Translator’s Note:
This article was published by the website Political Economy Critique (Naqd-e Eqtesadi Siyasi) on December 24, 2022, where the original Persian-language version can be found.1Khosrow Parsa, “A Brief Review of the Movement,” Naqd-e Eqtesadi Siyasi, December 12, 2022. It is a comment on the Fall 2022 uprising in Iran, a little over three months after it began on September 16, 2022. The biography of its author, Khosrow Parsa, a medical doctor and political commentator residing in Tehran, inspired my translation. Born into a nationalist family close to Mohammad Mossadeq, Parsa earned his medical degree at the University of Tehran and lived abroad during the 1960s and 1970s where he pursued specialization in neuro- surgery. While abroad, he was active in the National Front, in the Confederation of Iranian Students–National Union (CISNU), and with various leftist organizations.
Parsa was a prominent member of the Communist Alliance Group (CAG), playing a lead role in its failed effort to merge with the Organization of the Iranian Peoples Fadai Guerrillas (OIPFG), and he remained among this network of activists when he moved back to Iran in 1979, at which point the CAG and other iterations of the network transformed into the Organization of Communist Unity (OCU). Parsa and the OCU would continue their political activities in Iran through the 1980s.2I have drawn this information, for the most part, from a brief biographical statement at the end of another article on the Naqd-e Eqtesadi Siyasi website: https://pecritique.com/2021/01/01/شکوه-پادرجائی-خسرو-پارسا/.
The OCU holds a significant, albeit marginal and hence understudied place, in the history of Iran’s 1979 revolution. Its significance derives from two characteristics, both of which bear relevance to recent events. For one, the OCU’s antecedent formations (the Organization of the National Front in the Middle East and later the Star Group) were among the first of Iranian revolutionary groups to adopt a tricontinental vision. They were also among the most effective at establishing networks in neighboring countries, with reach in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Oman, Yemen, Libya, and Turkey.3For a framing of the group in terms of tricontinental visions of politics, see Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, “The Origins of Communist Unity: Anti-Colonialism and Revolution in Iran’s Tri-Continental Moment,” British Journal of Middle East Studies 45, no. 5 (2018): 796–822. Further, the CAG and OCU stand out for their consistent and public attempts at internal criticism.
Despite their turn to Marxism, this small group of activists espoused Mossadeq’s posture of independence exemplified by his concept of “negative equilibrium”; the CAG’s What Should Not Be Done was “one of very few pamphlets coming out of the revolutionary left around this time which can be read as an exercise in self-criticism and as part of an ongoing process of searching introspection.”4Ibid., 810, 820. This tendency led the CAG and the OCU to disavow Stalinism and Maoism and eventually to question practices of internal repression used by better known guerrilla groups based in Iran, in sharp contrast to the instrumentalism that shaped most other revolutionary formations.5Sadeghi-Boroujerdi offers a careful review of the group’s potentially divergent positions on this topic, specifically around the failure of the “homogenization process” with the Fadai guerrillas. See Ibid., 817–18, including note 136. See also Maziar Behrooz, Rebels with a Cause: The Failure of the Left in Iran (London: I.B. Tauris, 2000), 91, 158–61.
It also led the OCU to repudiate clerical rule in late fall 1978 when a popular uprising against the Pahlavi state was coalescing around Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Nearly every other leftist political organization supported Khomeini’s bid to leadership, either wholeheartedly or as a momentary step toward broader anti-imperialist objectives. The OCU bucked the trend before the outcome of the revolutionary struggle and the suppression of leftists was to settle into focus.6Anonymous, Az Goruh-e Setareh ta Sazman-e Vahdat-e Komunisti: Rahi be Raha’i [From the Star Group to the Organization of Communist Unity: A Road to Emancipation] (Vienna: Ketab-e Raha, 2022), 262–69. In its reconstruction of this history, the group notes the possibility that other organizations may have taken the same position. I am unaware of any evidence of a similar position held by other groups at that conjecture in extant scholarship.
