Thread by @ProfSunnySingh

Love these but also hate the decontextualised way these are presented. #DoBetter journalists buzzfeed.com/gabrielsanchez… via @guynamedgabe

It wasn't just the Soviet invasion. It was US meddling AND then support for the most regressive groups possible. And well before 1979

Those pics of women in skirts at Kabul University make me really angry, especially as it was US+ the 'West' that helped destroy that society

Let's be clear, no woman needs Western clothes to be 'free' but the brutal repression of women in the country didn't come from nowhere

Let's remember exactly WHO supported, armed, funded the most regressive, misogynist groups because....geopolitics! #ColdWar

Let's be clear: these pics of 'liberated' Iranian/Afghan/insert-name-here pictures help push a racist, Islamophobic, imperial narrative

They render those who destabilised society+politics and promoted war in these countries innocent while dogwhistling convenient fears

These decontextualised pics serve the white supremacist far right (and frankly Western mainstream) very well because they are comfortable

They are comfortable because they erase the centuries of colonial history. They erase the recent history of destabilisation and violence

They erase TODAY's violence. Even worse, they rationalise the violence inflicted upon Afghanistan/Iran and more in guise of 'saving women'

AND they help push the Islamophobic 'they hate women' narratives back in US and Europe, feed the racist narrative about 'Western values'

So ENOUGH! #DoBetter!