Iran is right, it is a conspiracy.

Only it’s the kind of conspiracy that Iran can’t or won’t understand.  The word “conspiracy” comes from the Latin “conspirare”, which means “breathe together”.   When people conspire through internet mediated means, their conspiracies, from going to the movies to spreading the word about a corrupt regime, take on the qualities of the medium.  The internet “routes around censorship as though it was damage”, and net-mediated conspiracies are learning the same trick.

The ruling Iranian government tried to silence dissent via traditional methods, only to find it as easy catching ghosts.  So now they are trying to make a case for aggressive foreign intervention and sabotage, (a so-called “soft overthrow”) because they can’t acknowledge what really happened.   Any nation-state admitting that hundreds of thousands of self-organized people with cell-phones can go toe to toe with an army, for even a moment, is tantamount to admitting that the age of the nation-state is over.   Even if the lumbering, fear and hate-mongering Iranian government does have a grasp on what really happened, it can never admit it.

This is what I’m talking about when I say that social-media can change the world.

The next time something like the Twitter-based uprising against the rigged Iranian elections happens – and it will happen again, somewhere – the reaction will be faster and more widespread and even harder to pin down and silence. And again, and again.

There IS a vast conspiracy against the Iranian government.   It’s not exclusively driven by heads of state and corporations.   It’s driven by people who are learning that tyranny is something to be routed around as though it were damage.

There are people undergoing mass trials right now in Iran, because the Iranian government needs to be able to blame someone.   It’s a horrible thing to see people have their lives on the line for speaking truth to power, and it’s an uglyness we’re all too used to seeing.  So I think it’s important to remember that there is a conspiracy.

It doesn’t require secret meetings, or government financing, and it’s open to everyone who is willing to put aside their fear to try and make, if only in small part, a better world. It’s a conspiracy that is learning to make itself heard even when its voice is silenced.  I’m a member, you could be a member, even the Ayatullah Ali Khamanei could be a member if he wished.  It’s a conspiracy that in some part succeeds by the simple act of being recognized as existing.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Welcome to the human conspiracy.

(My thoughts go out to those on trial and those who have been abused, detained, injured or killed in the attempt speak truth to power in Iran or anywhere else.)