this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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Truly, the most dastardly invention of the Iranian government was killing people who oppose it. No government before or since, especially not in the West, has steeped to such lows.
Some governments are more willing to resort to violent repression against their domestic enemies than others, though.
For instance: In 2022, Iran had minimum 596 executions (likely more), Saudi Arabia had 146, the US had 18,
e.g., places like Iran, Saudi are quicker to do so than most, even for internal enemies of equivalent threat to the state itself.
For instance:, during the Jina Ahmini protests over 300 were killed in only a month.
All states and all governments use violence or the threat of it to uphold their rule, but some are more reliant on violence versus other methods of control than others...
Plus some are more willing to use violence in foreign policy vs domestic policy.
If you're talking about violence used to uphold their rule, you can't separate domestic and foreign violence. All those people living, working, and dying young in atrocious conditions outside of the US for US prosperity, all those people gunned down in the dark or in protests against their government's subservience to the US, and all those people murdered in wars and 'conflicts' and by sanctions to further US interests must be counted.
Otherwise you're doing that thing where you redefine violence in such a way that distorts the picture. It doesn't matter whether you now explicitly mention the US because by nature of a comparison, the US is implicated, anyway. Likewise, replace US for every other government in the above equation for the true figures of how violent a state is in its own protection.
The logics of violence are fundamentally different between the two. Both are violent, yes, but the US invades Iraq for different reasons than Iran executes political prisonrs, for example. One is about the survival of the state, one is about advancing the conditions for capital accumulation.
The latter wasn't what we were talking about.