The African World

BlackCommentator.com Book Review

The Other Green Movement: An Exciting And Complicated
Look At The Iranian Opposition Movement -

By Bill Fletcher, Jr., BlackCommentator.com Editorial
Board
BC
April 14, 2011

http://www.blackcommentator.com/422/422_aw_book_review_other_green_movement.php

    Nader Hashemi and Danny Postel, Editors, The
    People Reloaded: The Green Movement and the
    Struggle for Iran's Future , Brooklyn, New
    York:  Melville House Publishing, 2011, 440 pp.

Nader Hashemi and Danny Postel have produced one of the
most interesting, informative and timely pieces of work
on Iran that I have seen in some time.  Hashemi and
Postel, as co-editors, assembled the works of an
impressive collection of authors to tell the story of
the Green Movement of Iran, i.e., the opposition that
arose out of the response to the 2009 Presidential
elections.  What makes this timely, though, is less
about Iran, ironically, and more about the framework
which is presented that helps one better understand the
Arab democratic uprising that has been unfolding in
North Africa and the Middle East, this despite the fact
that the Iranians are not Arabs.  In a word, this book
forces the reader to look beneath the surface and not
be swayed by the superficial analyses so common in
mainstream/elite Western media.

The People Reloaded is a long book, but what makes it
quite interesting is the variety of articles, in
content, style and length.  This ranges from very brief
pieces that remind me of blog entries, to longer and
more in depth analyses.  As such, this is not a book to
rush through; it is one that you feel you have to
complete in one or two sittings.  In fact, I found
myself reflecting on various pieces after a good
reading and was not always prepared to move to another
article.

There are several features of this book that make it
well worth the read.  The first, of course, is that
most of the authors are Iranian and all of the authors
have approached the subject matter with an important
degree of rigorousness that makes the entire volume
authoritative.  Hearing Iranian voices, and
particularly ones that are not generally associated
with mainstream Western institutes and media outlets,
makes the book an essential instrument in critically
analyzing both the Iranian capitalist-theocracy and the
Iranian opposition movement.

A second feature is something that will unsettle some
North American readers.  Several of the articles
contain a quasi-anger towards many progressives and
leftists from the West who have either thrown their
support to the alleged "anti-imperialist" regime of
Iranian President Ahmadinejad or have taken an agnostic
course because the opposition movement is not entirely
a secular movement.  This quasi-anger was something
that I encountered several years ago in a different
setting, in Zimbabwe when I addressed a leadership body
of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions.  Although I
was politely received, when I had concluded my remarks,
I was asked by one of the delegates how was it that
many African Americans continued to support Zimbabwe's
President Robert Mugabe despite the repression that he
had (and continues to) unleashed against opponents over
the years.  This quasi-anger or defiance seemed to draw
from a similar source as that which I sensed in the
articles in The People Reloaded:  a self-confidence in
the integrity of their respective struggles and a sense
that many of us in the West are terribly
unsophisticated and one dimensional when we view
foreign phenomenon.

A third important feature, discussed in several
articles, was the question of non-violence.  The
authors took the time to walk the readers through the
complicated question as to why the opposition has
relied on non-violence despite repeated provocations
from the Ahmadinejad clique.  For some, the question
was a moral or philosophical one.  For others, it was a
highly practical one, specifically, that resorting to
violence would not only result in even more repression
but it would also likely result in the regime using
this as something akin to the 1979 takeover of the US
embassy:  a means to inspire pro-government,
nationalist consciousness against the opposition.

In the immediate aftermath of the 2009 election there
were several left and progressive commentators in the
USA who challenged the notion that the election had
been stolen.  Using various polling numbers they
concluded that the election results were consistent.
The authors handle this issue in some interesting ways.
For some, the fact that the results were so peculiar,
including in districts that were assumed to be
Ahmadinejad bases, was enough to raise doubts (e.g.,
where Ahmadinejad won more than 100% of the vote).  For
others, their experience with the highly repressive
Iranian capitalist-theocracy was simply enough to call
into question virtually any election.  And for others,
the election results were themselves not the key
matter; rather the election was the catalyst for an
opposition movement that had been gaining steam,
quietly, for some time.

There are those in the USA and other parts of the West
who have become entranced by Ahmadinejad's rhetoric.
His anti-USA and anti-Israeli rants inspire some in the
Western left who would rather not spend the time coming
to grips with the complexity of Iranian politics.
Instead we are treated to a variant of knee-jerk anti-
imperialism, that is, if an international leader
attacks imperialism generally, or US policies in
particular, there are some progressives who believe
that they should be supported, irrespective of the
actual policies of the particular regime.  For these
friends, the facts do not matter if they get in the way
of a persuasive story-line.  One is reminded of how
many genuine anti-imperialists in both Asia and the USA
were initially fooled by the anti-imperialist/anti-
Western rhetoric of Japanese imperialism in the 1930s
and early 1940s.

The People Reloaded compels the reader to dig a bit
deeper.  One is introduced to the world of the Iranian
opposition and the often contradictory politics that
exist within it.  One almost experiences the excitement
of the 2009 protests with the hundreds of thousands of
people who took to the streets.  What also comes
through in this book is the strategic dilemma faced by
the opposition in a situation where the ruling elite of
Iran has fractured but not split and this same regime,
along similar lines to the situation in Libya with the
Qaddafi regime, is quite prepared to unleash the dogs
of war against its own people in order to ensure its
own continuity.

The People Reloaded is a book not only to be read, but
to be studied.  It provides a means to better
understand the nature of the struggle for justice and
democracy in Iran.  Through such an understanding the
basis can be laid for a constructive dialogue between
progressive forces in the Western World and those in
the Iranian democratic opposition.  That democratic
opposition desperately needs foreign allies but does
not need or want governments-such as that of the USA or
Israel-militarily intervening.  The People Reloaded
leaves one with the sense that the Iranian people will,
ultimately, settle accounts with their own tyrants.
_________________

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Bill
Fletcher, Jr., is a Senior Scholar with the Institute
for Policy Studies, the immediate past president
ofTransAfrica Forum and co-author of Solidarity
Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path
toward Social Justice(University of California Press),
which examines the crisis of organized labor in the USA

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