Author: Paroma Mehta

This project was originally written for a class at American University in 2021.

Introduction

At the turn of the 21^st century, the member nations of the United Nations established the Millennium Development Goals – a set of eight international development goals that aimed to focus on global development and eradicating barriers to better living standards. One of the organisations responsible for reducing these gaps in development was the World Bank, an international financial institution formed at Bretton Woods. The Bank is integral in the efforts of middle- and low-income countries to reduce poverty and improve quality of life.

However, there has been criticism of the World Bank’s efforts in these countries as their methods are often seen as ineffective and their policies are seen as harsh on borrowing countries. Additionally, cultural differences between the World Bank and the countries they serve are seen as significant barriers in their efforts globally as critics believe the Bank does not have the cultural competence to perform their actions in a sustainable, long-term way. These criticisms do hold weight when one evaluates the history of World Bank programs, particularly poverty reduction programs, in these low- and middle- income countries. Many World Bank programs have failed to make lasting change in rural areas, as reported by the Bank itself in an internal evaluation in 2006.

There are a number of World Bank programs that have shown great deals of promise and have led to improved conditions and lowered poverty rates in countries like China and Brazil. This begs the question that this paper intends to answer: why do some World Bank poverty reduction efforts fail where others succeed?

In order to explore this question, I will be studying two cases in India, a country that showed great development under the 2000 Millennium Development Goals. In India, there arguably exists a microcosm within a macrocosm with regards to the Bank. The World Bank has carried out many programs in India since 1949, when the newly independent country was just beginning to develop itself, and most of these programs are focused on rural development, education and public health. Some of these programs have had great success in the country, while others have failed on a large scale. I will be comparing a World Bank microcredit program in the South Indian state of Andhra Pradesh in the late 2000s that resulted in a microfinance crisis across the country, and the MSME Growth Innovation and Inclusive Finance Project, a rather successful program that provided a loan of $500 million USD to the Small Industries Development Bank of India in 2015.

I intend to argue that the World Bank’s failures in India can be chalked up to an inability to learn from their mistakes, and that the successes are due to the use of an internal evaluation system that is focused on both hindsight and foresight for the long-term to facilitate programs in the country.

Brief Background

Towards the end of the Second World War, at the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference at Bretton Woods, the World Bank came into existence. Originally known as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Bank was formed with the intention to provide financial assistance and aid in the reconstruction of the infrastructure of European countries destroyed by the War[1]. 16 years after its conception, the Bank started to focus more on development projects in low- and middle- income countries in 1960, and shifted its priority to the eradication of poverty, an area it predominantly works in today.

The organisation states that the current poverty crisis is the largest the world has ever seen, and a lot of projects focus on “fighting poverty, supporting economic growth, and ensuring sustainable gains in the quality of people’s lives in developing countries” through “effective institutions, sound policies, continuous learning through evaluation and knowledge-sharing, and partnership, including with the private sector[2].”

A majority of these poverty reduction efforts are focused on developing countries, like Nigeria, Madagascar and India, and primarily in rural development and disparity reduction. The Bank’s focus areas, as per their official website, are reducing the percentage of people living in poverty to no more than 3% of the world’s population by 2030 and to “increase the incomes and welfare of the less well off[3]”. The Bank’s projects range in specificities, like types of financial assistance, areas of investment and partnerships, but for the most part, the World Bank adheres to the same project framework and works directly with the project from identification to completion.

The World Bank in India

The World Bank’s first project in India dates back to 1949, with the provision of a Bank loan to the Indian Railways. Since the early 1990s, the Bank has worked more directly with the development of India as a country stating that its goal is to ensure that “the country’s rapidly growing economy makes much more efficient use of resources; fosters inclusiveness by investing in human capital and generating more quality jobs; and develops strong public sector institutions that are capable of meeting the demands of a rising middle-class economy[4].” With over a billion US dollars committed to India’s development every year, the World Bank has a large presence in India’s development, and plays a large role in the abolition of poverty and creation of financial development programs in the country.

Overview of Existing Scholarly Conversation

Criticisms of the World Bank

As aforementioned, the World Bank’s projects span hundreds of countries and billions of dollars in assistance. Regardless, many are sceptical of the efficacy and efficiency of the World Bank’s efforts to reduce poverty, due to historical precedent[5]. Notable critics like the Bretton Woods Project have been vocal about the World Bank’s failure to learn from their mistakes, the structural problems of their development projects, the exclusion of developing countries from many important dialogues pertaining to the Global South and often, a lack of effective programs[6].

Some critics present that the World Bank’s programs are a product of empty rhetoric and an absence of a clear agenda to address the issues they intend to address[7]. There are some supporters of the World Bank that reject these criticisms and consider that the Bank’s failings are more a product of its vision that adherence to capitalist beliefs lead to poverty reduction in the first place[8]. Further, critics like scholar John Sender argue that the World Bank’s failures are a product of its commitment to neoliberal economic policies that hinder its ability to create a project framework that completely understands the culture and situation in developing areas, like Sub-Saharan Africa, and thus, hindering the recipient’s possibility for maintainable growth[9].

Measuring Poverty Outreach

In academic circles, there have been increasing conversations about the methods employed in measuring poverty outreach. It is imperative to have an effective and reliable way to analyse whether the large scale, expensive policies that governments and institutions implement to reduce poverty are truly reaching the poorest in society and impacting them on a serious level. There is a dearth in methods of analysis that do so because there is a fundamental inability to measure the effectiveness of poverty alleviation projects, especially in comparison to the ways available of measuring poverty itself.

Scholars have proposed a variety of methods of doing so, a popular one being the creation of an index that measures various indicators of poverty. One of the earliest forays into this kind of research was conducted by Zeller and Sharma in 2005 where they outline the need for and construct a “multi-dimensional poverty index through principal component analysis using a range of poverty-related indicators[10].” The reason for this multi-dimensional index is due to the nature of poverty itself – it is made up of numerous social, economic, cultural, political, environmental and institutional factors – and thus, requires a multi-fold look at development pre- and post- outreach efforts to see the extent and width of such programs. By identifying a range of poverty indicators, assessing them individually and then analysing them as a collective, it is more effective to understand how valuable poverty alleviation efforts have been to a particular region. This method is based on indices that measure phenomena on a large, often international scale like the Human Development Index, which measures global average levels of human development on four main indicators[11].

