By Hoshang Noraiee
Introduction: Democracy Beyond the Ballot Box
In a world where right-wing populism is metastasizing across various societies, promoting a form of “political flattening” under the guise of democracy, analysing the phenomenon of Trumpism is crucial to understanding the fragile state of contemporary governance. Donald Trump’s open embrace of far-right factions, his relentless assaults on democratic institutions and the independent press, and his systematic campaigns to delegitimise the Left and even centrist liberals are not merely the personal eccentricities of a single politician. Rather, they are symptoms of a much deeper crisis within social relations and the global architecture of power. What became painfully evident during his first term in office has today solidified into an organised political blueprint — a global challenge to the democratic experiment.
Yet, democracy cannot be reduced to a ritualistic performance that begins and ends at the ballot box. Such a simplistic definition actually makes it easier to dismantle democracy using the very name of democracy itself. It is not a mere electoral mechanism; it is a complex ecosystem of institutions, rights, civil liberties, and socio-economic conditions that guarantee genuine and equal participation for all citizens.
To imagine that citizens who are hungry, sick, illiterate, homeless, and stripped of independent civic or labour unions can exercise equal political agency is a dangerous fantasy and an outright deception. In a society where the masses are consumed by daily survival, votes are easily bought, bribed, and engineered by capital and media manipulation. In such an impoverished landscape, the genuine self-determination of the majority evaporates. Voting is reduced to a tool for legitimizing an oligarchy — the rule of plutocrats and powerful interest groups. This mechanism operates as a systematic assault on critical thought. When a society is stripped of material security and the capacity for critical reflection, it becomes highly pliable, ready to accept domination. This is what we must call a “stealth coup” — a structural overthrow that deploys no tanks or armies, but operates covertly from within legal institutions and under the cover of official rules.
The Legal Coup: Warnings from the Liberal Tradition
The erosion of democracy and the threat of this structural coup in the West have not escaped the notice of even mainstream liberal theorists. The rise of Trumpism sounded a severe alarm. Trump attained power in a nation where the maxim “government of the people, by the people, for the people” is hardcoded into the political identity, yet where billionaires openly line up to buy and direct politicians. A glaring example is Elon Musk’s massive political expenditure, pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into mobilizing and steering voters toward Trump. Can a structure where concentrated wealth dictates the trajectory of votes and public opinion still claim to respect the principle of “one person, one vote”?
It is no surprise that even Francis Fukuyama, the famous liberal philosopher who once championed the “End of History” thesis, has sounded the alarm. In his 2018 book, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, Fukuyama looks critically at Trumpism, tracing the roots of the crisis to a terrifying widening of class divides and a profound sense of social marginalisation in American society — effectively diagnosing the structural failure of neoliberalism.
Similarly, Cambridge professor David Runciman, in his striking 2018 book How Democracy Ends, looks at history alongside contemporary shocks like Trumpism and Brexit to diagnose a midlife crisis and the danger of endogenous democratic collapse. Runciman warns that today’s threats do not look like classical military coups; rather, we face a gradual erosion of institutions and norms that hollows out democracy from within.
These warnings have deep historical precedents. In 1954, at the absolute height of the McCarthyist red scare in the United States, Henry Bertram Mayo, a political science professor at the University of Alberta and a staunch defender of liberal democracy, wrote a prophetic warning in his book Democracy and Marxism that describes our current predicament with chilling accuracy:
“In the unlikely event that democracy should be destroyed in North America from within, it will not be because the people accept communist theory or vote for the Communist Party. In all probability, the collapse will come under the name of ‘anti-communism’ or a ‘crusade against sin,’ led by hyper-patriots and organisations with vested interests. It is they who will gradually discard our precious civil liberties until a terrified or indifferent nation finally submits to slavery. The lessons of fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany provide a much more fitting and probable warning for North America than the threat of Soviet communism.”
