- Recipient of the {warehouse} magazine prize for Urban Perspective -
By now, talk of the Iranian elections will have traversed into the abyss of yesterday’s news. Outrage at the outcome reached its crescendo some seventy two hours after it erupted. Indeed, what began as a popular march quickly descended into a not-so-trendy crawl.
At this stage, all but the most ardent Mir Hossein Mousavi supporters – scores of middle and upper class professionals upset at the disruption Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s pretensions have caused the Iranian investment climate but also some working class peoples concerned about their heightened economic vulnerability – will have resigned themselves to the president’s second term.
Regardless of one’s personal feelings towards either the individuals or the events in question, or towards the country altogether for that matter, some macro-level reflection about the state of contemporary democratic societies is now warranted.
Admittedly, Iran occupies a middle ground between democratic governance and theocratic rule. And yet, the idiosyncratic union of religion and politics does not negate the democratic credentials of similar states, namely Israel, the USA, and France where zealous commitments to specific faiths – Zionism, meritocracy, and secularism respectively – frequently prompt governmental action that harkens more to religious fanaticism than to rational deliberation. Thus, despite its particularity, the Iranian debacle does provide a useful case study by which we can assess various relationships within democratic societies.
The charge levelled against the Iranian ruling apparatus was simple, bordering on banal: the election was stolen. This may have been true. In his corner, Mousavi had the pre-election polls which predicted a tighter race than the one witnessed. Granted, most polls were not in Mousavi’s favour and several of the triumphant ones were conducted by either his office or the offices of his supporters, but the emergence of procedural irregularities encourages the exercise of healthy scepticism.
But then, the charge may have also been false. Like it {him} or not, Ahmadinejad enjoys a solid base. In addition to implementing a number of programmes of collective social uplift during his first term – increases to public sector wages and pensions, affordable loans, and social services funded by national oil wealth – he challenged political bulwarks including the domestic establishment {by exposing corruption} and a biased international order {by standing up for the nation’s independence}.
He did all this while shunning the egotistical extravagance so common to political elites, continuing to reside in the same apartment and to eat the same foods as the poor majority {far different, for example, from his British counterparts who rather enthusiastically raided the trough}. Neither benevolence nor courage nor modesty is lost on ordinary people.
Yet, for all his populist qualities, it should be noted that the benefits of many of his initiatives were nullified by excessive inflation for which his administration bears much responsibility {hence the participation of the poor in the protests}. Moreover, the somewhat selective – even sectarian – approach to the investigation of profiteering suggests that his hostility towards corruption is not as Robin Hoodesque as it may first appear. Finally, the further curtailing of personal freedoms under his watch has not gone unnoticed and merits collective condemnation.
In short, whether the election was rigged is difficult to know for, to date, all we have are unsubstantiated allegations and the balance of probabilities is evenly split. Just as the American Supreme Court preferred to let sleeping dogs lay in the matter of Bush v. Gore, ruling in favour of Bush and denying a simple recount, it is unlikely that this incident will be treated any differently by the political class in Iran. In the end, both the elections and the ensuing protests will prove to be little more than footnotes in Iranian history.
Yet, this does not imply that there is nothing to learn from the episode. Au contraire, the events narrate a highly educational tale about the role of media in present-day society.
Few would question the media machine’s efficiency. Once a major media outlet decides to run with a story – as was done with the Iranian election protests – there is little to arrest its circulation or to challenge the implications the particular telling makes.
Of the Iranians and non-Iranians supporting the protests – and they are numerous in Canada alone – an important distinction can be made between those reacting to the events and those reacting to the story of the events. I suspect those belonging to the former must possess a perpetual feeling of dissatisfaction with the media’s porous and flimsy representation of Iranian politics, as if social reality can always be tucked away in neat little binaries: tradition and modernity, religious and secular, legitimate and illegitimate.
As for those in the latter category, I wonder whether they would be as vehement in their indignation had CNN, CBS, or the BBC reported the story differently. Would protesters be as in incensed had the media, for example, related some of the progressive aspects of Ahmadinejad’s presidency? Had they focused on Mousavi’s economic programme, rife with neoliberal truisms that lay at the heart of the current global economic crisis? Or were emphasis placed on the contrast between Mousavi’s lavish lifestyle and Ahmadinejad’s common one?
Whether such matters are relevant depends on the position one holds. But there’s the rub; the media are not meant to hold a position at all. According to noted Israeli journalist Amira Haas, the role of the media is to monitor the centres of power. What better way to keep politicians in check than to present the stories, positions, and interests of the involved parties and let the public make up their mind. The media thus ensure the accountability of our elected officials; or so the tale goes.
There is a term for stories that contain little substance, an obvious slant, and are devoid of any critical analysis: propaganda. Cheerleading a particular position – there is a link between Iraq and al Qaeda, Hugo Chavez is a bad man, the solution to the economic crisis is to throw more money at the financiers who got us into the mess – is the role of a propaganda machine. Today’s media is a corporate-owned tool of propaganda, selecting which stories to popularise and which to exclude, and, in the process, how best to shape our opinions about issues of public import.
As Thomas Jefferson said, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. By goose-stepping with media representations of reality, we have abdicated such vigilance and, by extension, the very freedom democracy is meant to ensure. Ordinary people have become passive, pliant, and submissive expressing quasi Pavlovian reactions – four legs good, two legs bad – to news stories regardless of how superficial or contradictory they happen to be.
And so, Barack Obama can condemn Iran for its “crackdown on protesters” whom, he predicts, will find themselves “on the right side of history” {unfortunately for him, Tony Blair made the same prediction after invading Iraq}. He can do this three short weeks after visiting Egypt and consorting amicably with Hosni Mubarak, 28-year veteran despot and protest-crusher, and without any fear that a sycophantic press corps {and public} will confront him on the inconsistency. So is the state of media in twenty-first century democratic societies.
Then again, maybe Ahmadinejad is no more than a holocaust-denying fascist who stole the election. {w}
clamour: volume i, issue v
/// {voice} of the urban community ///
the {warehouse} magazine would encourage its community of readers to share commentary about articles read in this magazine - or elsewhere - and observations about the {insert adjectives here} world we live in.
This is YOUR platform. So be sure to read out {LOUD}.