Similarly, in 2020, Zhou et al developed a similar indicator that was meant to act as a more dynamic method of measuring poverty alleviation in larger, fast developing countries like China, where poverty reduction efforts are widespread and focused on reducing the gap between urban and rural communities and regional development specifically. While the methodology itself is similar to that of Zeller and Sharma, the multi-dimensional index in this context does not aggregate their assessment of various indicators into one index but rather measures and analyses them individually to allow for different poverty characteristics across communities and indicators.

While many of these approaches have been quantitative, there are some scholars who see greater value in adopting a qualitative approach and reframe the way we understand poverty in order to measure alleviation and, as a result, construct more effective and sustainable methods of combating the problem. Scholar Edward Carr presents that by looking at poverty as a singular issue rather than as individual “poverties” that vary in cause and area, there is room to develop more effective poverty alleviation methods that do not overlook local causes of these situations and rather create solutions that are more in-tune with the specific problems in a specific area[12]. This is not to abandon existing, large-scale poverty reduction solutions but rather, adjust our development goals and analyse current methods to ensure that they are efficient and well-equipped to deal with a multitude of problems[13].

Methods

While qualitative methods as proposed by Carr hold great weight and value, they are difficult in measuring projects that have already been implemented. For the purposes of this research paper, it would be of value to utilise a modified version of the poverty index proposed by Zhou et al to analyse the effectiveness of World Bank efforts in India with regards to financial inclusivity as a method of poverty reduction. This is because of the distinction between static and dynamic poverty alleviation put forward. While the work of Zeller and Sharma is important in understanding the field of measuring poverty alleviation, it, like many of its contemporaries, intends to study a specific period of poverty outreach and cannot be easily modified to incorporate newer statistics or sudden changes. This limits opportunities moving forward to create more dynamic approaches to alleviate poverty, a phenomenon that itself exists dynamically.

The reason for this modification of their index is the availability of data and the type of projects being analysed. In their work, Zhou et al utilise the index to analyse poverty outreach across the entire country of China through large-scale government led policies that encompass multiple areas of life through multiple, congruent projects over multiple years. This paper looks only at two World Bank projects that last an average of 5 years in India, and often in smaller communities and on specific issues of financial inclusivity and growth.

While Zhou et al focus on global indicators of poverty reduction, for the purposes of this paper, this paper will be focusing solely on World Bank indicators of poverty. The Bank outlines these on their official website as World Development Indicators and divides them into different sections. However, due to the nature of the projects themselves, I will be relying specifically on the indicators put forward in the project appraisal reports and the completion projects, due to the scale of these projects.

Limitations and Tradeoffs

While World Bank project data is available, there is a severe lack of available data on individual regional and national projects – making it difficult to conduct a full quantitative analysis as proposed by Zhou et al. Even with the modifications aforementioned, there are limitations with using the data available. In late 2020, the World Bank released a statement stating that some of their published data contained a number of irregularities, which raises the question of reliability[14]. Further, by limiting the study to just two cases, there is very little room for generalisability.

Results

Microcredit in India

Following India’s microcredit crisis in 2010, the microfinance crisis in Andhra Pradesh is considered one of the largest failures of the idea of microcredit ever and it played an instrumental role in the disintegration and unpopularity of the practice in India. Following the creation of the system by Muhammad Yunus at Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank in the 1980s, the World Bank played a large role in popularizing the program through the creation of the Consultative Group to Assist the Poorest (CGAP) in the 1990s. The purpose of the CGAP was to act as “a service provider to the microfinance industry by catering to the needs of three stakeholders, namely the MFIs, donor agencies, and the microfinance industry[15]” and improve the work of microfinance institutions (MFIs) across the Global South.

The work of the CGAP was to incentivize microcredit programs in developing countries, an idea that led to the rise in private microcredit programs particularly in India that focused on serving already served populations. The World Bank was in great support of these programs and funded some in part. Andhra Pradesh was the largest recipient of microfinance in India but in 2010, the World Bank announced plans to provide loans of up to a billion US dollars to the Indian government’s “self-help group support program”, partially to ensure that objectives of the CGAP were carried out. The latter led to a huge crackdown of private MFIs, pulling the rug out from under recipients, leading to a debt crisis and into a significant increase in suicide rates in the region.

The failures in Andhra Pradesh can largely be chalked up to the World Bank’s hurry to expedite growth in India and a fundamental lack of understanding of the situation on the ground. Providing support for both private MFIs and government-led MFIs, while perhaps nobly intentioned, resulted in a crisis that severely impacted the people the World Bank claims to carry out development measures for.

MSME Growth Innovation and Inclusive Financial Project

In 2015, the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Growth Innovation and Inclusive Financial Project began as a way of providing financial assistance to the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) to expand and support smaller sectors within India’s burgeoning manufacturing and service sectors. While the implementation of the MSME project was incredibly different from the microfinance programs and the CGAP in general, the purpose remained the same: to provide financial opportunities to peoples typically excluded from these sectors and encourage further economic growth in India.

The project officially ended in 2020, after achieving most of their objectives either fully or partially. While not a perfectly efficient project, the program showed a marked improvement in comparison to many other World Bank financial projects in India, especially like the microcredit program. This is partly due to the fact that the World Bank, in their implementation completion report of the project, stated that there were clear evaluations of the MSME sector, the Bank’s relationship with SIDBI and consideration for the long-term impact of a project of this kind.

Following the end of the project, the World Bank continued their relationship with the MSME sector and provided around $750 million USD amid the crisis of the coronavirus pandemic. Further, the Bank has shown commitments to continuing this relationship and developing the sector further.  This shows a significant departure from past practices where the Bank failed to consider longevity and external impacts of their policies and actions, rather choosing to focus on fulfilling internal objectives through any means possible.

Analysis

In an article from 1996, scholar Bryan Johnson wrote for the Heritage Foundation: “clearly, the World Bank’s approach to economic development is a failure.[16]” While a bleak evaluation of the Bank and its programs, it is valuable to ask the question: why does the World Bank rarely learn from their mistakes? And in cases where it does, why is retrospect only warranted by a large-scale crisis and worldwide criticism?

As evidenced by the results above, the successes of the World Bank are greatly a product of learning from their failures and paying strict attention to their systemic problems. By listening to criticism and using their failures to move forward, the World Bank has shown that it can succeed and has the potential to implement programs that are valuable and long-lasting.

