Pahlavi-Style is Lumpenism

Pahlavi-Style is Lumpenism: A Tool of the Mullah Regime for Destroying the Real Opposition and Denying Iran’s Democratic Future

In recent years, Iranian society has witnessed major waves of resistance and protest; waves that were not only socially and politically significant, but also psychological turning points in the collective consciousness of the people. The uprisings of December 2017, November 2019, and the 2022 movement together form the clearest picture of this historic path. All three challenged the political structure of the mullah regime, and all three offered a new vision of Iran’s future, a future based on freedom, democracy, and equality, not the reproduction of vertical power systems, whether religious or monarchical. But alongside this historic movement, another phenomenon emerged, one that has been rarely discussed: Pahlavi-style lumpenism. This phenomenon is not part of the opposition; in fact, it operates dangerously as a cultural and psychological tool that helps prolong the life of the clerical regime.

To understand this better, we must begin with the word “lumpen.” This term has German origins and was first used by Karl Marx to describe a social stratum outside the structure of economic and social relations, neither industrial workers, nor peasants, nor bourgeoisie, nor intellectuals (The Communist Manifesto). Marx described them as people “without class identity, unstable, and susceptible to political manipulation.” Later, the term was used to define behaviors driven by excitement, aggression, lack of social responsibility, and rejection of dialogue. The term “lumpen proletariat” gradually entered psychological and political analysis and today, in the literature of political culture, it describes forces that are loud, anti-thought, anti-ethics, and wholly submissive to vertical power (Robert Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics). Therefore, when we speak of “lumpenism,” we are not referring to a social class, we are referring to a behavioral structure.

Globally, lumpenism is a historic phenomenon. In Europe, Latin America, and Africa, marginalized and politically uneducated groups have repeatedly been mobilized by governments, dictators, and coup-makers to suppress democratic movements (Michael Herzfeld, Iran After the Coup). These forces were ready-made tools for chaos, for killing public discourse, and for poisoning the political environment.

In Iran, however, this phenomenon has a defining turning point: the 1953 coup d’état. Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh’s democratic government, grounded in national independence and public support, offered Iran a historic opportunity for transformation. Its fall was not caused solely by foreign intervention; the streets were mobilized against reason. Figures such as “Shaban Jafari” and “Tayeb Haj-Rezaei” and other reactionary lumpen elements played a decisive role in street violence and attacks against supporters of the national government. The coup plotters understood that to overthrow Mossadegh, it was enough to remove reason from the street and replace it with clubs and fists (Iran After the Coup). The day a club was raised in Baharestan Square was the day Iranian democracy collapsed.

But the psychological consequences of the coup ran deeper than the coup itself. After 1953, the monarchy learned that it did not need public participation to maintain power, it only needed to mobilize the marginalized. This pattern did not end in mid-century. In the final months before the fall of the Shah, when revolutionary momentum peaked, the court assembled individuals with no political or intellectual grounding from across Iran,  people whose mission was to chant “Long Live the Shah” and intimidate real freedom fighters. The goal was to reconstruct the image of power and divert the movement (Kurt Wömer, Modern History of Iran). This lumpen-manufacturing method was neither exceptional nor improvised; it was an institutional approach to controlling society,  one later reproduced by the clerical regime in a religious form.

After the revolution, this structure did not disappear; it merely changed color. Lumpenism shifted from monarchy to religion. Religious thugs replaced monarchical street gangs. Once again, the streets were mobilized against society. This trend became so obvious that only sixteen months after the revolution, in 1980, Mr. Mousa Khiabani one main leader of MEK warned in a televised interview about the evolution of this phenomenon. He described the same structural danger born from street lumpenism that would grow into an instrument of political elimination and blind violence — a warning that today is clearer than ever. He said:

“This phenomenon of club-wielding has, over the past sixteen months, reached an extremely dangerous point. It has become a clear threat to the social security and political future of our country. These club-wielders, these thugs, sometimes flood the area in front of the university. They stop people. They search anyone they want. They attack bookstores whenever they wish. Just as they enter bookstores freely today, what guarantee is there they won’t enter people’s homes tomorrow? This trend will, in its evolutionary course, lead to blind terrorism… We already know some of these club-wielders are organizing themselves into terrorist groups.”

These statements testify to one truth: when lumpenism crosses from social behavior into political organization, its destination is clear, terror. As Mr. Khiabani warned, club-wielding is structural, not accidental; and once it evolves, it inevitably leads to organized violence and terrorism. History has confirmed this.

Now let us return to the present. In recent years, the real opposition, the people inside Iran, have shaken history three times. In December 2017, the first major psychological rupture in the structure of power occurred: the chant “Reformist, hardliner, it’s over” was not just a protest slogan; it was the end of an illusion (Iran Social Studies Center). The people said the problem is not the individual, the problem is the system. This shift from political surface to collective psychology was a real fracture in the body of authoritarianism.

November 2019 was the second stage. The widespread uprising — born from economic anger and social humiliation, showed that the public no longer sought gradual reform. The breaking of collective fear was the most important social transformation since the revolution. The regime responded with brutal violence, but this violence neither defeated the movement nor restored fear; it only deepened the divide (independent reporter accounts).

2022 was the culmination. A social revolution that, with the chant “Death to the oppressor, be it shah or leader,” clarified the future: Iran no longer wants to return to the past. Not monarchy. Not dynasties. Not inherited power. Not velayat. Not clerical rule. The people said: freedom, equality, secularism, democracy (independent media analysis). That chant is worth a century of political transformation.

But at the very moment people reached their highest level of awareness, the mullah regime understood something: physical repression was no longer enough. They needed to discredit the opposition. They needed to distort the alternative. They needed to poison hope. This is precisely where Pahlavi-style lumpenism entered the scene, just like 1953, but through new methods.

Figures who appear to oppose the regime but, in reality, serve it best: Ali Karimi, Yasmine Amini-Pahlavi, Alireza Kiani, and others who, through insults, sexual slurs, attacks on intellectuals, hostility toward democratic movements, and open hate speech, produce a grotesque image of the opposition. Their behavior is not resistance; it is cultural violence.

Today, the same dynamic that Mr. Mousa Khiabani warned about is repeating itself. If the club-wielding of the post-revolutionary streets protected religious tyranny, today digital lumpenism protects monarchical nostalgia and blocks Iran’s democratic future. Club-wielding has migrated from the street to cyberspace. Knives and sticks have become insults and threats. Physical organization has become media mobilization.

When monarchist lumpens wave Israeli flags while verbally abusing fellow Iranians, when they attack critics at overseas rallies, when they call intellectuals traitors, when Alireza Kiani threatens that Iran’s political future will be “king-centered” and that anyone who disobeys is an enemy, these are not mere insults; they are the repetition of the same historical cycle Khiabani described in 1980. He said: “This trend will lead to blind terrorism.” And today, we are witnessing the beginning of that phase.

Should such forces gain power, based on their behavior and language, there is little doubt they would go further than both the shah and the clerics. Because this current operates without moral framework, without political program, without civic accountability, and with a vindictive mindset. If they behave this way in weakness, imagine what they would do in power.

The real opposition in Iran is the one that filled the streets in 2017, 2019, and 2022. The one that said “Reformist, hardliner, it’s over.” The one that said “Death to the oppressor, be it shah or leader.” The one that said “Woman, Resistance, Freedom.”

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