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The Iranian Gracchus Feels Their Pain

“I believe if he really could, he would help us.” That belief, far more than anything Ahmadinejad has said about nuclear power or the Holocaust, defines Iran’s energetic president for the people who elected him almost a year ago, as well as the legions he appears to have won over since taking office in August. […]

“I believe if he really could, he would help us.”

That belief, far more than anything Ahmadinejad has said about nuclear power or the Holocaust, defines Iran’s energetic president for the people who elected him almost a year ago, as well as the legions he appears to have won over since taking office in August. If his image in the West is that of a banty radical dangerously out of touch with reality — “a psychopath of the worst kind,” in the words of Israel’s prime minister — the prevailing impression in Iran is precisely the opposite.

Here, ordinary people marvel at how their president comes across as someone in touch, as populist candidate turned caring incumbent. In speeches, 17-hour workdays and biweekly trips like the one that brought him here to Central Province, Ahmadinejad showcases a relentless preoccupation with the health, housing and, most of all, money problems that may barely register on the global agenda but represent the most clear and present danger for most in this nation of 70 million.

“It’s good to have a very kind person near you, caring about your problems,” said Akram Rashidi, 34, at the counter of a stationery store where the run on envelopes outpaced the supply of change. “The important thing is that the president and important people are caring about the people.” ~The Washington Post

It would hardly be the first time that a populist, nationalist demagogue would be elected on the basis of his solidarity with the common man, and also hardly the first time that such a demagogue would be militant and combative towards the outside world. These are two sides of what Kuehnelt-Leddihn awkwardly called identitarianism, and they are main features of every kind of leftism, including democracy. The rise of such demagogues is, of course, the flaw inherent in mass democracy or, if you prefer, any system infected by mass democratic practices such as general elections that make the head of government the tribune of “the people.”

Lost in the banter of ignorant or ideological Western pundits is the recognition that Ahmadinejad was elected (and, lest we forget this, he was popularly elected) principally on the basis of his “man of the people” routine, and that his rise to power has come on the basis of the very dissatisfaction with the rule of “the mullahs” that the most outspoken critics of Ahmadinejad also oppose. What is Farsi for “I feel your pain”?

To that extent, as much as he has been personally, intimately involved with the Islamic Revolution, he remains a political outsider in relation to the people who are actually in charge of long-term security policy. The demagogue will say what he will while he goes on making his show of concern for the common folk, but real security policy will still be decided by the clerical and military authorities.

The observation of one analyst in the story that “he is in a perpetual campaign” is telling–it reminds me immediately of Clinton, and it also smacks of a Rovian sort of politics. If the man is perpetually campaigning, it is much less likely that what he says about any particular issue can be taken as anything other than more demagoguery to cement his position. On the other hand, if his domestic program is in earnest he will rapidly earn the enmity of entrenched elites and could go the way of Tiberius Gracchus.

If he suffered the fate of Gracchus it would undoubtedly annoy the jingoes in this country, who need Ahmadinejad’s explosive rhetoric to justify their anti-Iranian attitudes, but it would surely be ironic that the representative of the democracy about which they are allegedly so keen should also be the source of their greatest anxiety in international affairs. You might think it would cause them to reconsider the wisdom of further democratising the Near and Middle East, but somehow I think they prefer the danger and instability democracy foments. It gives them crises to “solve,” which they solve, of course, by sending other people to do all the real work.

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