However, the World Bank, more often than not, does not learn from criticism, and it is fair to say that many critics of the Bank and its practices do have some valid concerns about the organisation and its future. John Sender, as previously discussed, believes that the World Bank’s biggest failing comes from its fundamental commitment to neoclassical economic policies above any other commitment. The situation in Andhra Pradesh is a product of the World Bank prioritizing their role as a neoliberal international financial institution over their role as a “the world’s largest development institution.[17]” Academics have also criticized the World Bank’s approach in India. V Ranganathan, in his discussion of the World Bank’s contribution to India’s growth and poverty alleviation, states that the “Bank concentrated on the growth objective in the first phase, subscribing to the theory that development would automatically trickle down out of growth…. And results are yet to show up.[18]” Further, the World Bank’s consistent focus on incentivizing private sector participation over promoting government-led policies reflects this issue of priorities. In an investigation carried out by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists for the Huffington Post into the World Bank’s failures to enforce “safeguard” policies in protecting vulnerable populations, Barry Yeoman writes that the World Bank’s collaboration with the Tata Group of India has “repeatedly failed to make sure people harmed by big projects get counted.[19]” By consistently favoring private sector companies and working to incentivize them to invest, the World Bank has ignored the populations they intend to serve and led to evictions, increased debt and often death.

The World Bank’s failures ultimately can be attributed to their misguided priorities and unwillingness to learn from their mistakes and adapt accordingly. Parallelly, their successes are a result of a strong focus and dedication to the program and utilising their insight into and historical knowledge of the countries they operate within.

Conclusion

The answer to the question of why the World Bank’s history of programs is littered with few successes and many failures lies within the Bank itself. Since its conception in 1944, the global economic and development landscape has shifted in its focus and has multiplied tenfold. The World Bank’s original purpose was reconstruction of the world for a better tomorrow, and now its purpose is to further development and continue to work towards a better tomorrow.

However, it is important that there is no moving forward without learning from the past. The Bank’s insistence to not learn from its mistakes and rely on private corporations to adjust quality of life across the world is holding back global development to a great extent. Further, by continuing to implement projects without looking at past projects, the Bank is doing a great disservice to the millions of people that rely on it for better living conditions.

While this paper only represents a small portion of the role of the World Bank globally, it is important for the Bank to note that its successes are only due to its learning from its failures. To facilitate sustainable, efficient and equitable change, it is necessary for the World Bank to slow down and take stock of the institution as a whole and how it functions.

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Bibliography

“Doing Business – Data Irregularities Statement”. 2020. World Bank. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/statement/2020/08/27/doing-business—data-irregularities-statement.

“Empowerment Case Studies: Consultative Group To Assist The Poorest (CGAP)”. 2003. http://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/433421468153290801/pdf/514460WP0GLB0C10Box342028B01PUBLIC1.pdf.

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“How The Bank’s Push For Microcredit Failed The Poor – Bretton Woods Project”. 2021. Bretton Woods Project. https://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/2017/12/banks-push-microcredit-failed-poor/.

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“India – Overview”. 2021. World Bank. https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/india/overview.

“Poverty & Equity Data Portal”. 2021. World Bank Group. https://povertydata.worldbank.org/poverty/home/.

“Poverty”. 2020. World Bank. https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty.

“The World Bank Group’s Uncounted”. 2015. The Huffington Post. https://projects.huffingtonpost.com/projects/worldbank-evicted-abandoned/india-uncounted.

“What Are The Main Criticisms Of The World Bank And The IMF?”. 2019. Bretton Woods Project. https://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/2019/06/what-are-the-main-criticisms-of-the-world-bank-and-the-imf/#_Toc10127386.

“What Are The Main Criticisms Of The World Bank And The IMF?”. 2019. Bretton Woods Project. https://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/2019/06/what-are-the-main-criticisms-of-the-world-bank-and-the-imf/#_Toc10127386.

“World Development Indicators – Poverty And Inequality”. 2021. World Bank Group. https://datatopics.worldbank.org/world-development-indicators/themes/poverty-and-inequality.html.

“World Development Indicators”. 2021. World Bank Group. http://wdi.worldbank.org/tables.

Baum, Warren C, and Stokes M Tolbert. 1986. “Investing In Development: Lessons Of World Bank Experience”. Development Southern Africa 3 (2): 199-218. doi:10.1080/03768358608439228.

Birdsall, Nancy, and Juan Luis Londono, 1997. “Asset Inequality Matters: An Assessment of the World Bank’s Approach to Poverty Reduction”. The American Economic Review

Cammack, Paul. 2004. “What The World Bank Means By Poverty Reduction, And Why It Matters”. New Political Economy 9 (2): 189-211. doi:10.1080/1356346042000218069.

Carr, Edward R. 2008. “Rethinking Poverty Alleviation: A ‘Poverties’ Approach”. Development In Practice 18 (6): 726-734. doi:10.1080/09614520802386363.

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Easterly, William. 2001. “The Effect Of IMF And World Bank Programs On Poverty”. SSRN Electronic Journal. doi:10.2139/ssrn.256883.

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Kanbur, S. M. Ravi. 1987. “Measurement And Alleviation Of Poverty: With An Application To The Effects Of Macroeconomic Adjustment (Evaluation Quantitative De La Pauvrete Et Remedes Possibles: Analyse Des Effets D’un Ajustement Macroeconomique) (Medicion Y Alivio De La Pobreza, Con Una Aplicacion A Los Efectos Del Ajuste Macroeconomico)”. Staff Papers – International Monetary Fund 34 (1): 60. doi:10.2307/3867024.

Klees, Steven J. 2002. “World Bank Education Policy: New Rhetoric, Old Ideology”. International Journal Of Educational Development 22 (5): 451-474. doi:10.1016/s0738-0593(02)00006-8.

Ranganathan, V. “World Bank and India’s Economic Development.” Economic and Political Weekly 38, no. 3 (2003): 236. Accessed April 11, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4413102.

Roodman, David. 2010. “Understanding India’s Microcredit Crisis”. Center For Global Development. https://www.cgdev.org/blog/understanding-india’s-microcredit-crisis.

Sender, J. (2000) ‘Reassessing the role of the World Bank in Sub-Saharan Africa’, in J. Pincus

World Bank Group. 2011. “After The Microfinance Crisis : Assessing The Role Of Government-Led Microcredit Alternatives.”

