The Danger of Republicanism

So what is the danger? The danger is that in order to rebuild society, you are forced to take all these pieces that were ground together over the course of history, ground together in this historical mill, and separate them out, reassemble them, so that society can once again reach a place of respect and trust, while at the same time being ready to sacrifice one's life for the person standing next to you, while also fearing that same person, fearing they may not be one of us.

That is the calamity we have experienced over these four decades. And the calamity that has befallen the Iranian people has ultimately sown a terrifying seed of violence for the future. And nothing can be done about it. No matter how much I tried over these past few years, kept saying let us move away from post-revolutionary violence, let us attribute the violence to the pre-revolutionary period, let us move past the friend-enemy dynamic, the us-versus-them framing, the polarized condition, because it was necessary for the revolution but is no longer necessary in the post-revolutionary period. Let us separate these things out. But everything gets ground up and in all of this things no longer

Because the violence that we will likely witness in the future, before it is realized, had to become possible first. Everything in the human world works this way. Anything that is going to be realized collectively must first become possible, possible in language, possible in ideas, possible in historical experience, possible in consciousness. But first the idea strikes you, first you begin to dream about it, first you share it with others through language and the channels of language, and then you reach a collective understanding, then you arrive at a consensus.

That is, a consensus around taking revenge on all these forces already exists in Iran today. A consensus that the only way to achieve justice is this, already exists in Iran's future. So if tomorrow someone truly takes hold of Iran and the Iranian people and tells them that you committed violence, one must ask who made that violence possible, what historical conditions we went through that made this violence possible. This violence became possible in language,

before it found historical realization, fascism became possible through the historical humiliation of the German nation. And this shows that when you humiliate a nation, the end result is fascism. I don't want to defend fascism. I don't want to justify it. I don't want to excuse it. I am explaining it. I am trying to understand why it happens.

It is not the case that it arises out of nowhere. There is always a history behind it. Behind every catastrophe you see, behind every rage that suddenly erupts throughout history and destroys a place, or builds something, or in any case wipes something out, or in any way deforms it, before all of that, these things accumulate layer by layer, and in the end there is an accumulated, repeatedly reinforced trauma, such that the subject can no longer move past it. Whatever they do, it is right in front of their eyes.

it is right in front of their eyes. these two days, and the images that came out of these two days, are not something that will leave us alone anytime soon. In the past few days, I have not had a single peaceful night. I have not slept well one night. To give you an example, two nights ago I went to bed and I was awake from five in the morning.

I cannot sleep. For whatever reason, I get heart palpitations. I am anxious the whole time. I want you to see this and put it in a broader context, to understand what this is doing to society. And if this final resolution does not happen, what else does it leave behind, what hatred does it plant inside us. And again, that same hatred could make certain things possible. But

who keep saying that because you, or the Iranian people, are going to restore the monarchy, they feel sorry for them. Mr. Mohammad Mahdi Ardavili feels sorry for you. This is because he still imagines that history is linear, and that there is a Hegelian spirit moving through this history, ultimately driving it toward progress. That is why, if people return to a point they were at before, these people are considered reactionary. They are considered regressive. So

that demands humility and meekness from those at the top ultimately ends up, in a hidden way, dismantling this hierarchy. And that idea imagines, it imagines that the pride and the grandeur found in the upper classes, meaning those who have been at the top throughout history, were something they constructed themselves and imposed on others.

It never addresses the level at which the people in the lower layers are telling you: now that you are in the upper layer, look down at me from above. Society needs this. Citizens in general, historically, the masses and people need this: that when someone is at a higher rank than them, they can lift their heads up to see that person.

If through morality they managed to bring those people down, to bring their position to an equal level, it is over. They eliminate them and then say to them: why did you come down in the first place, so that I could destroy you? Meaning the answer is: they need people who those people can look up to with pride, and who historically serve as guardians of things like grandeur, like greatness, like honor. Our idea

whose status is much higher than yours, to wear different clothes, drive a different car, just to show you that yes, I am of a higher status. But there is this morality, this ethic, where certain people come and constantly whisper things into society's ear, like humility, meekness, yes, simple living. That is the issue.