Mayo’s warning about the weaponisation of “anti-communism” as a cover for democratic erosion is no longer just a historical reflection; it has returned as a centrepiece of contemporary political rhetoric in the United States. In recent years, Donald Trump and high-ranking figures within his political movement have systematically resurrected Cold War-era panic, labeling mainstream Democratic opponents, civil society organisers, independent journalists, and legal prosecutors as “Marxists,” “godless communists,” and “Bolsheviks”. This deliberate conflation — documented extensively in recent political analysis, such as Trump Unleashes on Democrats | ‘Liberals Became Communists’ Claim Sparks Midterms Debate — is designed to demonise political opponents, delegitimise legal processes, and justify authoritarian crackdowns. By branding any dissent or institutional opposition as an alien “communist menace,” this strategy actively normalises the erosion of democratic norms, turning political debate into an all-or-nothing crusade against an imaginary totalitarian enemy.
Democracy and the Question of Political Agency
However, attributing the crisis of democracy solely to “culture” is an insufficient explanation. A political culture is not a spontaneous phenomenon independent of society; it is the product of interwoven power relations crystallised through institutions, media, political leaders, educational systems, and social forces. A democratic culture must be consciously constructed — and an authoritarian one is constructed just as deliberately. The core question, then, is not merely why democratic culture is weak, but which specific forces are actively reproducing an authoritarian culture and profiting from it. Financial oligarchies, populist media networks, charismatic leaders, authoritarian political organisations, propaganda networks, and even social media algorithms all play a hand in shaping public consciousness.
Trumpism was not the byproduct of a pre-existing culture; it was manufactured by a coalition of political, media, and economic actors who successfully weaponised existing structural crises, turning social anxiety, fear, and resentment into a potent political force. We can see this exact same logic playing out when we examine the crisis of democratic culture in other societies.
Right-Wing Populism and the Illiberal Turn in the Iranian Opposition
The global wave of intellectual erosion and structural authoritarianism has found a vivid echo within portions of the opposition to the Islamic Republic, particularly among the Iranian refugee and diaspora communities in the West. In these spaces, a professed commitment to democracy has frequently devolved into a superficial trend — a fashionable, opportunistic tool used to vie for future power. This intellectual degradation often manifests as a virulent hatred directed at any form of left-wing thought, frequently culminating in an archaic, chauvinistic “Aryan” nationalism and deep-seated anti-Arab racism. The product of this toxic fusion is a bizarre, deeply contradictory strain of ultra-nationalism that falsely wraps itself in the language of democracy.
True democracy is not defined simply by being against the repressive and brutal regime of the Islamic Republic. It demands an absolute commitment to political pluralism, respect for the rights of dissidents, the rule of law, tolerance, and the total rejection of the cult of personality. Any political current that seeks to impose a single leader, a single flag, a mandatory historical narrative, and a monolithic political identity upon a diverse society is actively reproducing the culture of tyranny, regardless of its anti-regime rhetoric.
In recent years, glaring signs of this authoritarian trend have emerged among monarchist factions and the hard-line, fanatical supporters of Prince Reza Pahlavi. The issue here is not the defence of a constitutional monarchy in theory — there are many functioning, democratic constitutional monarchies across the globe. The issue is that the historical reality of the Pahlavi autocracy in Iran cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be labelled a democratic experience. While that era brought rapid modernisation and socio-economic reforms, its political reality was defined by the absolute centralisation of power, the destruction of independent political competition, the crushing of civil society, and the unchecked expansion of a ruthless security apparatus.
These structural flaws and gaps between democratic messaging and political practice within the opposition leadership were highlighted in a recent investigative report by Reuters on Reza Pahlavi’s political campaign. The investigation, based on dosens of interviews, documented severe internal frictions, financial donor disillusionment over non-inclusive tactics, and the recurring failure of monarchist factions to forge genuine democratic coalitions with broader political forces.
The last Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, never concealed his hostility toward Western-style democracy. In his famous October 1973 interview with Oriana Fallaci, digitised and republished by The New Republic, he explicitly detailed his contempt for modern democratic governance:
“But I don’t want that kind of democracy! Haven’t you understood that? I don’t know what to do with that kind of democracy! I want no part of it. It’s all yours, you can keep it; don’t you see it? Your grand democracy! In a few years, you will see where your grand democracy leads… Freedom of thought, freedom of thought! Democracy, democracy! With five-year-old children going on strike and marching in the streets; is this what you call democracy?”