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Zeller, Manfred, Manohar Sharma, Carla Henry, and Cécile Lapenu. 2006. “An Operational Method For Assessing The Poverty Outreach Performance Of Development Policies And Projects: Results Of Case Studies In Africa, Asia, And Latin America”. World Development 34 (3): 448. doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2005.07.020

Zhou, Di, Kuangyuan Cai, and Shaojun Zhong. 2020. “A Statistical Measurement Of Poverty Reduction Effectiveness: Using China As An Example”. Social Indicators Research 153 (1): 39-64. doi:10.1007/s11205-020-02474-w.

[1] “History”. 2021. World Bank. https://www.worldbank.org/en/about/history.

[2] “History”. 2021. World Bank. https://www.worldbank.org/en/about/history.

[3] “Poverty”. 2020. World Bank. https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty.

[4] “India – Overview”. 2021. World Bank. https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/india/overview.

[5] Goodman, Peter. 2006. “The Persistently Poor”. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/07/AR2006120700427.html.

[6] “What Are The Main Criticisms Of The World Bank And The IMF?”. 2019. Bretton Woods Project. https://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/2019/06/what-are-the-main-criticisms-of-the-world-bank-and-the-imf/#_Toc10127386.

[7] Klees, Steven J. 2002. “World Bank Education Policy: New Rhetoric, Old Ideology”. International Journal Of Educational Development 22 (5): 451-474. doi:10.1016/s0738-0593(02)00006-8.

[8] Cammack, Paul. 2004. “What The World Bank Means By Poverty Reduction, And Why It Matters”. New Political Economy 9 (2): 189-211. doi:10.1080/1356346042000218069.

[9] Sender, J. (2000) ‘Reassessing the role of the World Bank in Sub-Saharan Africa’, in J. Pincus

and J. Winters (eds) Reinventing the World Bank, pp. 185-202. Ithaca: Cornell University

Press.

[10] Zeller, Manfred, Manohar Sharma, Carla Henry, and Cécile Lapenu. 2006. “An Operational Method For Assessing The Poverty Outreach Performance Of Development Policies And Projects: Results Of Case Studies In Africa, Asia, And Latin America”. World Development 34 (3): 448. doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2005.07.020

[11] “Human Development Index (HDI)”. 2021. Human Development Reports. http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-index-hdi.

[12] Carr, Edward R. 2008. “Rethinking Poverty Alleviation: A ‘Poverties’ Approach”. Development In Practice 18 (6): 726. doi:10.1080/09614520802386363.

[13] ibid 728

[14] “Doing Business – Data Irregularities Statement”. 2020. World Bank. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/statement/2020/08/27/doing-business—data-irregularities-statement.

[15]“Empowerment Case Studies: Consultative Group To Assist The Poorest (CGAP)”. 2003. http://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/433421468153290801/pdf/514460WP0GLB0C10Box342028B01PUBLIC1.pdf.

[16] Johnson, Bryan. 1996. “The World Bank And Economic Growth: 50 Years Of Failure”. The Heritage Foundation. https://www.heritage.org/trade/report/the-world-bank-and-economic-growth-50-years-failure.

[17] “History”. 2021. World Bank. https://www.worldbank.org/en/about/history.

[18] Ranganathan, V. “World Bank and India’s Economic Development.” Economic and Political Weekly 38, no. 3 (2003): 236. Accessed April 11, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4413102.

[19] “The World Bank Group’s Uncounted”. 2015. The Huffington Post. https://projects.huffingtonpost.com/projects/worldbank-evicted-abandoned/india-uncounted.

This project was originally written for a class at American University in 2020.

In 1961, Frantz Fanon wrote one of his seminal works entitled The Wretched of the Earth – a look at the impact and influence of colonization on nations and peoples, and further the social process of decolonization in these nations. Nine years prior, in 1952, there was a coup staged in Egypt by military personnel against the ruling elite and in 1953, the Egyptian monarchy was abolished, and the Republic of Egypt was established. Following this, Gamal Abdel Nasser came to power in the country and changed the course of Egypt for many years to come. While Fanon did not write The Wretched of the Earth until almost a decade after the events in Egypt, the two share many details in common especially as the theme of decolonizing nations is so prevalent to both. This essay aims to explore the Free Officers Movement and Nasser’s rebuilding of post-colonial Egypt through the lens of Fanon and further develop understandings of both ideologies.

It is necessary to begin any discussion of post-colonial Egypt by establishing the colonization of Egypt. This is not because formerly colonized nations are characterized by their colonization but rather because it provides necessary context in understanding the true depth and impact of colonization on these nations and how their societies are influenced by these socio-political impositions. Foreign occupation of Egypt can be traced back to the 16^th century with the presence of the Ottoman Empire in the region, which was followed by Napoleon’s campaign in the country in 1798. French occupation was immensely unpopular in Egypt with scholar al-Jabarti writing about the cruel nature of the French campaign in Egypt, particularly in response to the Cairo Revolt, and referring to the French as “demons of the Devil’s army” (al-Jabarti, 36) in his book Chronicle of the French Occupation: Napoleon in Egypt. After the French left Egypt in 1801, the nation saw occupation by Muhammad Ali and the Ottomans for the greater part of the 19th century until the entry of the British in 1883, who wanted control over the Suez Canal and the region before the French.

As Cleveland writes, British occupation of Egypt “shaped Egyptian economic development for several decades, had an impact on the formation of the country’s political leadership and became the focus of an anti-imperial nationalist movement that affected Egyptian politics for the first half of the twentieth century” (Cleveland, 96). While Egypt was never a formal British colony, it was considered a veiled protectorate until 1914 where the former Ottoman colony was made a formal protectorate of Britain by the League of Nations, setting up the Sultanate of Egypt. The Sultanate lasted till 1922 but following this, the British maintained a significant presence in the country, particularly with regards to the military and Egyptian politics.

Under British rule, it is important to note that the Egyptians who benefitted were “the large landholders who saw their property values and profits grow… have a vested interest in the social and economic advantages it brought them, and they would attempt to preserve those advantages” (Cleveland, 97). Egypt was ruled by its monarchy and technically was a sovereign nation, but the presence of the British colonial powers continued until 1956, despite the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 which called for the withdrawal of British troops for Egypt except the Suez Canal.

