Since 2019, the Iraq protest movement, dubbed the “Tishreen (October) Revolution,” has revealed the lengths to which both state and non-state actors are willing to silence dissent and free speech. Iraqi activists and protestors have been subjected to vicious and persistent hate speech campaigns, both online and offline, that aim to discredit them and the movement.
Growing more emboldened since Iraq’s defeat of ISIS, armies of online trolls have shed the Internet’s cloak of anonymity.
In October of 2019, Iraq witnessed the launch of a mass protest movement known as the “October Revolution,” with the slogan “We Want a Homeland” (نريد وطن ), which has become the movement’s online hashtag and raison d’être.
