I can’t remember when the first time I heard this chant at a protest. But it struck me as a powerful and true statement. I thought it came from the early union struggles here in the US. Only recently I learned that the chant is the title of a Chilean song ¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido! which was written as a sort of unoffical anthem for Allende’s political movement. The song and chant became even more popular and widely used by protest movements around the world, after Pinochet’s bloody coup. You can read the lyrics and listen to it here. (I can’t say I love the lyrics or the music – it sounds more like a turn-of-the-20th-century Russian socialist “workers” song than an indigenous Chilean melody).
As quoted on the link above, the composer of the song himself notes how he heard the chant at a rally and it inspired him to write the song. I have been unable to trace the history of the chant any further back. Whatever its origins, it came to mind this week as I watched events unfold in Iran.
I don’t believe the chant is a magical formula for overthrowing tyranny. After all, Pinochet (with the aide of the US) managed to overthrow Allende and crush his popular movement. However, it was Machiavelli who first pointed out that the tyrant (or Prince to use Machiavelli’s term) maintains his power over the numeric strength of the people by mainly using one tool: fear. Once this fear is broken, once people realize they outnumber the militia and thugs that the Prince marshalls to keep them in line, the Prince will fall.
Because fear is the underpinning of all tyrannical regimes, they are inherently unstable. Machiavelli himself argued this point and further argued that only republican regimes, where the will of the people is expressed, can be the basis of long term stability, peace and prosperity. In the second half of the twentieth century we witnessed the collapse of tyrranical regimes around the world as the people united and the fear faded.
I personally witnessed such a change myself. I have often mentioned on this blog a conversation I had with some Israeli friends in the mid eighties, right before the outbreak of the first intifada. We were, at the time moving to a suburb of Tel Aviv. A friend asked why we don’t buy a home in the West bank which is far less expensive. I responded that I believed that one day Israel would have to return those territories to the Palestinians. My friend burst out laughing and said: “You naive American. We hold onto the whole of Gaza with one gdud (about 100 soldiers). We’ll never have to give the territories back.”
Not much later, I was serving in Ramallah witnessing the Palestinian uprising first hand. Essentially the Palestinians had lost their fear of the Israelis and were united in overthrowing the military rule they lived under. Their protests were mainly non-violent and led to the eventual acceptance by Israel of the principle of “two states for two people.” The Israeli military realized the fear was gone, which is why they obssess about the loss of Israel’s “deterrence capability.” But once gone, it can never be restored. Even the arch militarist Sharon realized no number of soldiers could hold on to the Gaza strip and withdrew from there. Despite the setbacks of the past ten years, and the horrific use of fear through violence by both sides of the conflict, it is inevitable that Israel will eventually relinquish control of the West Bank and Gaza.
It is not yet clear whether the events in Iran will soon lead to the overthrow of the tyrannical regime there. Nonetheless a first step has been taken to diminish the fear. In response the regime is cracking down even harder to increase fear, but if the people of Iran remain united, they will eventually prevail.
Here are two recent articles that are elaborate on how this is playing out in Iran. The first from The Nation. The second from The New Yorker.
Tags: Iran