We now turn to two other philosophies – communism and fascism.
Communism
The second set of ideas popular in the lead-up to the Iranian Revolution was associated with communism. While some Iranians hoped to recast elements of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in a Shia mold, secular intellectuals looked to the Soviet Union for inspiration. The Communist Party of Iran (Tudeh) was founded in 1941, and a rival, the more left-wing Jangali Party, was established in 1920. Internal bickering split the Jangali movement and atomized it into small hard-left factions. It collapsed in 1921, but the Tudeh Party endured. Additionally, some left-leaning opinion-makers were independent of communist organizations.
Novelist and essayist Jalal Al-e Ahmad was not a communist, but his ideas and writings resonated with progressives and nationalists. His influential 1962 pamphlet, Westoxication, and his short stories argued that Iranians must control all elements of wealth, power, and culture. These ideas drew on Marx, Lenin, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Frantz Fanon and were debated on university campuses and in coffeehouses. Khomeini wrote favorably about Al-e Ahmad, who analyzed Iranian society through a Marxist lens. Khomeini saluted the mobilizing capacity and revolutionary zeal of Marxists, including Castroists and Maoists, though he did not share their view of religion. Similarly, in the twenty-first century, leaders of al-Qaida tried to lay the foundations for an alliance between radical Islamism and Western leftism.
Elements of socialism were compatible with Shia Islam. But communism never took deep and broad root in Iran, despite the efforts of Soviet-supported Iranian Marxists. Tudeh’s statement of principles, driven by atheism and its vague message of dialectical materialism, confused most Iranians. As with other Marxist groups, members of Tudeh snickered at religion but were willing to partner with clergy to forge a tactical front against a common enemy. Islamic radicals and Iranian communists shared a common enemy in the shah.
For this reason, the Tudeh supported Khomeini and the clerical regime in the aftermath of the revolution, though it regarded Khomeinism as little more than platitudes and abstractions. Khomeini, however, destroyed the party when he no longer had a use for it. The leftist Islamic group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) declared an armed struggle against the system in 1981. Nonetheless, the left was partially undone by internal bickering and its inability to solidify a base. Many Iranian communists were ethnic Armenians and deeply suspicious of any connections to Russia. By 1984, hard-left organizations were no longer capable of mobilizing forces for political change in Iran. Many of the leaders had been imprisoned, shot, exiled, or subdued.
Fascism
Most Iranians were uncomfortable with communism, though some were attracted to National Socialism and Italian fascism, the third set of new ideas examined here. During World War II, some Western intellectuals argued that fascist and communist regimes shared similar goals. Journalists at the influential Times of London referred to the Soviet Union as a fascist country. However, once fascism was defined, some Iranian intellectuals liked it. Fascism emerged in Italy during World War I, drawing on the ideas of the political philosopher Giovanni Gentile. His slogan was, “All within the state, none outside the state, and none against the state.” At its most successful, totalitarian states could eliminate thought crimes, a term coined by George Orwell in 1984. The first fascist movement to gain power was Mussolini’s Blackshirts in Italy in 1922. For observers of fascism, such as Orwell, it was not easy to fit Germany, Japan, and Italy into the same political framework. Fascist elements that attracted some Iranian intellectuals included the glorification of violence, fetishized masculinity, and mass mobilization. They were also drawn to the theatricality and fixation on enemies. Iranians applauded German fascism because it was hostile to British colonialism.
The elder Shah admired Hitler, National Socialism, and elements of the Aryan race concept, admiring and respecting Germany’s agenda in general. When Persia changed its name to Iran, Hitler reciprocated by making Iranians honorary Aryans. Hitler’s totalitarianism was predicated on an absolute identification with the community and the renunciation of individual rights or obligations to religion; indeed, in Hitler’s words, “We do not want to have any other God—only Germany.” Some Iranian intellectuals liked what they saw in Hitler’s collectivist and socialist philosophy. Some sympathy for Nazism continues today in Iran. Khomeini advocated for a dictator to lead an Islamic government and ensured that fascist principles would be enforced by the Guards, which has similarities to Hitler’s bodyguards, the SS. For all that, the philosophy that held the greatest and most enduring appeal for most influential Iranians was a resurgent and commanding Shia revivalism.
Elements of Islamism, communism, fascism, and Shia revivalism—the four sets of twentieth-century totalitarian ideas present in Iran—overlap. Communism and fascism are both authoritarian and atheistic. Islamism and Shia revivalism both want to build global Islamic law. Furthermore, the four ideologies all converge on seven points.
