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ABSTRACT
This article takes the assassination of Qasem Soleimani as a case study that manifests the schism between the realities of those in revolutionary struggle and those on the U.S. American left who might gather in solidarity with them. I explicate “reverse moral exceptionalism” as a nationalistic tendency to insist on oneself as central to every event of significance on the world stage and which positions the United States (U.S.) as a singular source of evil in the world. Based on an ethnocentrism that approaches the world from a position of dominance, reverse moral exceptionalism saturates the space available for others and induces the inability to listen to the testimony of others. Cartesian “either-or” logics situate all non-white state actors as inherently colonized and by extension, all colonial brown actors emerge as apolitical victims. I argue that when whiteness is only understood in racially provincial terms, it distorts understandings of inter-racial collusion in the transnational context. I attend to the unlikely ways in which whiteness and its concomitant forms of exceptionalism permeate U.S. American nationalist subjectivities, setting the groundwork for an anti-colonial discourse that paradoxically justifies oppressive regimes and brings about indifference to grassroots revolutionary discourse and the micropolitics of resistance.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Antonio de Velasco, Mary Stuckey, and the anonymous reviewers for providing critical insight on previous iterations of the article, which helped me sharpen how I think of reverse moral exceptionalism. Many thanks to the editor Stacey K. Sowards for her kindness and nurturing feedback on my work.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1 Kim Ghattas, “Qassem Soleimani Haunted the Arab World,” The Atlantic, January 3, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/01/qassem-soleimani-death-missed/604396/.
2 Grace Hauck and Chris Woodyard, “Outraged Americans Condemn US Actions in Iraq and Iran: ‘Enough with This Nonsense’,” USA Today, January 4, 2020, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/01/04/iraq-iran-tensions-protests-condemn-u-s-actions-middle-east/2807176001/.
3 Vanessa Romo, “Iran Launches Missile Attacks on Military Bases Housing U.S. Troops in Iraq,” NPR, January 7, 2020, https://www.npr.org/2020/01/07/794388410/military-base-housing-u-s-troops-in-iraq-has-been-attacked.
4 The term “American left” is an essentializing term. However, it is difficult to circumvent since it is prevalent in most of the discourse. I am aware of its analytical limitations, but for lack of a suitable alternative, I retain it with the caveat that it is not a historically specific discursive formation. See Leland M. Griffin, “The Rhetorical Structure of the New Left Movement: Part 1,” Quarterly Journal of Speech no. 2 (1964): 113–35.
5 Rasha Al Aqeedi, “The World Paid Attention to the Wrong Iraqi Protests,” The Atlantic, January 7, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/iraqs-real-protesters-are-caught-in-the-middle/604537/.
6 Shadi Hamid, “American Self-Criticism Borders on Narcissism: The US Role in the Middle East,” Brookings, January 10, 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/01/10/american-self-criticism-borders-on-narcissism/.
7 Megan Specia, “How Syria’s Death Toll Is Lost in the Fog of War,” The New York Times, April 13, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/13/world/middleeast/syria-death-toll.html.
8 Oz Katerji, “Qasem Soleimani Brutalised the Middle East, But the Bloodshed Is Far from Over,” Newstatesman, January 3, 2020, https://www.newstatesman.com/world/middle-east/2020/01/qasem-soleimani-brutalised-middle-east-bloodshed-far-over.
9 Elizabeth Tsurkov, “‘I Felt on Top of the World’: The Syrians Celebrating Soleimani’s Death,” Haaretz, January 10, 2020, https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/syria/.premium-i-felt-on-top-of-the-world-the-syrians-celebrating-soleimani-s-death-1.8377125.
10 Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami, Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War (London: Pluto Press, 2016).
11 Karim Sadjadpour, “Iran: Syria’s Lone Regional Ally,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, June 9, 2014, https://carnegieendowment.org/2014/06/09/iran-syria-s-lone-regional-ally-pub-55834.
12 Sarah Huneidi, “Iran’s Wars Kill Innocents Just Like America’s Do,” BuzzFeed News, January 16, 2020, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/sarahhunaidi/oppose-all-wars-iran-not-just-american-ones; Malak Chabkoun, “Soleimani Is No Anti-imperialist Hero,” Al Jazeera, January 6, 2020, https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/soleimani-anti-imperialist-hero-200105211451136.html.
