The Fate of Third Worldism in the Middle East

The pivotal years that laid the foundations for our times – in the Middle East and the world.

In the latter half of the twentieth century, a revolutionary idea promised to upend the global order. Anti-imperialist militancy, bolstered by international solidarity, would lead to not only the national liberation of oppressed peoples but universal emancipation, shattering the division between the prosperous nations of the capitalist West and the poorer countries of the Global South.

The idea was Third Worldism, and among others, it inspired struggles in Iran and Palestine. By the early 1980s, however, progressive visions of independence and freedom had fallen to the reality of an oppressive Islamic theocracy in Iran, while the Palestinian Revolution had been eclipsed by civil war in Lebanon, Israeli aggression, and intra-Arab conflict.

This thought-provoking volume explores the dramatic decline of Third Worldism in the Middle East. It reveals the lived realities of the time by focusing on the key protagonists – from student activists to guerrilla fighters, and from volunteer nurses to militant intellectuals. It juxtaposes the Iranian and Palestinian cases to offer a riveting re-examination of this defining era. Ultimately, it challenges us to reassess how we view the end of the long 1960s, prompting us to reconsider perennial questions concerning self-determination, emancipation, change, and solidarity.

The Fate of Third Worldism in the Middle East includes the following chapters:

Introduction: The Transformation of Third Worldism in the Middle East
Sune Haugbolle and Rasmus Elling

1. Demystifying Third World Solidarity: Cuba and the Palestinian Revolution in the Seventies
Sorcha Thomson

2. Nursing the Revolution: Norwegian Medical Support in Lebanon as Solidarity, 1976–1983
Pelle Valentin Olsen

3. Searching for Friends Across the Global South: Classified Documents, Iran, and the Export of the Revolution in 1983
Simon Wolfgang Fuchs

4. Translation, Revolutionary Praxis, and the Enigma of Manuchehr Hezarkhani
Nasser Mohajer and Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi

5. The Gendered Politics of Dead Bodies: Obituaries, Revolutionaries, and Martyrs between the Iranian, Palestinian, and Dhufar Revolutions
Marral Shamshiri-Fard

6. Brothers, Comrades, and the Quest for the Islamist International: The First Gathering of Liberation Movements in Revolutionary Iran
Mohammad Ataie

7. The ‘ends’ of the Palestinian revolution in the Fakhani Republic
Sune Haugbolle

8. The Islamic Republic Party and the Palestinian Cause, 1979–80: A Discursive Transformation of the Third Worldist Agenda
Maryam Alemzadeh

9. The Front of our Friends: Shu’un Falastiniyya as an Archive of Palestinian Third Worldism
Klaudia Wieser

10. Fragile Solidarity: The Iranian Left and the Kurdish National Question in the 1979 Revolution
Rasmus C. Elling and Jahangir Mahmoudi

11. Jabal ‘Amil Between the Palestinian and Iranian Revolutions
Nate George

Afterword: Towards a Praxis-Centred Historiography of Middle East Third Worldism
Toufoul Abou-Hodeib and Naghmeh Sohrabi