[How authentic protest movements like the one in Iran can be
hijacked by a funded opposition that builds momentum for war and
military intervention.]
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THE IRANIAN UPRISING AND THE CYCLES OF PROTEST  
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Nassim Noroozi, Linda Martín Alcoff
December 23, 2022
The Indypendent 
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_ How authentic protest movements like the one in Iran can be
hijacked by a funded opposition that builds momentum for war and
military intervention. _

Screenshot of a video of masses of protesters in Zahedan, Iran on
Dec. 16., TWITTER/@FridaGhitis

 

Iran’s theocratic regime has been rocked over the past three months
by the strongest protest movement the country has experienced since
the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The death of Mahsa Amini, 22, while in
the custody of the “morality police” sparked the uprising. And it
has been women-led. Unlike previous protest movements in Iran, it
rejects the idea of reforming the Iranian government and instead calls
for its overthrow. 

How should anti-imperialists in the West respond to what is happening
in Iran? How can they be in solidarity with the protesters’ demand
for greater freedoms while understanding that protest movements like
this one can be hijacked by those who would increase the chances of
war and Western intervention in Iran?

_The Indypendent_’s Linda Martín Alcoff
[[link removed]] spoke with
Nassim Noroozi, a guest lecturer at McGill University and Concordia
University in Montreal. Noroozi’s work focuses on ethics of
resistance in today’s neo-colonial context and the modes of
mainstream perceptions of the Iranian opposition. 

_What do you think inspired the recent protest movement in Iran? _

Iranians are not alien to protesting in the past decades, and dissent
against the Islamic Republic and its violent episodes is probably as
old as the government itself. Sanctions, inflation, the withdrawal
from the nuclear deal by Trump and the downing of the Ukranian
airplane in 2020 led to protests and some were brutally suppressed,
further deepening the deep-seated anger and resentment against the
government. 

But a timeline might help to situate the recent uprising which was
originally against the morality police. The death of Mahsa Amini was
the third incident that happened with the police in a rather short
period of time. The morality police are in charge of ensuring that
“Islamic” attire, conventions and dress codes are followed and
they use  police vans to capture those who do not have the proper
attire. This is not a new system of policing and did not start with
the Islamic revolution, although it did become more systemic after it.
We have poems about it at least from seven centuries ago. Hafez, the
great 14th century Iranian thinker and poet, presented sarcastic
interpretations of their role and taunted  the obsequious and
contradictory character of these morality officers. But focusing on
the more recent time span will help us situate the movement in the
current global context.

“The third cycle of the protests is the tragic phase when not only
the demands of the people are ignored, but there are global policies
to further isolate the Iranian people.”

The first incident occurred between two women on a bus: one with
Islamic attire and one without. The video of their spat circulated
over media when the woman who was not wearing a headscarf started
filming, saying “I will send this to the whole world so they can
see” and the other woman shouted “I will have IRGC (Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps) arrest you.” The back and forth showed
the divisive force of imposed headscarves, as well as the external
factors that  play a role in it. To everyone’s surprise, the girl
without the headscarf was arrested and later appeared on TV making a
‘confession,’ with her face looking gloomy and possibly beaten up.
It was a shocking authoritarian use of power over a frivolous spat.
The girl was released but the incident was not forgotten. 

The next incident also involved the morality police. There, people
witnessed a mother in front of the police van trying to prevent it
from moving forward, begging the driver to not take her daughter to
the morality center saying her daughter is sick. And then Mahsa
Amini’s incident happened, where she collapsed in front of the
cameras and we saw her photo in the hospital the next day. 

Most Iranian women have had an experience of some sort with the
morality police and it is pretty dehumanizing. But to see someone
actually die in front of the cameras, an innocent life taken away, was
too much.  Her pleading to a female officer could be seen on camera
and it resonated with everyone. The uprising and anger were
authentic. 

_This protest movement has garnered significant attention in the West.
How does this attention affect the movement? _

To answer this we need to go back to the first incident I mentioned,
the girl who shouted “I will send this video so everyone in the
world would see.”  This shows us a very specific mechanism for
resistance: to send your video to the activists in the West. Often
such videos are sent to Masih Alinejad — a pro-sanctions feminist
— who uses them to promote and encourage sanctions and hawkish
policies towards the Iranian government. She presents herself as an
unpaid activist, but she works for Voice of America, a broadcast
channel owned by the United States government, and her talking points
justify Western intervention in Iranian affairs. 

So fighting injustice is tainted by the heavily-funded support from
outside Iran that preys on, co-opts and, most importantly, engenders
moments of resistance in order to promote hawkish policies against the
Iranian government. So funded opposition has a hand in forming the
temperaments of resistance, ushering protests into very particular
trajectories. The authenticity that is present in early stages is
often eroded in later stages.  