These initiatives exhibit a way of being and acting useful for English-language debate today. Their utility holds especially true given the OCU’s composition outside of Iran, in exile, and among a then-nascent Iranian diaspora. A large portion of English-language and diasporic activism over the Fall of 2022 has concentrated on representation. These efforts succeeded in establishing a zero-sum game, either for or against the movement in Iran. On the one hand, a hoard of liberal internationalists have championed revolution and “regime change” while ignoring the fact of US empire.
On the other, a smattering of so-called anti-imperialists claim that any support for a revolutionary politics in a place like Iran serves the interests of ideological mystification on behalf of US empire. Nuance and uncertainty have fallen by the wayside, deemed markers of apologia or, at best, the aimless peregrinations of diasporic academics out-of-touch with realities on the ground.7See, for example, Nina Farnia, “The Iranian-American Intelligentsia in US Foreign Affairs: Ahistoricism, Anti-Structuralism, and the Production of Idealism,” Middle East Critique (February 25, 2023). Over four decades ago, the OCU was able to oppose monarchical and clerical rule at once—a position that some overnight revolutionaries on the liberal side of the ledger would now embrace—precisely because it was detached and out-of-touch, overly academic and rooted in diaspora. It did so, moreover, while organizing and engaging in anti-imperialist armed struggle across the region.
That said, it would contravene the spirit of the OCU to present Parsa’s article as exemplary, immune to criticism, or beyond debate. Neither Parsa’s article nor my translation should propel retrospective glorification. If the English-language text of this article proves worthwhile, it is because it is incomplete and searching. The author is not even certain as to what we should call events—a protest, an uprising, a movement, a revolution?
In other words, the article merits consideration less for what it says and more for how it says it, demonstrating a mode of engagement sympathetic and critical at once and thus distinct from other commentary on offer. The Iranian state’s well documented paranoid style (a feature that predates the Islamic Republic by decades) casts a long shadow over English-language debates, spurring at times wildly baseless charges of complicity. But what would it mean to criticize the movement from a sympathetic position, to reach beyond paranoia and to do so in English, the ever-expanding idiom of imperial domination?
I offer this material as a set of provocations meant to spur thought, further engagement, and critique. The fifth thesis especially demands close inspection. Here, Parsa stages a speculative debate with an imagined interlocutor. At first glance, he seems to pit the category of “women” against the category of “political prisoner,” by which he means individuals incarcerated prior to September 16, 2022. This can be read to imply that “women” are taking up too much space, an ungenerous reading premised on a quantitative calculation—too much, too little, just enough—that misses the author’s point: a qualitative argument as to how the categories “women” and “political prisoner” are not, and therefore should not be, viewed as mutually exclusive. On these terms, Parsa links current events with longer histories of state repression in Iran and calls for reflection on the tactical choice to avoid the label “politics.”
The text is filled with imprecision, perhaps as a safety precaution, a product of the author’s position in Iran and a sign of respect or of consideration for activists in the trenches. Perhaps imprecision is the by-product of a searching tone, necessary to hold a conversation oriented toward self-criticism. I cannot say for certain. What I can say is that a quantitative manner of thinking that demands definitive empirical proof for each and every proposition advanced threatens to misunderstand the intervention altogether.
Nonetheless, where certain aspects can seem too vague and in order to facilitate comprehension for an uninitiated audience, I have inserted translator notes to provide context to the best of my knowledge. These notes are not intended to clarify what the author said or meant in a definitive manner. They are merely indications of how I read the text, offered here in case they prove useful. Ultimately, the text should be read in a democratic manner, judged, and interpreted as the reader sees fit.
Three months is sufficient time for an initial appraisal.
Almost entirely unexpected in its inception, the current movement or uprising has reached a point over the course of its unfolding that for some heralds an immanent revolution and for others a potential or prospective one. Of course, there are those for whom events have not yet reached a scale that would cause “concern.” Still mired in their slumber of disregard and neglect, they can only register opponents as playthings of foreign enemies, destined for destruction.
What is a revolution? What are the stages and conditions of revolution? How does a political and democratic revolution differ from a social one? Others have addressed these questions on a number of previous occasions and from multiple perspectives. I feel no need to rehash the debates here, except to say that, were it to succeed (the chances of which are extremely high, whether it happens soon or over a longer stretch of time), the current struggle would fall in the category of democratic revolutions. It has not set about transforming the means of production. That said, any social revolution is very likely to include numerous democratic revolutions as well.
