The Logic of Erasure: From Execution and Imprisonment to Character Assassination and “Organized Loneliness”
The Logic of Erasure: From Execution and Imprisonment to Character Assassination and “Organized Loneliness”
By Mohammad Javad Tavaf
How the Islamic Republic Removes Opponents from the “Common World” Through a Combination of Overt Repression, Character Assassination, and the Destruction of Social Bonds — and How the Opposition Can Unintentionally Become Part of This Logic
Drawing on the thought of Hannah Arendt, this essay argues that repression in the Islamic Republic is not limited to imprisonment and execution. Rather, it is a gradual process aimed at discrediting, isolating, and disconnecting individuals from the common world. When rumors, labels, and accusations are repeated without independent judgment, parts of this machinery can even be reproduced by opponents of the regime themselves.
Erasure Does Not Always Begin with Bullets or the Gallows
The Islamic Republic is a repressive system that does not rely solely on imprisonment and execution to silence critics and eliminate civil, political, and cultural activists. The ultimate objective of such a system is to remove opponents from the public sphere and deprive them of the ability to act, influence, and participate in the common world.
Sometimes this elimination takes the form of arrest, torture, and execution. In many cases, however, the tools employed can be even more corrosive than death itself: character assassination, rumor campaigns, stigmatization, hate speech, professional exclusion, pressure on family members, confiscation of property, social restrictions, and the denial of identity documents and freedom of movement. In such circumstances, a person may remain legally alive, yet gradually disappear from society’s view.
Dark Times and the Severing of Human Bonds
In Men in Dark Times, Hannah Arendt argues that the darkness of an era is not produced solely by overt violence. It emerges when people become separated from their common world and when human and social bonds are systematically broken.
Arendt emphasizes that evil is not necessarily something demonic or mysterious. More often, it is the result of “thoughtlessness”—the irresponsible repetition of narratives and the absence of independent judgment.
From this perspective, repression is not merely a security measure; it is an anti-human process. The regime does not simply seek to imprison an individual. It seeks to sever that person’s connection to the world, diminish their credibility in the eyes of others, and create fear around listening to their voice. The ultimate goal is to weaken society’s capacity for solidarity and collective resistance.
The Public Realm and Gradual Erasure
Arendt reminds us that in dark times, human beings depend on a light that only the public realm can provide—a space where people see one another, speak with one another, and participate in shaping a shared destiny.
The public realm is not limited to streets or media outlets. It includes every space where seeing, hearing, and judging together remain possible.
Totalitarian systems target this sphere directly. Prison is only one stage. The next stage is exclusion from media, employment, friendship networks, and public memory itself. When a person is no longer seen or heard within the common world, they may be physically free, yet effectively erased from public life.
A Case of Gradual Erasure
A clear example of this mechanism can be found in the story of a woman active in the cultural sphere who spent years struggling to establish herself in cinema and the arts.
Her refusal to submit to patriarchal systems of exploitation led to her gradual exclusion from professional projects and cultural circles. This was followed by political persecution, fabricated financial charges, imprisonment, solitary confinement in Evin Prison, death threats, detention in Qarchak Prison, hunger strikes, exile, and eventually the deprivation of basic civil rights.
At the same time, she became the target of a campaign of sexualized accusations. Labels such as “honeypot agent” and various allegations regarding her personal relationships became tools of character destruction.
These accusations did not disappear after her release. For years they have continued to obstruct her ability to work, participate in professional communities, and live a normal life. This is the continuation of imprisonment through social means.
In such cases, the state does not merely imprison the body. It also imprisons a person’s profession, reputation, psychological security, and ability to tell their own story.
Violence Against Families and Organized Harassment
This logic of erasure often extends to activists’ families as well.
In one case, the phone numbers of an activist’s wife and daughter were published on matchmaking and temporary-marriage websites. The result was a constant flood of harassing calls and messages.
This was not an isolated act of harassment. It was part of a broader strategy aimed at transforming everyday life into a permanent space of humiliation, shame, and anxiety—making the cost of speaking out and resisting seem unbearable.
Under such circumstances, formal freedom solves little. Individuals and their families remain trapped in a continuous cycle of threat, degradation, and psychological exhaustion.
