The tale of double standards is one as old as time itself, with the West weaving its own narrative about certain events that hit countries it opposes in a way that would benefit it and undermine the other country in question, while on the other hand entirely disregarding those same events when a Western nation is afflicted by them in order to try and preserve its rule and uphold its values.

The West seeks to undermine countries it deems lesser or whose views it opposes by waging soft war against these states and drumming up international opposition and condemnations of them, exploiting popular protests or demonstrations as a political tool to antagonize and demonize other countries while deeming any wave of popular anger on Western soil as a wave of unlawful riots carried out by anarchists.

The most recent example of these double standards and the spinning of faux narratives was in Iran. Thousands of people in September flocked to the streets in riots that swept across the nation over the death of a young woman alleged to have been killed at the hands of the Police for violating the law, and chaos ensued.

Before anyone knew it, rioters were all over the nation, looting stores, burning down cars, homes, and administrative buildings, as well as assaulting civilians and in extreme cases even killing them. Rioters, Iran’s High Council for Human Rights (HCHR) said, employed tactics of extreme violence against Iranian civilians and security forces. For instance, two students were stabbed to death by rioters in the city of Mashhad. In addition, 7,000 officers were injured in the line of duty during the riots, including some who were brutally murdered. There were videos all over social media of rioters brutally murdering policemen and civilians alike as violence was taking the nation by storm.

The Iranian authorities sternly dealt with the situation and tried to contain the violence as much as they could, arresting the wrongdoers, with the state issuing an order that the Police must be unarmed when confronting the rioters in order to limit the number of casualties. Those apprehended for criminal action were taken to court and dealt with according to the law, with Tehran reporting months later than the overwhelming majority, namely 83%, of those arrested were released.

It is worth noting that the riots entailed acts of gruesome violence and were found to have been funded and facilitated by foreign actors, among which are France, with terrorist organizations being among the belligerents, including the MKO, and still, Iran dealt with the situation in a manner befitting dealing with civilians, but was nonetheless condemned all over Western media.

Human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch condemned what they called "brute force used in [the] crackdown on dissent", claiming that the government "imprisoned hundreds of activists on dubious charges", while Western media, the likes of the French Le Monde made interactive stories to remember the rioters who either suffered injuries, were arrested, or even died in the protests, condemning the killing of "innocent" people who were "protesting" against the government.

Other outlets, such as Radio Free Europe and The New York Times gave the riots, which, again, were found to have been backed by foreign powers, a social aspect, saying they were due to people suffering from economic hardship, poor living conditions, corruption, and political repression.

Thinly-veiled double standards

Moving on from Iran's riots to Europe, namely, France, proclaimed a free, democratic country, one can easily distinguish both how the authorities dealt with a similar situation and how Western media handled the uproar.

It is a relatively calm Tuesday at the end of June near the French capital of Paris, and the Police stop a teenager driving a car at a traffic stop, and after talking to the young man for a bit, the footage shows a 17-year-old, a boy by the name of Nahel Merzouk, getting shot at point blank before driving off and having his car crash into a stop.

It was later clarified that he had no driving license while driving the car, but one may argue that this is no grounds for the death penalty.

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This is the moment 17 year old Nahel M was shot dead at point blank range by a French policeman in the Paris suburb of Nanterre. The killing has led to three consecutive nights of rioting across France. pic.twitter.com/J5osn9CnNi

— 5Pillars (@5Pillarsuk) June 30, 2023

Long story short, the policeman who killed Nahel was incarcerated and charged with voluntary homicide; however, what ensued after his death is what deserves to be examined.

The people of France took to the streets in mass protests that turned violent and, similar to Iran (though this time they were not motivated by foreign states) and started burning down cars and buildings, with vandalism sweeping across France before the state sent down tens of thousands of Police officers to quell the demonstrations and brutally beat up and detain thousands of protesters who are, arguably rightfully so, protesting the systemic murder of North Africans and Black French people at the hands of the Police at traffic stops, as well as the systemic racism within the institution.

The protests also made a focal point of the fact that the French Police are too heavily armed for their job and that this was enabling them to commit crimes against civilians.

The 17-year-old, who was learning to be an electrician and played in a rugby league, was murdered, and the people were outraged, especially because this is not the first time, as a 2017 law enabled the Police to shoot at a vehicle fleeing a traffic stop; though this was the case for Nahel, one cannot distance themselves from how a teen, who is part of a racial minority, may react upon having a gun pointing at his face at a traffic stop. The law, however, specifically permits the office to shoot at a vehicle moving if the driver was putting passengers or passersby at risk, and Nahel had barely pushed the gas pedal at the point he was shot at, meaning his killing was unprompted.

The killing was not a one-off, as the French Police has quite the history when it comes to Black people or North Africans at traffic stops, with this particular case being the third this year. If three people getting killed at traffic stops is not that huge, maybe we could look at the 13 killed in 2022, the two in 2021, or the other three in 2022. Over the span of three years, the French Police killed 21 people at traffic stops, with the victims often being from racial minorities, namely Black or North African.

The situation is quite clear between both nations, as Iran had someone die, who was alleged to have died at the hands of the Police, and riots broke out in response, with the same happening in France, except for the fact that there was evidence the French Police killed the young boy while this was the complete opposite for Iran, and riots and protests broke out, respectively, in Iran and France.

Rioters and protesters

The media is a great tool in the hands of whoever wields it, and the West certainly wields its media correctly, as it is, arguably, a great tool of propaganda to fool the masses.

Very quickly, the Iranian rioters were quickly glorified by Western media, for they are protesting against an unjust regime killing them! However, the French protesters were not met with the same degree of love, as they were quickly demonized, and their actions were quickly dismissed as ones of anarchists and vandals, because how dare they protest against a democratically elected government that enshrines human rights? Despite violence breaking out in both France and Iran, the latter's riots were supported by the West, yet the ones in France were quickly condemned and the French people were called on to cease "rioting".

Even when it comes to reporting on the ordeal, there was a clear bias between the media's handling of either event. The media used the clearly biased term "riots" when it came to France after they spent months using the words "protests" when it came to Iran - again, despite evidence of violence and vandalism in both. Another aspect was the demonization of the French protesters amid sympathy with the Police. 

The media has been spending the past few days reporting on how the pesky "rioters" have been getting arrested in the hundreds as the poor Police officers were also sustaining injuries in the hundreds in their pursuit of reinstating social order. This was not the case for the riots in Iran, as the media was only reporting on how the rioters were being detained and how they were sustaining injuries in the natural course of the restoration of social order while failing to comment on the brutal murder and targeting of civilians and police forces by the rioters.

The media did not say that what the French protesters were doing was the culmination of years of racism, social inequality, poverty, the ghettoization of the areas heavily resided by immigrants, and many more social phenomena associated with the oppression of those who were quick to rise in the face of the government.

Iran and France are just two examples of how the West utilizes its monopoly of the media to twist and turn words and incidents through means that serve its greater, imperialist interests, with the alteration of mere words as simple as "riot" and "protest" affecting the psyche of the reader and demonizing and praising the party they see fit as serving their ideals. However, this goes much, much deeper, extends to numerous states, and could be observed as a destructive trend in many arenas.

The West remains adamant to show itself as civilized while othering those it opposes, such as Iran, in a bid to reflect the "supremacy" of its rule while denigrating that of its opponents, and it is worse on the soft war front than it is on the ground, as words can hurt much, much more than bullets and missiles might. Words can create an alternate reality, delude, and change the perspective of generations to come.