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June 19, 2009

Are Tehran Twitterers also myth-spreaders?

Well, Robert Fisk, in his latest dispatch engages in shooting down inside-Iran rumors,
First, he shoots down, or at least challenges, Rumor No. 1: That a student was killed at the start of this week, shot in a protest:
(A)n Iranian woman muttered to me in an office lift that the first fatality of the street violence was a young student. Was she sure, I asked? “Yes,” she said. “I have seen the photograph of his body. It is terrible.” I never saw her again. Nor the photograph. Nor had anyone seen the body. It was a fantasy. Earnest reporters check this out – in fact, I have been spending at least a third of my working days in Tehran this past week not reporting what might prove to be true but disproving what is clearly untrue.

Next? The ongoing claims that Iranian cops are really Hizbullah. Fisk, who has lived in Beirut since 1976, and covered the Middle East pretty much continually since that time, ought to know, and he does.
They don't even look like Arabs, let alone Lebanese. The reality is that many of these street thugs have been brought in from Baluch areas and Zobal province, close to the Afghan border. Even more are Iranian Azeris. Their accents sound as strange to Tehranis as would a Belfast accent to a Cornishman hearing it for the first time.

Next, he shoots down the myth that Basij militia thugs had taken over presidential candidate Mir Mousavi’s HQ. Yes, uniformed men were there, he says: Mousavi’s own security company.

Next, he challenges the fantasies of the likes of Juan Cole, and others who claim that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had lost all support from poor urban dwellers:
When I visited the slums of south Tehran on Friday, for example, I found that the number of Ahmadinejad supporters grew as Mousavi's support dribbled away.

In other words, Ahmadinejad has had the support of the poor all along. Juan Cole can keep on deluding himself about that, but at some point, I think he recognizes that he’s going beyond self-delusion.

It’s easy to see how, in the herd mentality of a place like protesting Tehran, especially under-30 protesting Tehran, how Twittering could become a driver for rapidly expanding urban legends.
Are Tehran Twitterers also myth-spreaders?

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