Acommentator in (mirabile dictu) The Washington Post made an excellent point about how the war in Iran is being understood. “We are living through the first alt-war,” the Tel Aviv University scholar Jen Brick Murtazashvili wrote. On the one hand, we have the war as it is fought online. On the other, we have the war as it is fought in reality, on the ground. The two “have diverged so completely,” Murtazashvili noted, “that they might as well be happening on different planets. It’s not that people lack information; it’s more that they are constructing an entirely different alternate reality—one that confirms what they already believe.”
The online narrative—I hesitate to call it “reality”—takes place not just online but in the propaganda press more generally. The dominant theme here is excited angst and handwringing, typified by a recent cover story in The Economist, “Advantage Iran.” Yes, really. “A month of bombing Iran has achieved nothing. . . . For now, at least, the advantage lies with the Islamic Republic.”
The painful truth is that this is essentially the same narrative being peddled by the Iranian regime itself. See, for example, the silly Lego videos the regime has been releasing. They are supposed to expose the U.S.-led anti-regime coalition to ridicule. The effect is a self-deconstructing farce. What genius, I wonder, came up with that embarrassing gambit?
Most of the legacy media is caught in the grip of painful nostalgia. Not only do generals tend to fight the last war, but media hacks also reach into yesterday’s satchel of clichés to describe the new conflict. Thus, we see Politico solemnly opining that “The administration’s interest in pinpointing a negotiating partner signals a desire to find some way out of the quagmire that Iran has quickly become, jolting world markets, spiking oil prices, and renewing concern about inflation.”
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