Exploiting Resentment

April 1, 1952 — The Goulburn Evening Post


The Mossadegh Project | January 23, 2020                       


Lead and sole editorial in The Goulburn Evening Post of Goulburn, New South Wales, Australia (established in 1870).

Australian media archive on Iran




The Goulburn Evening Post

A LITTLE, BUT NOT ENOUGH

It is manifest that mankind has got ahead of itself in many ways. First of all an outstanding, [example] for instance, was the report the other day that there was sufficient in the American stock pile of atom bombs to kill everybody on the earth. Just why the people of the world, are bothering about making things to blow themselves to bits is difficult for an ordinary intelligent person to understand. He realises that love of power and a desire to drive mankind in the direction which those power lusting people think is good for it—or for them—is the cause, but how to meet the problem? Right through the Middle Eastern countries has arisen, suddenly and violently, a realisation that the people who live there are as good as the people who have been exploiting them. Whether they are or not remains to be seen. But this boiling up of nationalism from Agadir to Afghanistan is not just coincidental; it is the outcome of education—and not enough of it. The peoples there have had sufficient education to tell them something is wrong with the set-up, but not sufficient to persuade them that they are not yet competent to rule themselves. Mixed with this, too, is a realisation that the ruling foreigners seem to be getting a great deal more out of life than they themselves are. This breeds resentment. To argue with them that they are the unfortunate victims of a process, slow in itself, which will benefit their race in the future would be futile. Mossadeq is an outstanding example of this and as a consequence his own people are suffering quite unnecessary miseries because resentment has been exploited. Commonsense would find an easier way out. So it would in Tunis and Tangier, as it is endeavouring to do in Egypt, if there, the uneducated will let it. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, someone has written. The world is getting a lesson in the truth of that summary, right along the south side of the Mediterranean from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf.


Richard Stokes’ Second Thoughts on Iranian Oil (1951 Letter)
Richard Stokes' Letter to Clement Attlee, Aga Khan Concurs (1951)

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Related links:

Some Signs Of Sanity In Persia | Sydney Morning Herald, May 29, 1952

Mossadeq’s Dream | Goulburn Evening Post, May 23, 1951

The Shadow For The Substance | Newcastle Morning Herald, Sept. 2, 1952



MOSSADEGH t-shirts — “If I sit silently, I have sinned”

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