Contesting the Iranian Revolution: The Green Uprising.

Abstract

Iran is but one country that gives real-world application to the Orwellian mantra that “history is written by the victors.” Indeed, the militant clerics, who consolidated power at the expense of all the revolutionary factions, have worked tirelessly to present their version of the Iranian Revolution’s history as the only version—one best encapsulated by the state’s preferred revolutionary slogan: “Independence, Freedom, Islamic Republic” (esteqlal, azadi, jomhuri-ye eslami). For years, the Iranian government has presented this one-sided history to the benefit of its ruling class and self-affirming ideology.

Just as the events of 1978-79 are far more complex and disputed than the state would like to admit, the historic uprising of 2009 is equally contentious. More than five years after the revolt, the Iranian government continues to refer to the Green Movement as “the sedition”—a conspiracy orchestrated from abroad and without organic roots within the country. Inspired by the studies that contested the “official” narrative of the Iranian Revolution, this work aspires to do the same with the “official” narrative of the uprising in 2009.

The events of 2009 are historically consequential not only because they could have dire consequences for the Iranian government in the long-term, but also because of what they tell the reader about the critical juncture in which Iran’s experiment with Islamism finds itself. After 30 years of Islamic rule, a new generation of activists, who were raised under the ideology and authority of the Islamic Republic, challenged that state by co-opting the system’s discourse, history, and symbolism, all of which they reprogrammed with subversive meaning and leveled against the state with a profound sense of purpose. In doing so, activists brought to the fore in a fiery manner the post-Islamist shift that has been taking place in Iran in recent years.

This study takes the archival footage from the events in question, interviews, memoirs, diplomatic cables, activist articles, news data, all of which are intertwined with the research material from the history of the Iranian Revolution in order to produce the context necessary to understanding the tectonic shift the uprising in 2009 represents.