Unity or Discord
Unity or Discord
Six months after the coming to power of the president who chose the name ‘National Unity’ for his government, we are witnessing an all-encompassing imbalance in various political, social, and economic arenas.
The defeated faction in the presidential election, which due to multiple causes and factors still possesses more determining power than the elected government, presents itself in the position of a claimant and demander in such a way that it is not satisfied with anything less than a full return to a position of complete purification.
The Emergence of National Unity
The unsuccessful and crisis-inducing experience of homogenization policies imposed a crisis of efficiency and legitimacy along with conflict and hostility on the public sphere of domestic and foreign policy, such that the gap between the nation and the government, as evidenced by the level of participation in the pre-fourteenth presidential election, reached its highest point in the history of the Islamic Republic.
In the absence of the possibility for reformist and national political action, the domestic far-right in the position of the government and the monarchist far-right in the position of the opposition imposed a radical struggle on the country’s political situation. The totalitarianism of the far-right encouraged the revolutionary and radical actions of the overthrow-seeking faction.
Reformists, however, in the midst of the struggle and conflict between homogenization and overthrow-seeking, supported Dr. Masoud Pezeshkian in the role of the hinge between the nation and the government, under the idea of reform from within, and made the deadlock and crisis in homogenization and the impossibility and undesirability of overthrow-seeking the prelude to their new reformist political action.
Unity After Establishment
After the coming to power of the fourteenth government and the unveiling of the concept of ‘National Unity,’ the country’s political sphere witnessed various representations and narrations of it. This concept, like other concepts, is heavily influenced by the political context, motivations, and the political psychology of those using the discourse and the political factions present in the political arena, theorists, and is affected by everything that has been involved in constructing politics and the political matter in Iran.
Understanding the concept of ‘National Unity’ without considering the context and the discourse that produced it is an incomplete and misleading understanding that is obstructive and paradoxical. It wasn’t long before ‘National Unity’ in the political arena was reduced from issue-centered agreement and efforts to solve the country’s problems to agreement and coalition with the rival and forming a shared cabinet.
The writer considers two interpretations of ‘National Unity’ presented by two prominent political science professors, Dr. Mohammad Mehdi Mojahedi and Dr. Abolfazl Daliri, as definitions stemming from the requirements and needs of normalization politics in the country. Mojahedi writes in defining ‘National Unity’ that it is the same strategic socio-political program that, by synergizing the exhausting conflicts among divergent forces and converging the forces within society and government, and by linking government and society, provides the conditions for solving Iran’s issues at a strategic level.
Daliri defines Dr. Pezeshkian’s victory as the result of the conscious action of all political forces, including decision-makers in the governance system, civil society actors, and the people, and considers a return to politics and following the discourse of compromise and reform as a necessity of the current conditions. However, what appeared in the political arena was something else.
Unity Against Politics and the Political Matter
Retreating from the narrative that considered ‘National Unity’ as issue-centered agreement to solve national issues to a narrative that prioritized overcoming political disputes emptied ‘National Unity’ of its political content, namely compromise and reform, and pushed it towards transformation and retreat. The concession of significant parts of the executive power to the rival faction not only did not create a place and field for issue-centered agreement but also allowed opponents of the compromise and reformist narrative to dominate the unity.
Using Chantal Mouffe’s agonistics, it can be said that the narrative not focused on politics and the political matter of ‘National Unity’ is an anti-political, unrealistic, transformation-seeking narrative that, ironically, will add to the bile of obstruction, anti-development, crisis, and dangers.
In another language, perhaps reconciliation, the effort to overcome agonism and not recognizing the system of difference and competition under the title ‘we are not quarrelsome’ is erasing the political issue and, in Agamben’s language, leads to a kind of eliminative integration or integrative elimination and emboldens the homogenizers to push back the advocates of unity, such that they know no limit in destroying and eliminating and transforming unity, as the great Saadi says:
If the sweet doll does not sit sour, her claimants will covet the candy.
Overlooking the agonistic, competitive, and conflictual nature of politics not only does not lead to overcoming disputes but guides politics from competition to enmity, conflict, and blind radicalism.
Integrating society will neither be achieved through homogenization nor through anti-political unity. Both of these anti-political paths will place a large lock on the door of politics. As Stanisław Jerzy Lec, the Polish physicist and diplomat, says, there are words so big and yet so empty that they can enslave entire nations. This one-dimensional narrative of politics overlooks the Janus-face of politics, which sees conflict and compromise as two sides of the god of politics.
Strong Society and Strong Government
When the rule of political science and its various experiences is that division, difference, agonism, plurality, and diversity are unrootable, the effort for purification, homogenization, and eliminating the space of competition and politics will lead nowhere. However, the politics of unity can, while accepting and recognizing these dynamic characteristics of society, pursue issue-centered problem-solving.
Unity at the top, to manage the growing challenges and risks of politics, to the extent that it is on the path of normalization and passing the consequences of exceptionalism, can be part of the normalization process, provided that the elimination and destruction of the dynamics of politics are not on its agenda.
Artificial, imposed, and one-dimensional unity, disregarding what is happening beneath the surface of politics below and in society, since it responds to the desires and wills oriented towards the power of political poles and gangs that have brought the country to this state instead of responding to the demands of politics, will lead nowhere.
Passive unity to eliminate what is called a dispute not only does not eliminate disputes and conflicts but ironically causes the anti-national current to be emboldened, eliminating agonism and the grounds for political competition, securitizing politics, and sliding politics from agonism to antagonism and conflict.
Transition to National Political Action
Max Weber, in a passage from his rich writing titled ‘Politics as a Vocation,’ considers politics a hard and slow transition through large and difficult obstacles, a passionate and simultaneously measured transition.
He defines these characteristics of politics not to despair and abandon politics but to hope for the future and through the passage of political action, and writes that it is entirely true, and all of history’s experience testifies to its truth, that if no one had previously entertained the dream of achieving any impossibility and pursued it stubbornly in the world, what is possible today would never have become possible.
But for this, the individual must be a leader and pioneer, and not only a leader and pioneer but also, in a very precise sense, a hero, and even those who are neither leaders nor pioneers nor heroes must be so brave and courageous that their hearts do not tremble even at the collapse of all hopes.
These characteristics are necessary today; otherwise, even what is possible and within reach today will not be achieved. Only someone who is sure that if the world one day seems too foolish and insignificant to him for what he has in mind, he will still not give up has the spirit of political action.
Only someone who, despite all this, can still say on such a day, ‘despite all this’ has the spirit of political action. Translation by Professor Mohammad Mehdi Mojahedi of a passage from Max Weber’s article.
Our country’s political sphere, despite all this, includes deep transformations compared to the past, a new arrangement in global and regional arenas, and demands and requirements of the context and time, demanding national and spirited statesmen who, instead of ignoring politics, take responsible political action centered on dear Iran, national interests, and benefits. This path is not, as some of Pezeshkian’s supporters say, resignation and withdrawal, which is a joint project of the domestic and foreign far-right, nor the imposition of a transformational narrative, but the revival of national and reformist politics and effective action based on practical interests.
The atmosphere is pregnant with various events, and large and significant decisions are necessary to overcome the dangers.
However, the political atmosphere is very ambiguous and distorted.
As Lichtenberg, one of the prominent figures of the Enlightenment in Germany, in a parable about what was happening in France, said, in France, the barrels are boiling; whether the result will be wine or vinegar is unknown.