Review of Fenêtre sur l’Iran. Le crie d’un peuple bâillonné, by Mahnaz Shirali (Éditions Les Pérégrines, 2001)

Learning about Iran through its social media

photo_camera AFP/ATTA KENARE - A woman walks past an Iranian flag wall mural

Back in the 1990s, France-based Iranian academic Mahnaz Shirali conducted sociological research in Iran for her doctoral thesis, published in 2001 as La jeunesse iranienne: une génération en crise. Twenty years later she attempted to update her study and, with the help of collaborators inside the country, she distributed hundreds of questionnaires to Iranians between the ages of 18 and 25. Two hundred were returned duly filled in, but a number of the participants were summoned by university authorities and some were even arrested and accused of collaborating with the Mossad and the CIA. The academics decided to discontinue the investigation so as not to put anyone else at risk.

Faced with this setback, Shirali opted to study the Iranian youth through social media, very popular in a country where 70 percent of the population surf the internet every day. Her methodology was participant observation, through interactions with thousands of young internet users on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn throughout 2020. Fenêtre sur l’Iran is based on her analysis of these interactions and of several in-depth interviews with some of those young people, by phone if they were in Iran or in person if they happened to be passing through Paris. The author interprets her findings in light of the history and current situation in Iran and of her readings of Western sociologists and political scientists – most notably Hannah Arendt, whom she often cites.

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A society in crisis

Shirali paints a bleak picture of her country of origin. She describes the Islamic Republic as a place in which freedoms and human rights are systematically violated, public punishments and executions are used to terrorise the population, and prisons are bursting with political prisoners. She also denounces the greed and mismanagement of the mullahs, who accumulate wealth while three out of four Iranians live below the poverty line and squander the country’s resources on foreign militias that fight in their wars against the “great Satan” (USA) and the “little Satan” (Israel). To make matters worse, the Iranian authorities have reacted to the sanctions brought about by their behaviour by offering a Franco-Chinese oil consortium commercial terms akin to colonial-era concessions and by allowing the deployment of Chinese troops in Iran.

Confronted with political repression and the worst economic crisis in the country’s history, young people are unable to fully integrate into society and have no hope for the future. Those able to emigrate do so; many of those who can’t turn to drugs and prostitution or commit suicide. The legalistic Islam imposed by the ayatollahs has alienated them from religion up to a point where many of them see blasphemy as a form of resistance. They grew up surrounded by lies, so they have become cynical and do not believe in anything or anyone. They have no confidence in the foreign-based political parties, or the militants confronting the Islamic Republic, or Iran specialists like Shirali herself. In fact, they do not respect the notion of authority, whether it comes from parents, teachers, policymakers or clerics.

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Young Iranians flee the restrictions in the public space into the virtual world, where they hide behind aliases to avoid being identified and denounce the crimes of the Islamic Republic against its citizens. Social media allows them to mobilize, e.g. using hashtags like #StopExecutionsInIran on Twitter to protest the use of capital punishment against dissidents and political prisoners, or sharing photos with their heads covered and their breasts bare, or videos dancing, on Instagram and Facebook to denounce the arrest of women for posting images revealing their hair or showing off their dance moves.

Shirali argues that the behaviour of Iranian netizens shows that they have internalized the propaganda and methods of the state in which they grew up. They are attracted to Western ideas of freedom and democracy, but many declare themselves in favour of public punishments such as amputations, floggings and executions, considering such harsh justice necessary to deter common criminals. On the other hand, the vast majority of men disregard the demands of women, which they dismiss as secondary issues, and do not wish to question gender privileges.

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Young Iranians are also prone to conspiracy theories. They are convinced that western democracies are indifferent to the human rights situation in Iran, even that they secretly support the ayatollahs, because those powers prefer Iran to remain a weak country. Repressed, violated and humiliated, they are themselves violent and insulting to each other, although they all describe themselves as opponents of the regime. Incapable of critical thinking, they are easy prey to the Islamic Republic’s army of cybersoldiers, who work around the clock to mislead them with fake news, distract them with trivial matters, and sow discord.

Lack of alternatives?

Shirali explains that while the Iranian regime is widely rejected, the opposition is unable to provide an alternative. Shirali explains that despite the widespread loathing inspired by the Iranian regime, the opposition is unable to provide an alternative. There are numerous groups, from monarchists to republicans, from People’s Mujahideen to constitutionalists, all with a prominent internet presence that hides very low levels of popular support among the Iranian people. Their ties to their home country are often tenuous, and they are unable to organise even a joint demonstration. They compete fiercely with each other to attract the economic support generously offered by certain Western countries despite their accounting opacity, of which we had an example in Spain when it was revealed that the Islamist-Marxist organisation People’s Mujahideen had financed the beginnings of the far-right party Vox.

On the other hand, the Iranian people have lost their faith in the reformers who gave them so much hope and for whom they massively voted in the 1990s and the 2000s. Perhaps somewhat unfairly, Shirali attributes this to the fact that reformers and conservatives have more in common than what separates them, neglecting to mention the systematic disqualification of reformist candidates by the hawks of the regime. Nevertheless, her pessimism is somewhat justified by the fate of those who have tried to reform the Islamic Republic from within and have found themselves in prison, like human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, or in exile, like Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi

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Fenêtre sur l’Iran can feel quite repetitive at times, but its greatest flaw is its lack of nuance – which is ironic given that Shirali attributes that weakness to the young Iranian internet users she researches. Upon reading her work, the only possible conclusion is that all Iranians are against the regime and gleefully celebrate its setbacks, such as the assassinations of the leader of the Quds Force, Qasem Suleimani, and the father of the Iranian nuclear program, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. What’s more, they admire Donald Trump and eagerly await a foreign intervention that will liberate them from the ayatollahs, which seems rather implausible given that Iranians were direct witnesses to the dire consequences of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Additionally, the author makes a number of claims that would need to be properly referenced, e.g. that the Islamic Republic has an army of 12,000 cybersoldiers. Finally, her condescending tone can be irritating, as when she insists that Iranians have never really understood Western ideologies.

However, the work helps us better understand a fascinating society undergoing dramatic transformations. Shirali rightly denounces the most negative consequences of the repressive policies imposed by the Islamic Republic on civil society and on women, and she could also have alluded to the persecution of certain groups, especially minorities such as the Baha’is, the Zoroastrians and the Sunnis. However, the irritability, fickleness and incivility that, in her opinion, characterise young Iranians are common features of social media around the world, and their campaigns to defy the regime make us feel less pessimistic about the prospects for change in the country. Iranian internet users themselves refer to social networks as a form of “training for democracy”, and that could well be the main idea to retain from Fenêtre sur l’Iran.

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