Iran, “People Power,” and the Ghosts of 1989

A whole host of professions devoted to the memorialization of political movements — journalists, activists, historians hungry for op-ed opportunities –  anticipated 2009 if for nothing but the fact that it marked the twentieth anniversary of two of the most consequential events in recent world history: the fall of communism in Europe and, in China, the massacre at Tiananmen Square.

But this year has  marked far more — the culmination of a decade during which the shine came off the “end of history,” as Francis Fukuyama blandly labeled the post-communist period. First came the wars (Iraq, Afghanistan) often irresponsibly dressed up as civilizational struggles, then a collapse of faith in capitalism so stunning that, had it happened during the Cold War, might have sparked, if not a reverse 1989, a considerable propaganda coup for the Soviet bloc. Whereas one of the cataclysmic events of 1989 — the fall of the Berlin Wall — was more widely celebrated in the soaring boom of the late 90s, 2009 seems more ripe for an exploration of the ambiguous legacy of both the popular movements that swelled, on both sides of Eurasia, twenty years before.

Enter the Iranian election imbroglio, perfectly timed to capture a zeitgeist brimming with expectation of cultural chaos and refreshed by reminders of the popular demonstrations that erupted on the streets of Berlin and Beijing. Salient memories of the former make it unsurprising to watch media figures, cheerleading what they hope is yet another replay of 1989 Berlin, lump the demonstrations against the election result with other recent “Twitter Revolutions”. While Evgeny Morozov disputed social media’s usefulness for such movements in the March/April issue of BR, he is having slightly more trouble doing so in the context of Iran, where the government — let’s all stop inconsistently plastering every momentarily disfavored system with the epithet “regime” — is either much less sophisticated at harnessing the internet for propaganda purposes, or doesn’t need to.

After all, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad counts among his supporters significant numbers of the lower classes, and, though reported on with far less zeal by the BBC or (when it finally stuck its head out of the embarrassing gutter of celebrity gossip in which it’s been increasingly entrenched) CNN, many thousands of them also managed to mobilize in Iran’s capital without the aid of an expensive iPhone. Indeed, missing from the many discussions about the protests in Iran, from technology to the flared tempers on display in the streets, are they they, like many large street demonstrations over the past decade — and unlike the uprisings of 1989 — have been taking place in an atmosphere charged with class politics.

Read the rest of this entry »