Why was January 1404 bloody?/ Majid Shia Ali

Throughout the contemporary history of the world, various governments have been responsible for the killing of a large portion of their citizens, from the crimes of the Khmer Rouge to the history of genocide in Bosnia, from the Nazi gas chambers to the famines resulting from the policies of the Stalin and Mao governments. Even […]...

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Testaments of an Uprising/Naimeh Doostdar

January 1404 was a time for a number of protesters to say their “last words”; a sentence recorded in a few lines on Instagram stories, or in a few-second video, sometimes in a brief call to family, and sometimes in a will that the survivors tried to carry out without fail. These messages, republished in […]...

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From the rule of law to the state of confiscation/ Sara Qureshi

Introduction: Terminological explanation In this article, the concept of the general power of the state is consciously used, not political sovereignty. This choice of language is not accidental. The state here is not simply the construction of political power, but an institution that, in the logic of public law, is responsible for implementing the law, […]...

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On the Origin of Evil and Obedience/Amin Judiciary

The atrocities of World War II and the participation and complicity of the German people with the Nazi regime, in the guise of a soldier or government agent, in the murder of millions of people in the death camps, posed a fundamental question to sociologists: How could an ordinary German citizen be so obedient and […]...

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De-identification as Politics/Aida Abrofarakh

In the analysis of state violence, a focus solely on the moment of killing or the number of victims often obscures the deeper mechanisms that enable and anchor widespread violence in a social context. Violence, especially in the form of mass killing, is not a sudden, momentary act, but a gradual process that begins before […]...

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Witness accounts of the January 1404 uprising/ Nafiseh Sharaf al-Dinini

The accumulated crises in the political, economic, and social structure of the Islamic Republic reached an explosive point in January 1404, which, in terms of geographical scope, the intensity of government violence, and the depth of popular demands, constituted the most unprecedented challenge to governance in Iran’s contemporary history. The January 1404 uprising, which sprouted […]...

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Silence for the Killing/Amir Aghaei

The following text is a scribble by a young man from inside Iran about the internet shutdown during the recent protests. It was originally supposed to be a report on the internet shutdown, but I couldn’t. No matter how much I tried to maintain an impartial tone of reporting, I couldn’t. No matter how much […]...

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After the collapse of institutional trust/ Kazem Alamdari

Introduction: From political crisis to normative crisis The political developments in Iran in recent years cannot be analyzed simply in terms of a recurring cycle of “protest-repression.” What happened in the recent uprising—and especially the government’s response to it—reflects the entry of the Islamic Republic’s political order into a qualitatively different phase. At this stage, […]...

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When Politics Turns into Death/Diako Moradi

Introduction: The Problem of State Violence in an Era of Collapsed Legitimacy In the classical tradition of political science, state violence was often analyzed as an exceptional means of containing crisis and restoring order, something that made sense in the context of Weber’s “legitimate monopoly of violence.” In this view, legitimacy was not only a […]...

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Maintaining the system by firing bullets/ Morteza Hamounian

Everyone had come. With every force they could muster to organize the suppression. In a structure where maintaining the system is a duty, all their strength is expended to fulfill this duty; even if this fulfillment comes at the cost of the blood of citizens. In January 1404, Iran witnessed a protest movement that began […]...

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