their rights and freedoms at the drop of a hat. The lockdowns have exacerbated, in a lot of places, the tyrannical rule which was already present.
 
As I said in the previous article, if you think lockdowns were bad in the United States, they pale in comparison to other actually communist nations which operate under central governments. The advantage of federalism was present in America, since some states chose to not lockdown at all, others locked down for a short while, and others took their time but eventually recognized the need to open back up.
 
And while there are some states which are stupid, such as California which is now reinstituting mask mandates for indoors, plenty other states have seen the light and recognize the futility of such efforts in handling the pandemic. As I have written over a multitude of articles, many, most or all of these measures either didn’t work at best and were outright detrimental to people at worst on a number of levels, pathetically including health and safety.
 
The point is, the world locked down and experienced some of the worst tyranny they had seen, for many for the very first time. And such near absolute power in the hands of a few became too much for those who have seen some of the worst of it. South Africa was already rather dictatorial, what with white farmers literally being stripped of their land; Iran has been a radical Islamic cesspool since the 70’s and Cuba is, well, Cuba. They have already had to witness a lot tyranny in their lifetimes, and the lockdowns, particularly as long-lasting and severe as they have been, might have been the straw that broke the camel’s back for some of them.
 
They are people with little to nothing to lose by doing this, with plenty to gain if successful. They are willing to take their chances because they can’t stand the bullcrap they currently have to go through.
 
I hope that many other countries come to understand that they have to fight authoritarianism wherever it pops up and do so to the greatest of their abilities.
 
Proverbs 16:12
“It is an abomination for kings to do evil, for the throne is established by righteousness.”