"The Iranian announcer was grieving the loss of a "father," as he put it, while for Alinejad and so many other Iranians in exile and at home, the vaporized ma[n represented something entirely different]. Such torrential downpours, from loyalists and dissenters alike, often follow the deaths of notorious and long-ruling dictators-Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Saddam Hussein."
"Take the epidemic of crying after the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il succumbed to a heart attack in 2011. Crowds of hundreds with their heads lowered bawled loudly in unison; others fell to the ground and shook in their grief. Did they love the man who starved them and trapped them like rats in a cage? Were they acting for one another in order to avoid suspicions of disloyalty?"
"In New York City, Masih Alinejad, a dissident who was targeted for death by the Islamic Republic, of which Khamenei was the supreme leader, burst out into the streets when she heard the news. "The dictator of my country is dead! He's dead!" she shouted, wailing hoarsely."
The death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prompted dramatically different emotional responses across Iran and the diaspora. Iranian state television broadcasters wept openly while delivering the news, while dissident Masih Alinejad celebrated in New York City streets. These contrasting reactions mirror historical patterns following deaths of long-ruling dictators like Stalin, Mao, and Kim Jong Il, where crowds displayed intense public grief. The emotional displays raise fundamental questions about motivation: whether mourners genuinely loved their leaders, performed loyalty to avoid suspicion, or experienced complex grief tied to their own identities and experiences under authoritarian rule. People grieve for different reasons, reflecting their varied relationships with power structures.
Read at The Atlantic
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