During the first half of the twentieth century, however, as more countries gained independence or sovereignty, there was rising political and nationalist consciousness within the Arab world and Egypt in particular. With the rise of anti-imperialist groups like the Wafd Party and the Muslim Brotherhood, there was an increased sense of Arab-centrism and anti-colonial rhetoric. In 1947, most notably, the Ba’ath Arab Socialist Party was formed. The party was focused on three main principles: Arab nation unity and liberty, freedom and equality, and anti-colonial civilization (Baath Party Constitution). Nationalist ideas and open criticisms of British interference in the region were increasingly commonplace as “educated Egypt had found a voice – or perhaps many voices – and its echoes reverberated across the political landscape” (Cleveland, 100) primarily through Egyptian press and media.

While the Ba’ath party never gained prominence in Egypt, particularly due to Nasser’s personal disagreement with the organisation, its Constitution reflects many beliefs that were held by Arab nationalist leaders at the time, like Nasser. Firstly, the idea that the “Arab Homeland belongs to the Arabs” is a strongly regionalist and anti-colonial statement, that showed rising attitudes at the time across the world – with the rise of pan-Arabism and pan-Africanism. Additionally, a focus on the fundamental idea of freedom plays a strong role across Ba’athist  beliefs and literature at the time. The Constitution speaks about the provision of equal opportunity for all, establishing just systems and that the Arab nations seek to help all who struggle for freedom. It then goes on to address anti-colonialism, taking a strong stance of solidarity and vowing to provide support to anyone that may need it. While it is important to note that Nasser was not a part of Ba’ath party and it has never maintained a strong presence in Egypt, the 1947 Constitution shows a spiking consciousness in the Arab world about ideas of decolonization and a change in the discussions of class as previously known.

This rising contention brings to the forefront one of Fanon’s core ideas: the idea of violence. Fanon writes: “Decolonization never goes unnoticed, for it focuses on and fundamentally alters being… decolonization, therefore, implies the urgent need to thoroughly challenge the colonial situation” (Fanon, 2). Fanon’s central premise on violence is that he believes that colonialism itself is the result of a campaign that has its foundations in violence and that “in the colonies, the foreigner imposed himself using his cannons and machines” (Fanon, 5). Fanon also states that the order of the colonial world is governed by violence, that “tirelessly punctuated the destruction of the indigenous social fabric, and demolished unchecked” (Fanon, 6). Further, Fanon argues, the only way to properly eradicate or abolish colonial rule that is established on violence is through the use of violence. In his view, “whenever an authentic liberation struggle has been fought, wherever the blood of the people has been shed and the armed phase has lasted long enough to encourage the intellectuals to withdraw to their rank and file base, there is an effective eradication of the superstructure borrowed by these intellectuals from the colonialist bourgeois circles” (Fanon, 11). This idea has been the subject of criticism in academic circles, especially where the belief “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” is prevalent. However, it is necessary to be cognizant of the fact that Fanon is not calling for solely unbridled physical violence, but also structural violence to break down oppressive systems and more importantly, intellectual violence to rid the colonization of the mind.

In a Fanonian sense, the rising social consciousness and political critique at the time was an active act of violence by the colonized against their colonizers. When the “colonized subject … discovers that his life, his breathing and his heartbeats are the same as the colonist’s” (Fanon, 10), they are actively engaging in decolonization and violence against the systems that held them back. Cleveland discusses how the “Egyptian press served [as a] … forum for the propagation of ideas on the major cultural and social issues of the era” (Cleveland, 100) as the nation moved to independence. However, most notably, Gamal Abdel Nasser engaged in this violence on a variety of levels. In a classical sense of violence where “blood is shed”, as a military officer, Nasser had fought for his country in the Egyptian Armed Forces and the Arab-Israeli War of 1948 – where he developed his intense brand of nationalism. Nasser’s fundamental desire as a leader of Egypt was to “dismantle the old regime and uproot the political, economic and ideological imperialism which was keeping Egypt in servitude” (Nasser, 75). Structural violence is best understood as a form of violence wherein there are certain social structures and disparities that prevent certain groups from accessing necessities, an occurrence that is incredibly common in colonial societies. Under British rule, most programs were designed “to serve British imperial and financial interests” and “in many areas of social development, [their] policies were regressive” (Cleveland, 98). Previously, Egypt had a state-sponsored school system, but under the restrictive education policies of the British, tuition fees were raised and the general public’s access to education was increasingly restricted.

These restrictive policies that were often centered around financial restrictions contributed to two main features in Egyptian society. First, there was increased disparity between sections of society that led to increased class consciousness, and a desire to remove systemic barriers through the upturning of colonial powers and their allies, the monarchy in the Egyptian context. The production of wealth for the British empire at the cost of Egyptian lives became even more prominent as Egyptians began to realise the nation’s “conversion into a vast field of cotton provided the British economy with its life blood, at the expense of the starving Egyptian peasants” (Nasser, 77). Secondly, there was a creation of a “group of Egyptian intellectuals imbued with nationalist ideals and a sense of frustration over their inferior status” (Cleveland, 98). An example of such a figure is Gamal Abdel Nasser himself. In his 1962 charter The Morrow of Independence, Nasser explicitly states his disillusionment with the British colonial rule and heavily criticizes the socio-economic structures in Egypt at the time.

An important aspect of Fanon’s ideas is his focus on class statuses and the theory of stretch Marxism. Following the abolition of colonial rule through violence, it is imperative that the creation of a nation state and its development is not led by the “native bourgeoise” or by the elite of the country. Rather, the revolution and the subsequent rebuilding of the nation should be carried out or led by the lowest rung of society that is uninterested and uninvolved in revolutionary politics, or the lumpenproletariat. Fanon argues that this is because he believes that the native bourgeoise is driven by personal interest and may act as a “vulgar opportunist” (Fanon, 11). While there may be some removal of foreign influence, the native bourgeoise will act in accordance with their class interests and continue the capitalist, imperialist patterns in order to maintain power and disparity – going as far as to say that the ruling elite’s “interests are identical to those of that of the colonialist bourgeoisie” (Fanon, 23). It is notable that following the official “end” of the era of the British acting as protector over Egypt, the country was run by the monarchy who continued relations with Great Britain and allowed them to maintain a strong presence in Egypt – against the interests of the greater society and primarily for financial profit. Despite popular protest, the British did not dissolve their military presence and did not leave until the 1956 Suez Canal crisis, as they had nothing to gain from being in the region anymore.