When we support the protests, from inside or outside Iran, we need to
ask, “Which stage of  the protests are we supporting?” 

It is often the case that a protest is sparked out of genuine
dissatisfaction at injustice. This is similar to any other country.
(George Floyd can be a recent example). Now for Iranians inside and
outside of Iran, this brings signs of hope for a regime change. 

But then literally in the course of a few days, the protest enters a
different life cycle, distinguished by different agents.

We have ordinary Iranian citizens who live abroad and are genuinely
angry at the injustice; they march and protest and do interviews with
the press. 

There are very specific organizations (I call them funded opposition)
that represent the adversaries of the Iranian government who then
enter the commotion for their own agenda, be it a justification of
further sanctions or a call to topple the regime.  When ordinary
Iranians want to topple the regime, they are aiming for something
other than what the MeK wants (MeK was a formerly designated terrorist
organization and is a cult-like Iranian opposition group).  What an
ordinary Iranian wants is different from what a lobbyist who has close
ties to  Saudi Arabia wants: The latter wants to assume power, while
an Iranian wants a real change.  

So then you can imagine how messy this second life cycle of protests
is. Iranians are angry, so they don’t want to hear about the
co-optation of the protests. To sustain the hegemonic narrative of
change — and its support for sanctions and intervention — Iranians
who are opposed to this co-optation get smeared, silenced and
threatened. 

And then we have a third cycle. This is the tragic phase when not only
the demands of the people are ignored, but there are global policies
to further isolate the Iranian people. This phase is literally the
death of the first cycle of protests, because we allowed ourselves to
be duped by the second cycle. 

So the question I raised earlier about _which _stage of the protest
we are supporting can help the first life cycle of the protests to
live and thrive. And, if we don’t pay attention to what exactly is
being supported, it can make the authenticity of the protests wither
away.

This timeline approach allows us to distinguish ethical and healthy
stances on the protests from unethical ones. Often, it is so pleasing
to see that a part of the world (especially the East) is fighting for
democracy or women’s rights that we forgo analysis. Mainstream
coverage too often interviews think tank experts and activists who do
not disclose their affiliations with funded opposition. Some are smart
in hiding their affiliations, but their affiliations are accessible
online, and checking these out will go a long way in determining
whether you are supporting an authentic phase of the protests or not.
(This does not mean you should rely on misinformation and smear
points; I mean the actual professional affiliations). Such awareness
can help critique the Western mainstream coverage of the second and
third stages of protest. 

Our fascination with mainstream coverage can end up paving the way for
aggression and war and more suffering of the very people we want to
see free. Without even being aware of it, we can partake in
“pink-washing:” the justification for more sanctions and suffering
in the name of aiding the victims of the regime. 

_So, what can anti-imperialist supporters of the protest who are
against sanctions and intervention do? _

There is a hypocritical element to the reaction we should call out. On
the one hand the symbolism is really attractive to the eye. The hair
cutting in the European parliaments and on social media was powerful,
and for me it was scary because I felt that some aggressive military
action was about to get a free pass under this symbolism. Also, why
wasn’t there this much attention given to the Hazara [an ethnic
minority in Afghanistan] girls that were mass murdered a few times in
the past year? Ironically enough, on November 12th, Germany proposed
more sanctions on Iran, although these are by definition an infliction
of pain on people, and then the funded opposition demanded cutting of
diplomatic ties. The problem is that the original hair cutting and
“solidarity shows” can dupe us into thinking that these  are
legitimate responses_._ 

The haircutting was a symbol of solidarity with progressive causes,
such as women’s right to choose what they wear and a people’s
fight against oppression. But sanctions will lead to further isolation
of the country from the sphere of global trade, travel, economy,
access to medicine, etc. _in the name of_ rectifying and fighting
the oppressive forces. 

So the coverage of the movement not only hides the mechanism of this
double oppression, it bolsters it by offering hawkish policies as the
liberatory next step. There is a long colonial legacy, too often
ignored, of isolating countries that have gained sovereignty over
their resources. 

“Anti-imperialist activists can help expose the sponsors of funded
opposition in their countries, and criticize hawkish policies that use
progressive terminologies like ‘freedom’,’ ‘democracy’ or
‘women’s rights’.” 

Western anti-imperialists are faced with a dilemma: on the one hand,
imperialist countries support and amplify protests in places with
(authoritarian) governments they don’t like. This can be beside the
point for the protestors on the ground who are suffering from
authoritarian injustice. The fact that the governments of countries in
which protests are happening _also_ co-opt anti-imperialist rhetoric
is one major reason that the anti-imperialist rhetoric gets ignored,
but it is also true that protestors can be intensely Eurocentric,
creating further problems. 

