| Why '79 Reasearch Paper By Farhad Saberi October 29,2001 http://www.ParsZamin.com/essay/why79/html At the end of 1978 in Iran, there were demonstrations in the streets, mostly conducted by university students. The main demand was Human Rights. Other demands were more political freedom, better management of the country's oil revenues, and an end to an oppressive regime. There were many arrests and imprisonment. The demonstrations did not stop however. In 1979 the demonstrations grew unexpectedly to staggering levels. In the capital, Tehran, the number reached into the hundreds of thousands. The Shah of Iran, then the absolute monarch, chose to leave the country instead of opening fire on the demonstrators. Hence, a revolution had occurred. But why should have a revolution occurred? Why did the people demonstrate? What were the reasons behind the masses? Was it simply the same reasons that dominated the media, that is, more political freedom, greater participation in the decision making about the country's future and Human Rights? Or were there other reasons? Did there exist other more powerful motives for the people's outcry that did not appear in the media? The answer is yes. I have talked to many people who were adults in 1979. Some of them participated zealously in the demonstrations. I asked these people why did the revolution occur? Why were they in the streets in a state of frenzy, screaming slogans at the top of their lungs, and rejoicing? None of them are capable of giving an answer that was satisfactory to me. The best answers they could come up with were "Human Rights," or "the Shah was wasting Iran's oil," or "democracy." At first sight, these answers seem legitimate enough to gather a patriotic mass into the streets and scream "death to the Shah." However, the research that I have done shows that the causes of the revolution reaches beyond these reasons. If people were only concerned about the above causes, the revolution would not have occurred. The latter happened because the motives were so much more powerful resulting the coup d'�tat. People argue, consciously, that the causes of the revolution revolved around three main reasons given above. I have to stress, again, that these reasons are the ones that people know consciously. The subconscious reasons are the ones that I never hear. The causes responsible for stirring overwhelming emotions in the people were subconscious. It is for this reason, subconscious feeling, that today, the demonstrators and participators in the revolution twenty years ago are incapable of seeing, even themselves. In short, today, people don't understand why the revolution occurred because the reasons were subconscious. In this paper, I will give the reasons behind the strong subconscious impulses of the people of Iran. Then I will explain how these subconscious feelings were implanted in the people. To understand the reason for the revolution, one must go back to the early 1960's. Iran was a country struggling to catch up with modern technology and civil laws. The Shah of Iran set out to modernize Iran in every way. From military to tall buildings to technological industries, Iran, in the Shah's vision, was going to compete with the western world. As he said in Persian, he was going to create a "tamadone bozorg," which means "great civilization." The Shah said to his people that he ought to go so fast that they would have to run in order to catch him. He did not have the time to wait for the people to adapt, understand and appreciate the modernization. To illustrate how far the Shah went to create a great civilization, one must look at what happened when the Shah tried to modernize Iran at such a fast paste. After quadrupling the price of oil in 1973, the Shah makes purchases costing billions, and ships full of merchandise are steaming towards Iran from all the continents. But when they reach the Persian Gulf, it turns out that the small obsolete ports are unable to handle such a mass of cargo (the Shah hadn't realized this). Several hundred ships line up at sea and stay there for up to six months, for which delay Iran pays the shipping companies a billion dollars annually. Somehow the ships are gradually unloaded, but then it turns out that there are no warehouses (the Shah had not realized this). In the open air, in the desert, in the heat, lie millions of tons of all sorts of cargo. Half of it, consisting of perishable foodstuffs and chemicals, ends up being thrown away. The remaining cargo now has to be transported into the depths of the country, and at this moment it turns out that there is no transport (the Shah had not realized this). Or rather, there are a few trucks and trailers, but far from being adequate to what is needed. Two thousand tractor-trailers are thus ordered from Europe, but then it turns out there are no drivers (the Shah had not realized this). After much consultation, an airliner flies off to bring South Korean truckers from Seoul. Now the tractor-trailers start rolling. With time and the help of foreign freight companies the factories and machines purchased finally reach their appointed destination. Then comes the times to assemble them. But it turns out that Iran does not have near enough of engineers or technicians (the Shah had not realized this). From a logical point of view, anyone who sets out to create a Great Civilization ought to begin with people, with training cadres of experts in order to form a native intelligentsia. And yet how do we build it in Iran, where there are no experts and the nation, even if it is eager to learn, has nowhere to study? In order to fulfill his vision, the Shah needed at least 700,000 specialists immediately. Somebody hit upon the safest and best way out- import them. Tens of thousands of foreigners thus begin arriving. Airplane after airplane land at Tehran airport: domestic servants from the Philippines, hydraulic engineers from Greece, electricians from Norway, accountants form Pakistan, mechanics from Italy, military men from the United States. Let us look at the pictures of the Shah from this period: He's talking to an engineer from Munich, a foreman from Milan, a crane operator from Boston, a technician from Montreal. And who are the only Iranians in these pictures? Ministers and Savak agents guarding the monarch. Their countrymen, absent from the pictures, observe it all with ever-widening eyes. This army of foreigners, by the very strength of its technical expertise, its knowing which buttons to press, which levers to pull, which cables to connect, even