The Iranian supreme leader (or whoever runs his Twitter account) has responded to the riots in Baltimore by condemning the U.S. for its racism and police brutality. Michael Totten comments:
Iran’s ruler is doing what the Soviet Union used to do and what Hugo Chavez did more recently. Both used the West’s language of human rights as weapons against the West while resisting everything Western human-rights activists stand for. Partly they were just being cynical, and partly they were pointing out the West’s supposed hypocrisy. . . .
The most foolish among us might be convinced that tyrannical dictators on the other side of the planet care more about [human rights] than we do. That’s the theory, anyway. Hey, maybe the Iranian leader is one of us! Maybe everything our own government says is a lie! . . .
The Communist bloc was an unspeakable prison house spanning more than one continent, but its utopian ideals appeared lofty to a small percentage of Westerners who couldn’t be bothered to look at the details. The utopian ideals of Iran’s revolutionary regime, though, will never gain traction among those of us who aren’t Shiite Muslims. Iran’s tyrant will not pull this off, but it’s fun watching him try.
Read more on World Affairs Journal: http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/michael-j-totten/iranian-leaders-bizarre-twitter-feed