13 Margaret Walker, Moral Repair: Reconstructing Moral Relations after Wrong-Doing (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 94–5.
14 Noor Ghazal Aswad and Antonio de Velasco, “Redemptive Exclusion: A Case Study of Nikki Haley’s Rhetoric on Syrian Refugees,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 23, no. 4 (2020): 735–60; Noor Ghazal Aswad, “Exploring Charismatic Leadership: A Comparative Analysis of the Rhetoric of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 49, no. 1 (2019): 56–74.
15 Jill Stauffer, Ethical Loneliness: The Injustice of Not Being Heard (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 73.
16 Eliza Griswold, “The Assassination of Raed Fares, and the Day the Syrian Revolution Died,” The New Yorker, November 27, 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/news/postscript/the-assassination-of-raed-fares-and-the-day-the-syrian-revolution-died; Muhammad Dibo, “Kafranbel: The Conscience of the Revolution,” Syria Untold, December 21, 2013, https://syriauntold.com/2013/12/21/kafranbel-the-conscience-of-the-revolution/.
17 Lillian Smith, Killers of the Dream (New York: W.W. Norton, 1994), 12.
18 Lisa Wedeen, Ideology, Judgement, and Mourning in Syria: Authoritarian Apprehensions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019), 160.
19 Savannah Shange, Progressive Dystopia: Abolition, Antiblackness, and Schooling in San Francisco (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019).
20 Noor Ghazal Aswad, “Radical Rhetoric: Towards a Telos of Solidarity,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 24, no. 1–2 (2021): 207–22.
21 Yassin al Haj Saleh, “The International Left Is Suffering a Major Crisis,” Yassin al Haj Saleh, November 29, 2014, http://www.yassinhs.com/2014/11/29/yassin-al-haj-saleh-the-international-left-is-suffering-a-major-crisis/; Loubna Mrie, “What’s Next for the Left’s Troubled Relationship with Syria?,” The New Arab, November 15, 2016, https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/comment/2016/11/15/whats-next-for-the-lefts-troubled-relationship-with-syria.
22 Yasir Munif, The Syrian Revolution: Between the Politics of Life and the Geopolitics of Death (London: Pluto Press, 2020), 155; Wafa Mustafa, “The Syrian Revolution 10 Years On: What Does the Future Hold?,” Syrian Revolt, March 31, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1Y7h4N_uHQ.
23 Munif, The Syrian Revolution.
24 Lisa Wedeen, Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 29.
25 Nader Hashemi and Danny Postel, Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).
26 Judith Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (New York: Verso, 2009), 3.
27 Darrel Allan Wanzer-Serrano, “Delinking Rhetoric, or Revisiting McGee’s Fragmentation Thesis through Decoloniality,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 15, no. 4 (2012): 647–57.
28 Wedeen, Ideology, 121.
29 Trevor McCrisken, American Exceptionalism and the Legacy of Vietnam: US Foreign Policy since 1974 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 190.
30 Jason Edwards and David Weiss, The Rhetoric of American Exceptionalism: Critical Essays (North Carolina: McFarland, 2014), 6. For studies of moral exceptionalism in centrist left discourse, see Allison M. Prasch, “Obama in Selma: Deixis, Rhetorical Vision, and the ‘True Meaning of America’,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 105, no. 2 (2019): 42–67.
31 Godfried Agyeman Asante, “#RhetoricSoWhite and US Centered: Reflections on Challenges and Opportunities,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 105, no. 4 (2019): 484–8.
32 Walter Mignolo, “The Geopolitics of Knowledge and the Colonial Difference,” South Atlantic Quarterly 101, no. 1 (2002): 57–96.
33 Claire Sico King, Washed in Blood: Male Sacrifice, Trauma, and the Cinema (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012).
34 Jenna Hanchey, “Catastrophe Colonialism: Global Disaster Films and the White Right to Migrate,” Journal of International and Intercultural Communication (forthcoming).
35 Daniel C. Brouwer and Charles E. Morris III, “Decentering Whiteness in AIDS Memory: Indigent Rhetorical Criticism and the Dead of Hart Island,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 107, no. 2 (2021): 160–84.