if it behaves in the humblest way, begins to dominate and starts creating an Iranians inferiority complex. The foreigner knows how, and I don't. This is a proud people, extremely sensitive about their dignity. An Iranian will never admit he can't do something; to self. Such an admission constitutes great shame and loss of face. He'll suffer, grow depressed, and finally begin to hate. He understood quickly the concept that was building his rulers: All of you just sit there in the shadow of the mosque and tend your sheep, because it will take a century for you to be of any use! I, on the other hand, have to build a global empire in ten years with the help of foreigners. This is why the Great Civilization struck Iranians above all as a great humiliation. In fact, the Shah, for encouraging military personnel from the United States to come to Iran, issued an immunity for them and their families from Iranian law. One of the most famous sayings of Khomeiny was born from this, which said that "an American dog has more rights than does an Iranian, in Iran." He was right. The people were even further humiliated by this. To illustrate further the humiliation of the Iranians, let us revisit the 1971 celebrations of the 2530th anniversary of the original Persian empire founded by Cyrus The Great in the sixth century B.C. Kings, presidents and special envoys from all countries in the world came to attend the celebrations which was going to be held at Persepolis, an ancient city of the Persian empire. The guests aside, almost everything at the party had been brought from Paris. An encampment of tents was constructed on the dry, high plateau of Persepolis. At the center of the tent city was a sort of Big Top, where receptions and dinners were to take place. It was draped with ruby velvet and furnished with gilded chairs. Around the main tent were scores of smaller tents for the famous guests. They were cleverly designed, in France, and contained two bedrooms, two marble bathrooms and a small, chic sitting room. There were hot plates for breakfast, refrigerators for drinks, and ironing boards for the frantic maids. The plumbing must have been a great feat of civil engineering. The cost: $300 million dollars and that in a country where per capita income, though rising, was still only about $500 a year. The content: all French. And who are the people not attending the party? The Iranians themselves. Having such a party of Persian history not for the Iranians, but for the foreigners not only humiliated the people, but separated the Shah from the them. The inferiority complex, the humiliation, the separation of the Shah from the people, and the fact that they were not proud of the modernization and the building of the great civilization, since they were not participators, created a sense of resentment in the Iranian subconscious. The departure between the people and the monarch widens, subconsciously. People no longer feel that the Shah is the protector of Iran. He is perceived in the hidden psychic of the Iranian as a foreigner in charge of Iran. In 1963, Khomeiny, from the city of Qom, spoke outwardly against the Shah's policies. He spoke of the foreigners that the Iranians did not want in their country. He concluded that "the Shah must go!" He was arrested and put in exile. He first went to Iraq. Then he was moved to Paris, France. Khomeiny, with the help of a few of his followers, from his Paris home, recorded tape after tape which were sent freely to Iran and distributed among the people. We know that in the subconscious minds of the people, there is already unhappiness, resentment, sadness, humiliation and a loss of ego and self esteem. But it would take a certain manipulation of the human psychic in order to manifest subconscious content without fearing one's accompanying emotions. They are concepts referred to as the loss of identity, or the deprivation of an individual from independent thought. This mind manipulation was being achieved through the tapes of Khomeiny. We know of another mind manipulation in history. Hitler's, one of the most influential humans who ever lived. There was an incredible resemblance between what Hitler achieved in the 1930's, and what Khomeiny achieved, through the medium of his recordings, in 1978. It was this kind of mind manipulation that fired up the masses in the streets. Khomeiny, just like Hitler, exploited the unhappy subconscious minds of the people in order to create his revolution. If people had the chance to use their logical, intelligent and independent thought, they would not have revolted, because they would have known that in many ways, what the Shah wanted to create was, in the long run, good for the people and for the country. The people would not have revolted if their conscious minds were conducting their behavior. By looking at how Hitler achieved the manipulation of the German people, we can understand how Khomeiny managed to do the same with his Paris cassettes. At his trial after the Second World War, Hitler's Minister for Armaments, Albert Speer, delivered a long speech in which, with remarkable acuteness, he described the Nazi tyranny and analyzed its methods. "Hitler's dictatorship", he said, "differed in one fundamental point from all its predecessors in history. It was the first dictatorship in the present period of modern technical development, a dictatorship which made complete use of all technical means for the domination of its own country. Through technical devices like the radio and the loud-speaker, eighty million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man. Earlier dictators needed highly qualified assistants even at the lowest level � men who could think and act independently. The totalitarian system in the period of modern technical development can do without with such men; thanks to modern methods of communication, it is possible to mechanize the lower leadership. As a result of this there has arisen the new type of the uncritical recipient of orders." Since Hitler's day the armory of technical devices are more than ever at the disposal of the would-be dictators. As well as the radio, the loud-speaker, the moving picture captured by the camera, and the press, the contemporary propagandist can make use of television to broadcast the image and the voice, and can record them on spools of magnetic tape. Thanks to technological progress, Big Brother can now be almost as omnipresent as GOD. This is how Khomeiny was present to the people. From Paris, he made his recordings on modern technology, the magnetic