Is history repeating itself? While history never repeats itself mechanically, similar structures can reproduce identical pathologies. Today, a hard-line faction among the supporters of Prince Reza Pahlavi exhibits a worldview that mirrors the absolute intolerance of the late Shah’s era. Irony abounds here: their totalizing, exclusionary behaviour deeply resembles the fanatical tactics of the Hezbollahi followers of Ayatollah Khomeini on the eve of the 1979 revolution. This diaspora faction exhibits a total inability to tolerate diversity, showing fierce hostility toward ethnic and national minorities. Even now, lacking any state power or control over a formal government apparatus, they actively stalk, dox, and threaten left-wing groups, religious dissidents, and other opposition currents, treating them as existential enemies to be eradicated.
From this perspective, the ongoing efforts within this diaspora to normalise, rehabilitate, and glorify SAVAK — the Shah’s notorious domestic security and intelligence service — is not a benign historical debate about the past. It represents a fundamental break with the core principles of human rights. In the collective memory of the Iranian people, as well as in the archives of international bodies like Amnesty International and the United Nations, SAVAK is synonymous with systemic repression, the brutal torture of dissidents, and horrific human rights abuses. How can one chant slogans of freedom and democracy while simultaneously worshiping a state apparatus whose sole mandate was to suffocate dissent and atomise civil society?
The greatest danger blocking the path to a future democratic Iran is a current that copies Trumpian methods to reproduce fascist behaviors. We can see the tangible manifestations of this authoritarian movement across the diaspora today:
- Totalitarian and Exclusionary Slogans: The enforcement of chauvinistic mantras like “One Homeland, One Flag, One Leader,” accompanied by exclusionary chants such as “Death to the Three Corrupters” — a slogan explicitly designed to lump the current clerical regime together with leftists and the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) as legitimate targets for political elimination.
- Physical Intimidation and Extortion: Diaspora activists targeting small business owners in Europe and North America, using intimidation and bullying tactics to force shopkeepers to display portraits of Prince Reza Pahlavi and Trumpian-style political insignia on their storefronts.
- Paramilitary Style Marches: The organisation of chilling, synchronised marches in several major German cities, where hardline Pahlavi loyalists dressed in matching uniforms and wore armbands bearing the official logo of SAVAK — a deliberate attempt to rehabilitate a historical apparatus of state terror.
- The Embrace of Right-Wing Militarism: The bizarre sight of diaspora protesters waving Israeli flags alongside portraits of Benjamin Netanyahu — a leader facing war crimes scrutiny from the International Criminal Court — while chanting “Long Live Bibi.” This represents a complete detachment from universal principles of human rights and humanitarian values.
These displays are designed to normalise political violence and deploy organised ignorance; they are not valid forms of political critique. This faction’s attacks on the Left are entirely devoid of intellectual or theoretical substance. They possess no understanding of leftist philosophy or its historical evolution, nor do they notice that the democratic left parties in the Western countries where these refugees now live form the bedrock of social, parliamentary, and union stability. Even those within this movement who were once leftist youth have rapidly erased from their memories the pivotal role the Left played in constructing the modern world — including labour rights, women’s liberation, refugee protections, social equality, and the creation of the welfare state — just as they choose to ignore how seamlessly the democratic left participates in Western democracies today.
The Iranian Left: The Urgency of Overcoming Dogmatism
To criticise these far-right currents and the nostalgia for SAVAK does not mean we should ignore the severe historical blunders of the Iranian Left. Leftist thought is not immune to criticism and must never be shielded from it. Wherever and whenever the Left has fled from critical self-reflection, claiming a monopoly on absolute truth through a rigid, dogmatic reading of history, it has inevitably drifted toward totalitarianism. The justification of Stalinist totalitarianism in any form offers no path to human liberation.