The actions of the native bourgeoise, namely the King of Egypt and the rest of the monarchy, and the presence of British forces in Egypt acted as the primary motivator of the 1952 Free Officers Movement or the 1952 Coup. While the coup d’état is not characterized by its physical violence, it did contain some movements of violent interactions between parties. However, it is a strong example of structural violence – it intended to completely uproot the status quo and return the power to the Egyptian people, rather than the elite minority. While this use of violence and focus on the removal of the bourgeoise is quintessentially Fanonian, it is imperative to note that the revolution was still a revolution from above. The military class is not the lumpenproletariat, as they are organized, often well off and are often politically involved which goes against the Marxist prescription for the lumpenproletariat. However, it is important to recognise that it was still a relatively lower class that was focused on socialist and somewhat Marxist beliefs.

Nasserism as a political ideology is explicitly rooted in socialism, and this can be seen in his writing and his policies. In The Morrow of Independence, Nasser hints at Fanon’s discussion of the upper class and the colonial powers, stating that  “before the revolution, economic power was in the hands of a coalition between feudalism and exploitative capitalism… political life and the parties reflect this power and serve as the façade for this coalition” (Nasser, 77). He then goes on to discuss the intrinsic link between colonialism and capitalism, noting that the “economic momentum of the capitalist countries originates from the investments made in the colonies” (Nasser, 77). While Nasser did not embody Marxism in his Nasserism and rather leaned towards a more Arab brand of socialism, some of his ideas resonate with Fanon’s stretch Marxism. Fanon calls for the stretching for Marxism to include critiques of colonial capitalism and states that “Marxist analysis should always be slightly stretched every time we have to do with the colonial problem. Everything up to and including the very nature of pre-capitalist society… explained by Marx, must here be thought out again” (Fanon, 40). This call to stretch Marxism is seen in Nasserism, which is further characterized by its rejection of Western capitalism and inherent focus on anti-colonial nationalism.

While it is clear that some of Fanon’s ideas can be seen clearly within Egypt’s post-colonial state-building, many aspects of Nasser’s rule do not align with Fanon’s view of an independent country. Firstly, and most importantly, is the question of the lumpenproletariat. While it is true that Nasser and the rest of the Free Officers were not a part of the colonial elite or the native bourgeoise, they maintained a relatively high-class status, especially Nasser who also had a background as an intellectual. This is an important shift in Fanon’s theory of decolonization and can be considered as an important factor in determining Egypt’s future. Additionally, one of the main characteristics of Nasserism is his continued focus on modernisation and industrialization, as he attempted to bring Egypt into the modern world. This breaks from Fanon’s strict prescription of class and focus on agrarian society as “when the Nasserist ruling class came to power, they addressed the dominance of the private sector by weakening the power of the agrarian faction that dominated it, and which was tied to foreign capital and institutions[1].” Fanon also warns against the “pitfalls of nationalist consciousness”, a rhetoric that Nasserists leaned heavily into and built a majority of their policies and platforms around. Salem writes that “nationalism could just as easily lead to exclusion, tribalism, chauvinism, racialized nationalism and so on… impossible to argue the Nasserist nationalist project was free of these ideological extremes and… it did eventually succumb to a regressive form of nationalism.[2]”

Another reason that Nasser does not fit into this Fanonian view is because of the role of pan-Arabism at the team. As aforementioned, in the late 1940s, the Ba’ath party started to gain prominence and there was an emergence of a united Arab consciousness, as evidenced by Nasser’s own involvement in the creation of a United Arab Republic. This provides a different background and temporal context for Egypt’s attempts at decolonization because the country also participated in regional alliances and societal norms.

At a surface level, it is obvious that Egypt was not built around Frantz Fanon’s ideas of how a post-colonial society should organise itself or what such a society should look like. Placing The Wretched of the Earth within Fanon’s broader bibliography also makes it evident that his ideas are centered around the experiences of black colonized individuals and therefore, lack replicability to some extent. However, it is important to recognise the validity of Fanon’s ideas as they transcend a variety of national and cultural boundaries and hold relevance even outside of the context they were written. While the Egyptian project took place years before and in a completely different part of the world to Fanon’s writings, it is necessary to note that Fanon did not write his work in a vacuum – it was informed by the world around him and already existing freedom struggles.

In discussions of vacuums, there is also a lasting impact of the post-colonial project in Egypt on Egyptian society. While Nasser and his regime tried vehemently to disband neocolonialism in Egyptian society in the 1950s, the role of class runs deeper than comprehensible. As Persaud writes, “the hegemonic project that was begun in 1952 came to an end by 2011 mostly because of the colonized nature of the national bourgeois, combined with cracks in the leadership that was no longer able to manage the contending social forces.[3]” The inability of previous governments to address the problems of colonialism arguably indirectly led to the events of the Arab Spring in 2011 to some capacity, resulting in the long-term effect on Egyptian society and government.

Nasser and Egypt do not perfectly adhere to the Fanonian model of decolonization, and perhaps there is merit to this because of the divergence between Nasser’s Egypt and Fanon’s look at still-colonized African nations. However, there are clear links between the two and Fanon can act as an important method of looking at post-colonial forays into nation building and, more importantly, problematize these in order to learn broader lessons in decolonization.

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[1] Salem, Sara. 2018. “Reading Egypt’s Postcolonial State Through Frantz Fanon: Hegemony, Dependency And Development”. Interventions 20 (3): 428-445. doi:10.1080/1369801x.2017.1421041. 437.

[2] ibid 439.

[3] Persaud, Randolph B. 2021. “Hegemony And The Postcolonial State”. International Politics Reviews. doi:10.1057/s41312-021-00106-0. 1.

This project was originally written for a class at American University in 2021.

Introduction

Since the end of the Second World War, the world has seen significant shifts and movements in populations, and particularly the expansion of diasporas. More people chose to migrate out of their homelands for a variety of reasons over the last three hundred years – from those seeking opportunities during the American Dream in the 19^th century to those fleeing persecution in their countries of origin in the 20^th century.

Similarly, the 20^th century saw an upwards tick in political activism with the emergence of a number of movements worldwide, calling attention to issues like gender equality, racial tensions, national sovereignty and economic freedom. This progressive movement carried forward into the 21^st century and, more notably, into the “digital age”. As social media grows in prominence and becomes an increasingly intrinsic part of society’s social fabric, it also acts as a primary source for many to learn about social movements and engage in political and civic activity. Many political movements begin on social media, like the #BlackLivesMatter movement in the USA, or gain momentum on social media, like the “mera jism, meri marzi” movement in Pakistan.

