The Government of Humiliation, Repentance, and Self-Serving

Note--In all societies, there are individuals who are losers, unemployed, stranded, displaced, desperate, and exploited alongside ambitious and greedy individuals, some of whom may be willing to submit to any humiliation to achieve their desires through immoral and illegitimate means. In some governments, individuals must submit to humiliation not only for immoral and illegitimate desires but also for ordinary and common requests. It is in authoritarian and totalitarian regimes that the grounds for this humiliation-seeking are well established in both cases. To support the claim that the Islamic Republic is such a regime, it is enough to refer to instances of these self-degrading behaviors to meet ordinary individuals' needs—such as obtaining and maintaining jobs and continuing to live. The four examples I have chosen each reflect a spectrum of these humiliations: an exiled artist, a repentant communist, and two different artists within the country. All four are victims of the Islamic Republic and find themselves in a position where playing in the humiliation scenario is perceived as a method for their survival. Habib's letter for returning to the countryReturning to one's homeland and country is a right of every human being. However, this right in Iran cannot be achieved without self-humiliation: individuals must either remain silent throughout their lives or, if they voice any protest and their work is not favored by the government, pay the price for it for the rest of their lives. In a secular and normal society, such letters should not be written: "Dear Mr. Ahmadinejad, esteemed President, I explicitly and loudly declare that I have national and Islamic pride and a firm belief in the current laws of the country and I despise the traitorous sellouts who are in the service of global arrogance and Zionism and have never cooperated or communicated with them and have not sullied my hands with treason. Of course, I acknowledge that I have lost my youth and life, which was my main asset, outside the country and I may have also made some mistakes." He must insult his opponents, who at least have transformed and developed a broader perspective, to appease Ahmadinejad to open the way for his return to the country: "Gentlemen who now talk about freedom, human rights, and citizenship rights in the guise of reform, caused a climate of distrust and fear among some compatriots with their narrow-mindedness and lack of foresight at the beginning of the revolution, to the extent that some of them were forced to leave their homeland with tearful eyes without having any fault, of which I am one." (Fars, June 21, 2016) He returned to the country but despite these statements, he could not work in his homeland.Confessions of Masoud FarasatiAnother group that the religious government loves very much is the repentants, those who, under pressure, submit to the values and behaviors of their interrogators. The interrogator feels that he has a superior value and ideological position in this confrontation, but his only advantage is his greater force and more powerful weapon. Repentants have been present in all institutions since the beginning of the Islamic Republic, even at high levels. The government particularly likes to have repentants in the field of art and culture so that they can be better controlled (their repentant file is always ready to be presented to the public and thus their character is humiliating) and also serve as a lesson for others not to "raise their heads too high." One of these repentants who has become a popular critic of cinema for the intelligence agencies and the ruling elite is Masoud Farasati. He says about his process of becoming a repentant: "I was part of one of the leftist groups. Leftist, as we used to say at that time, independent. We thought. A thought that is still dependent. Non-mass left, because the mass left had dependencies both on the front and financially. We came to Iran and defended the revolution. At some point, we did not kill. I also became passive. Not just me, some of the kids became like this. We split. Some took up arms against the government. My group became passive. They said this path is wrong, but they became passive. We had no other way because the people were on the other side. We were not against the people. We did not know what to do. In the last year and a bit, we completely reached a dead end, and they arrested everyone in one night. At the end of 1981, we went to Evin. I had an interrogator whom I could see from under my blindfold. The edge of his coat was torn. He was a master's student in political science. He was a month old. He had to punish me. At the same time, he had my punishment order, tears fell from the corner of his eye. I saw this. If you tell this to a modern person, they will not understand. What do I have with this fight? He changed me, so I sat down and read like a donkey. I read 400 volumes of books (in prison). I was a Maoist leftist. I started reading. I started with philosophy. Then history and then everything. I read everything serious. I read Al-Mizan. I carefully read the four fundamental volumes of Allameh Tabatabai and made notes. Intellectually, I had already been shot in the head, meaning I was passive. I was not religious, I still hit left. Gradually, I reached some things. When I went to the Sharia judge, he asked: "Do you accept the Islamic Republic?" I answered: "No." He asked: "Do you accept Islam?" I replied: "No." He said: "Go." I was under a death sentence for three and a half years. The