Why is President Obama Depicted on a Huge Billboard in Tehra

[frigidmagi]

Slate

Propaganda billboards are a common sight in Tehran but they’re usually devoted to ayatollahs as well as honoring “martyrs” of the Iran-Iraq war. There are a few anti-American billboards as well but they’re the exception and foreign politicians are almost never put on display. That’s why it caught the eye of Iran watchers when an Iranian website posted pictures of a huge mural in a busy section of Tehran that shows President Obama standing next to Shemr, a villain in Shia Islam. Below them is a quote: “Be with us, be safe.” The Guardian’s Roland Elliott Brown writes a fascinating explanation of this “high-context” propaganda and how it should be interpreted.

The bottom line? “Anyone who still likes Obama in the wake of tightening sanctions—or who advocates meeting American, EU, or International Atomic Energy Agency demands over Iran's nuclear program to avoid conflict—is a traitor to the faith. Obama, the state insists, is a ‘Hussein’ unworthy of loyalty.”

[SirNitram]

It's Two Minutes Hate without requiring a TV.

[Josh]

It's always easier to personalize the opposition in the form of their leader. Pretty much everybody does that.

What's tragicomic is how North Korean propaganda is so stuck in the fifties that they usually throw in the old lines about gangsters that used to be so much a part of the international propaganda against us.