With the emergence of social media, there is also a strong relationship between diaspora politics and political activism and how non-traditional media sources like social media can have some amount of influence in international foreign policy towards Iran. This is particularly interesting in a modern context, as diasporas are greater than they have been in recent history as more people are emigrating for a variety of reasons.

However, this paper aims to focus on the political activism of the Iranian American diaspora and discuss the question: “How has social media changed the political activism of the Iranian diaspora?” Further, this paper argues that diaspora activism, particularly the activism of the Iranian diaspora, plays an important role in speaking out against or about the repression of authoritarian governments and that with the rise of digital media and particularly social media, diaspora activism is able to gain more momentum and garner more support, and actually, as a result, can lead to genuine policy changes in their country of residence.

Iranian Americans: An Overview

As of 2020, there are about half a million to one million people living in the United States that identify as Iranian American[1]^,[2]. Following a round of social, economic and political reforms in the middle of the 20^th century, there was the first wave of Iranian immigration to the United States in 1950, as foreign exchange rates liberalised, and foreign investment increased. Many of these were younger Iranians moving abroad for educational and professional opportunities, with the intention of moving back in a short period of time.

However, after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, immigration rose again and for different reasons – people were moving for refuge or as exiles, and with the intention of settling down for the foreseeable future. This spike was impacted the hostage crisis of the 1980s and Iranian immigrants were denied visas and opportunities to move were limited as the diplomatic relations between the US and Iran ended. After the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) in the US was passed, many more Iranians became US citizens through naturalisation and further, there was larger cases of immigration to the country.

Iranian Americans make up a large demographic in the USA and are very active in their communities in many ways, from academics and doctors to creatives and politicians. Around three-quarters of Iranian Americans state that they vote in US elections and engage with American politics, and all of them state that their political involvement also involves discussions of foreign policy towards Iran. In a study conducted by the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans (PAAIA), respondents to a political survey stated that: “beyond the nuclear deal, important US-Iran relations issues for Iranian Americans include promotion of human rights and democracy and lifting the US trade embargo. Promoting regime change is also of growing importance…[3]”

The diaspora’s political activism and engagement in Iranian politics is not a new phenomenon. It began with Iranian dissidents and exiles in the 50s and 60s, protesting the Shah and his visit to the United States. Additionally, for many older generations of Iranian Americans, their existence within the US is inherently political due to the nature of their migration, characterised by the Islamic Revolution and rejections of the politics in Iran.

Diasporas and Activism

Identity Construction and Political Activity

In many cases, diasporas are often tasked with the role of acting as political advocates for a multitude of issues in their countries of origin – whether by raising awareness or lobbying to enact actual change in policy. This is often for valid reason as diasporas, in some capacity, act as unconscious representatives of their countries of origins, or their “homelands.”

In recent studies conducted, there has been research that states that diasporas operate as “ethnic lobbies in liberal host lands and as advocates of a multicultural in order to attempt to democratise authoritarian homeland regimes.[4]” This can be understood also in the context of mediation – diasporas provide a bridge between their homelands and their countries, and often transmit “Western values” from abroad.

While they may not necessarily be citizens of their homelands, they are placed within their own unique identity construction wherein they exist outside the state’s boundaries geographically but not culturally and socially. Scholar Yossi Shain also presents that diasporas are aptly suited to manipulate international images and focus attention on issues that may be used to influence foreign policy decision making by engaging with the domestic politics of their homeland on a global scale, due to their international location.

This phenomenon is not newly noted as well: Latha Varadarajan in her 2010 book, The Domestic Abroad, states that “for the first time in history, diasporas are coming together cheaply and effectively and are exerting their influencing on the politics of the countries they have physically, but not emotionally, abandoned.[5]” Diasporas have long used their unique positionality to engage in political activism to advance political issues in their home countries.

Problematising Politics

However, this is not to paint diasporic political beliefs with a broad-brush stroke: not all members of the diaspora share the same political beliefs and not all members of a diaspora may use their divergent identity construction to engage politically. Writing about the need to “problematise and disaggregate” the diaspora, social scientist Alexandra Délano Alonso suggests that one “think of diaspora not in substantialist terms as a bounded entity, but rather as an idiom, a stance, a claim.[6]” By challenging the ways in which the diaspora is perceived, it paves the way to create less of a monolithic view of the diaspora and avoid falling into traps of generalisation.

Rise of Social Media

Creating Communities

As social media rises in popularity and usage globally, people are more interconnected than ever before and more intimately as well. Many diasporic ethnic communities use social media to connect with existing and reach out to new generations of activists. David Faris lays this idea out in his work Electronic Iran. Eloranta et al argue that social media allows for the production of trust and support through the interactions of diverse people within diasporas that then use social media to advocate in a systematic manner. Further, they present that “even though emerging media technologies do not alone produce trust and network support in digital space, social media continues to provide openings in ways individuals create new ties and engage in civic engagement of social networking at both the local and transnational levels.”

This creation of alternative social networks acts as one of the greatest strengths of social media activism and creates frameworks to bridge social capital in activist circles. These frameworks are particularly filtered into personalised social networking spaces where politics is undermined as a collective and there is a sort of dialogical space of interaction for communication, sets of relations and civic norms of involvement. These personalised networking spaces are also aided by the algorithms of social media – scholar Stefania Milan speaks about this “medium-specific infrastructure” of social media and how it leads to the emergence of a contemporary, previously unimagined form and level of mobilisation. Some studies present that “political uses of social media have a mobilization effect among youth, as they create opportunities for individuals that otherwise would not participate[7].”

There are still significant problems with social media activism. Firstly, it is important to address the question of trust building and relationship depth within a social media context. Electronic Iran discusses the work of Robert Putnam, who argued that new, digital media has led to the decline of social capital in the American public life because these information and entertainment technologies make people passive, mere consuming subjects leading to lower group solidarity and enhanced fragmentation. As a result: Putnam argues that relationships formed within these environments often lack the depth of “normal” para-social relationships and further suffer from enhanced views of trust. While this is a valid concern, there has been work conducted after Putnam of social media relationships, in particular, that shows that people have begun to reconfigure relationships in the age of social media[8]. There are also deep levels of trust in these social situations, perhaps not at the level of offline relationships but deeper than previously believed[9].