The past three months have been an inflection point, a decisive and fateful period in our history after which Iranian society will no longer return to its prior state of affairs.
1
The past three months have been an inflection point, a decisive and fateful period in our history after which Iranian society will no longer return to its prior state of affairs. This much is indisputable. The changes underway are greater than anything anyone envisioned. The circumstances of these developments—the fact that such drastic upheaval took place in such a short amount of time—demonstrate the depth of existing antagonisms and the absence of any prospect for improvement. Others have written about these antagonisms before. Their depth merits greater scrutiny.
2
One or two exceptions notwithstanding, we have rarely encountered prior cases that anticipate current events beyond broad gestural similarities—not only in terms of the speed with which the uprising unfolded, but also its emphasis on women. This was perhaps to be expected. The antagonisms in Iranian society were so numerous, dispersed, and profound that an explosion was inevitable, and yet it was never clear which antagonism would finally spark the explosion: a women’s revolution, a total revolution, a national revolution, an issue-based revolution …
3
From any perspective one takes, the bravery, courage, and determination shown by the youth, and women in particular, is awe-inspiring and historic. What we have witnessed has been cause for surprise in its scope. It deserves our admiration.
Much has already been said about the social causes of the uprising, especially about generational differences. No matter the event’s outcome, however, the topic that will preoccupy sociologists, philosophers, and the like for years to come (decades in my estimation) is the event’s scale—its immensity, its grandeur, its universal reach. We are hard-pressed to recall this much support for a democratic revolution, expressed from all corners of the world and from so many different classes of people. We are, in this sense, confronted by a new phenomenon.
The bravery, courage, and determination shown by the youth, and women in particular, is awe-inspiring and historic. What we have witnessed has been cause for surprise in its scope.
4
Political analysts stand in agreement on a number of issues. I feel compelled to move swiftly past these issues to arrive at topics that, in my view, require further reflection.
The leadership of this uprising and protest has seen horizontal networks drawn from people directly involved in the struggle. False claims to leadership advanced by tired and defunct political groups—sometimes implicit, sometimes brazenly open, but nonetheless false—are so devoid of meaning they cannot but lead to dead ends. Those who pretend to lead and who profess to collaborate with the protestors from outside Iran’s borders are telling lies and sowing confusion. The leaders of the movement on the ground are fully aware of this fact. And they are poised to find a solution for the potential dangers that false proclamations produce. At least, I hope they will.
Horizontal networks are the only way to protect the movement from interference and manipulation, but we know these networks suffer their own shortcomings. As ever, there is hope that a popular movement will be able to forge a path to success without succumbing to authoritarianism or despotic rule. We do not know what that path will look like in advance because it simply has not been traversed enough before to give us indications of what’s to come.
I do see one threat lying in wait. Some political analysts have identified this threat (for example, Mohammadreza Nikfar, Saeed Rahnema), and their writings offer admonitions and proposals that should at least be attempted in practice.8Translator’s Note: For an English-language translation of a relatively recent and partially relevant writings by Nikfar, see “The Active Manifestations of a Passive Revolution,” trans. Frida Afary, Radio Zamaneh, January 11, 2018. See also “The Middle Class of Iran and its Poor: Background and Necessary Points for Discussion” in In the Middle, On the Edge: Essays on Iran’s Middle Class Poor, ed. Nazli Kamvari (Stichting Radio Zamaneh, 2022), 56–58. For an apt statement by Rahnema, see “Iran: Secular Revolt against Clerical Tyranny,” New Politics December 5, 2022. In any given social setting, as we all know, there are multiple factors at play. You may advocate the utmost democratic and humane sorts of interaction, but what of the people standing beside you? What of the other political forces that harbor their own aspirations for leadership?
What, in other words, of those who seek to appropriate the movement so as to project themselves as its leaders? We’re only at the very beginning, and all these false pretenses exist. May we never see a time when the aspirations to appropriate the movement actually prove effective.
