No doubt, it can be perilous for Westerners to wade into the mire surrounding Middle Eastern and Persian politics, and the ongoing drama taking place in Iran is no exception. Cultural, political and geographical differences combine to make analysis, comparisons and even empathy tricky for the most level-minded observer. Yet the disputed election, populist uprising and official response offers some insight into both Iranian history and the jockeying for power among Western interests. At the risk of getting in over my head, I'd like to offer a few thoughts on something I know a little bit about - the American media.
Whatever one's political orientation, the election discrepancies, the Basij-backed suppression of and violence against protesters, and the massive limits on and censorship of media coverage unfolding in the streets of Tehran should cause revulsion and anger. Yet one needn't sympathize with the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to recognize that even a flawless election would have been scrutinized and attacked by the majority of Western observers and the press corps, and that the wall-to-wall coverage of this complex state of affairs has been greatly simplified - little surprise, as the majority of Americans incorrectly believe, among other things, that Iranians are Arabs. I won't suggest I have any major insights into Iranian political culture or what the disputed presidential election may portend for the greater future. But I will argue that I'm somewhat dismayed at the black-white approach assumed by our television, print and electronic commentators in the mainstream media. Indeed, the amount of coverage awarded to the elections themselves - air time, column space, blog entries - is somewhat telling. Certainly, Iran's volatile reputation, nuclear ambitions and long history of estrangement with much of the Western world would unsurprisingly result in massive attention being paid to an election, disputed or not. Yet I'm reminded of the distinction made in the late 1980s by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman between "legitimizing versus meaningless third world elections," in which both the official stance from Washington and the coverage assumed by the media of foreign elections is directly linked to and partially pre-determined by the United States' interest and / or sponsorship of political parties. One needn't subscribe to Chomsky's worldview to recognize that, for example, Nicaragua's 1984 election, in which anti-Washington leftists achieved victory through rather undisputed voting procedures, would be viewed less warmly than 1984's El Salvadoran inconsistent yet ultimately "pro-American" election. Given the long history of antagonism between the United States and Iran, any electoral inconsistency would of course be highlighted and analyzed. On the one hand, this is as it should be - any rigged or faulty election is a blow to democracy and justice. On the other hand, many other elections suffering equal or greater discrepancies become overlooked or explained away by Western observers, depending upon the larger sympathies or political interests at play.
Ahmadinejad is a difficult figure to defend in any capacity, yet it says something about the media's appetite for sensationalism that so much Western coverage has focused on his loathsome comments about the Holocaust. These inflammatory statements seem less born out of ignorance or even pure hatred and more from a tired and predictable (and therefore even more immoral) approach to political divisiveness and the rallying of extreme factions. Make no mistake, his anti-Semitism deserves coverage. Yet these comments overshadow nearly everything else taking place within his rule, including the fact that Ahmadinejad's support in Iran has at least as much to do with his rather outspoken commitment (whatever his real reasons) to fighting poverty and assuming a populist fiscal approach. Mir-Hossein Mousavi, it must be noted, has assumed a much more privatization-friendly approach. The election, therefore, seems as much about traditional political and economic differences as about the fight against tyranny and suppression or the desire to crush Israel.
This is a complicated business, and requires some level of simplification for outside observers. And yet I'm surprised at how the American media has attempted to frame the election, the disputed results and the resulting protests through an incredibly simplistic prism of American political and social culture. To my mind, this has manifested itself in three distinct framing devices with which the media, the commentators and the wonks have analyzed the election fallout.
1) Neocon attempts to paint the protests as the direct or indirect spawn of President Bush's stated ambition for greater democracy in the Middle East. This argument is understandable in a time of upheaval for the neoconservative movement in general and a period of defining the legacy of George W. Bush. Yet one wonders how a people lumped into a hastily-conceived "axis" would identify or even wish to be associated with the philosophy of the recently-departed president. Despite his anti-democratic tactics and moral ambiguity, Ahmadinejad is no Saddam Hussein or Kim Jong-il. And the neocon push for Middle Eastern democracy seemed mere lip service at times, in which the use of force trumped populist movements and political hopefuls needed to toe a pro-American line. In the end, crediting Bush with the Tehran protests seems deluded wishful thinking.
2) Equally simplistic has been the crediting of a so-called "Obama Effect" on Iran, in that Obama's somewhat open approach towards Iran and the 2008 election itself had somehow coalesced to throw off the shackles of repression and let the sunlight of freedom shine broadly upon Persia. As somebody who voted for Obama, I reserve the right to find the media's adulation of him rather silly and somewhat distasteful, and while I'm willing to admit that African democracy movements may yet find some inspiration in Obama's election, I suspect that his impact on the Middle East has been, and will be, rather negligible for some time. The citizens taking to the streets and dodging the aggression of the Basij likely have things other than the 44th President of the United States on their minds.
3) Perhaps the most insulting framing device to my mind has been the media's anointing of social networking devices as the prime instigator and enabler of the ongoing protests. Naming movements is always fraught with peril, but unsatisfactory as the "Green Revolution" or the "Persian Awakening" may be, they at least reflect some degree of cultural specificity. But when I hear talk of a "Twitter Revolution" (a term also tossed about during the Moldovan unrest this year), I suspect the worst. There's no denying the fact that tools like Twitter, iPhones, blogs and other electronic networking devices have assumed a large and necessary role in a time of media and journalistic suppression. Important pieces of information, raw video and timely communications have undoubtedly spread thanks to these tools, and the future may well show that revolutionary movements and dissenters have gained a new weapon in the fight against authority. But much of the dialogue strikes me as a mere marketing tool. Never mind the fact that the accuracy and effectiveness of the blogs and Tweets have yet to be proven (unsurprisingly and understandably, large amounts of information transmitted through these means have proven inaccurate, inflated and incoherent). I fear the future ad campaigns for social networking tools that aim at convincing American teenagers that having a MySpace account in and of itself constitutes social activism. I imagine a "Start Your Own Revolution" campaign in which posting fan photos of John Mayer is juxtaposed with the martyrdom of Neda Agha-Soltan.
There's little doubt that something went wrong in the voting booths of Iran last week, and that the official government response has been brutal, censorious and unacceptable. Yet I wonder why the media is so quick to assume the standard narrative of American pluck and technology transforming peoples across the globe. We're still trying to fully understand the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Let's not get ahead of ourselves with this one, no matter what we decide to call it.
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