36 Renée L. Bergland, The National Uncanny: Indian Ghosts and American Subjects (Chicago: University Press of Chicago, 2000), 13.
37 Lisa A. Flores, “Between Abundance and Marginalization: The Imperative of Racial Rhetorical Criticism,” Review of Communication 16, no. 1 (2016): 5.
38 Syria Plus, “Syrians Distribute Sweets in Celebration of the Killing of Qasem Soleimani,” Youtube, January 3, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4X9RFlJh9NE&feature=youtu.be.
39 Prescilla Isin, Bountiful Empire: A History of Ottoman Cuisine (London: Reaktion Books, 2018), 109.
40 Euronews Arabic, “Victory: This Is How Syrian Refugees in Idlib see the Killing of Qasem Soleimani,” Youtube, January 10, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF_6zJ2rxOM; Euronews, “Watch: Syrians in Idlib Distribute Sweets to People in Celebration of Soleimani’s Killing,” Youtube, January 3, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1-s-oXJNMA.
41 Kevin DeLuca, Image Politics: The New Rhetoric of Environmental Activism (New York: Routledge, 1999).
42 Orient TV, “Orient TV News Cameras Collect the Opinions of the Syrian Street around the Killing of Soleimani,” Youtube, January 4, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Am8nDIMl2ac.
43 Syria Plus, “Syrians Distribute Sweets.”
44 Hanadi Zahlout, “If Our Eyes Could See the Spirits of Cities, We Would Have Seen This Morning Aleppo in Her Glorious Long Dresses of Silk Dancing,” Facebook, January 3, 2020, https://www.facebook.com/hanadi.zahlout [private Facebook post shared with permission of author].
45 Yakeen Bido, “Sayra we Sayra … ,” Facebook, January 3, 2020, https://www.facebook.com/100003941110556/posts/1550336168441072/?d=n.
46 Sali Flowes is a pen name for the Idlibi journalist Salwa Abdel Rahman. Sali Flowes, “They All Ate Sweets on the Killing of Soleimani, but Yakeen and I Did Not … ,” Facebook, January 3, 2020, https://www.facebook.com/100012868031263/posts/830360174069576/?d=n.
47 Ali Ferzat, “General Soleimani,” Facebook, January 3, 2020, https://www.facebook.com/100000917557614/posts/3634099843297232/?d=n.
48 Ali Ferzat, “Trump and Soleimani,” Facebook, January 12, 2020, https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=5192492234124644&set=a.175684052472179.
49 Noor Ghazal Aswad and Michael Lechuga, “Led by the Land: Recovering Land Agency and Interconnectedness in Social Movement Scholarship,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 26 (forthcoming).
50 Euronews Arabic, “Victory.”
51 “Soleimani in Syria: A Legacy of Death and Devastation,” AlJumhuriya, January 6, 2020, https://www.aljumhuriya.net/en/content/soleimani-syria-legacy-death-and-devastation.
52 Huneidi, “Iran’s Wars.”
53 Ahmed Jamal, “Soleimani’s Movements along Syrian Map Documented with Illustrations,” Enab Baladi, September 1, 2020, https://english.enabbaladi.net/archives/2020/01/soleimanis-movements-along-syrian-map-documented-with-illustrations/?so=related.
54 Ahmad Aba Zayd, “Soleimani: Naked Propaganda,” Facebook, January 7, 2020, https://www.facebook.com/abazed89.
55 Orient TV, “Orient TV News Cameras.”
56 Ibrahim Alloush, “If Only Syria Had Killed Him!,” Enab Baladi, January 5, 2020, https://www.enabbaladi.net/archives/353541.
57 Luna Safwan, “#Lebanon’s Airport Highway with New Qassem Souleimani Pictures on Every Possible Corner,” Twitter, January 3, 2020, https://twitter.com/LunaSafwan/status/1345729454623105024.
58 “Soleimani in Syria,” AlJumhuriya.
59 Matthew Houdek, “Recontextualizing Responsibility for Justice: The Lynching Trope, Racialized Temporalities, and Cultivating Breathable Futures,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 18, no. 2 (2021): 136–62; Ersula Ore and Matthew Houdek, “Lynching in Times of Suffocation: Toward a Spatiotemporal Politics of Breathing,” Women Studies in Communication 43, no. 4 (2020): 443–58.