First, all four share anti-democratic ideals, seeing democracy as either hostile, misguided, weak, or ignorant of the importance of healthy leadership. Islamism and Shia revivalism see all man-made law as invalid because the only valid code is sharia. In Iran, the Guards enforce sharia and punish those who transgress it. Of all political and bureaucratic cohorts in Iran, few have shown more contempt for democratic norms than the Guards.
The second point of convergence is a sense of victimization. The German and Italian fascists of the 1920s accused the treaties ending World War I of being unfair. They argued that their states' borders were irrational and needed to be revised to reflect ethnic and racial collective identities. Communists focused on class warfare and drew inspiration from images of Spartacus liberating slaves in imperial Rome. Islamists and Shia revivalists argue that Muslims have been victimized by Western, non-Muslim forces to explain the relative backwardness of Muslim states and societies. Shariati and Qutb spoke of master-and-slave relationships under imperialism.
Khomeini accused the West of imposing an unjust economic order, thereby dividing Muslims into the oppressors and the oppressed. The Guards have long emphasized the victimization of Muslims, Iranians, and non-Europeans. Their publications assail the historical colonial practices of European powers, particularly Britain’s, and attribute many of Iran’s current maladies to past injustices. They blame Iran’s widespread poverty and relative underdevelopment on policies of the shah’s regime and on the current practices of the CIA and President Trump’s reimposition of financial sanctions.
Third, all four philosophies center on implacable enemies. Adherents of each of the four idea sets see themselves in a pitched, unrelenting war with enemies. The Soviets declared capitalists, wreckers, and subversives their enemies. The Nazis identified lower races as enemies to be purged from the collective gene pool in German-controlled territory. The Iranian enemies are the United States, Israel, and world Jewry. According to Shariati, all of history was a struggle between two religions—God’s doctrine of justice and man’s worship of greed and injustice. The Soviets and Nazis were threatened by Western liberalism and social license, which they saw as subversive. Islamists, notably Qutb, and Shia fundamentalists see the West as immoral and hostile to Islamic values.
In line with these ideas, the Guards have been charged with unmasking, imprisoning, and, at times, executing prisoners. Fourth, all four ideologies are anchored in contempt for nonconformity and the conviction that the individual must be subordinate to the collective. This collective may be the larger racial grouping in Nazi Germany, the economic class in the Soviet Union, or the religious body in Iran. The Basij, truncheon in hand, stroll the streets to discourage and penalize social nonconformity. The Guards use cyber operations to block Iranian protests against the regime.
Fifth, all four are utopian. Communists imagined elements of a pure and primitive prehistory that contrasted with the materialism and corruption of the European industrial revolution. The perfect future would have an equal distribution of wealth, no poverty, and access to health care and education for all. There would be no war because there would be no human conflict. For National Socialism, utopia was a racial order; the Nazis looked back to a time of imagined racial purity and hoped to recreate it by eliminating existing contaminants. Islamists and Shia revivalists pictured a utopia of first-generation Muslims conducting a perfect society. Khomeini held that Mohammad’s Mecca and Imam Ali’s caliphate in the first generation of Muslims were models to emulate. Khomeini also anticipated a planetary conflagration that would establish Allah’s kingdom with the return of the Mahdi. His advent could be hastened by creating the right set of circumstances and a sufficient set of nuclear weapons.
The Twelver Shia believe that the first twelve imams who succeeded Muhammad were sinless and chosen by God as models for future generations of Muslims. In their historical narrative, these imams were hounded and killed by the Sunnis, except for the twelfth, who disappeared and has been in hiding ever since. Each year, millions of Shia make a pilgrimage to a well in the village of Jamkaran, near the city of Qom, to pay homage to the Mahdi. The Twelfth Imam will return as the Mahdi, or savior, and reveal himself. Then Jesus will return to earth to battle the forces of evil. Good will triumph over the wicked; Jesus will die and be buried alongside Muhammad in Medina. Then comes judgment day, when the world’s inhabitants will ascend to heaven or descend to hell. Utopia is found in that Islamic heaven.
Sixth, all four ideologies are driven by a mandate for change, compelling them to crush existing societies and craft new ones. Those who obstruct this plan are enemies. Khomeini agreed with al-Banna and Qutb that reviving “true Islam” was imperative to establishing God’s sovereignty. The Guards lead Iranian efforts to change the old order in the Greater Middle East.
