On his Instagram account, in protest against the Iranian regime's harsh measures to suppress the unrest in recent months, Hamid Farrokhnezhad, the well-known Iranian actor, writer, and director for the stage, films, and television who has won numerous awards, called on Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to step down from his position of his own free will. This, he said, will prevent the bloodshed that would accompany his forcible removal from power by the people.
The following is a translation of Farrokhnezhad's Instagram post:
"Wherever dictators appear in the world, or at whatever point in history, they share many moral traits. [Whether they are] Idi Amin, or Franco, or Mao, or Mussolini, or Pol Pot, or Stalin, or Ceausescu, or Pharoah, or Ali Khamenei – they all gradually bear the illusion of fear of God and think themselves 'absolutely righteous,' 'indispensable,' and 'eternal.'
"This does not mean that tyrants are people of little understanding. They aren't. The shared process [experienced by all dictators] makes them all mentally ill, and [likewise makes] them base their interpretation of reality on the world they created – not on the real world. This becomes their Achilles heel. Another trait commonly found among dictators is their 'extinction.' They all have one thing in common – they will be brought down.
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"Again, this does not mean that all dictators are bad. Some even lead to development in their countries. But their fate is no different than that of any other kind of dictator. They are brought down and extinguished, either by a foreign power or by their own nation. Dictators either fight and are destroyed or surrender and are destroyed; in both cases their end is the same.
"Another common feature of this guild is that they all think that they are different from members of other guilds and are not dictators at all. But with everything else they have in common that I have pointed out, they are different in one main way – either they have character or they do not. The first category [of tyrants] is that when they approach the end, they accept their 'fate' and leave. The second group [of tyrants] chooses the expensive path that leads to more casualties on both sides – that is, both the civilians and they themselves – such that in the end, the story repeats itself with everyone. The second and third circles of the privileged, the appointees, and their forces are also objects of vengeance, due to the anger of the citizens who suffered many losses. The second group [i.e. those who choose the expensive path] dies in a dirty and evil [way].
"Ali Khamenei, you were not a good dictator for us. You can at least be dictator with character."[1]
Farrokhnezhad's Instagram post.
[1] Instagram.com/p/CmLcjyZrLgF/, December 15, 2022.