These people have a problem with social hierarchy, and they go to war against the ethics of hierarchy, and they have turned this into a dominant morality. What I want to say is: be careful of these things. They ultimately pursue equality, and you know that equality will become a project, like social engineering. Everyone is supposed to fit under this table.

Whoever doesn't fit, we cut off a leg, we cut off a head, but everyone must fit. That is what equality means. If you want to pursue it, that is fine, but ultimately, because human beings are not equal, it will turn into engineering equality within society. And anyone who wants to rise above another in talent, in innovation, in intelligence, in effort, they cut them down. Equality, how appealing it sounds. And that is what has sounded appealing to me for years. These concepts that today

discarding tradition is actually a completely cognitive mistake, and here is why. Because they felt that religion is genuinely real. This distinction, please keep it in mind. Even someone like Nietzsche, Nietzsche himself makes this point. He says that if ultimately we can show that the source of religion is not God and not divine, it will collapse.

The question Nietzsche asks is: why is it that when it became clear that morality or religion has no transcendent origin, it did not fall apart or lose its functions? The answer is that if you regard all of these as human achievements, meaning you treat God as well and religion as well as human achievements, your problem will be solved.

But if you take the position that now that we know there is no God, others had fabricated this, it was a lie, and we must fight against this lie, then again your problem with the social world will become something else. That is, you enter into a struggle and you begin to receive history in a conflictual way, and you receive it in a linear way, and in doing so you place all achievements to one side.

think about whether monotheism was not that historical moment of finding God, but rather the end of humanity's search and the declaration of the end of humanity's search for God. Meaning, a point where people said, "We found it, this is it," meaning, stop searching. It is the end of that search. Or for example, if you look at the concept of confession in Christianity, it is helping that person reach the end of their search for forgiveness in the world.

We create a place, we build a location, we put a person there and we say, this is the place of forgiveness, this is the address for forgiveness in the world. Do not wander lost asking who will forgive me, who will forgive me. Go here, you will be forgiven. Done. Anyway, it is a mechanism that puts an endpoint on humanity's searching.

Humanity, which for thousands of years has been asking where I came from, who is my God, who created me, and at some point it was said, by this one, and his name is this, and this is his name, and this is his house. How different this is, because here you are taking a human being into account and you realize that this is saving the searching mind from distress and from wandering lost throughout history. Rather than saying this was a trick to impose something, it is the end of the search for God.

it is the end of the search for God. Hegel says religion is a superficial passage from God. Hegel says religion is a superficial passage from the idea of God. But I cannot quite agree with Hegel, because Hegel's assumption is that God exists somewhere else, that God is present in another place, and religion made a superficial passage from Him.

Meaning, once again, a wandering, lost human being is being encouraged to go searching through history and look for something in the form of an intellectual history and cultural history, to search for something so that you can find it. Well, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with the Enlightenment itself, the same thing happened.

That is, this natural rights framework and this positivism that dominated, really, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which wanted to receive everything in a rational form, ultimately also regarded the human being as a purely rational subject, one who can lay foundations. Kant, on the Enlightenment, says exactly this, that it is an exit from all the forces that have taken the place of the human being and reason on their behalf.

Now, these forces that have taken the place of the human being and reason on their behalf, can the human being reason without these forces? Here, these forces that stand in your place and think for you are not forces external to you. Kant should have understood this. These forces are not external to the human being.

These are the human being's own historical forces, which in any case produced a hard-won, difficult consciousness, which became my guide in the face of that. which became my guide in facing that. Human beings are not founders. Human beings are not originators. That is, we always

beings are not originators. That is, we always The reasons for our actions, the prescriptions we have for life, the vision we have of happiness, the expectations we have of what well-being means, all of these we see reflected in these historical sources, which others, with their help, actually put in place and came to our aid.

