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| Hamidreza Jalaeipour |
This text is not a critique. Nor is it an analysis. It is simply a description of a person: Hamidreza Jalaeipour. He is truly beyond critique, and a precise analysis of him is impossible. That is why one must settle for describing him. He is a doctor, a faculty member in the Department of Sociology at the University of Tehran, and at the same time, illiterate. In the literal sense of the word, illiterate. Attend some of his classes and you will see. Ask about his thesis defense sessions; each one is a spectacle in its own right. For one thesis, he recommends a domestic magazine as a source, for another, shallow notes from the virtual world. Last year, during a defense session for a thesis titled The Formation of the Concept of Nation in Iran from the Perspective of the Sociology of Knowledge, he confused the concept of “value logic” with “values and norms.” Proving his illiteracy is not difficult—just glance at his Telegram channel. His writings are incoherent, cheap, vague, and unstructured, with a touch of tabloid sensationalism. He does not shy away from labeling some people as “pan-” and others as foreign agents. Lately, under the banner of “pan,” he has been running a campaign to discredit Turkish activists. Yet his ignorance betrays him, especially in the way he uses words and terms crudely, without scientific precision or theoretical care. He uses the term “pan” loosely, indiscriminately, and colloquially. From the demand for official recognition of the Turkish language to political demands for Turks, all are tossed under the label of “Pan-Turkism.”
What is Pan-Turkism? Jalaeipour does not know. For him, mother-tongue education, ethnic fundamentalism, separatism, racism, identity politics, ethnocentrism, nationalism, and so on—all are equivalent to Pan-Turkism. His knowledge does not even reach the level of a few lines on Persian Wikipedia. When he uses the word “nation,” it is as if he were writing from an ancient inscription—stone, historic, fixed, and immutable. It is the crudest and most dogmatic understanding of the concept of nation. His outlook even contradicts that of the country’s security officials. Not long ago, one such official publicly distinguished between identity-seeking and separatism. But for Jalaeipour, distinctions of this kind are meaningless. He has his own security-minded approach: for him, there are only Pan-Turks and separatists—nothing else.
He is also inventive. In one of his articles—titled Why Do “Pans” Lie?—he wrote: “The claim that reformists are ‘against mother-tongue education’ is an obvious lie, racist, and of a ‘pan’ type.” In other words, anyone who says reformists oppose mother-tongue education is a racist—and specifically a pan-racist! Incredible! This so-called professor of sociology even offers a new definition of racism. Given precedent, it would hardly be surprising if he linked reformism to good genes, race, IQ, and so on. Does it sound like a joke? Of course it does.
Jalaeipour is also brazen. He has written that reformists are not opposed to the teaching of mother tongues in families. Glory be to God! By this logic, reformists deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. We should be grateful to them! In his view, reformists and moderates cannot possibly oppose mother-tongue education. Presumably, he means that in their hearts they are not against it. Perhaps, during their four terms in executive power, mother-tongue languages were taught and flourishing, and we simply failed to notice.
Jalaeipour also claims that the existence of seventy mother tongues in civil society proves that mother-tongue education is free and vibrant. Is this an argument or nonsense? It doesn’t matter. What matters is Jalaeipour, with his pretensions to national security and his thirst for attention. In his view, national security means that anyone who cares about identity and mother tongue—regardless of their approach—is a foreign agent. He distorts concepts and terms so much, turning them upside down, that he deprives ethnic demands and activities of any boundaries, distinctions, or clarity. This way, he can insert his imaginary “foreign agent” into his shallow analyses. In fact, with this worn-out method, he cloaks his otherness-hostile outlook under the guise of national security and territorial integrity, and turns identity activists into enemies of national security and territorial integrity.
He reduces the “Other”—with all its identity, social breadth, and diversity—to nothing but a “foreign agent,” while ignoring the internal context and social conditions of existing divisions. But Jalaeipour’s demonization of the “Other” takes place under the banner of reformism and in the silence of reformists. With this silence, it would not be surprising if reformists preferred not to denounce the Jalaeipours and their vulgar remarks but instead to support such figures—against “marginalized mother tongues.”