60 Jamal, “Soleimani’s Movements”; “Soleimani in Syria,” AlJumhuriya.
61 Arash Azizi, The Shadow Commander: Soleimani, the U.S., and Iran’s Global Ambitions (London: One World, 2020).
62 Alloush, “If Only Syria Had Killed Him.”
63 Osama Abu Zayd, “If Support [for Palestine] Is the Standard on Which Our Values Stand,” Twitter, January 6, 2020, https://twitter.com/oabozayd/status/1214294411204550656?s=21. Iran justified its support of the Assad regime based on its anti-Israel and anti-American credentials. See Marwan Bishara, The Invisible Arab: The Promise and Peril of the Arab Revolutions (New York: Nation Books, 2012).
64 “Soleimani in Syria,” AlJumhuriya.
65 Jamal, “Soleimani’s Movements.” The Tiger Forces was a pro-regime unit established in 2013 and one of the first to deploy Russian T-90 tanks.
66 Alloush, “If Only Syria Had Killed Him.”
67 “Soleimani in Syria,” AlJumhuriya.
68 Derek Davison, “Donald Trump and the Foreign Policy Establishment Want War with Iran,” Jacobin Magazine, January 3, 2020, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/01/iran-united-states-drone-strike-qassem-soleimani-death.
69 Greg Shupak, “Stop the War. Stop US Empire,” Jacobin Magazine, January 5, 2020, https://jacobinmag.com/2020/01/donald-trump-war-iran-us-empire.
70 Vladimir Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (Mansfield Center, CT: Martino Publishing, 1939), 9.
71 Azizi, The Shadow Commander; Memri, “Studies by Arab Researchers of Distribution of Foreign Bases across Syria,” January 18, 2018, https://www.memri.org/reports/studies-arab-researchers-distribution-foreign-bases-across-syria.
72 Sarah Lazare and Michael Arria, “Trump Is Pushing War on Iran—But Democrats Laid the Groundwork,” Jacobin Magazine, January 4, 2020, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/01/donald-trump-war-iran-democrats-qassem-soleimani-drone-strike; Joe Allen, “How to Revive the Antiwar Movement,” Jacobin Magazine, January 10, 2020, https://jacobinmag.com/2020/01/iran-antiwar-movement-united-states-iraq-afghanistan.
73 Leila Al-Shami, “Syria and the ‘Anti-Imperialism’ of Idiots,” Vox, April 18, 2018, https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/9kgm3e/syria-and-the-anti-imperialism-of-idiots.
74 Derek Davison, “The Rogue State Is on the Rampage Again,” Jacobin Magazine, January 13, 2020, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/01/donald-trump-united-states-imperialism-iraq-iran.
75 Eric Bouris, Complex Political Victims (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, 2007).
76 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Random House, 1981), xvii.
77 Haneen Ghabra, Muslim Women and White Femininity: Reenactment and Resistance (New York: Peter Lang, 2018); Fatima Zahrae Chrifi Alaoui and Shadee Abdi, “Wakanda for Everyone: An Invitation to an African Muslim Perspective of Black Panther,” Review of Communication 20, no. 3 (2020): 229–35; Marouf Hasian Jr., “Colonial Re-Characterization and the Discourse Surrounding the Eyre Controversy,” Southern Communication Journal 66, no. 1 (2000): 79–95; Noor Ghazal Aswad, “Biased Neutrality: The Symbolic Construction of the Syrian Refugee in the New York Times,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 36, no. 4 (2019): 357–75.
78 Arturo Escobar, “Beyond the Third World: Imperial Globality, Global Coloniality and Anti-Globalisation Social Movements,” Third World Quarterly 25, no. 1 (2004): 207–30.
79 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism, xvii.
80 Marie Battiste, Decolonizing Education: Nourishing the Learning Spirit (Saskatoon, SK; Purich Publishing, 2013), 33.
81 Shupak, “Stop the War. Stop US Empire.”
82 Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Eve Tuck, and K. Wayne Yang, Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education: Mapping the Long View (New York: Routledge, 2019), 31.