At present, in addition to the traditional opposition, we are seeing personalities appear on the scene—or, better yet, the construction of personalities—from amongst whom it is unclear which are legitimate, and which illegitimate. These personalities have extensive resources at their disposal.9Translator’s Note: The author does not list any of these “constructed personalities” by name, perhaps out of an abundance of caution. For Persian-language readers who followed events as they transpired at the time, the phrase may intimate personalities suddenly turned revolutionaries (and minor celebrities). A number of such personalities accrued tens and in some cases hundreds of thousands of social media followers and influence in the three-month period between September 16, 2022, and December 24, 2022. It is no easy task to stand against them and still, at the same time, to promote or otherwise uplift the movement. To do so requires an abundance of caution.
5
In my view, thus far, this movement has avoided becoming political in the strict sense of the term. This has been a deliberate and intentional posture. It has even resisted the slogan “free all political prisoners.10Translator’s Note: The slogan “free all political prisoners” was a prominent “nonpolitical” chant and organizing principle in the months leading up to the 1979 revolution in Iran, adopted across ideological lines by liberals, Islamists, and leftists alike. Four decades later, while there were calls to free some of the political prisoners taken into custody due to their participation in the 2022 uprising, the author is correct to note that, by the time of writing, slogans calling for the release of all political prisoners, including those imprisoned from well before, were not widely present if present at all. It took until February 14, 2023, two months after Parsa’s article appeared in print, for a collective of twenty trade unions and civic organizations in Iran to issue a charter that included a demand for the freedom of all political prisoners, the first such public call since the uprising began. An abolitionist position—one that claims all prisoners are political prisoners, thereby calling for the abolition of prisons and the legal trappings that support imprisonment—has also been absent. To the contrary, a good deal of the discourse around the movement has marshaled the language of law, calling for the prosecution and imprisonment of current state officials. I wish I could understand the reasoning behind its position. For over forty years, activists and political prisoners have carried the torch and kept struggle alive. A good number of them have given their lives. An even greater number have spent years upon years in dungeons. Where are they in this movement?
A women’s revolution, with all its remarkable grandeur and immensity, holds value in its own right. But memories of [previously] imprisoned women and men have been silenced—on what accord? A women’s revolution should not be seen solely as a women’s revolution. This is a revolution in which women play a lead role, but they do not have the only role. Women have shown that they are the standard-bearers not only of the plight of women but also of a broader social struggle and transformation.
Perhaps the analysis that inspired efforts to resist the slogan “free all political prisoners” assumes that a plurality of slogans would take the focus away from issues pertaining to women. If that is the case, then it must be said that this analysis is categorically wrong. Every social problem holds its own distinct conditions. This pertains above all to the current uprising, which [nearly] everyone considers the opening salvo of an explosion produced by the many antagonisms that structure our society today.
It is possible to be a woman, to valiantly and demonstrably express one’s legitimate demands, and to also keep in mind that countless other activists created grounds for this colossal and glorious explosion. It is true that a scattered discourse causes confusion. But disregard for the movement’s other ideals, goals, and causes can obstruct its progression and, even worse, threaten to isolate it. Woman is meant in the sense of life and freedom, of which the political prisoner is one of their key components.11Translator’s Note: My translation attempts to capture the conjectural quality of the author’s tone in the original. Two turns of phrase are noteworthy: “perhaps” and “if that is the case.” The author begins by admitting that he does not understand the reasoning behind the absence of the slogan “free all political prisoners.” He then posits a speculative position (“perhaps,” “if that is the case”) which he proceeds to repudiate in an imagined theoretical debate. It may be worthwhile to reflect on this stylized debate given the events that have taken place since its publication, notably the repression of street demonstrations, a sharp increase in prisoners, and a shift in discourse toward the defense of those prisoners.
