The first is that Ukraine, in February 2022, was largely unknown to the average Western viewer. Most could not have named its president. Most did not realize it was a raucous democracy with elections, a free press, and a thriving stand-up comedy scene. The memes introduced that Ukraine to the world, filling an information vacuum. As Olga Tokariuk, a researcher and journalist, argued in a Reuters Institute paper, Ukrainian humor worked as a “gateway to a deeper understanding of Ukraine’s history and culture.”
The second reason is more important: the Ukrainian memes were consistent with the underlying reality. The witty, defiant, democratic Ukraine of the embassy accounts was the same Ukraine that journalists and diplomats and refugees and weapons inspectors all found on the ground. The propaganda did not have to overcome the truth; it only had to surface it.
Iran has neither advantage. The Islamic Republic is not obscure; it is among the most-covered, most-analyzed, most-sanctioned regimes on earth, and the public record of its 47 years in power is thick and damning. The mass executions of political prisoners in 1988 are well documented—including the fact that some young women among them were first raped by their guards, on the theologically dubious premise that virgins could not be executed.
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