My daughter’s hair stylist is Iranian (she was an accountant in old country). When Jimmy Carter’s wife died, she said “I’m happy she’s dead.” I’ve never seen anyone else say a negative thing about the Carters personally. Even die hard Republicans who think he was a weak President don’t hate him as a person. But this is not an uncommon sentiment among the Iranian diaspora.
Iranian who left Iran here. Do you have stats or reference for this critical piece of information?
It’s as if someone’s says, since Bangladesh is predominantly muslim, the majority aligns with what the Islamic regime does for ideological reasons and would try to undermine the account of atrocities.
But one shouldn’t believe this before seeing some polls, stats, etc.
Also, as a Russian who left Russia, it's certainly a familiar pattern.
Note, by the way, that this doesn't really imply anything about whether those people are wrong to be antagonistic.
That’s true. Bangladeshi people strongly supported amending the constitution to make Islam the official religion. Islamization of the country has accelerated since we left, and now it looks like the Islamist parties will get a seat at the table in a coalition government.
I've noticed there's two distinct 20th century Russian diaspora groups in the US. Those who came here prior to the fall of the USSR, and those who came after.
In talking with the ones who came after the fall, life wasn't glamorous but got truly unlivable in the wake of the collapse.
In talking with the ones who came before the fall, they wanted to make money.
It seems to be true across the Muslim world. My father is from North Africa, and any time we've been back there over the past decades it's very clear a large swath of the youth are embracing the more religious political movements.
All I can do is throw my anecdotes into the pool: I mostly have met two types of Iranians: Those that fled in the 80's post-revolution, and those that come to the US for university (90's, 00's, and 10's).
All of them have been anti-regime.
I have met a few that came for other reasons (not education and not the 80's stock). Yes, those are either pro-regime or neutral.
My guess is that what rayiner says is correct: The majority of the Iranian diaspora in the US is self selecting and not representative of the full population.
It’s very odd. I saw lots of younger Bangladeshis supporting the overthrow of the Awami League government (the most secular of the parties). I wasn’t sure if it was people who just didn’t realize it would leave a vacuum for Islamists, or or people who wanted that. It seems there’s some of both.
Iranian-American here, I have never heard a single Iranian badmouth Carter or his family in my entire life. This is the first time I'm hearing of it.
> extremely antagonistic towards the regime
On the other hand, this point is very accurate, I can confirm. There's a reason we left, after all. To my earlier point: this is consistently the direction of our anger - towards the regime - not the Carter administration.
My friend is one but wasn't always like that. He was never critical of Russia or the USA and was pretty quiet until befriending some Russian dude in his apt building during the blackout of hurricane Sandy. Now he frequently criticizes and rants about capitalist USA then sings praise of Russia. We keep telling him to go back but he doesn't. He's unfortunately "that guy" in our group of friends now -_-
You say it yourself, the ones who "had the financial means to do so left" - so it's very disingenuous to then state "the people who were fine with it stayed." What about those who couldn't afford to leave?
In any case I was simply responding to OP's "why" question and that their theory on blaming Reagan allegedly vs Carter on a narrow point, highlighting that particular case is temporally much later, and has no relevance to the underlying reason Carter is hated over there.
However there was a smallish wave of political immigration after the 2011 protests and 2014 conflict with Ukraine, and a much larger one since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. And those people tend to be very anti-Russian-government for obvious reasons.
FWIW when it comes to Russia specifically, I would broadly agree that the problem there is not just the government but the culture as a whole (although we'd probably disagree about the specific things in that culture that are problematic). It is not obvious, though, and I think it always behooves one to be careful when making sweeping generalizations like that and carefully rationalize them.
My guess as well. As an Iranian outside of Iran, I see that my folk in Iran are way angrier, more disappointed, braver and determined against this injustice than I (we outside) am. It’s common sense.
You’re correct about Russia. And the same observation applies to the Indian subcontinent, where I’m from, as well. And, while you’re correct that each place requires a separate analysis, I would guess it applies to most places people leave.
People’s emotions and tribalism often make them romanticize the places they left. They attribute the good things about their society to the people and their culture, but externalize the bad things about their society. That’s usually self-deception.
