By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 12 October 2021

There were immense political forces at work in the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79, and they have been covered in some depth on this blog before. In this brief piece, I want to look at the social aspect, specifically the social contagion aspect. People who were in Iran during the Islamic Revolution or who have studied it deeply in retrospect describe the country going “temporarily insane”,[1] and tend to use terms like “febrile” and “hysterical” when describing the atmosphere, especially by the summer of 1978, since, as everyone seems to acknowledge, the revolutionary fervour fed on itself the longer it was allowed to continue. Continue reading →