The Protests of the Iranian People and Nonviolence: Yes or No
The Protests of the Iranian People and Nonviolence: Yes or No. Are the protests of the Iranian people a nonviolent struggle, a violent one, or both? Are events like setting garbage bins on fire, throwing stones, Molotov cocktails, and attacking security forces considered legitimate defense or violent struggle?
Some believe that nonviolence is a relative concept. For instance, when security forces attack protesters with various methods and tools, a counterattack is considered legitimate defense from the perspective of the audience.
The most famous model of nonviolent struggle belongs to Gandhi. His practical method was organizing large protest marches. It is quoted from Gandhi that when people, at a certain point in the 1920s, stormed and set a police station on fire and killed some policemen, Gandhi halted the movement at that time and said, ‘I do not want to be a part of this movement that is evidently heading towards violence.’
However, it is also quoted from Gandhi that he said somewhere, ‘I would prefer violence a thousand times to the emasculation of an entire nation and race. My theory of nonviolence never accepts fleeing from dangers and leaving our loved ones defenseless. Between committing violence and cowardly fleeing, I certainly prefer violence to cowardice.’
For this reason, some believe that we fundamentally cannot have a nonviolent struggle against repression. These are idealistic and unattainable desires, but we can be nonviolent, and civil struggles are also nonviolent, not without violence.
Some say that Iranian society has reached a point in its social struggles where it must choose between a violence-oriented or nonviolent approach. Although choosing one of these paths is directly related to the nature and extent of the government’s response and the tolerance of the activist society under these conditions, some believe that if the activist society is equipped with violent tools, the fate of social struggles could lead to nowhere and result in much bloodshed.
Conditions for Nonviolent Struggle
Nonviolent struggles have two essential conditions. First, the activists and protesters should not be the initiators of violence. The second condition is that they should not unjustifiably continue violence, meaning if there is no necessity to continue violence for legitimate defense, they should stop it. In many cases, individuals are forced to resort to a degree of violence to defend themselves.
People like Gandhi and Martin Luther King say that resorting to violence and using violent tools and its main method, that is, armed struggle, is fundamentally wrong because it leads to the proliferation and reproduction of violence. It creates a cycle that does not reach any conclusion, and through this type of struggle, you cannot achieve freedom and justice. On the other hand, it may cause innocent people to become victims, which is unethical. Therefore, they reject violent and armed struggles from an ethical standpoint.
There are also those who reject armed struggles from a strategic and functional perspective, like Mandela. Although he turned to violent struggles at one point, he criticized and rejected armed struggles. Mandela says that honorable violent struggles and sabotage do not lead to bloodshed and loss of human lives, whereas armed struggle leads to bloodshed and strengthens the cycle of violence.
Obstacles to Violent Struggle
We are now in times when many international institutions and democratic and free countries do not endorse armed struggles and violent methods and even explicitly reject them, often siding with governments in these cases. Therefore, activists will lose international support. Thus, both ethically and strategically, armed struggles seem rejected and ineffective.
On the other hand, in theories related to nonviolent struggles, especially in the discussion of civil disobedience, the first thing they say is that civil disobedience is practical in a structure that has at least minimal democratic conditions. There must be a degree of legality so that if you break a law, the other side reacts legally. From this perspective, many theorists, including John Rawls, Hannah Arendt, and Jürgen Habermas, say that civil struggles cannot be pursued in oppressive, authoritarian contexts.
For this reason, it is said that Mandela eventually concluded that nonviolent methods of the Gandhi type were not effective. Mandela, on one hand, said that our main issue is not to use methods that lead to the destruction and killing of human lives, but on the other hand, we must put a stick in the wheels of the government’s machine and raise the tension so high that the regime is ultimately forced to negotiate. Some believe that this method is what led Mandela to victory.
The Fourth Force of Nonviolence
Ahmad Zeidabadi, a reformist political activist who recently called for a nonviolent struggle, uses the term ‘Fourth Force’ and says that the Fourth Force is not a political demarcation. It is merely a name for all afflicted Iranians from every class, group, and faction with any kind of ideological and political inclination, provided they renounce the use of violent tools against their compatriots and fellow humans.
He points out that the weapon of the violence-seekers on both sides is to create fear and panic through threats and insults to silence and make us flee. He says we must show them that we are the children of Rostam Dastan, and we will not be silenced or flee from the roar of the demons and the howls of the wolves. We will stand courageously and with a nonviolent movement put them in their place. The homeland extends its hand of supplication to its noble children and calls them to rise and engage in a movement to reject violence.
According to Zeidabadi, the nonviolent movement, by its nature and goal, does not need an organization, leader, widespread media, or financial backing. It is enough to declare ourselves members of this movement and enter its circle, a circle without hierarchy, where everyone is equal, level, and accompanying each other.
Don Quixote: The Domestic Gandhis
Arman Amiri, in the channel ‘Assembly of the Insane,’ has harshly criticized Zeidabadi’s idea of calling for nonviolence and attached a picture of Don Quixote to his writing. He recalls the calm spirit of Gandhi, who gained his remarkable charisma from his astonishing gentleness, a calmness that truly erupted from the depths of his being and made even his greatest political enemies simultaneously admire his composed and lovable character. Compare this model with the self-proclaimed domestic Gandhis.
Then he brings up Zeidabadi himself as an example and writes, ‘For instance, the latest version of Mr. Zeidabadi, who has recently officially declared his prophetic mission, every word of his speech is filled with aggression, his face flushed, his speech full of resentment, hatred, and anger, and his daily actions claw at the face of the world and humanity. This image reminds one of a drunken black man with a sword in hand, foam at the mouth, disheveled hair, and a flushed face, waving his sword in the air and shouting, ‘Did you understand my nonviolence, or should I explain it to you now?’
According to Amiri, Gandhi’s nonviolence was his practical method of organizing large protest marches, meaning he never believed that to avoid violence, we should sit at home and become moral teachers for others. However, our domestic nonviolence advocates, while dedicating part of their peaceful activities to belittling, mocking, and reproaching virtual space activists, have not taken even a single practical step for a protest movement.
Arman Amiri writes that whenever one of these domestic Gandhis shows enough courage and integrity to say, ‘I will go to the streets on such and such a day and hold a nonviolent protest march for the victory of a nonviolent revolution,’ I will set aside all my beliefs in respect of this practical honor and go and walk alongside them with the same nonviolent tradition.
Iran Gate has been covering this event in particular since the beginning of the widespread protests of the Iranian people. You can read related content by searching the keyword ‘widespread protests.’ Additionally, we recommend two articles related to this writing.
- How Not to Get Arrested in Protests
- The Literature of Denial in the Islamic Republic