6
I hope the current disregard for political12Translator’s Note: The author uses the word siyasi There are, of course, many conceptions of what constitutes the political. For purposes of context, it is notable that independent political parties have been prohibited in the Islamic Republic. This has not, however, precluded political engagement of various sorts since 1979, often under a guise that cannot readily be identified as political. This tactic, which can potentially ensure an activist’s safety and security, most often involves corporatist associational demands that do not contravene the state in principle. The author seems to note a carryover effect according to which these avowedly nonpolitical tactics have appeared in the midst of an uprising that openly repudiates the state. It would seem then that by “political slogans,” the author means slogans that expressly propose a vision of community different from the one currently in place, whatever the case may be. He is right to note that the period between September 16 and December 24 did not see slogans for a communist state, to take one example, or even for that matter a liberal democratic one. slogans is based on some justification of which I am as yet unaware. I hope. All the same, to jump from the pursuit of fixed and definite associational demands to a position that projects a horizon beyond creates a vacuum that, itself, requires analysis.
A number of movements across Iran have advanced targeted associational demands before the current uprising took hold—from teachers, retirees, and the dispossessed to strikes and pickets by workers, peasants, functionaries, and truck drivers. It was to be hoped that these movements would join the general uprising. Noteworthy steps have been taken in this direction. It hasn’t been long since the current uprising began, and possibilities for its expansion and for convergence with these prior movements still exist, encouraging indications of which appear daily.
Nonetheless, these steps must occur with greater speed and urgency than they have to date. The pursuit of targeted associational demands has not found the space it needs to blossom in the current uprising. As a result, the forces that could potentially join the struggle are yet to participate with all of their might. It is likely that these bonds of solidarity will strengthen with time.
In addition to persuading and exhorting masses of people to join them in struggle, activists should listen to their wants, their desires, and their demands.
In my view, in addition to persuading and exhorting masses of people to join them in struggle, [activists]13Translator’s Note: The original Persian was written in the passive voice (“should be listened to”). I have inserted the word “activists” as a grammatical subject to render the text more legible in English. No such category exists in the author’s original article. should listen to their wants, their desires, and their demands, whether they be social or individual. The social manifestation of these demands, in the form of unions, workers councils, and the like, have been as active as the coercive circumstances would allow. Still, a large majority of people are making their decisions to participate as individuals.
By majority, I mean the majority that is as-yet politically unaware, or even still those who possess a modicum of political consciousness but for whom the exigencies of survival and the need to make ends meet have proven prohibitive obstacles to their participation. This problem is easily recognizable to anyone who is in regular contact with ordinary people in Iran. It is demagoguery, pure and simple, when those who warm their hands at the fire from afar call for the thousandth time to mass mobilize, some even going so far as to scold people when they fail to follow instructions.
The quintessential examples here are the statements issued by orators living abroad.14Translator’s Note: Some of the most well known orators abroad include Reza Pahlavi, Maryam Rajavi, and Masih Alinejad. More recently, their ranks also include Shirin Ebadi, Hamed Esmaeilion, Nazanin Boniadi, Ali Karimi, Sima Sabet, Pouria Zeraati, and Golshifteh Farahani. Sabet and Zeraati are affiliated with a media outlet (Iran International) that receives funding from a Saudi Arabian firm and regularly broadcasts programming into Iran via satellite. Despite their inexcusably poor record of cooperation and collaboration, they have the gall to make speeches about the importance of “unity, unity, unity” among people living in Iran. They are asking people to join the ranks of a revolution as a unified front while they fight among themselves over its leadership. Some can even be heard saying: Join the revolution! Riot! Set things on fire! And we’ll be there for you!
7
The recent movement has precipitated positive developments with respect to the nations and nationalities problem. Kurdistan’s initial vanguard position in the struggle, the further spread and depth of the struggle in Kurdistan, and later the fact that Baluchis joined together with the Kurds have all had an immensely positive impact on what has transpired. The mobilization of people in Azerbaijan, Gilan, Loristan—in fact, across most parts of Iran—point in a general direction of cohesion.
It goes without saying that past problems have not been resolved in their entirety. We cannot expect the many obstacles to national unity to disappear overnight, but the initiatives taken so far have been forward-facing, and they have inspired hope. Solidarity chants heard from Zahedan to Kurdistan are bound to warm the hearts of Iranians who hear them. They lay the groundwork for future and further struggle.