Some of this dynamic is already well-known by anti-imperialists in the
Global North, obviously not because they are inherently better
thinkers, nor because anti-imperialism is an all-inclusive way to
think about injustice, but because they are living in comparatively
stable countries where some open exchange of ideas can develop. The
stability is itself the result of having illegally occupied indigenous
land, but stability is a crucial factor that allows Western
anti-imperialists to _see_ and _make sense_ of the critiques of
the unjust world order. This should not result in Western
anti-imperialists castigating protestors in countries like Iran, or
reprimanding them because of their Eurocentrism, as this will
intensify the dilemma I mentioned earlier of increasing the power of
Western attention. 

Anti-imperialist activists can help expose the sponsors of funded
opposition in their countries, and criticize hawkish policies that use
progressive terminologies like “freedom,” “democracy” or
“women’s rights.” 

This way, they can provide us with the much needed time for the first
life cycle to thrive and for the ideals in the first cycle to bear
fruition and turn into lasting policies. Calling on their governments
in the West to stop from meddling in the internal affairs of a nation
who is already suffering  from extreme authoritarianism on the ground
is the ultimate anti-imperialist mission as it can allow us to deepen
our questions about the modes of activism we have. (Questions like
“Where we are in the world and in this geopolitical space? Whose
interests are being advanced by our activism?” “Can I harm my
people — the very sector I am supporting — with my idea of what is
good for them?”) Anti-imperialists can help us achieve the space to
explore these questions by asking their governments to stay away from
the internal affairs of other countries and by showing how money
affects and corrupts progressive activism. 

By the way, this is not easy for Western anti-imperialist activists. I
have often seen how they don’t want to stay at this level and want
to do a more glamorous task, like rebuking the protestors on the
grounds of being ignorant of CIA-backed operations, or make snarky
comments about the protestors being naive about imperialism. This is
not good: they might even whitewash the atrocities of some purportedly
anti-imperialist groups that hold power in countries in the Global
South, and allying with unjust forces, on the grounds that we must
focus on the bigger evil — imperialism. Again, this further
alienates protestors from exploring anti-imperialist interpretations
of the world order and inhibits discussion about it. 

I should note that it is very difficult for anti-imperialists to see
their mission as being the provision of time for reflection on the
nature of protests rather than castigating imperialist tendencies of
protestors. I am reminded of Jean-Paul Sartre’s own contradictory
remarks, chiefly his reiteration that philosophy needs time, but then
he later prescribes the need to speed up the process of thinking in
order for the Marxist moment of realization to happen faster.

Iranians outside of Iran who are anti-imperial, anti-war and
anti-sanctions are heavily marginalized, smeared, silenced and
cornered by the funded opposition. One great help would be to provide
platforms for them and offer moral and professional support during
these smears and help their nuanced narratives be heard. 

Lastly, in my view, anti-imperialists should commit to uncovering the
fallacious way notions of freedom are used,  they should face the
risk of being smeared, and they should keep asking questions about the
relation between foreign intervention and local protests in
geographies and countries afar. 

_Finally, what do you think the outcome of these protests will be? And
if they are suppressed, what might be the long-term impact of this
women-led movement on Iran?_

I am not good with predictions, but any suppression – be it in the
form of capital punishment or otherwise- is detrimental to developing
a more nuanced anger and a smarter, more reflective  response. We
already see this on the ground, namely the way rightwing organizations
and Western governments are given a free pass when they propose
further hostile policies under the name of causes like “woman,life
and freedom.” Sanctions create collective existential and
intergenerational fatigue. 

More women are resisting wearing the headscarf in public and this is
in and of itself a huge milestone. There are some conflicting reports
about how the “morality patrol” will be terminated which would be
another great milestone. I think the funded opposition will say this
is not enough and we need to do away with the whole system, which
itself is a troubling stance that needs a whole interview.

_NASSIM NOROOZI is a guest lecturer at McGill University and Concordia
University in Montreal. Noroozi’s work focuses on ethics of
resistance in today’s neo-colonial context and the modes of
mainstream perceptions of the Iranian opposition. _

_LINDA MARTÍN ALCOFF is a Latin-American philosopher and professor of
philosophy at Hunter College, City University of New York. Alcoff
specializes in social epistemology, feminist philosophy, philosophy of
race, decolonial theory and continental philosophy, especially the
work of Michel Foucault._

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* Iran
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* Women
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* morality
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* religion
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* United States
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* imperialism
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* anti-imperialism
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* Protest
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* disinformation
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* misinformation
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