Post Modern Imperialism

The post-June 12, 2009 election disturbances in Iran have ushered in the age of post-modern imperialism. Pundits are hailing the internet and various social networking websites--Facebook, Twitter, YouTube-- as helping communication among the Iranian demonstrators in face of government shutdown of cell phones and land lines as well as allowing citizen journalism to impart real-time developments to the outside world in face of the Iranian government's crackdown on foreign media.

I view the role of the tweets and facebooks etc in the Iranian post-election movement as ushering in the age of post-modern imperialism. The US Department of State announced yesterday that it explicitly asked Twitter to not shutdown for scheduled maintenance in order "to keep the Iranian tweets coming". There are a number of subtexts in this seemingly simple request: (1) The State Department wants to have access to real time information on developments in Iran (2) The State Department wants information to be transmitted across the various factions within Iran (3) The State Department wants to plant information among various groups in Iran-- for who is to know where any tweet/facebook/video is coming from? (4) The State Department wants to influence the developments in Iran.

It is no surprise to me that the Iranian government today accused Washington of interfering in its internal affairs. President Obama can give lip-service to Iranian self-determination. However, his administration’s use of social networking sites to impact developments in Iran is nothing short of imperialism, the post-modern way.