Salman Rushdie: Nintendo and Big Macs can liberate Iran
Since 2009, Iran has seen an ongoing internal ideological struggle between the government and the Green Movement, a wave of opposition to the Iranian regime.
So how can the Greens tip the scales in their favor and bring about revolution in their country? According to author Salman Rushdie, the key lies in … Nintendo and Big Macs. OKAY THEN.
Speaking to Big Think, the Booker Prize-winning writer insisted, “I often think that the best way to liberate Iran is just to drop Nintendo consoles from the air. And Big Macs.” Bear with him here, though:
“If you look at the opponents of the Iranian regime, the green movement in Iran – that clearly represents a young, liberal, modernising spirit that exists in that country. And in every Muslim country you will see that. You will see particularly young people. They don’t want to live according to the rules that the old gray-beard mullahs set for them, so I think if we want to look at the Muslim world you have to look at it in those ways. You have to look at it as a world in conflict. And what we need to do is to support, I think, that modernising positive way of being a Muslim, which involves living in the world as it is. Support that and encourage that, and be extremely critical as we should be, of that other tyrannical, despotic, medievalist Islam, which unfortunately is in power in a lot of places.”
Yep. Not … quite … sure where Nintendo comes in there, but the idea of firing SNES carts and Power Gloves across the Iranian border is sweet.