83 Sally Silk, “When the Writer Comes Home: Narrative Failure in Butor’s La Modification,” Style 26, no. 2 (1992): 270–86.
84 Silk, “When the Writer Comes Home,” 284.
85 Michael Moore, “Hello Fellow Americans. Do You Know This Man?,” Twitter, January 3, 2020, https://twitter.com/mmflint/status/1213084631530196992?lang=en; Michael Moore, “I Know It’s Bothersome That I’m Speaking Some Awful Truths … ,” Twitter, January 8, 2020, https://twitter.com/MMFlint/status/1214900138453409792; Michael Moore, “Just Wondering—Is There an American General for Whom Millions of Us Would Turn Out for His Funeral?,” Twitter, January 8, 2020, https://twitter.com/MMFlint/status/1214881961564606464.
86 “Bernie Sanders: Trump Administration Hasn’t a Clue about What It’s Doing,” CNN, January 6, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxyXrezEfL0&t=560s.
87 Derek Davison, “Donald Trump and the Foreign Policy.”
88 Branko Marcetic, “The Imperial Presidency Helped Bring Us to the Brink of War in Iran,” Jacobin Magazine, January 3, 2020, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/01/iran-qassem-soleimani-killing-drone-donald-trump-war.
89 Davison, “The Rogue State Is on the Rampage Again”; Keyvan Shafiei, “Bernie Has Opened an Opportunity for Us to Build an Anti-War Movement. We Should Seize It,” Jacobin Magazine, January 30, 2020, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/01/bernie-sanders-iran-antiwar-movement; Marcetic, “The Imperial Presidency”; Micah Uetricht and Meagan Day, “The US Cannot Retaliate Against Iran’s Strikes in Iraq,” Jacobin Magazine, January 7, 2020, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/01/iran-bombing-us-base-no-war; Featherstone, “Neocons Don’t Regret the Iraq Disaster”; Shupak, “Stop the War. Stop US Empire.”
90 Nathan J. Robinson, “How to Avoid Swallowing War Propaganda,” Current Affairs, January 5, 2020, https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/01/how-to-avoid-swallowing-war-propaganda.
91 Belen Fernández, “The Mainstream Media Is a Cheerleader for War with Iran,” Jacobin Magazine, January 4, 2020, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/01/war-iran-qassem-soleimani-drone-strike-death-mainstream-media.
92 Liza Featherstone, “Neocons Don’t Regret the Iraq Disaster—and Now They Want War with Iran,” Jacobin Magazine, January 18, 2020, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/01/iraq-war-iran-media-bret-stephens-goldberg-bolton-friedman.
93 Colin Kaepernick, “There Is Nothing New about American Terrorist Attacks against Black and Brown People for the Expansion of American Imperialism,” Twitter, January 4, 2020, https://twitter.com/Kaepernick7/status/1213552939786096640?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1213552939786096640&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ffanbuzz.com%2Fnfl%2Fcolin-kaepernick-iran-reaction%2F.
94 Lillie Chouliaraki, The Ironic Spectator: Solidarity in the Age of Post-Humanitarianism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013), 2.
95 Marcetic, “The Imperial Presidency.”
96 Huneidi, “Iran’s Wars.”
97 Rohini Hensman, Indefensible: Democracy, Counter-Revolution, and the Rhetoric of Anti-Imperialism (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2018), 12.
98 Judith Butler and Athena Athanasiou, Dispossession: The Performative in the Political (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013), 17.
99 Emmanuel Levinas, Existence and Existents (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 2001), 83.
100 Marcetic, “The Imperial Presidency.”
101 Edward Said, The World, Text and the Critic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 193.
102 Butler, Frames of War.
103 Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 2002), 113.
104 Lauren Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship (London: Duke University Press, 1997), 13.
105 Alice Rayner, “The Audience: Subjectivity, Community, and the Ethics of Listening,” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 7, no. 3 (1993): 19.
106 Julietta Singh, Unthinking Mastery: Dehumanism and Decolonial Entanglements (London: Duke University Press, 2018), 30.
107 Gemma C. Fiumara, The Other Side of Language: A Philosophy of Listening (London: Routledge, 1990), 112.