Engineering National Pride with Nothing

According to Tabnak news agency, since the morning of December 7, 2016, preparations for cooking 80,000 kilograms of ash (a type of Persian soup) as the 'largest ash cooking' for a world record on the occasion of 28 Safar have been underway in Shiraz. Such activities have been thriving in Iran for over a decade. One of the legacies of the Ahmadinejad era that remains alive is the craze for setting records to be registered in the Guinness Book, records that do not reflect individual or group efforts to showcase human capacities (like sports records) or efforts to improve human living conditions (like fighting diseases or enhancing health and nutrition). There is hardly a week in Iran without a record being set: a 90-layer cake in Shiraz, a 26-meter kebab skewer, a four-kilometer painting in Mashhad (on the theme of Mahdism) and Hamadan (on the life of the Prophet of Islam), a 1,500-meter ostrich sandwich in Tehran, a 5,000-square-meter handwoven carpet, the largest tahdig (crispy rice) in the world, the largest ash in the world in Shiraz, a 110-pot noodle soup in Shahrekord, the largest flag in the world, and other records that are merely aimed at creating numbers. Interestingly, most of these records are related to religious matters and Shia occasions, and the record-setting activities are also considered a form of religious propaganda. When we closely examine these statistics or 'mosts,' we see that the 1,500-meter sandwich is actually the same as 5,000 30-centimeter sandwiches, the 90-layer cake is actually 30 three-layer cakes stacked on top of each other, the 5,000-square-meter carpet is actually 150 10-square-meter carpets, and the 26-meter kebab skewer is actually 52 half-meter kebabs. Thousands of these records can be produced by combining numbers that occur in ordinary life every day (like a 1,000-meter sangak bread, which is essentially 1,000 one-meter sangak breads) and can be a source of pride and honor for the common people. These figures only serve to astonish the masses without having any impact on improving their lives. In a society where populism becomes a political culture, such expressions are naturally used to influence the public to claim that 'we are also a nation,' 'we have great achievements that others (Guinness Book) register,' and 'we can boast with these achievements.' This culture of meaningless and functionless record-setting, the costs of which are paid by municipalities, the IRGC, and other public institutions, raises the question of where it originated and why it has persisted. The Ahmadinejad government and its military-security base, along with the Leader's office, sought to wash away all the values of the reformist era (democracy, media freedom, rule of law, growth of civil institutions, and government accountability) and make the people forget them. To achieve this cleansing, it was necessary to present other ideas and programs in their place. One of them was to summarize the entire story of progress and development in the nuclear program, which ultimately led to a nuclear agreement and the halt of parts of it after tens of billions of dollars in costs and hundreds of billions of dollars in losses due to sanctions. To instill a sense of pride in the people, they naturally needed to feel that they had a place among nations and lacked nothing. Within this framework, 1) fake degrees from Oxford, Cambridge, and Harvard were created and fed to the public, 2) astonishing statistics were presented to show the country's progress to society, 3) Ahmadinejad was turned into a celebrity with extraordinary slogans (global management) and a special jacket and car, and 4) the Guinness Book was suddenly discovered socially, and efforts began to fill its pages with Iran's name. All of this was meant to occupy people's minds so they could not think about other issues like the plundering of the country's resources by the military and security forces, and the ongoing lies, fraud, and looting. For this reason, military and security institutions and their affiliated propaganda and public agencies (like municipalities) continue to engage in Guinness record-breaking. When it is impossible or not feasible to instill pride through progress, development, ethics, and humanitarianism, alternatives must be found for the people. Groups loyal to the government, who know that claims of democracy, freedom, and scientific progress in Iran are lies, naturally turn to other records. The Guinness record-setting phenomenon in Iran is not merely a social phenomenon; if it were, it would not have much benefit but would not harm anyone either. However, the problem is that the government and public institutions play a significant role in organizing them. Officials attend record-setting ceremonies; the venues for these events and their security are provided by the government; and much of their budget is funded by governmental and public institutions while any joyful ceremonies and political and civil meetings are prevented; municipalities and governmental institutions usually cover a significant portion of the costs of such events. Records that should be noted Iran under the Islamic Republic has also set records in natural gas consumption, cancer patients, declining groundwater levels in some areas, drying up lakes and rivers, urban air pollution, energy waste, brain drain, opium consumption, embezzlement figures, and per capita executions and executions of minors. However, few people ask Ali Khamenei, who still presents himself as hopeful for the future with these achievements, based on which statistics and trends he is optimistic about the future. The Islamic Republic's propaganda apparatus focuses on useless and theatrical records instead of concentrating on the worrying trends that are reflected in the aforementioned records. Amid all the inefficiencies, corruption, lies, fraud, and repression of the Islamic Republic, the only commodity left for the security and military apparatus of the Islamic Republic is the pride in the cemetery-like security of the country in their propaganda apparatus. The government exaggerates the threat of ISIS (without fighting it) and blows the trumpet of hostility against the United States (without any signs or evidence) to attribute the lack of war in Iran to its successes. In this case, the government is selling nothing (the absence of war) to the people as its achievement.