r/iranian • u/Dont_Knowtrain • 5d ago
Most detached diaspora groups
Which Iranian community aboard is the most detached from Iran and Iranians, I feel like it’s the Los Angeles community
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u/Comfortable-Unit9880 5d ago
Iranian-Americans definitely hella detached. Large percentage of Iranians in LA are jewish from what I hear, plus thanks to the pro-israel lobby in US, lots of Iranians in the US are influenced by that
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u/Inryha 5d ago
Literally so much hate from people that are not even from CA/LA toward those Persians. At least LA/SF/DMV/Toronto/ATL Persians try to maintain their traditions and host huge Iranian events to continue the culture. The most detached I think are the ones that live in the midwest or Europe where there are not a lot of Iranians and they are jealous, rude, and make ridiculous posts like this. You have not even met an LA Iranian I’m guessing, and all you know about them is a caricature from some video you watched online.
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u/sassa82 5d ago
Iranians in Europe travel to Iran much more than in USA. I think iranians in US are much more detached. Many iranian-americans I have met don't know persian lananguage which is not the case for iranians in europe.
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u/Dont_Knowtrain 5d ago
Exactly
Even the most anti regime people in Europe still visits their family in Iran, except a few British and German exiles
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u/misingnoglic 5d ago
The US Iran relations don't exactly help...
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u/EpicCleansing 5d ago
Maybe not, but at the end of the day nobody's going to question or second-guess your US passport unless you act real weird.
Tons of Iranian-Americans visit Iran every year. The big problem is the distance, especially for older folks.
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u/Dont_Knowtrain 5d ago
Well from everything I’ve seen LA Iranians are extremely detached, some with family members who were AAVAK
“Europe” has a whole a lot of Iranians? Don’t know where you got that from
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u/misingnoglic 5d ago
Iranians are an extremely traumatized group who have been displaced 44 years ago or even more recent than that for some. I don't think posts like this are very productive.
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u/anthonioconte 5d ago edited 5d ago
No traumatized are the people fleeing from Gaza, not the Iranian aristocrats who are eating kabob in Beverly Hills for the past 40 years. Stop this victimhood shit.
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u/misingnoglic 5d ago
It's not a competition.
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u/anthonioconte 5d ago
No it’s not, but majority of LA Iranians are not traumatized by any stretch of the word.
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u/misingnoglic 5d ago
My mother and uncle had to endure growing up under the siege of bombs during the Iran Iraq war. My uncle had to be smuggled out of Iran through Pakistan to avoid the deadliest war in modern history; and my grandparents and mother had to live through not knowing whether he would come out of that. My grandfather had to give up his pharmacy practice and move to a country where he had no redeemable education and could not understand the language beyond a basic level. And they did not have the worst of it by any means. How are you someone who wants to pivot to being a therapist but don't understand any of these very common occurrences as things that can contribute to trauma?
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u/anthonioconte 5d ago
I’m sorry your family had to endure all of this. I myself was born during the Iran-Iraq war and my family had to flee the city for the desert and sleep in a car while I was 4 days old. Yes these are all Traumatic events. What I was trying to get at, and that is the problem with generalization is that there is a specific group of Iranians who live in LA and I know these people very well. They mostly have left the country before or during the revelation. Brought a lot of money with them, invested in so many lucrative businesses. Most of them haven’t been back to Iran since then, their children don’t speak a word of Farsi and they look down on people like me or your family who grow up in Iran. I hope that clears out what I am trying to say.
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u/EpicCleansing 5d ago
The same can be said for every Iranian, except lots of people had to actually fight the deadliest war in modern history.
You're right that it's not a competition, but Iranians in Iran have a very different deal than Iranians in the diaspora. Iran has been under direct threat of invasion by the world's largest military power for 21 years now, and the rhetoric is still heating up. Imagine what it's like to raise your kids like that.
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u/misingnoglic 5d ago
See the first sentence of my comment: "Iranians are an extremely traumatized group".
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u/Comrade-Viktor 13h ago edited 13h ago
To anyone reading this thread, there is this great book called "Iranians in Texas" by Mohsen Mostafavi Mobasher. While it is specifically about Iranian-American diaspora, both first and second gen, in Texas, it is still highly applicable to other groups imo.
A great quote I wanna point out is the following, "Although nearly three decades have passed since the hostage crisis, unfortunately the story of Iran and Iranian immigrants remains unpleasant,and the distorted generalizations and stereotypes about Iranians persist and are widespread in the United States. The Iranian government is still viewed as a fanatic and terrorist state and part of an “axis of evil” and as a threat to the international community. As long as U.S.-Iranian relations remain entangled, Iranian immigrants in the United States will be subjected to prejudice, discrimination, and profiling; and as long as Iran continues to experience its current inflation, population growth, and political repression, Iranians in the diaspora will continue the paradoxical life of double exile, a fragmented and conflicted life that has made them ambivalent about living both in Iran and in the United States. Theirs is a kind of purgatory; they are neither happy in exile nor looking forward to returning home. Their identities are marginalized in the societies of both their host and their home countries," (Mobasher 47).
It brings up a point about how Iranians in diaspora are marginalized members in both the host society and home society. Anyways, I think people should really read this book. Even if you don't agree with everything he says here, the book is still an insightful and, most importantly, a more academic approach to studying Iranian diaspora.
Edit: Just wanna summarize by saying Iranians have been dealt a very shit hand this past century. While I think some diaspora groups are detached from the realities of being Iranian instead of Iranian-<insert country>, this kind of talk could be reductive.
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u/anthonioconte 5d ago
As an Iranian who lives in LA, 100% agree with the OP. Iranians ( some of them don’t even feel inclined to call themselves Iranian, because they are Perssshian) in LA specifically the monarchists who live in west LA are some of the most delusional crowds that I have ever seen in my life. Extremely superficial, materialistic and anti-intellectual. It’s such a shame