armenian. indigenous. alive.

[left: Palestinian woman holding key to home now under Isr*eli occupation]

[right: Keys hang from a tapestry at a school in Aralez, Armenia, representing the keys to homes left behind by the survivors of the Armenian Genocide]

I never thought coming out would bring me so much closer to the people who I love the most in this world.

I want to preface this with two things before I begin: I support my people of Iran, and I am by all means not a monarchist.

Now, I need to state the absolute frustration i have felt for the past 5 years with western and SPECIFICALLY American leftists. Your armchair politics and theory mean nothing because you do not apply it to your lives. What I mean is that you are useless. You look down on the global south, on people fighting for freedom from their oppressive governments who are, let me tell you, by all means capitalist, despite being anti-US or having “communist” in their name.

You shame those for fighting against theocratic regimes, regimes who arrest and murder leftists in their country, and regimes that torture people for not aligning with them politically.

You call our people American agents, and want oppressed people to sit and WAIT until the American empire falls.

Yet you do NOTHING to bring about the fall of the American empire, because you are in your cushy armchair reading theory.

You want the global south to wait for YOU to action a revolution to bring about the fall of the American empire, yet you do nothing.

You want our people to SUFFER without end while you get to live on that armchair looking down on our movements because your comfort is subsidized by our suffering. It is bought through the destruction and exploitation of the global south.

Real theory is made on the ground, not in your books. Revolution is messy. Revolution is imperfect.

Iranians are a freedom loving people. They brought down the Shah because they wanted freedom, we want the right to choose. Iranians are bringing down the Islamic Republic because they want freedom, they want the right to choose. Every dictator will fall at our hands, every theocrat, every figure that rises to oppress and contain us will fall. We have proven that.

It is your choice whether you want to pretend to be educated, whether you want to pretend to be a revolutionary. Let’s be real, most white western leftists that control the narrative only fantasize about a communist utopia where they are in power. At the end of the day, it is about power, about ego for them— not freedom of the global south. The narrative surrounding Iran proves that. Westerners do not care about brown people. We are just theory. We are a concept. The liberation of the global south means nothing to them, and we will always be looked at from under someone’s boot.

Sincerely,

My heart aches holding onto memories of my childhood of us all together, before I knew myself, and before I knew them.

I wanted to highlight a common argument/standpoint most colonizers globally use when speaking of the lands they occupy.

This argument absolutely astonishes me. Committing active genocide and then saying “okay and we erased you so it’s ours now, what can we do about it, it’s the circle of life”.

I came out to my dad when I was 21. To be fair I hadn’t even come out to myself truly until I was 20. I knew I wanted my dad to meet any partner I would have one day, so coming out to him before I was in a relationship was my first step.

He didn’t believe me at first, I told him when he was in the middle of one of his homophobic rants. He just said I would change. One day you’ll change, you’ll want a family. When that didn’t work, and I got into my first relationship with a woman, he would just ignore the fact that I was gay.

I’m 24 now, and my partner and I went to visit him this summer. He met her for the first time, and I was so worried he would say something offensive. But I know my dad, he wouldn’t risk disappointing me in that way.

He spoke with her, he engaged in conversations with her, and at the end of our trip he gave her a hug and a pat on the head.

Ever since we came home, whenever I FaceTime him, he asks about her. And yesterday, he told me he was glad I met someone with a good heart. He said it’s not easy to find people like that.

When I introduced her to my grandmother, she asked her to come closer, she gave her a kiss on the forehead and held her hand. She told us to be kind to one another. I couldn’t help but laugh when she told us to not fight, and then I understood what she actually meant, she was telling us to not physically fight each other. I assured her we would never do that.

My grandmother born in 1935 in a small village in Iran. Who was forced to marry at the age of 12. Who grew up deeply religious, pulled me close and told me to not care what others thought, to care about my happiness first.

My grandmother who prays for the health of me and my girlfriend at the end of every phone call.

I just want to say, that there is hope. When I had originally came out to my grandmother, she told me to never speak of it again. She is now the first person to always ask how my girlfriend is doing whenever we speak.

I know it’s not always safe to come out to our parents. I think many of us can gage whether it is safe to do so or not. I know I am everything to my father, he has always uplifted me, he always gave me freedom to dress how I wanted and to go out with friends whenever I wanted. I knew my father was the “black sheep” of the family (something he was not ashamed of), which helped me know whether it would be safe to come out.

I wonder why they fear showing the Brown people being murdered? Because the fact that Armenians are Brown and Indigenous isn’t profitable for them. It doesn’t do well with their agenda to victimize themselves as yt Americans.

Their tired “Christian genocide” propaganda, when they actually mean “the shaming of yt fascist christian Americans”.

These people would never, and do not care about Indigenous Christian’s in SWANA being persecuted. They also won’t mention the fact that a leading cause of our persecution has to do with our Indigeneity.

Fascists like them are the exact reason we have lost our homeland. Why we lose our culture. Fascists like them are the bearers of genocide.