«مرحم زخم ایران و ایرانیان ازادی است»

Kadivar

I concur with your excellent analysis.

Interesting documentary but Clearly biaised by MKO feedback ...

The Left Wing / MKO feedback seem to have been the Only sources used by the directors of this otherwise excellent documentary. Not surprising since it looks as this was made in the mid 1980's and with the help of the BBC ( already quite hostile to the previous regime of the Shah ) ...

If censorship was so Bad during the Shah's regime, I don't know how a satire like Daie Jaan Napoleon could have ever been showcased on Iranian TV without the slightest censorship ? ...

Documentary on Uncle Napoleon on Bebin TV :

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufMWQqChTw0

No mention of Iranian showmen like Fereydoune Farrokhzad for instance who tried to make a difference in the Iranian National Media by bringing it much closer to the People at large :

Farrokhzad on Iranian TV in Iran:

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4w2eq1Fmdk&feature=related

Farrokhzad in Exile explains the Tozihol Massael:

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEh_zkYjOSg&feature=related

Or Satrical Newspapers like TOFIGH which during the Shah's time allowed criticisms on the Shah's government as long as the Royal Family and the Shah himself were not criticized ...

A More balanced report with other "exiled' intellectuals other than the regular die hard Communists or far left view points would have added more objectivity to the entire documentary.

To claim that Golesorkhi was arrested on false claims of wanting to kidnap the Royal Family and presenting him as entirely innocent seems a little far fetched in handsight.

These guys would have most probably have become torturers or executioners in their own right after the Revolution just like the Rajavis and MKO who executed the Shah's generals only to be chased into exile in turn ...

The documentary even admits that the Shah's Era of censorship was a Bureaucratic one where as that of Khomeiny was Ideological and therefore far more dangerous and radical in it's application.

Democracy is a never ending struggle ( including in thriving and stable democracies) and fighting censorship is never an easy task but a nation and society also has to be prepared and educated so that it's freedom or rather conception of freedom is not highjacked by the far less educated and radical minded elements of society.

From that point of view, I think that our society back in 1979 was politically illiterate in its large majority and one can blame the Shah for sclerorizing Iran's Political landscape by not allowing enough political freedoms. But I don't think that blaming a system in its entirety gives a full picture of the social and political dillemas that discouraged Iranian society from truly becoming a democratic one.

Historians like Abbas Milani for instance give an entirely different picture of the Shah's reign but also Iranian society prior to 1979 which challenges much of the pre conceptions we have on that era due to emotional reactions but also left wing historical revisionisms or and revolutionary rhetoric that have dominated any serious and researched outlook on the Pahlavi Dynasty and its pros and cons in the light of what we know today nearly a generation after the Islamic Revolution of 1979:

//iranian.com/main/2009/dec/abbas-milani

My Humble Opinion,

DK