pssst, did you hear this neocon propaganda?

Andrew Sullivan wonders why, if the story turns out not to be true, the Iranians would want to release disinformation about a new nationwide dress code that is purportedly under consideration by the Iranian “parliament.”

The law mandates the government to make sure that all Iranians wear “standard Islamic garments” designed to remove ethnic and class distinctions reflected in clothing, and to eliminate “the influence of the infidel” on the way Iranians, especially, the young dress. It also envisages separate dress codes for religious minorities, Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, who will have to adopt distinct colour schemes to make them identifiable in public.

I say it’s how the Iranian rulers distract and deceive—and how they will divide and conquer if we continue to fall for it every goddamn time.

Read this from someone who thinks the Yellow Badges for Jews story is neocon propaganda aimed at snookering “us” into going to war with Iran:

It never ends with the neocons—illusory weapons of mass destruction, aluminum tubes, yellow cake, Mohammed Atta in Prague, argumentum ad nauseam, ab ovo usque ad mala—they are seasoned and pathological liars. “Iran’s announced intention to force non-Muslims to wear an identifying badge is causing many to make the comparison to Hitler and the Nazis, who forced Jews to wear badges in the shape of the Star of David,” declares the American Thinker, or rather non-thinker since there is a good chance the story is nonsense, a cheap and gaudy propaganda contrivance, another log tossed on the attack Iran pile.

Meanwhile, the Iranians are laughing at us as we fulminate. Because we have fallen into their trap. They want nothing more than for us to fulminate over the fate of the Jews. It only “proves” their point—that all “we” care about is the Jews (not, for example, the Palestinians).

And meanwhile, in our outrage over the purported Yellow Badge for Jews—which is a hideous, stomach-churning thought but nevertheless a distraction—we are missing the real story.

Which is that the Iranian people are the first victims of the perverse power-mongering thugs who rule them. The proposed legislation will require all Iranians to all dress alike, in a manner decreed by their totalitarian torturers. That’s why it’s called a theocracy. That’s why it’s called Islamofascism.

And that is why we must find a way to give hope and courage and support to the democrats in Iran.

Meanwhile, another note: we are all so savvy—MSM and blogosphere alike—when it comes to discerning spin from every quarter in America. It’s time to cast that same skeptical eye on spin, propaganda, and media-savviness that originates in parts abroad.