Vive La Revolution!

I saw this comment on iranian.com:

Majid Tavakolli is one of the many students who were arrested during the National Student Day protest. While we must campaign for the freedom of Majid Tavakolli we cannot forget all the other students who were also arrested on that day and probably facing the same faith as Mr. Tavakolli.

I hope that we can campaign for as many students as possible rathern than making a hero out of one and forgetting about the rest.

I had to reply:

I certainly respect your wish to empathize with other protesters, but I don't think you're looking at this situation correctly. In fact, I think you're falling into the trap of your rulers. Let me explain why.

It was a powerful ruler that once said, The death of a single individual is a great tragedy, the deaths of millions, merely a statistic. He was a very smart but evil man. He understood that the narrative of an individual martyr can resonate with all people, A single individual puts a face on the struggle of the group and gives all members of that group a common reference point to interpret and fight for. As a member of that group, a single person experiences the sea of humanity as a very abstract, distant concept but seeing another individual just like him (or her) puts the struggle at a very concrete, tangible level. This man understood that individual heroes were very dangerous, destabilizing creatures.

We saw this phenomenon in the protests after the rigged election in the summer. Scores upon scores of protesters were shot on the streets, but it was the video of a single beautiful girl gasping her last breaths that riveted the world's attention. Your struggle had been distilled into a single face, a single tragedy, which everyone could identify with. Her public mourning and her image are still with us to this day.

Or if I can be more blunt and cynical and think like your political leaders, the deaths of hundreds of protesters in the streets were merely a sewage problem, but with the death of this single girl your leaders knew they had something far worse-- they had an image problem.

I mean in no way to denigrate all the other sacrifices made by all the other protesters and I mean to show you no disrespect, but sometimes when people stage a revolution, individuals are necessary for the cause because no matter how advanced man becomes, he still longs for an hero.

My prayers are with you all.