“Make Iran great again”: Apolitical influencers and the revival of a romantic patriarchal nationalism

Abstract The Woman Life Freedom (WLF) Movement in Iran represents a longstanding struggle for social justice, gender equity, and civil rights. Our study details how this grassroots feminist uprising faced an attempted co-optation by a monarchist Coalition’s rhetoric of unity for regime change. Through an analysis on X (formerly known as Twitter) and Instagram, we illustrate how apolitical influencers center Man, Homeland, Prosperity (MHP), a far-right mantra alongside WLF to perpetuate a patriarchal Persian nationalism. Given that language and hegemonic politics are closely intertwined, we argue that MHP is WLF’s ontological and epistemic opposite as it violates and oppresses the progressive ethos of a feminist movement. By invoking a sense of nostalgia for a glorious and imperial past (God, King, Homeland), Reza Pahlavi and his Coalition reproduce discourses of a populist, romantic, and patriarchal nationalism around the Persian identity. While WLF is committed to a pluralistic “solidarity,” MHP revolves around a monolithic “unity.”