As the debate in Washington on whether to strike Iran advances — at the continued behest of Benjamin Netanyahu — the memory of the 2009 popular uprising against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed reelection recedes. Ironically, the same people who were championed for taking to the streets are now potentially facing bombs and protracted war. It’s as if the world has no memory — not only of the Iranian people, whose courage was the source of daily coverage in the Western media that summer, but also the potential of people power to affect real and lasting change.
The recently released documentary The Green Wave is an invitation to remember. By recounting the early days of the Iranian Green Movement through the eyes of two fictional students and bloggers (the composite of over a thousand different entries in Iranian blogs), director Ali Samadi Ahadi tells the story of the Iranians who poured into the streets, screaming “Where is my vote?” At the same time, however, it also shows what happened next: kidnappings, beatings, stabbings, shootings and disappearances.
While the The Green Wave offers a reminder of the remarkable people who risked their lives for democratic change, it falls short in offering a way forward. There is no smile and no hope, but only fears as the audience is taken to dark rooms and torture cells — ultimately left feeling unsure of how this movement even formed in the first place. Knowing that history helps explain why, after three years of violent repression, Iranians still seem eager to rise up once again.
Despite the perception that the movement was led by elite and opposition leaders, it was the populace that started the demonstrations. Only after this mobilization did the reformist leadership join the protesters and help coordinate demonstrations and strikes.
Some analysts argue that one of the most obvious errors of the Green Movement was the dependence of the populace on these leaders. As evidence they point to the decreased number of demonstrations following the house arrest of the two major leaders of the movement, Mehdi Karoubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi.
Reviewing the Green Movement’s successes and failures demonstrates that it is in the fifth stage of Bill Moyer‘s Eight Stages of a Social Movement. According to Moyer:
After a year or two, the high hopes of movement take-off seems inevitably to turn into despair. Most activists lose their faith that success is just around the corner and come to believe that it is never going to happen. They perceive that the powerholders are too strong, their movement has failed, and their own efforts have been futile. Most surprising is the fact that this identity crisis of powerlessness and failure happens when the movement is outrageously successful — when the movement has just achieved all of the goals of the take-off stage within two years.
This final point of Moyer’s is a positive one for the Green Movement and is bared out in my own interviews with Iranian activists. There is a strong and common belief, especially among young green activists, that “the movement has not died.” They believe that the movement is alive, but in a state of hibernation. The government seems to believe this as well, monitoring even minor activists, their families and friends. It knows full well the strength of this movement, its skill at organizing public demonstrations through Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, as well as reaching the outside world in spite of all efforts to block global electronic communications.
This current state of hibernation has not been helped by the international economic sanctions imposed on Iran. Many people are too distracted by their daily needs being threatened to focus on the movement. Meanwhile the main activists, organizers, planners and thinkers who would be working to move beyond the current situation are regularly placed in prison.
If this state of hibernation is to be broken, the movement needs to re-strategize and remind the populace of its beliefs, values and interests. Serbia’s Otpor movement did just that a little over a decade ago. Not unlike Iran today, Serbia was enduring U.S. economic sanctions and struggling with domestic pressures. But Otpor overcame the fears created by former Prime Minister Slobodan Milosevic by using tactics that put the government in a position where no matter how it reacted — either by ignoring the protesters or cracking down on them — it would lose. This strategy empowered the populace and led to increased participation and ultimately a general strike, which forced Milosevic out of power.
While some critics and analysts from outside and inside Iran continue to complain about the lack of strategic leadership and campaign organizing in the Green Movement, valuable time is being lost. They should instead be helping to strategize on how to wage a long-term campaign for the movement that will spur successive moves leading toward the achievement of social and political reforms.
Where The Green Wave fails in portraying hope and the positive aspects of the movement, it at least succeeds in reminding the world that Iranians desire to secure their own peace and justice. The story of how they awaken from hibernation and move forward in the aftermath of torture and suppression will be found in the next green wave. After all, the tide may go out, but waves will continue to roll in.
Since you brought Israel and the threat of war looming between Israel and Iran, I would like to point out that Iranian citizens are NOT potential targets of Israeli bombs in case of an Israeli strike, but Israeli citizens ARE potential targets of an Iranian bomb. If Israel were to attack Iran, it would target nuclear facilities. The leaders of Iran, on the other hand, have promised to wipe myself and most of everyone I know out of existence.
The threat of war should be something that scares all countries involved. But in this modern age, we cannot pretend that even the most sophisticated militaries are capable of preventing mass civilian casualties. Studies have shown the dramatic increase in civilian casualties from war to war over the past century.
In its 2006 war with Lebanon, Israel killed over a thousand civilians, wounded perhaps another thousand and displaced over a million. By contrast Lebanon killed 43 Israeli civilians. And if we look at the civilian death rates in Afghanistan and Iraq, we will see even higher death rates.
I think we can all agree that any civilian death is a travesty. So why can’t we agree that modern warfare is only increasing them and that claims that such deaths will be avoided or minimized are never backed up?