With social media activism and these communities, there is also the question of authenticity of activism. As activism is more widespread and easily accessible, there is concern that movements are co-opted by corporations and individuals look to make personal gain rather than actually contribute to furthering the movement. This is prominent among companies who are “faking woke[10]” in attempts to sell products by catering to the politically savvy instead of actually participating in these large-scale social justice movements. However, it can be argued that this does not invalidate the legitimate work carried out by activists and people within these movements, nor does it reduce the actual value of social media activism.

Efficiency and Efficacy of Social Media Activism

The role of social media today is undoubtedly larger than ever more, and in some ways is challenging the influence of traditional media sources like the news. Through its carefully constructed algorithms, it is also a perfect way to generate and share content of a political nature on a mass scale. Social media has the power to influence and inform public opinion that may help achieve geopolitical goals, and as social media is a tool that is accessible across socio-economic groups, particularly in Western countries that the diaspora may live in, it provides a wider audience than previously before that makes it easier to reach people and gain support.

This widespread influence plays an important role in social media’s power to transform. As social media dictates trends in fashion and entertainment, it also has shown power in determining social movements and, in some cases, actionable and real policy change. Following the death of George Floyd in 2020 and the mass mobilisation of the #BlackLivesMatter movement through social media applications like Twitter and TikTok, there have been “bans on chokeholds in various municipalities and positive movement toward comprehensive police reform, including the signing of an executive order by [former US] President Donald Trump to incentivize best practices in the police force.[11]” This is one example but it showcases the sheer strength of social media activism in illustrating any real change.

Iranian American Activism

In some ways, American diasporas engage differently from traditional diasporic methods of activism. These diasporas, like the Iranian American diaspora, use social media to create virtual spaces for communities to educate each other and mobilise movements but much of the actual policy activism happens offline and a lot of “homeland” politics are a form of solidarity politics.

Iranian Americans are uniquely situated as a diaspora as a result of the tension between the US and Iran, two countries with no diplomatic relations and a rather antagonistic relationship in general. As a product of this tension, Iranian Americans often face discrimination within the US and report feelings of not belonging or not feeling welcome. The result of this is active involvement in politics of both Iran and the US as there is such a significant stake for the demographic in both countries.

On the internet, Iranian Americans use social media like any other diaspora group: it is a central part to their community building as they use these spaces to find like-minded people with similar backgrounds. Additionally, visual media is a big part of these circles as they use things like infographics on social media to disseminate political information about the experiences of Iranian Americans and share information about the situation in Iran.

Younger Iranian Americans are more active on this front, especially high school and college students who run social media accounts that attempt to educate and foster dialogue about a multitude of issues. Some examples of this are Instagram accounts that are run by young Iranian Americans from a variety of political backgrounds. First, there is @_chaitalk, an account that began during the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic for “fostering conversations and building community among Iranian American high school, college and graduate students.” The account runs free-to-attend, open Zoom meetings on a regular basis that discuss issues of US-Iran relations like “building allyship on issues both in Iran and America” and issues of the Iranian American experience like “generational differences in attachment to Iranian culture.” The group does not have an explicit political affiliation but rather aims to create an environment for young people to have these conversations as a community to strengthen it as a whole.

On the other hand, there are accounts that are explicit about their political beliefs or ideologies. The account @iranic_cultures is a political comedy account that posts about the culture of Iran and about its leftist, anti-imperialist beliefs. In contrast, there is @therichkidsoftehran – an account that posts about “stuff they don’t want you to see about Iran” and is often criticized as glorifying the large wealth disparity in Iran and its past years of monarchy. Regardless of political affiliation or opinion, it is clear to see that social media accounts are doing what diasporic social media communities do: using the uniqueness of social media and taking advantage of its algorithm to create online spaces to gather with and engage with like-minded people to discuss political issues of importance to them. There is also an informational component to most of these accounts, whether that be outright political education or challenging the stereotypes of Iranians, that helps them reach wider audiences than just Iranian Americans and gain more support for their ideas.

Much Iranian American traditional political activism with regards to policy change still continues to happen offline and through conventional means like lobbying. Popular lobbying organisations like the National Iranian American Council, a group that is not without controversy, work within the walls of Congress to encourage policy shifts towards Iran. Some of these are effective but, again, it is important to remember that diaspora political beliefs are not a monolith and the views of the NIAC are not representative of the diaspora as a whole. However, the work done by groups like the NIAC are influential in shifting public attitudes towards Iran and has proven to cause some change in policymakers’ attitudes through measures like the “No War with Iran Strategy Call”.

Lastly, an important feature of diaspora political activism is solidarity politics. Scholar Sally Schulz writes about solidarity politics as “some form of unity (however tenuously the members might be united) that mediates between the individual and the community and entails positive moral duties.[12]” Social media campaigns like #NoSanctionsonIran are attempts from the Iranian American diaspora to advocate for the Iranian people in US politics through public sphere politics and try to influence US policy towards Iran. This solidarity politics is also an example of diasporic resistance of the homeland regime as the solidarity is with the people of Iran and not with the government.

Conclusion

Navigating identity and national loyalties is difficult when you have many “identities” and “allegiances”, especially when they are often at odds with each other. The rise of diasporas has shifted this difficulty into more normalcy and allows these unique constructions to function as their own microcosms with individual culture, experiences and even politics. Diasporas like the Iranian American diaspora are disposed to advocate for their homeland and act in ways to challenge the status quo – bringing light to injustices and situations in their homeland while being in their country of residence.

Further as Iranian Americans adapt to changing political and social landscapes, they evolve their use of the technologies available to continue to spread their messages and ideas about an array of issues. Social media allows a widespread platform of new people and new ideas that help the diaspora gain momentum and support from people who may have previously been uninvolved or uninformed. Often, this digital activism can lead to attitude or priorities shift, and even legitimate policy changes.

The future of US-Iran relations is unsure as the relations between the two countries continue to worsen every day. Uncertainty continues to grow as the two administrations refuse to cooperate and regularly act in opposition of each other. However, even as recently as March 2021, Iranian Americans have actively advocated for the improvement of these relations through a variety of social media campaigns and even memorial events. The future is definitely not without the politics of the diaspora and active change through social media mobilisation.

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