Organized Loneliness
In such conditions, individuals confront not only the state but also loneliness.
Arendt writes that loneliness deprives people of a shared understanding and a shared world with others. She regarded it as one of the central tools of totalitarian systems.
The ultimate purpose of many of these pressures is to deprive individuals of their common world—the place where they can be heard, trusted, and recognized.
People disconnected from their social networks become far easier to suppress. For this reason, authoritarian regimes do not merely imprison bodies; they target trust itself.
A society in which nobody trusts another person’s account becomes slower to unite and quicker to abandon its victims.
Intelligence Operations and the Role of the Opposition
An important point is that hate campaigns and character assassination are not always carried out directly by security institutions.
To make narratives more believable, information presented as “confidential” or “leaked from inside the regime” is sometimes passed to influential figures within the opposition. These individuals are told that trusted sources inside the system have confirmed certain allegations.
Such information—whether deliberately manipulated or entirely fabricated—can later be published as “exposés” by regime opponents, making it appear more credible to the broader public.
Examples of this phenomenon can be found in various allegations spread years ago by Ruhollah Zam about certain activists. These claims continue to be cited today, despite substantial evidence indicating that some of them were deliberately manufactured by security agencies and circulated as supposedly insider information.
Ruhollah Zam was unjustly executed. Yet the injustice of his execution does not automatically validate every claim he made—particularly now that the infiltration of intelligence operatives into his inner circle has become increasingly evident.
When political activists, media outlets, or members of the opposition repeat rumors—especially sexual allegations—without investigation or without hearing the accused person’s account, they risk becoming part of the same machinery of repression.
They may not be prison guards, but they can nevertheless help build the social walls of a prison.
Criticism Is Not Erasure
A distinction must be made between criticism and character assassination.
Criticism seeks truth, allows for response, and contributes to a clearer understanding of reality.
Character assassination seeks elimination. It delivers judgment in advance and buries reality beneath accusations.
Labels such as “traitor,” “infiltrator,” “honeypot agent,” or “corrupt” can expel individuals from the realm of dialogue when applied without due process or an opportunity for defense.
Arendt observed that Gotthold Lessing’s central concern was “humanizing the world through continuous and unbroken conversation about its affairs and events.”
Labeling and stigmatization are the exact opposite of this principle. They close the door to dialogue.
The Responsibility of the Opposition and the Defense of the Common World
From this perspective, defending individuals who have become targets of systematic discrediting is not merely an act of solidarity with a person. It is a defense of moral judgment and democratic principles themselves.
Opposition movements should exercise far greater caution regarding sexual and moral accusations, avoid repeating them without evidence, and recognize that the same methods can one day be turned against them.
Such accusations can deprive people of employment, social participation, psychological security, and ordinary life for years. In some cases, they can lead to complete personal destruction or even place lives at risk.
Every time we repeat a rumor, we should ask ourselves:
Are we helping uncover the truth, or are we helping erase a human being?
Ultimately, there is little difference in logic between physical execution and social execution. Both seek to remove human beings from the public sphere.
Execution ends a life.
Character assassination and organized loneliness destroy the common world in which life can be shared with others.
Defending those targeted by this logic is not merely defending an individual. It is defending the possibility of living in a world that can still be called a common world.
Resistant Living: From Individual Responsibility to Collective Responsibility
Within this logic of erasure, there are those who, despite being victims of the very system that seeks to silence them, refuse to surrender. They continue to write, create films, tell stories, work, and live as freely as circumstances allow.
The continuation of creative work, public engagement, and meaningful participation in society is not merely a personal choice. It is a form of quiet yet profound resistance against a system designed to render people silent, invisible, and isolated.
Those who persist in defending their dignity and their right to tell their own stories despite years of pressure, rumors, exclusion, and threats represent some of society’s most valuable moral resources. They deserve recognition, respect, and solidarity.
Yet their individual resilience does not absolve the rest of society of responsibility. On the contrary, it reminds us that civil society, cultural figures, political activists, and ordinary citizens have a duty to stand beside them, listen to their stories, and ensure that such costly acts of resistance are not lost in silence and isolation.
