This morning, economic anthropologist and author Jason Hickel posted this on Twitter:
On this day in 1953, the US and Britain orchestrated a brutal coup that deposed Mohammad Mosaddegh, the popular Prime Minister of Iran, beloved for his progressive and pro-worker reforms, because he sought to restore national control over the country's oil reserves.
Which I wouldn't be writing about, probably, except that the comment immediately responding to it was this:
Wow. I had no idea. But it doesn’t surprise me. I want to read more about this.
Now, maybe that's from a bot account, since there are several numerals in the account name and a somewhat unbalanced number of follower vs. following accounts. I hope so! Because I'm having trouble plumbing the depths of how ignorant that response is.
It's not that the writer doesn't know the year it happened, or who it happened to, or some other detail of what happened. It's that they have no idea how the U.S. set in motion everything that has happened in Iran since 1953, which has reverberated in many ways around the world and in the U.S. since... and they feel totally fine about admitting that in public.
What does a comment like this add, even in something as low-stakes as a Twitter thread? Why does anyone want to volunteer it, instead of just thinking it and then going to "read more about this" — which is a good reaction if you truly are as ignorant about the subject as you say?
Someone is wrong on the internet! Alert the authorities!
I know, I know. This isn't important.
As I am wont to do, I'm picking a small thing to be annoyed about because there are so many large ones I can't bear to think about in any depth.
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