On February 28, 2026, segments of the Iranian diaspora, including parts of the Canadian Iranian diaspora, took to the streets to celebrate reports of the Supreme Leader’s death following U.S.–Israeli airstrikes, while the killing of 168 schoolchildren in Minab received far less attention. This moment highlights how, within parts of the diaspora, a rhetoric that edges toward fascist politics can emerge; one that frames military violence as liberation and becomes dangerously indifferent to the suffering of civilians inside the country; particularly marginalized groups such as Kurd and Baloches, becomes politically disposable.
While fascism is commonly perceived as a top-down force driven by white nationalist power, its rhetoric has always been maintained by ordinary people, especially those experiencing social, political precarity and structural inequality. Iranians are not an exception to this dynamic.
This dynamic is further shaped by internal conditions of prolonged oppression. Ongoing oppression among Iranians erodes critical consciousness and causes chronic hopelessness and internalized powerlessness that have weakened social and political agency for many.
Some Iranians have placed their hope in external colonial power rather than collective movements. This desperate yearning for an external saviour to deliver liberation has intensified since February.
Many Iranians in the diaspora now gather with U.S. and Israeli flags, openly expressing gratitude for military intervention and the violation of Iran’s sovereignty. By simply replacing one authoritarian force with another, the comprehension of freedom becomes distorted. Liberation is no longer seen as a long and collective struggle, but as something that can quickly achieved through military force. Here, freedom is detached from justice and ethics, shifting away from social responsibility and fairness towards glorification of authoritarianism.
This longing for external rescue is further reinforced through identification with Western power and whiteness. In pursuit of imagined colonial allies, some Iranians increasingly claim proximity to whiteness and Western identity and distancing themselves from the region and its people. While the desire for whiteness has a long history in Iran, this time it carries a particular political purpose that extends beyond cultural aspiration. As whiteness functions as the highest social and political status within fascist ideology, this alignment reinforces a sense of belonging within Western identity for some Iranians.
Whiteness as a symbol of modernity and legitimacy framing marginalized groups inside Iran as well as Arabs and Muslims as racialized “others” portraying them as threats or even disposable, while legitimizing exceptional attention and entitlement for Iranians.
In search of Western legitimacy nostalgic fantasies of monarchy, nationalism, and an imagined Iranian exceptionalism revived. Claims to whiteness further symbolically separate Iran from its historical, regional, and cultural realities and histories of struggle. This historical amnesia, reinforced by historical illiteracy, creates simplified and mythologized narratives rooted in nationalist nostalgia that have been mainly promoted by former Iranian crown prince Reza Pahlavi and affiliated media.
A fictionalized vision of pre-modern and pre-revolutionary Iran as a golden age of greatness and dignity creates nostalgia for an Iran imagined as modern, powerful, and closer to the West. Adopting nostalgic symbols such as the Pahlavi flag and monarchist image manipulate emotionally charged political attachments that frame return to the past as a path toward an imagined utopian future. However, nostalgia and a return to the past have always failed to lead to liberation. In fact, its simplification of history to a singular emotionally charged authoritarian narrative legitimizes polarization and violence toward others.
The cumulative effects of oppression, identity crisis, exile, and historical illiteracy, manufacture a political fantasy detached from Iranian and global realities. Such political imaginary’s often function less as political analysis and more as political wishes. Instead, fascist ideology becomes appealing because it fabricates realities that promise security, belonging, and strong leadership. Under the guise of ideological certainty, revenge, hatred, and bigotry they continue to legitimize violence against dissenting voices signaling a breakdown of ethical responsibility: a core feature of fascism. This in turn reproduces imagined political futures that perpetuate the very logics of power, oppression, and violence they claim to resist. In this regard fascism understood not only as a top-down political ideology, but as an ongoing process rooted in deeper emotional and social structures.
