Persian Monarchism and the Far-Right Politics of Diasporic Mobilization in the United States

• In Event: Global and Transnational Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 10. Contentious Politics

Abstract

Amid the global resurgence of far-right politics, this paper examines how diasporic political opposition groups in the West participate in, negotiate with, and reproduce exclusionary political formations while claiming to mobilize for democracy and freedom in their countries of origin. Focusing on Iranian monarchists in the U.S.-based diaspora, who seek to restore the monarchical order dismantled by the 1979 revolution, and drawing on interviews, ethnographic fieldwork, and historical analysis, it shows how diasporic actors from the Global South actively mediate, localize, and rearticulate far-right racial, gendered, and affective regimes as central components of their activism. Rather than occupying a peripheral position, these actors function as key intermediaries who translate, legitimize, and circulate far-right political imaginaries across national boundaries. Engaging with scholarship on the transnational dimensions of far-right politics, this paper analyzes the symbolic practices, cross-border linkages, and logics of exclusion structuring Iranian monarchist activism, offering a framework for understanding how diasporic political action reproduces and transforms the global far-right.

Author

• Saeed Saffar Heidari Sabet, University of Illinois-Chicago