 |
Monarchy nostalgia turns politics into obedience over freedom. |
Monarchy, whether in its symbolic or absolute form, is the decayed remnant of a primitive age—an era when power drew its legitimacy from blood, lineage, and myth. Today’s monarchism is less a political stance than a kind of disorder: a nostalgic yearning for obedience and kneeling down, a regressive impulse that surrenders reason to the illusion of inheritance and pedigree. In a world where politics means participation, responsibility, and collective maturity, monarchism is a craving to return to an order in which unquestioning obedience is a virtue—a reduction of politics to a childish farce starring the “Father of the Nation” and supporters who still cannot distinguish between a citizen and a subject.
It is within this framework that one must view Reza Pahlavi’s recent remarks at the “National Cooperation to Save Iran” conference, where he stated: “For me, the best title possible is the title of father, which you have given me.” This seemingly humble phrase, in the Iranian political-cultural context, goes beyond a personal expression of affection. It resonates with a familiar echo in our collective unconscious, once again summoning the figure of the father as a code name for domination. It signals a return to the archaic and patriarchal structure of power, in which ruling is a kind of fathering and the nation are children in need of guardianship. What makes this statement significant is not that it was uttered, but that Reza Pahlavi accepted the title not with indifference but with satisfaction and eagerness. That satisfaction reveals his affinity with the connotations of the father as guardian and custodian, even if concepts such as freedom, democracy, and elections are constantly on his lips. The desire for a father—both at the psychological and collective level—is a regression to structures in which freedom is traded for security and maturity for dependency. Just as contemporary Iranian politics has long equated freedom with the absence of security, labeled it as chaos, and presented authoritarianism as the guarantor of safety.
 |
| Take a look at this Instagram frame: a network that has ignored discrimination against us for years is now busy multiplying and cementing the image of the so-called Prince Pahlavi. Iran International, behind the façade of journalism, splits one report into several separate pieces—not to inform, but to deceive the audience with a visual bombardment; like billboards for a shampoo, a bag of chips, or a soda, the viewer’s mind must be occupied so that no other options are seen. Here, repetition turns into a technique for imposing a single choice, because such constant display of one figure is above all a sign of the absence and erasure of others. A media outlet that repeatedly reproduces the so-called prince’s image side by side is no longer media; it is the propaganda machine of monarchy. |
In modern politics, the concept of the father evokes unwritten rules where command flows not from collective reason but from the mouth of a single individual. Politics here is reduced to a version of the traditional family, where governance assumes a paternal role and the nation is diminished to children who require care and guidance. In the political memory of the twentieth century, this image has been repeated time and again: Stalin, Ceaușescu, Mao, Gaddafi, and countless other tyrants and dictators who were called “Father” or declared themselves the “Father of the Nation.” In all these cases, the father figure was elevated into an idealized yet terrifying image—a symbol of fear, domination, and ownership, where command replaced contract, inheritance replaced choice, and obedience replaced maturity.
History, of course, also offers exceptions—figures such as Mahatma Gandhi, who received the title of Father of the Nation not through possession of power but by renouncing it. The title gained wider acceptance only after his death. These exceptions demonstrate that if fatherhood in politics carries any virtue, it lies not in domination but in the refusal of it. If, however, it is taken to mean authority and top-down guidance, then it becomes nothing more than the sacrifice of the political and the collective to the altar of an emergent dictatorship.