The Scotsman
Courage of Iranian women is in stark contrast to Britain's face-masked cosplay revolutionaries, says Euan McColm
People’s protests across the Islamic republic put weekend agitators with incoherent views and violent rhetoric to shame
Week in, week out, he and his comrades gather in cities across the UK, chanting their support for Palestine and demanding the destruction of Israel. On occasion, he’ll turn his attention elsewhere and stand outside a feminist conference, screaming abuse at attendees who refuse to buy into the fantasy that trans women are actually women. Whether devoting himself to making Jews feel unsafe or spending miserable afternoons threatening women who reject the presence of men in changing rooms and rape crisis centres, the contemporary British radical goes equipped with two essentials.
The first is a terrifying certainty. The second is a face-mask.
I’ve never had much time for these cosplayers, these weekend insurgents with their incoherent views and their violent rhetoric but, over recent days, my contempt for them has only deepened. Since December 28, people across Iran have been on their streets, demanding the end of the Islamic regime that has terrorised them for decades. With international media denied access to the country, citizens have, through shaky live streams on their smartphones, showed the world what real revolutionary courage looks like. How small the masked undergraduate waving a Hamas flag on a British street looks when compared with those Iranian women who – under threat of the most horrific punishment – have thrown off the hijabs they are compelled to wear. While British ideologues align themselves, from the safety of the West, with the Islamists of Hamas and Hezbollah, people across Iran are saying “no more” to the theocrats who, for years, have supported those terror groups.
And they are doing it with humbling bravery.