The point Burke makes is this: society is a social contract, but where does he part ways with Locke and Rousseau? Locke and Rousseau say the social contract is among the living. Burke says, do not be mistaken, society is a social contract between the dead, the living, and those yet to come. You live within this social contract, and you cannot revolt against or destroy something that belongs to the dead.

In a sense, he is speaking of a democracy of the dead. He says they too are partners in your present, and you are merely a trustee in this trust. You can adjust and modify it, you can reform it, just as they did, meaning they carried it hand to hand, adding things to it and taking things away. But you cannot simply, just because

simply, just because just because I am a living person in Iran today, I cannot put territorial integrity to a referendum. From Burke's perspective, you cannot. Those who gave their lives for your territorial integrity, who suffered and endured hardship, who became impoverished, and the future generations whose lives must be accounted for within this political geography.

Because if you want to rely only on this, in fact, the excuse that I am a living person, you will be dead in sixty years, and what has been your tradition and exists as historical memory, you can only be a noble and faithful trustee, passing it on to the next generation. But from a Lockean perspective, it is not.

From that perspective, it is not. Burke says this social contract cannot be broken in any way. Because the state of war of all against all would follow. But Locke says if the government was tyrannical, you can, because it applies to every social contract. But from

every social contract. But from But from Burke's perspective, he looks at this history and tradition in this way. What is he trying to say? He wants to say: you who will die in sixty more years, if you realize and understand that future generations will not be the guardians of your legacy and your struggles, you lose all reason for any effort and endurance.

That is, if someone tells you that fifty years from now, or twenty years from now, or ten years from now, the suffering that women today endured in order to reach the freedom to choose their clothing, those people came along and voted that they want compulsory hijab again, he says you lose every reason for the suffering you endured, and society will make no effort to even fight it, because there is always the possibility that in the future it will be nullified.

That is, the ideas about freedom that I have gained could be nullified and ignored. So that is where its importance lies. Do not think that the dead are simply gone. We too, fifty years from now, all of us sitting here will be dead.

So that is where its importance lies. Do not think that the dead are simply gone. We too, fifty years from now, all of us sitting here will be dead. fifty years from now, will look back and ask: did the people who came after us, did our children, did the new generation, preserve the memory of our suffering?

Did they turn it into historical memory? Otherwise, people will tell you: no, back then some people were killed, thousands of young people, children, women and men, in the streets of Iran, what meaning could that possibly have? It becomes completely meaningless. Any struggle, any noble act, will become meaningless. Because how much longer are we really going to benefit from this change in circumstances?

What we are pursuing, part of our subjectivity, part of the Iranian subject's mentality, is built on the idea that I want to build something for my children. As for me, my time has passed, let my children, I mean... We defer it to the future, just as those who came before us had the hope that we would receive these achievements, passing them on to those who came after, who are us, and we must be the guardians of these things.

that I consistently try to speak against republicanism, and this is why. Because republicanism, in my view, is a prescription that is supposed to completely rebuild everything from scratch. It is opaque about the future it intends to build, and because it constantly defers that future to broad concepts like the general will, like representation, like democracy, it makes clear it does not want to be bound by any fixed principle, and in practice it is placing its entire bet on change itself, on the act of transformation.

This cannot produce truth. Look at the thinking that exists inside the republicans, and the goal they have been pursuing since the revolutions in Iran: a total renewal. Everything is supposed to be new. Everything is supposed to be new. Why do I say new? I have a reason for it. For seventy years, since Iran's modern history, republicans have wanted to say: we are going to create something that is neither the first Pahlavi nor the second Pahlavi nor the Islamic Republic.

Meaning for at least seventy years they have wanted to create something, and yet what they offer is something that for at least seventy years we have not been able to find. Where is it?

Look at the thinking that exists inside the republicans, and the goal they have been pursuing since the revolutions in Iran: a total renewal. Everything is supposed to be new. Everything is supposed to be new. Why do I say new? I have a reason for it. For seventy years, since Iran's modern history, republicans have wanted to say: we are going to create something that is neither the first Pahlavi nor the second Pahlavi nor the Islamic Republic.

