“The West’s Toxic Triangle”

“The Internet, Hollywood and Harvard University form an infamous triangle for promoting Western lifestyles,” Mohammad Hossein Nejat, the cultural deputy for the Revolutionary Guards, told a crowd in Khorammabad, Lorestan province in late January.

Speaking at the closing ceremony of the bi-annual festival of visual arts in Khorammabad, western Iran, Nejat said that, despite the West using these powerful tools for promoting its unsavory lifestyle, “North Korea was able to counteract this invasion by the art of resistance and war.”

It was important, he argued, to understand that the way the West appreciated the arts was quite different from the Islamic Republic’s appreciation of them.  “The West uses the arts in an incorrect way and wants to transfer this incorrect way onto other societies.”

He said that the arts should concentrate on topics such as “the unity of Sunni and Shiite Islam, not trusting America, American deception, economic sanctions and its repercussions, and the message of the revolution.”

“The enemies try to promote the Western way of living in the world,” he said, and warned that Iranians should resist.

According to Shabestan news agency, in the same speech, the Guards’ cultural deputy warned against the dangers of satellite television channels, which he referred to as “imperialist.”  “Today, the enemies use more than 160 satellite TV channels and cyberspace against our culture and our system and our people.” Unfortunately, he said, 60 percent of Iran’s population had access to these channels.

Nejat said the West was committed to “defending the royalist system” and would use any tactic it could to “attack Islamic identity” in Iran. 

Last week, Ayatollah Khamenei, the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader, accused “the West” of hiring terrorists to discredit Islam. In a message published across all official Islamic Republic news outlets on January 22, he also urged young people to learn about Islam through the Koran and the life of the Prophet Muhammad and said it was important they inform themselves about Islamic teaching.

Read the original article in Persian