interrogator knew me. I mean, during this time, he had dealt with me so much that he knew me. One night he came to my cell. I turned my back to the wall and sat down. He said: "Donkey! I want you to be tried again from the beginning. Don't make yourself soft. I know you are no longer a Marxist. I also know that you support the Islamic Revolution. Whether you are a Muslim or not is not my concern. I will ask you questions, answer like a human. Don't make yourself soft. Is that acceptable?" I said: "Acceptable." He said: "You owe me." He was a very good kid." (Tabnak, June 18, 2016) Farasati, after prison, still carries an anti-imperialist ideology and becomes a native critic and anti-imperialist of American cinema and Iranian intellectuals. His words continue the guidelines of Khamenei in the field of art and culture: "My critique [of the film Muhammad] was read by Mr. Khamenei and he said, 'Pay attention; this critique is serious.'" (Same source) For three decades, Farasati has lived in the same atmosphere of interrogation humiliation and repentance and Stockholm syndrome (falling in love with one's interrogator) and for this reason, he calls those he dislikes "culturally impotent" imitating Javadi Amoli. Such behaviors align with the tradition (of swearing and cursing) of the left and also serve to get closer to the security and military institutions that Farasati works with. The protest of Mehran Ghafourian against the insults of Ansar has made artists and writers who want to avoid being deprived of these resources or having their activities banned humiliate themselves again in conditions where they are humiliated. Calling some artists impotent by Ansar Hezbollah is a humiliation, but the more complex humiliation is that the humiliated individual, instead of defending themselves, insults the government’s opponents for mentioning this humiliation. One of these humiliated artists said: "In protest against a magazine's insult to artists, any reaction I show has nothing to do with hostile satellite networks and I have never responded to their calls." (Tabnak, June 30, 2016) In this message, referring to the hostility of the satellites, he is self-serving for a regime whose supporters insult him. Later, he tried to resolve his protest against humiliation (taking a photo with a person whose headscarf was pulled over their head and even their face was not visible): "I covered one of my friends who was a boy with a blanket and said my proposal for the Hafez Festival in 2017 is such a covering; I never intended to mock the hijab, nor would I do such a thing, nor can the hijab be mocked. I believe the hijab has sanctity... My wife’s family and my mother also chose the superior hijab, meaning the chador; my wife is also religious, and my friends and acquaintances know that the Ghafourian family is religious... Mehran Ghafourian declares from here that he loves the hijab and neither mocks it nor can it be mocked... My wife comes from a family that has the correct hijab and has chosen the chador; both the manteau and the chador are respectable to me... On the day of the Hafez Festival, the wind was blowing, but despite all these explanations, which man would agree to let his wife move around in a gathering with an open manteau?" (Interview with Fars, August 7, 2016) Tataloo and Support for RaisiAmir Hossein Maghsoudloo, known as Tataloo, supported Raisi in the 2017 elections. Over the past decade, he has experienced various paths to obtain permission for his activities, from singing nationalistic anthems to justice-oriented works and getting close to football players to insulting his interrogator and then apologizing to him. However, none of these made him a singer without restrictions. Ultimately, he sided with someone in the elections who had been banned from performing concerts in his city. Even after Raisi's defeat, he did not remain silent and praised Elham Charkhandeh in a post on Instagram: "A true Iranian lady, I pray to God that you always be healthy and happy; you have shown that it is not only men who can be strong. The day people realize that change is truly possible and that anyone can change, they will understand that you were among the first people, and that day is not far away." (Khabar Online, May 30, 2018) By praising Charkhandeh, he shows that he is willing to endure any humiliation to convince the coercive powers of his change (from an underground singer to a government preacher) so that he can carry out his normal work.Enjoyment from the Suffering of OthersCertainly, when the clergy and their guards hear such humiliating and self-serving words, they become intoxicated and take pride in having established a government where individuals must crush themselves before it to survive and work, to avoid imprisonment and torture, and to ensure that no one disturbs their families and that their children do not grow up without parents. A totalitarian religious government cannot control its citizens without humiliating them and enforcing an ideologized Sharia. The people living under this authoritarian and totalitarian government cannot continue their lives without enduring a level of humiliation (or diving into the sea of it for greater benefit) because the country's resources are at its disposal. The Islamic Republic has acted in such a way that the only way for citizens to escape enduring humiliation is to leave the country or for this government to fall. Of course, the government has acted in such a way that many believe that the collapse of the religious government will not be possible without the collapse of society.