Meaning for at least seventy years they have wanted to create something, and yet what they offer is something that for at least seventy years we have not been able to find. Where is it? Where have we not found it? Where is it hiding in our history? What kind of idea is this that has not yet struck, but exists inside your mind as a republican, and you are pointing to the future as if it will be found there?

And then when we ask, which one is it? Is it the first Pahlavi? No, death to Reza Shah. Is it the second Pahlavi? No. Is it the Islamic Republic? No. So what is it? Not a sheikh, not a shah. Well, what is it? What is it that you hold in your hands, yet for seven hundred years no matter what we tried, we could not find it?

We had the Constitutional Revolution, we did not find it. We did not find it. We had 1304, we did not find it. In your view, we did not find it. We went through World War and in your view, we did not find it. We had the Shahrivar of 1320, we did not find it.

We experienced 1332, we did not find it. We experienced '57, we did not find it. We experienced the executions of the 1360s, we did not find it. There were eight years of war, and after that we did not find it. Different governments came, we did not find it. The reformists came, we did not find it.

In 88, we did not find it. In 96, we did not find it. In 98, we did not find it. In 1401, we did not find it. In 1404, we did not find it. So what is it that you hold? These people want to turn society into a historical laboratory and give a revolutionary character to what is happening in Iran. This is where

I am against revolution. But as a conservative, I understand that monarchism and the idea of monarchy is not revolutionary at all. That is, it lacks the spirit of revolutionism. Revolution is fundamental change, it is an overthrow. Whatever concept we want to put on it, it lacks a revolutionary spirit. Meaning it does not seek, in the way that Burke tells us, in the way that he tells us, in the same way that what happened in the French Revolution, it does not seek to create or found something new.

It has no ambition to found something. It searches in history, as I said once: the future is something already experienced. And this lacks the characteristics of revolution. It is only from here that you can show why monarchism in the future of Iran is at the same time conservatism, and this can be

that political forms do not guarantee freedom, they do not secure it. Everyone understands this. It is not the case that freedom is simply achieved through the form of a republic. These ridiculous claims that you are seeing these days in these circles, being made in these conversations, they imagine that a concept like freedom is hidden within a political form, embedded and contained within the political form.

How far does this distorted thinking go? How far? They say freedom is hidden in the layers of a republic. Anyone who has taken even one or two proper courses in political science understands that form does not guarantee content. But our issue, when we speak of this form, when we refer to the monarchical form, my point is exactly this: to avoid Iranian society becoming a laboratory once again for ideas that these people want, ideas they want to experiment with.

These are seductive fantasies, so to speak, that have taken shape collectively, and now they want to impose those fantasies on you and me, and then see how the experiment turns out.

Opposition to the system, specifically to the republican form of government, or even the minimal effort that people like me are making, with these forms, comes down to this: preventing us from falling into the laboratory of history again. This society no longer has the capacity for that. It does not have the capacity to keep going through experiments, coming back, and starting over.

Human maturity means exactly this: reaching a point where you went the wrong way, and you turn back around, you return. You do not need to build a new road. I gave this example once before: like a bus driver who is lost, and the people inside are each offering a suggestion for how to find the way again.

Some say, "Let's get a compass and a map, let's build a road." Some say, "Let's go out tonight and ask whoever we find for directions." One person gives directions one way, another gives directions the other way. And then someone says, "Just turn around and go back to where we made the wrong turn, turn around and go back." Now, some people would call this going backward.

That is nonsense. It comes from the fact that this constant wandering, this going from one place to another, benefits the people on this bus. They profit from it. The one who says "let's build a road" is killing history, is killing time. You build a road from where, and how do you know where it leads?

Why should we build it? The roads have already been built. Conservatism means exactly this: the roads that have already been built are known. They were shaped on the basis of these experiences. Unlike this, we are people on a bus,