Elica Le Bon الیکا ل بن@elicalebon
Let me tell you why I decided that yesterday's appearance on Piers Morgan, alongside Dave Smith, would be my last.
First, I had spent the past couple of months being so emotionally exhausted and above that, genuinely devastated by Dave Smith's online rhetoric. It's hard to describe how much his words have hurt me, alongside millions of Iranians, and millions of Jews and Middle Eastern people. He repeatedly downplayed the brutality and threat of the Islamic regime in Iran, insisting over and over again "Iran (the regime) is not the threat, the U.S. government is the threat."
The overwhelming majority of 90 million Iranians know this line very well. It is the same propaganda of "anti-western imperialism," used as a red herring, that convinced them to take to the streets in '79 and bring in the Ayatollahs. Following that mistake, they realized this line, this rhetoric, this propaganda was complicit in one of the biggest heists of our time.
For the past 45 years, Iranian intellectuals--both inside and outside of Iran--have exhausted themselves to try and demonstrate to the world how this type of commentary is not just a red herring, but it leads to the collapse of society, as it did for us. Imagine how exhausting and painful it is to try and explain the contours of this to the world, only to have people who discovered the Middle East yesterday insist we don't understand it.
After October 7, not just Dave Smith, but many westerners who had no familiarity with the reality of this type of propaganda were thrust to the spotlight by regurgitating these same appealing lines, having no idea who manufactured this rhetoric and to what end.
Societies who have been touched by the finger of death, be it under socialist utopias or jihadist domination--Iranians, Israelis/Jews, Venezuelans, Cubans, Yemenis, Afghans, Syrians, Iraqis, Lebanese, Russians, Chinese, even many Gazans, and more--understand where these talking points begin and end.
That considered, what the post-October 7th discourse has revealed is that much of the untouched western world has become so indoctrinated by the disinformation of these bad actors--who they can't even begin to understand the inner workings of--that conversations become futile. These conversations become more about "winning" to those whose only investment is being right, which inevitably means losing for those whose investment is survival.
So when Piers' team reached out to me to join the conversation, I'll admit that I did actually ask to debate Dave Smith. The thing is, though, a part of me inside was screaming, "don't."
Don't do it. This man is not here to listen to you, he is here to talk over you. He is not here to understand Iran, and the sentiments of millions of Iranians who do not support his advocacy for "diplomacy deals" that have proved fatal to them (quite literally, by enriching the machinery used to massacre them), but to insist that his out-of-touch perspective of Iran, without knowing an iota of the long history that brought us here from the Iranian perspective, is truth.
The whole "anti-war" line has been used by the regime's lobbyists for decades, the same one Dave Smith insists on now. Even court documents revealed correspondence between the regime and its U.S. based lobbyists in pushing this co-ordinated propaganda effort--which they admitted to intentionally aiming at naive western anti-war activists as their "easiest targets"--to induce diplomacy deals that line their coffers with hundreds of billions. The only true anti-war perspective is the one of millions of Iranians who have for decades asked not to platform this regime to the point of an inevitable military confrontation. But how could outsiders who aren't listening know this?
I'll be honest, as soon as that conversation began, I was already defeated. As soon as the opening line was Pies reciting how much I think Dave Smith's talking points are garbage (I do, but that's obviously not how you start a fruitful conversation, that's how you egg on a cat fight) I knew I made the wrong decision.
I knew I would be taunted, pushed, and agitated, not just because I have to contend with somebody who possesses an illicit amount of confidence and arrogance despite standing on the outside of our collective sentiment, but because the conversation was clearly never intended to bring him, nor the world, closer to truth. This is why you should always listen to your gut instinct, and I'm disappointed in myself that I failed my instinct on this occasion.
At this point, coming closer to the truth will not happen through debates. Why? because it isn't facts people don't have, its context. Underneath the thin layer of easily accessible facts, there exists oceans of context that escape people who have never swam in our waters.
Dave Smith well never, not for as long as he lives, know how much he has hurt us. These conversations will never bring the world closer to truth.
Truth will come to light, as it always does, but it will happen not by attacking the darkness, but through shining the light. Eventually, enough people will shine the light of truth until every corner of darkness is dispelled.
So even though I won't be engaging in these reality TV style debates, I will continue speaking where people are interested in listening, and that have a chance of moving the needle closer to truth. Until then, we may continue to face the abuse, attacks, hate, and ostracization from the masses lingering in the dark, but in the words of Ricky Gervais, "your boos mean nothing, I've seen what makes you cheer."