tape, called cassettes, and sent them to Iran. Every home had a copy of his tapes, which came one after another, within reasonable intervals, so as to keep his Big Brother figure always present in people's minds, like god. What were the methods used by Hitler for "depriving eighty million people of independent thought and subjecting them to the will on one man? " What was the theory of human nature upon which those terrifying successful methods were based? What is the nature of the ordinary human that allowed Hitler, then Khomeiny, to condition the subject people, depriving them of independent thought and undermining the ordinary person's common sense and logical thinking? Hitler had a deep respect for the Catholic Church, Islam and Judaism; not because of their doctrine, but because of the 'machinery' they have elaborated and controlled, their hierarchical system, their extremely clever tactics, their knowledge of human nature and their wise use of human weakness in ruling over believers. Discipline and spirituality, not for of God's sake, or to achieve personal salvation, but for the sake of the State and for the greater glory and power of the demagogue turned Leader, this was the goal towards which the systematic moving of the masses was to lead. Let us see what Hitler thought of the masses he moved and how he did the moving. His first principle: the masses are utterly contemptible; there are reasons around them which has, or can, cause them contempt. The ordinary people are incapable of abstract thinking and uninterested in any fact outside the circle of their immediate experience. Their behavior is determined, not by knowledge and reason, but by feelings and unconscious drives. It is in these drives and feelings that the roots of their positive, as well as their negative, attitudes are implanted. To be successful a propagandist must learn how to manipulate these instincts and emotions. As Hauxley put it, "The driving force which has brought about the most tremendous revolutions on this earth has never been a body of scientific or logical and thoughtful teaching which have gained power over the masses, but always a devotion which has inspired them, and often a kind of hysteria which has brought them into action." Whoever wishes to win over the masses must know the key that will open the door to their hearts, not their individual thinking. The heart must be won, not the logical and the intelligent thinking of the individual. And this is what Khomeiny played with. He played with the people's hearts. He lied to them about Islam, opening their ignorant hearts to him, while exploiting their humiliated subconscious. Hitler made his strongest appeal to those members of the lower middle classes who had been ruined by the inflation of 1923, and then ruined all over again by the depression of 1929 and the following years. The masses of whom he speaks were these bewildered, frustrated and chronically anxious millions. To make them more mass-like, more homogeneously subhuman, he assembled them, by the thousands and the tens of thousands, in vast halls and arenas, where individuals could lose their personal identity, even their elementary humanity and be merged with the crowd. A man or woman makes direct contact with society in two ways: as a member of some familial, professional or religious group, or as a member of a crowd. This is part of the ordinary person's nature. Groups are capable of being as moral and intelligent as the individuals who form them; a crowd is chaotic, has no purpose of its own, and is capable of anything except intelligent action and realistic thinking. The thousands in Hitler's arenas became those in the bedrooms where Iranians would gather to listen and be brainwashed by knomeiny's Paris tapes. Assembled in a crowed, people lose their powers of reasoning and their capacity for moral choice. Their suggestibility is increased to the point where they cease to have any judgment or will of their own. They become very excitable, they lose all sense of individual or collective responsibility, they are subject to sudden accesses of rage, enthusiasm and panic. In a word, a man in a crowd behaves as though he had swallowed a large dose of some powerful intoxicant. The crowd-intoxicated individual escapes from responsibility, intelligence and morality, into a kind of frantic, savage mindlessness. And this is what we saw in the streets of Iran in 1979. We saw people crying "death to the Shah" without even thinking about what it meant. Because most people were crowd-intoxicated. Going back to what I said in the introduction paragraphs of this paper. "People do not know why they revolted. They don't remember." Now it makes sense! They don't remember because they were crowd-intoxicated. To conclude, I will give a final thought to the reader. In north America where democracy seems to be the political system, one must be very aware of the dictatorship behind this so called "democracy." Every day we are subjected to reports about our leaders would-be. The news paper, television and radio are the dictators in this so called "free democracy." One erroneous report by CNN affects completely the outcome of our votes. Two reports by the CBC can create social unrest. If the media would want to, it could dictate people into a civil war in any city. On the other hand, we feel that we are in a very healthy society. We feel freedom when it comes to independent thought, individuality and freedom of choice. We are in perfect conformity with the media and the political system. We are happy because we feel that we are living in a normal society. We feel that our mental health is intact. Many of us are normal because we are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because our human voice has been silenced so early in our lives, that we do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does. We are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; we are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Our perfect adjustment to this abnormal society is a measure of our mental sickness. Millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted, still cherish the illusion of individuality, but in fact they have been to a great extent de-individualized. Their conformity is developing into something like uniformity. But uniformity and freedom are incompatible. Uniformity and mental health are incompatible too. Man is not made to be an automaton, in a crowd or in a society, and if he becomes one, the basis for mental health is destroyed. Back to emails index |