It has not gone unsaid that Generation Z, or Nasleh Zed, are the new revolutionaries in Iran. Since the death-in-custody of Mahsa Jina Amini they have taken to the streets where they have been beaten, shot at and arrested for their participation in the Women Life Freedom movement, while away from demonstrations, they are dismantling and defacing the image of authoritarian rule across their homeland. 

A young schoolgirl, under the pseudonym Nina, attested to her classmates vandalizing the portraits of Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei displayed in the halls of their school with markers. This act of defiance was not the first or last that Nina’s classmates had undertaken in protest to the regime’s violence and mandatory veiling, but it uniquely represents the disillusioned state of Nasleh Zed in Iran that provides an enduring foundation for their acts of protest and disobedience (Moaveni, 2023). 

In this century alone the regime has endured a previous movement that fervently protested its political processes in the Green Movement of 2009, which protested the fraudulent presidential election that occurred in the same year. Yet, many consider the Women Life Freedom movement distinct from the Green Movement as well as the 1979 Revolution. One such reason that the Women Life Freedom is fundamentally different from the Green Movement and from the ‘79 Revolution, is the mass participation of young Iranians.

Similar to western media narratives during the Arab Spring, the internet is being identified as a catalyst for civil disobedience, and many have begun to understand that the tech savvy Nasleh Zed are more adept at procuring political and moral outlooks from the internet. As Holly Dagres describes in her piece, Iran’s Gen Z is Still Waiting for the Revolution, Nasleh Zed has begun to utilize a developed and vast internet space to access, “a window onto the free world,” (2024). For instance, Nina, the aforementioned schoolgirl, describes organizing a group unveiling at school over Whatsapp, furthermore in 2019 the regime used the internet as a tool of state repression when they orchestrated a, “total internet shutdown,” during which they killed 1,500 protestors, “including children,” in an event now referred to as Bloody November (Dagres, 2024). The role of the internet for young Iranians is also explained by Asef Bayat who claims, when young Iranians use the internet, “they learn what exists in the world and grow to understand how much they are deprived,” (New Lines, 2022). Thus, the internet and its various alternative spaces that didn't exist in 1979 and that weren't fully developed in 2009 have now empowered Generation Z in Iran to stray from prior ideologies and modes of movement building. 

The Iranian Youth’s internet use has also influenced their uninterest in seeking to reform the regime through the regime’s own useless avenues of reform, instead favoring, "a wholesale dissolution of the regime" (Siamdoust, 2023). The Iranian youth that have chosen to direct their focus and energy towards the welfare of women and minorities do not regard the regime as politically useful, and thus, have abandoned the modes of uprising found in Iran’s past movements, and consider reform an empty promise. School Age revolutionaries who have continually watched their classmates and family members die in the streets at the hands of the regime view participation in the current political system of Iran as complacency. Dagres describes that following the events of Bloody November in 2019 under the rule of ‘moderate’ president Hassan Rouhani, Iranians began to feel that, “it didn’t matter who was in power in Iran under the current system; authoritarianism reigned supreme,” (2024). Similarly, memes satirizing and criticizing the recent Presidential election reflect a distrust and disillusionment with Iran’s political processes, “some equated the act of getting your index finger dipped in ink after voting with sticking a finger in protesters’ blood,” (Dagres, 2023). 

As recounted by our schoolgirl revolutionary Nina when her school authorities forced her and her classmates to restore the ink-covered portraits of the Ayatollahs they had vandalized, “[we] tried to wipe off the ink with wet towels, but the paper grew damp and the Ayatollahs’ faces warped under the laminate” (2024). As the regime continues to oppress the people they allege to serve, the once powerful visage of 83 year old Ayatollah Khamenei has become warped in its efforts to command respect from the youthful heirs of Iran.

- Hatcher Stanford

References

Bayat, Asef. 2022. “A New Iran Has Been Born — a Global Iran.” New Lines Magazine. October 26, 2022. https://newlinesmag.com/argument/a-new-iran-has-been-born-a-global-iran/.

Dagres, Holly. 2024. “Opinion | Iran’s Gen Z Is Still Waiting for the Revolution.” The New York Times, July 10, 2024, sec. Opinion. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/10/opinion/iran-gen-z-politics.html.

Moaveni, Azadeh. 2023. “The Protests inside Iran’s Girls’ Schools.” The New Yorker. August 7, 2023. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/08/14/the-protests-inside-irans-girls-schools.