Ahmadinejad: Even Tyrants Need “Hope”

Even Iran, a nation led by one of the most virulently anti-Semitic regimes in the world, can’t help but use an extremely successful campaign strategy, most likely designed by an American Jewish campaign manager (David Axelrod). Irony of irony? You make the call.

According to The Guardian, the Iranian faced of politics has been jumping on the "Yes We Can" bandwagon as of late. However, there is some confusion over the exact timeline, with some claiming that Ahmadinejad used a variation as early as 2005, though Obama is said to have used his version even earlier.

Arguably, the "Yes, We Can" slogan, combined with the vague promises of "Hope" and "Change," are what won President Obama his position as President. (Though a similar, if not the same, slogan was used to elect Deval Patrick as Massachusetts governor, also under the tutelage of Axelrod.) This fact was not lost on Iranian "President" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who recently began co-opting the slogan and playing of his days as a former schoolteacher. Apparently even tyrants and out-of-touch-with-reality Holocaust-deniars can’t pass up a good slogan when they see it.

One has to wonder exactly what it is that Ahmadinejad’s slogan is referring to. Yes we can destablize the world? Yes, we can wipe Israel off the map? Yes, we can sustain skyrockting inflation while ignoring the Iranian people’s plight? Yes, we can bring about the end of days? It’s just not quite as uplifting as it was, when used in American politics.

For a man who thinks that rats from Israel are why people in Iran live shorter lives (ignoring the whole, ‘the government doesn’t give a hoot about its people in Iran’ thing) than in Israel, someone in his corner is politely astute enough to jump on the popular politics bandwagon. What strange bedfellows politics makes, indeed, even if said bedfellows aren’t exactly giving honest credit where credit is due.