Setting aside the obvious reverence for the father of the "Aryan master race" concept (Seriously, just pull up this guys Wikipedia -- first paragraph).

Such a critique of Persian culture without any context is unjust. For nearly a whole millennia, the Persians have endured a never ending parade of invasion, destruction, and conquest. While most are aware of the notable events, i.e. - Rashidun Caliphate (636) - Mongols (1219) - Timurids (1370)

What is less known is the centuries of endemic violence in the border regions, and the relentless assault on the Persian way of life and culture itself (including the centuries long conversion process to Islam). Yes, although there are brief periods of peace, e.g. under the Safavids, at this point Iran is settling in for a long period of population collapse, famine, and economic depression.

In such a setting, I suppose it might make sense for a culture to develop such defense mechanisms for survival.

On the bright side I suppose, these conditions also gives rise to one of the most influential literary and poetic traditions in world history -- i.e. Rumi, Hafez, Ferdowsi, etc. In some ways, this is one of the first instances of art as a form of subversive resistance, and also, indeed a cousin of tarof...

While the Persians may have given it a name, let's not pretend they have the monopoly on deception/self-deception.

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burkaman 2 hours ago | parent [-]

From Wikipedia:

> He came to speak a "kitchen Persian" that allowed him to talk to Persians somewhat. (He was never fluent in Persian as he said he was.) Despite having some love for the Persians, Gobineau was shocked they lacked his racial prejudices and were willing to accept blacks as equals. He criticized Persian society for being too "democratic". Gobineau saw Persia as a land without a future destined to be conquered by the West sooner or later. For him this was a tragedy for the West. He believed Western men would all too easily be seduced by the beautiful Persian women causing more miscegenation to further "corrupt" the West. However, he was obsessed with ancient Persia, seeing in Achaemenid Persia a great and glorious Aryan civilization, now sadly gone. This was to preoccupy him for the rest of his life.

The guy was a terrible person and a documented liar about his knowledge of Persia. Perhaps he had some conversations with locals who genuinely didn't understand why he hated black people, and he thought "ah, these clever Persians, so effortlessly deceiving me when they obviously must be as racist as I am".

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smsm42 13 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

That's pretty standard model for those times - when dealing with "inferior" peoples, its pretty much either "noble savage" or "inscrutable deceitful liar". The latter is especially convenient - if the observer does not understand something, it's not because their command of the local language and customs sucks and you can't actually understand a complex culture by just showing up there with zero knowledge - it's because the locals are taking pleasure in deceiving people.

Of course every culture has lying, some social customs necessitate it to some measure, and politeness, strictly speaking, always has a deceitful component - I am usually not really that invested in knowing how are you, and don't care that much about you having the best of luck in all your future endeavors - I am just saying that because that's a polite way to express that I don't hate you and neither you should hate me. And I may not actually be extremely busy this weekend but that's a polite way to say I don't want to go to the pokemon museum with you.

In a familiar culture, that's understood as how things work and is not taken at face value, but in context. Unfamiliar politeness could be taken by hostile (or arrogant) observer as deceit. Which is of course reinforced by being an outsider to the culture - would you really immediately tell everything about yourself and your intimate thoughts to a total stranger that looks weird and barely speaks your language? Or would you mutter some polite non-committal platitudes while he is scribbling away something like "never allowing oneself to appear as one is, but in always showing oneself otherwise; it is the art of presenting to each person the aspect that will please him most, of adopting his ideas, his tastes, his language, while inwardly remaining quite different". Fuck yes, I don't know you, and you are a guest, of course I'd not immediately go into dissecting the fine details on my soul and vigorously debating hot topics of the day with you.

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jihadjihad 42 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think he was so caught up in his own bullshit that he couldn't see clearly. To him "Iran", which literally means "of the Aryans", had been reduced (or, in his thinking, reduced itself) to a sad mockery of its former glory.

It's all hooey, of course. But he was nothing if not resolute in his delusion.

	▲	burkaman 24 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Delusion is the right word, I would encourage people to read the whole Wikipedia. Despite his complete lack of academic training or ability (he failed the entrance exam to a military academy), he published several anthropological/archaeological books about Persia which were universally torn apart by actual experts. Two of them were focused on translating ancient cuneiform, but again, he didn't speak Persian, and "he failed to understand linguistic change and that Old Persian was not the same language as modern Persian." Some of the cuneiform he "translated" was not even Persian, and he also used ancient mythical poetry as a factual historical source, claiming that ancient Aryans had conquered a race of giants. It's too much to quote here but it's all pretty funny: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_de_Gobineau#Criticism_o.... Sidenote unrelated to Persia: He was so racist that when American racists translated his work (looking for justification to subjugate black people), they had to take out his rants about how impure American white people were.

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mock-possum 30 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Bigots really do say the damndest things.