8
As I mentioned at the outset, we are still at the beginning of the road. Scour the world: no great social transformation ever reached its outcome before traversing multiple stages, without experiencing plenty of ups and downs, or absent the mere passage of time. Still, this event has already produced an astonishing outcome. We are witness to an irreversible social transformation.
We are witness to an irreversible social transformation. Whether we like it or not, this is the road that has opened before Iranian society.
Whether we like it or not, this is the road that has opened before Iranian society. As to what the ruling authorities can do or will do and for how long, we do not know. What we do know is that their efforts will prove futile at the end of the day. It is likewise impossible to predict the effect of global machinations, plots, and stratagems. I know that Western governments and their strategists, for reasons demonstrated over the course of the twentieth century, have never desired a progressive democratic government in the region. And they do not want one now—not in Iran and not anywhere else in the world.
It would be suicidal for Western governments to allow a government of the people to emerge from the heart of a general revolt. Just look to what they did with the Occupy movement or the Yellow Vest movement in France. As far as they’re concerned, it is improbable that ordinary people could be so fearless as to change a government in a manner that contravenes their wishes and desires. “Let ’em loose and it’s a bull in a China shop. What about the New World Order?” The trickery, duplicity, “support,” and sleights of hand practiced by Western governments all revolve around a single precept: we decide, not the people.
As for Russia and China, there is nothing to say other than to convey anger over their reprehensible and, yes, barbaric approach. They are neither with the people of Iran, nor with Iran’s government. They are willing to take any indecent action as long as it preserves their national interests. Thankfully, in this regard at least, differences of opinion among the Iranian opposition and those who support the movement are negligible.
Against this setting, the uprising must perforce be the topic of conversation. In the end, we have no choice but to win. The current state of affairs cannot possibly continue as is. Many of the cards in the deck have already been played. More important still, at present, the movement has reached its first stage of victory. It will achieve a massive social transformation, and, along the way, it will surely notch other victories as well.
It is true that the shape of things to come cannot be predicted. There are tens of possible scenarios on the table—the prospect of civil war, the partition of Iran, a military attack on the country. From among these possibilities, the only alternative that we can accept—the only alternative worth fighting for, the only alternative that is human and merits the sacrifices and struggles that have compelled global admiration from friend and foe alike—is the attempt to bring about democratic conditions of life.
We have determined our own fate on a number of occasions over the past one hundred and fifty years. In this, we have been trailblazers. Our Constitutional Revolution is exemplary among national movements. Today, our level of consciousness has risen to new heights. We will not be cowed. “Woman, Life, Freedom” is a brilliant and luminous stage in our history. But a long road waits ahead.
Notes & References
- Khosrow Parsa, “A Brief Review of the Movement,” Naqd-e Eqtesadi Siyasi, December 12, 2022.
- I have drawn this information, for the most part, from a brief biographical statement at the end of another article on the Naqd-e Eqtesadi Siyasi website: https://pecritique.com/2021/01/01/شکوه-پادرجائی-خسرو-پارسا/.
- For a framing of the group in terms of tricontinental visions of politics, see Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, “The Origins of Communist Unity: Anti-Colonialism and Revolution in Iran’s Tri-Continental Moment,” British Journal of Middle East Studies 45, no. 5 (2018): 796–822.
- , 810, 820.
- Sadeghi-Boroujerdi offers a careful review of the group’s potentially divergent positions on this topic, specifically around the failure of the “homogenization process” with the Fadai guerrillas. See Ibid., 817–18, including note 136. See also Maziar Behrooz, Rebels with a Cause: The Failure of the Left in Iran(London: I.B. Tauris, 2000), 91, 158–61.
- Anonymous, Az Goruh-e Setareh ta Sazman-e Vahdat-e Komunisti: Rahi be Raha’i [From the Star Group to the Organization of Communist Unity: A Road to Emancipation] (Vienna: Ketab-e Raha, 2022), 262–69. In its reconstruction of this history, the group notes the possibility that other organizations may have taken the same position. I am unaware of any evidence of a similar position held by other groups at that conjecture in extant scholarship.
