Amidst the chaos of various reports from Iran, one thing seems clear: the election was stolen, and rather ham-fistedly at that.
I should hasten to say, it's possible that they stole an election they would have won anyway. I don't pretend to be an expert in Iranian politics, and with such a volatile situation--plus a class dimension pointed to by VLaszlo in quick hits that's never seriously discussed here--I doubt that many others outside Iran know much better either.
But I do know the tell-tale signs--at least some of them--when an election is being stolen. Manipulating and cutting off communications are right there at the top of the list.
Given that nothing could possibly de-legitimate the unelected government more than this, one has to wonder why they did it. Perhaps they didn't realize this. Perhaps they didn't care. Perhaps they even wanted it, to show how little they cared if they were seen as illegitimate. As I freely admit, I don't know enough about Iranian politics to even begin to say which is more likely. But given what little I do know, this moment seems clearly parallel to a number of other crucial moments in world history--none of them too happy in the short run.
Tianenman Square is an obvious parallel--a moment of potential transformation dashed, one that came at the end of a string of such moments that had swept through Eastern Europe. The CIA's coup in Iran in 1953 is another such moment, as is the multi-nation European uprising of 1848. These are all moments when it seemed that bonds of history might burst... but then they did not.
But what are those bonds of history? They are primarily the bonds of the masters, but they are also the bonds of necessity as well, which often means they are the bonds of what the poor need to survive. Those on the edge of starvation may eat like kings for a day if that's what it costs to rally enough of them to keep the Ancien Regime in place.
That's the bottom line of what I see happening in Iran just now. I'm not claiming it's the dominant framework we all should adopt in understanding events there--I don't claim there's any dominant framework at all.
I only claim that it's a valid one, that it gets at some significant piece of the truth--and that that piece is one that's widely shared around the world, not just now, but across a broad period of time, reaching back at least to the 19th Century, but forward we know not how long. For if we do not find a way past this point of impasse before too long, then global warming and other forms of environmental catastrophe will close off the possibility of further progress for at least a period of centuries.
We need to find a way forward that empowers individual autonomy while at the same time ensuring the essential dignity and security of the least among us--the basics of both political and civil rights on the one hand and cultural/socio-economic rights on the other.
This is not conceptually an impossible dream. It is entirely doable in terms of social dynamics. But there are tremendously powerful special interests opposed to it, and their are powerful myths we have come to believe that tell us it is not possible.
This is one reason why it matters a great deal what is happening in Iran today, where it's been reported that many supporters of Mousavi have gone out to protest without any hope of success, merely because they feel they must do it--one might say, out of a sense of "duty now for the future." And this sense of duty is not just important for them, but equally much for the poor masses who may have quite sincerely voted for Ahmadinejad as well.
Now, that's the kind of bi-partisan change I can believe in.
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