The historical obsession within Marxist-Leninist traditions to aggressively attack “revisionism” — a trend enforced with extreme rigidity by Leninist, Stalinist, and Maoist factions — ultimately suffocated critical inquiry and nurtured a climate of dogmatism. Yet, intellectual revision — in the sense of theoretical dynamism, the constant re-evaluation of theories, and adapting them to shifting historical realities — is the very definition of a living dialectic. It should never have been used as a political slur. Any philosophy that insulates itself from critique will inevitably harden into a dogma.
The forces known as the Left in contemporary Iranian history are no exception and deserve rigorous critique. The mainstream of the Iranian Left remained frozen within a dogmatic Marxist-Leninist framework. This intellectual paralysis and poverty of critical thought prevented a deep grasp of democracy, human rights, civil society, and political pluralism. In doing so, this current also played its own tragic part in reproducing the very culture of autocracy and totalitarianism that has plagued modern Iran.
The Social Media Age and the Slaughterhouse of Reason
Today, democracy faces a devastating erosion of public reason. In the era of social media algorithms, fake news, and AI-generated disinformation, intellectual degradation has become a highly lucrative business model. The cost to public discourse, civil society, and critical scholarship is staggering.
Social media algorithms are engineered for engagement, not truth; they thrive on manufactured polarisation. Rage, fear, hatred, historical revisionism, and hyper-emotionalism generate clicks, while nuanced arguments, deep reading, and rational dialogue are buried by the layout of the digital economy. Consequently, the public square has been transformed into a slaughterhouse of reason, where vitriol replaces argument and tribal identity replaces analysis.
A symptom of this intellectual decay is the belief that simply shouting insults at the Left, liberals, monarchists, or any other rival faction constitutes political awareness. But democracy does not survive on hate speech; it breathes through the capacity to listen, to critique, and to accept critique. The democratic left is not the cause of the decline of political democracy. On the contrary, it is the retreat of the democratic left, the unchecked spread of unfettered capitalism — particularly in its neoliberal form — and the subsequent rise of populist nationalism that have triggered this global systemic crisis.
Conclusion: The Three Pillars of Balance
A sustainable, modern, and democratic society rests upon three pillars that must remain in a state of dynamic equilibrium: a decentralised state governed by the rule of law, a vibrant economy, and a citizenry equipped with social security, welfare, and social agency.
- Without a state anchored in the rule of law, civil liberties perish.
- Without economic justice and security, votes and political participation are easily bought, manipulated, and captured by oligarchs.
- Without informed, independent, and empowered citizens, democracy degenerates into an empty, hollow electoral ritual.
The tragedy of contemporary Western capitalism lies in its preservation of the outer shell of political democracy while simultaneously shredding the social welfare and economic security of the masses through deep neoliberal inequalities. Conversely, the tragedy of the traditional Left was its historical willingness to sacrifice production dynamics, pluralism, and civil liberties in the utopian pursuit of economic equality, completely losing the masses in the process. It is in this vacuum of equilibrium that democracy loses its color, paving the way for far-right populism — a current that rides the waves of poverty, insecurity, and social apathy to deliver a modern form of serfdom under the stolen name of democracy.
The greatest barrier to democracy in Iran’s future may not be the current dictatorial regime alone, but the endurance of this very authoritarian mindset across wide swathes of society and the opposition. As long as leader-worship replaces institutionalism, as long as the glorification of historical instruments of state terror like SAVAK replaces respect for human rights, and as long as the illusion of absolute truth replaces dialogue, tyranny will continue to reproduce itself — merely swapping its faces, its flags, and its slogans.
The core issue is not monarchism versus leftism, nor republicanism versus nationalism. The core issue is the structural relationship that any of these currents maintains with freedom, pluralism, human rights, the distribution of power, and critical thought. The true test of a democratic culture is revealed in how a movement treats its political opponents, not its loyal followers. Democracy begins when no leader, no ideology, no political current, no security apparatus, and no historical narrative is placed beyond the reach of critique. Only then does freedom transcend the level of a slogan and become the durable foundation of political life.
Hoshang Noraiee is an independent researcher and writer specializing in contemporary Iranian social and political history and diaspora dynamics.
