Right-wingers on social media flipped out over the message Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi had read on his behalf at the Academy Awards on Sunday night.
Farhadi won the Oscar for best foreign film for “The Salesman,” but didn’t attend the ceremony as a protest against President Donald Trump’s executive order banning travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Iran, and temporarily halting the nation’s refugee program.
Instead, Iranian-American engineer Anousheh Ansari read a message on Farhadi’s behalf thanking the academy and his film crew, but blasting the travel ban as “inhumane.”
Farhadi wrote:
“Dividing the world into the us and our enemies categories creates fear. A deceitful justification for aggression and war. These wars prevent democracy and human rights in countries which have themselves been victims of aggression.”
Farhadi also called on his fellow filmmakers to use their craft “to capture shared human qualities” to “create empathy between us and others.”
That sent conservatives over the edge. Here are some of their messages:
And here are some of the responses:
Trump’s travel ban remains on hold after a series of court rulings against it, but his administration has promised to file a new one soon.