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| An overturned truck with a Pepsi logo burns in the center of Tehran during riots which paralyzed the city on December 27, 1978. |
Dissent isn’t something we should fear doing, it should be something we need to embrace in our current age of restrictive governments.
Out of the eight values we have analyzed, I am most passionate about protecting one's ability to express their grievances towards the government. Best said by Steven Shiffrin in Dissent, Injustice, and the Meanings of America, “The First Amendment protects minority views, no matter how unpopular. You have a strongly protected right to disagree with the government — and everyone else. In fact, it is your patriotic duty to criticize the government” (American Civil Liberties Union, 2018, p. 2). If we have the legal right to articulate our opinions, even if they’re considered unpopular, and that it’s encouraged to criticize the government.
Why isn’t this usually followed through in different governments of various countries?
I am Iranian-American and the subject of citizens and governments clashing together is not an unfamiliar subject for me.
My mother and father’s experience living in the past era of the Islamic Republic of Iran opened my eyes to the importance of free speech and opinion; how it did not come easy for my parent’s post revolution given the censorship and threats against free speech. It was much harder for my mother given the drastic change in the cultural climate that came after the 1979 revolution: a new wave of strict Islamic codes and mandatory dress codes given to many women. The system controlled art, literature, media, and many forms of entertainment. This of course, included heavy institutional oversight to suppress public dissent and discourse over the Islamic government.
The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance is an Iranian Government agency formed in 1984, responsible for overseeing and regulating any domestic media, cultural expression, and enforcing further state censorship.
The Ministry was mentioned in a 2018 Reporters
Without Borders article, reflecting on the 39th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution and the legacy of the regime continuing to harass journalists and citizen-journalists. The regime’s ministry has persecuted the freedom to inform not only domestic media, but international media. 350 media outlets were closed, issuing more than 800 journalists and citizen-journalists being detained and interrogated with 500 of them being given prison sentences ranging from three months to 19 years. Propaganda is recycled as official foreign media, funded by the regime which is also supported by fake news world networks that take pride in suppressing the freedom to inform.
Public dissent, a concept that should be a universal right for all countries, cost the lives of many civilians. Protests that erupted in Iran on 28, December 2025, demonstrated the exhaustion from years of repression and censorship that have weighed on newer and older generations of men and women living in Iran. Iranian authorities responded with a deadly crackdown during January of 2026, by cutting off all internet access to conceal crimes against their own people. The regime has used unlawful force, firearms and other prohibited weapons, against protesters, which resulted in mass killings and serious injuries. It is unfair to the people of Iran that their own right to free speech is compromised by the regime, with excessive censorship further fueling the years of built up resentment towards the government.
Protecting dissent is one of the most important Eight Values of Expression because of what it means for fighting against oppression and censorship. I believe that everyone has a right to criticize their own government, and that we need to be more socially aware of how the right doesn’t always apply to everyone’s government.
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Sources
Amnesty International, "What happened at the protests in Iran?" — details the mass killings of protesters starting December 28, 2025, and the internet blackout Iran imposed to conceal the crackdown.
Reporters Without Borders, "Revolution anniversary – 39 years of news control and censorship in Iran" — documents decades of media closures, journalist detentions, and censorship under the Islamic Republic.
NBC News, "Iran attempts to crush dissent with a wave of arrests after deadly crackdown" — mass arrests following the deadly January 2026 crackdown.
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