Bryan, while I agree with some of what you have said, I believe you missed the point of what Wizardofil was saying. Israel has not been saying that it wants to wipe out Iran or even to wipe out its military. Rightly or wrongly it is saying it does not want Iran to have nuclear weapons, especially when Iran and recently Iran’s proxy, Hizbollah, have been saying that they want wipe out Israel. Incidentally, Genocide Watch has issued an alert on Iran, see http://www.genocidewatch.org/iran.html, and places Iran at level 5. Recently the Iranian head of the Revolutionary Guards has said “Our response to Israel is clear: I think nothing will remain of Israel (should it attack Iran). Given Israel’s small land area and its vulnerability to a massive volume of Iran’s missiles, I don’t think any spot in Israel will remain safe”
He said Iran’s response to any attack will begin near the Israeli border. The Islamic Republic has close ties with militants in Gaza and Lebanon, both of whom have rocket arsenals that could be used for cross-border strikes.
Unfortunately, this is the very reason that Israelis are concerned about Iran having a nuclear weapon. You will notice Bryan, that the Iranian statements show no concern for civilians.
no body says we will wipe out Israel,but it is a natural process . many other regimes had similare destiny, Soviet union and A parthide regime wiped out!!and Israeal in the future!!!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/iran-guard-commander-tehrans-missiles-mean-nothing-will-remain-of-israel-if-it-attacks/2012/09/16/03f028b2-ffee-11e1-bbf0-e33b4ee2f0e8_story.html
Thanks Marvin. I see your point, but if we dwell on rhetoric, we are likely to miss the facts of the matter. Israel may say it is only seeking to strategically defend itself, as do most nations before they go to war. No one, not even the most ardent hawks in the U.S. government said they wanted to wipe out Iraq or Afghanistan. And though we haven’t used nuclear weapons, the effect, over the last 10 years has in many ways been just as terrible for civilians.
So, political leaders can say they are only going after the bad guys, but reality shows that is never the outcome. It seems the Israeli people get that, with polls showing only 27 percent in support of a unilateral strike. Meanwhile, as this article shows, the people of Iran still oppose (and want to bring down) their illegitimate regime — a regime that similarly uses fear (which in no small part is bred by Israel’s own access to nuclear weapons) to justify potential violent conflict.
My point in all this is to simply say when we talk about armed conflict we are talking about civilian deaths, and in this case civilians who almost toppled the regime that threatens Israel. Is that right? And, perhaps more pragmatically, is that going to breed the kind of peace most everyone wants for the Middle East?
Agreed!!!
This article calls to mind the question of why much of our mainstream media now is focused on Iran as a threat instead of focusing on what the United States could be doing to support a people’s movement in that country.
Perhaps there wouldn’t be so many threats to the US, or to Israel for that matter, if the US practiced what it preaches about supporting democracy and human rights.
How about solidarity between Occupy in the US and Western Europe, on the one hand; and, on the other other hand, Iranian and Arab people’s movements? Perhaps the US government would be more allied with those movements if big corporations didn’t dominate our political system.
A nuclear armed Iran is not just distablizing fact for the Middle-East, Israel and the nations bordering Iran. A nuclear armed Iran is a danger to any country which wishes to have a secular or any form of democracy.
We know that Iran financially supports terrorist organizations which kill and destroy without care for civilians and without warning. We know that Iran is supplying Syria in its brutal crackdown on civilian protest. It would be silly to assume that an Iran with weapons grade neculear material wouldn’t stop to use it to advance its agenda, which is radicalized and anti-Western and anti-humanist.
So forget peaceful non-violence. Unless you have your individual or collective heads buried, we must work to stop Iran from deploying directly or indirectly the material of war which kill innocent civilians.
Soemtimes, in the cause of saving humanity, we have to choose if we are on the side of right action or on the side of appeasement.
This world isn’t pretty or nice. And the fact is we all can’t get along. Never have and never will. Which is why survival is both critical and costly in the face of radicalized factions which have no problem eliminating humanist, secularist democracy in favor of religious dogma – be it Christian, Jewish or Islamic.
I don’t think anyone here has advocated appeasement or a nuclear-armed Iran in this thread (or the article). The discussion has mainly focused on extending the concern you have for Israeli and Western civilians to the people of Iran, who in great number oppose the policies of their president.
Thanks Bryan. Perhaps a lot of good could be done if ordinary folk pressured our governments and our corporate media to focus on supporting those in Iran who want to change how their country is run.
But the US is perhaps at best ambivalent about people in the Middle East fighting for democracy in their countries for fear that they’ll choose governments unwilling to cater to corporate-dominated interests.
Is that yet another example of how unrestrained corporate power is hurting us here and abroad ?
There are too many people making a lot of money from wars which their kids don’t have to fight in, for us to not be at least skeptical about yet another corporate media dose of fear, fed to us in sound bites and flashes of images mixed in with beer commercials, American Idol, and Survivor.
Greg Lukianoff writing in yesterday’s Huffington Post:
“Further, let’s not fool ourselves about what’s going on in these anti-U.S. protests all over the globe. As many commenters have said, the violence is not just about a YouTube video. It’s also an attempt to make a statement. Religious fundamentalists in Islamic countries, just like religious fundamentalists throughout history, want to send a message to their own people: We don’t want any Islamic Martin Luthers or, worse yet, Islamic Richard Dawkinses in our country, and you’d better not even consider trying to make waves, lest you be the next target of violence.
It’s become easy for American academics, elites and contrarians to scoff at the universal values of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom from imposed beliefs. But while America may be almost alone as a nation in being relatively purist about these doctrines, this does not mean we are wrong. A nation and even a world where it’s safe for people to believe as they choose–or not to believe at all–is one worth aspiring towards.”