Let me fast forward a bit to the day when the 10 days of yelling and looking for a throat to chew by coup lovers have come to an end. Or perhaps I should fast forward even further to the day when it has all ended, and despite all the throat tearing chants of “execute them”, they did not even dare to arrest Mousavi and Karroubi, or, to use their own expression, “the leaders of the riot.” All in all, last Friday’s rally will be remembered as a tiny brouhaha.
In the last few days I was afraid that, after six months, we would lose the street; that a torn picture will once again turn the street into the scene of Islamic Republic clichés, and the state television would go back to its usual propaganda. I really worried that the streets would be empty of the green presence. I did not feel good, and not because I believe that the green movement should go to the streets to show its support for a man whose picture has been torn, and forget about all the blood that has spilled on these streets. I felt bad because, for the last 6 months, the street had belonged to us; the street that no one could censor; the street that had become the true reflection of the reality contradicting all the distorted pictures of the past. The street which was filled with enthusiastic young men my age whose passion would not fade away by baton beatings, and the young women whose courage and bravery surpassed their fellow male protesters.
Not that the coup government, the Islamic Republic, or the Supreme Leader do not have loyal supporters, but this green planet does not belong to them. The images broadcasted on IRIB and Fars News (or rather, Intelligence) Agency prove this fact. These images show old men that simply do not understand, men who are too old to change, and men who will stick to their traditional ideals forever. The adjective “old” does not only pertain to their age, however; there certainly are younger members. When I say “old”, I also refer to their outdated and exhausted ideas. But the fact remains that those who took to the streets after Kayhan’s calls to violence were, for the most part, old men. The tale of the green movement and the coup government is the story of the rebellion of sons against their fathers.
The real fiasco of government’s Friday’s rally was not the low turnout but the makeup of the crowd who showed up. The green movement is the birth child of the need for change and reform; it is the result of people’s desire for a modern and new way of life. Modernity, in all its forms and shapes, has always been more attractive, handsome and seductive than traditionalism. The chants of the Friday rally not only were not new but they were a tired step back from the old clichés slogans of the Islamic republic. Just in six months, the green movement has matured enough to slash the “death to” from its slogan portfolio. The old men of the Friday rally, on the other hand, kept chanting the ancient slogan of “death to hypocrites,” but their message remained the same, with the only variation coming in the form different “hypocrites’” names.
They still try to rule the country with the same old clichés. This has become the coup government’s main flaw, and people have taken advantage of it. The Islamic Republic is unable or refuses to see the legitimacy of the crisis it faces, still hoping that wide camera lenses will come to its rescue. Wide lenses will not rally supporters or bring legitimacy. Perhaps those pictures will satisfy the small crowd who, for one reason or another, joined the rally, but not the Iranian people, and definitely not the youth whose protests’ turnout only in one university is 4 or 5 times larger than the combined number of old men rallying in 3 or 4 cities.
The truth is that the coup has given up on its public relations charm campaign. Their only hope right now is their prisons and the use of violence by the military forces, but even those tools have lost their effectiveness. The coup has lost the public relations battle outside and inside Iran. They gave up the international scene long time ago because of their wrong policies, lies, their use of language, interference in other countries’ affairs and their support for terrorist groups. The national scene, however, took a makeover when citizen journalists began to appear on every street corner 6 months ago, making the IRIB and other police-like media flee the arena. That is why, these days, only old men answer to their calls. The old men listen and answer to each others’ calls, but the green planet does not belong to these old men.
This is the only [photo] I found in the state media almost showing the entire crowd. Without exaggeration, the most generous estimates will put Friday’s turnout at around 5000. Seriously, with all the IRIB campaign and calls and announcements, was that the entire crowd you could bring out?

Madyar