- See, for example, Nina Farnia, “The Iranian-American Intelligentsia in US Foreign Affairs: Ahistoricism, Anti-Structuralism, and the Production of Idealism,” Middle East Critique (February 25, 2023).
- Translator’s Note: For an English-language translation of a relatively recent and partially relevant writings by Nikfar, see “The Active Manifestations of a Passive Revolution,” trans. Frida Afary, Radio Zamaneh, January 11, 2018. See also “The Middle Class of Iran and its Poor: Background and Necessary Points for Discussion” in In the Middle, On the Edge: Essays on Iran’s Middle Class Poor, ed. Nazli Kamvari (Stichting Radio Zamaneh, 2022), 56–58. For an apt statement by Rahnema, see “Iran: Secular Revolt against Clerical Tyranny,” New Politics December 5, 2022.
- Translator’s Note: The author does not list any of these “constructed personalities” by name, perhaps out of an abundance of caution. For Persian-language readers who followed events as they transpired at the time, the phrase may intimate personalities suddenly turned revolutionaries (and minor celebrities). A number of such personalities accrued tens and in some cases hundreds of thousands of social media followers and influence in the three-month period between September 16, 2022, and December 24, 2022.
- Translator’s Note: The slogan “free all political prisoners” was a prominent “nonpolitical” chant and organizing principle in the months leading up to the 1979 revolution in Iran, adopted across ideological lines by liberals, Islamists, and leftists alike. Four decades later, while there were calls to free some of the political prisoners taken into custody due to their participation in the 2022 uprising, the author is correct to note that, by the time of writing, slogans calling for the release of all political prisoners, including those imprisoned from well before, were not widely present if present at all. It took until February 14, 2023, two months after Parsa’s article appeared in print, for a collective of twenty trade unions and civic organizations in Iran to issue a charter that included a demand for the freedom of all political prisoners, the first such public call since the uprising began. An abolitionist position—one that claims all prisoners are political prisoners, thereby calling for the abolition of prisons and the legal trappings that support imprisonment—has also been absent. To the contrary, a good deal of the discourse around the movement has marshaled the language of law, calling for the prosecution and imprisonment of current state officials.
- Translator’s Note: My translation attempts to capture the conjectural quality of the author’s tone in the original. Two turns of phrase are noteworthy: “perhaps” and “if that is the case.” The author begins by admitting that he does not understand the reasoning behind the absence of the slogan “free all political prisoners.” He then posits a speculative position (“perhaps,” “if that is the case”) which he proceeds to repudiate in an imagined theoretical debate. It may be worthwhile to reflect on this stylized debate given the events that have taken place since its publication, notably the repression of street demonstrations, a sharp increase in prisoners, and a shift in discourse toward the defense of those prisoners.
- Translator’s Note: The author uses the word siyasi There are, of course, many conceptions of what constitutes the political. For purposes of context, it is notable that independent political parties have been prohibited in the Islamic Republic. This has not, however, precluded political engagement of various sorts since 1979, often under a guise that cannot readily be identified as political. This tactic, which can potentially ensure an activist’s safety and security, most often involves corporatist associational demands that do not contravene the state in principle. The author seems to note a carryover effect according to which these avowedly nonpolitical tactics have appeared in the midst of an uprising that openly repudiates the state. It would seem then that by “political slogans,” the author means slogans that expressly propose a vision of community different from the one currently in place, whatever the case may be. He is right to note that the period between September 16 and December 24 did not see slogans for a communist state, to take one example, or even for that matter a liberal democratic one.
- Translator’s Note: The original Persian was written in the passive voice (“should be listened to”). I have inserted the word “activists” as a grammatical subject to render the text more legible in English. No such category exists in the author’s original article.
- Translator’s Note: Some of the most well known orators abroad include Reza Pahlavi, Maryam Rajavi, and Masih Alinejad. More recently, their ranks also include Shirin Ebadi, Hamed Esmaeilion, Nazanin Boniadi, Ali Karimi, Sima Sabet, Pouria Zeraati, and Golshifteh Farahani. Sabet and Zeraati are affiliated with a media outlet (Iran International) that receives funding from a Saudi Arabian firm and regularly broadcasts programming into Iran via satellite.