Information icon.svg Results for the 2024 RationalWiki Moderator Election have now been posted. Thank you for participating in this election, and congratulations to the winners!

Davud Monshizadeh

From RationalWiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Monshizadeh, Hitler simp and wannabe.
A lunatic Chaplin imitator
and his greatest fans

Nazism
Icon nazi.svg
First as tragedy
Then as farce

Davud Monshizadeh (1914–1989) was an Iranian Neo-Nazi and the founder of the National Socialist Workers Party of Iran (SUMKA).[1] He was a supporter of Nazism during and after World War II. Before joining the SS and founding SUMKA, he was a professor in Sweden, specializing as a scholar in Iranian studies and had a minor contribution to the study of Iranian linguistics, an activity he continued after the war once he returned to Sweden as a university scholar.

Moshizadeh's party, SUMKA, was ultranationalist and isolationist, opposing communism, capitalism, and foreign influence from western powers.[2] Monshizadeh and SUMKA also supported the Shah and opposed Mossadegh and his secular reforms, with some critics of the late Shah alleging that he and the CIA supported and funded SUMKA at one point.

Hitler protégé[edit]

Monshizadeh was a great admirer of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, having lived in Germany since 1937, and was an SS member who fought (and was wounded) in the battle of Berlin,[3] and he even went as far as trying to resemble Hitler to a tee (mostly with his mustache and his clothing), and his party also adopted the Nazis' militarism and salute. He formed SUMKA in 1940, leaving Iran but then returning after a decade in 1950, where he continued his political life as a fascist activist.[4][5]

Monshizadeh admired Hitler for several reasons, mostly among them being that Hitler saw Iranians as fellow Aryans alongside Germans (despite Iranians being the real Aryans) and declaring that Iranians are of equal citizenship and status to Germans.[note 1] This made Iranians immune to the Nuremberg laws and allowed them to gain citizenship and a high status in the Greater German Reich.[6]:161 Monshizadeh did just that, working for various organizations within the Third Reich, such as writing articles for Das Reich (a weekly Nazi propaganda newspaper founded by Joseph Goebbels), and ran an anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi radio program called Deutsche Radio, which he ran and operated with other pro-nazi Iranians.[7]

Legacy[edit]

Monshizadeh died in relative obscurity in Sweden in 1989 (coincidentally 100 years since Hitler was born) and was buried in Uppsala. Unlike most Nazi collaborators, he was never wanted nor tried for his participation in and with the Nazi party (making him one of the more obscure party members), and he continued his work as a scholar in Sweden, teaching Iranology and Persian language at Uppsala University.[8]

Despite the party becoming inactive after the Iranian revolution,[9][10], advocates of neo Nazism continue to exist online amongst the younger generation of Iran. Though they are currently small, they are unfortunately an increasing minority.[11][12][13] SUMKA's legacy remains as a way for Iranian youth to become radicalized into neo-Nazism, white supremacy, and Islamophobia, creating an online army of rabidly xenophobic and Islamophobic youth becoming radicalized into Neo-Nazism.[13] Some chat forums were even created by and are filled nazi sympathizers (basically an Iranian version of Stormfront or The Daily Stormer).[14] [13][15]

Notes[edit]

  1. In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote how he revered Iranians as the original Aryans and pure-blooded Aryans just like Germans.

External links[edit]

References[edit]

  1. Davud Monshizadeh En-Academic.com
  2. Doc 21 - 1953-00-00 144 propaganda - spy service.pdf
  3. Iranian National Socialist Movement (A History). Iran Politics Club, Second edition 10 July 2015.
  4. Davud Monshizadeh. World Biographical Encyclopedia.
  5. Neo-Fascist Chief Arrested in Iran; Police Seize Party's Quarters -- Step Held Consequence of Attack on Soviet Center. The New York Times, 27 August 1952.
  6. Ailreza Asgharzadeh, Iran and the Challenge of Diversity: Islamic Fundamentalism, Aryanist Racism, and Democratic Struggles. Springer, 11 June 2007. ISBN 9780230604889.
  7. Leonard Willy Michael, National socialist propaganda in late Reza-Shah Iran: the case of Khaterat-e Hitler by Mohsen Jahansuz. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 2021.
  8. Monchi-Zadeh, Davoud. Encyclopaedia Iranica.
  9. RECENT NAZI INCLINATIONS IN THE VIRTUAL DOMAIN OF IRAN ACIS - The Alliance Center for Iranian Studies 6 December 2010
  10. National socialist propaganda in late Reza-Shah Iran: the case of Khaterat-e Hitler by Mohsen Jahansuz Taylor & Francis Online
  11. Iranian ministry denies authorising neo-Nazi website The National Maryam Sinaiee, Nov 23, 2010
  12. Iran lifts ban on pro-Nazi website Al Arabiya News
  13. 13.0 13.1 13.2 Lorena Galliot, Who's behind the 'Association of Iranian Nazis' Archived from france24.com, 18 November 2010
  14. Iran lifts ban on pro-Nazi website. Al Arabiya News, 22 November 2010.
  15. Alt-right and authoritarian memetic alliances: global mediations of hate within the rising Farsi manosphere on Iranian social media SageJournals