By Ari Brown
If you walked through the streets of Manhattan, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Chicago or Portland last year, you could hardly miss them: endless Gaza protests, celebrities on bullhorns, and nonstop media coverage treating every chant as a moral imperative.
Susan Sarandon, Mark Ruffalo and a parade of progressive icons were everywhere, lecturing the world on justice. Now that courageous Iranians are risking their lives in the streets, confronting a brutal regime, where are these moral megaphones? Where are the hashtags, the celebrity rallies and the tear-jerking op-eds? The silence is deafening.
In Iran, protesters are facing a government that has crushed dissent for decades. Hundreds of people have reportedly been killed for demanding basic freedoms. These men and women aren’t marching for Instagram applause. They are risking imprisonment, torture and death. Yet celebrity rallies vanish, elite media campaigns are absent, and the activists who claim to speak for the oppressed suddenly have nothing to say.
The left’s silence on Iran has nothing to do with principle. Their outrage is selective, because the oppressor isn’t Israel and the victims aren’t Jewish. When a cause can’t be weaponized against America or Israel, moral alarm disappears. Outrage is on demand, but only when it fits the narrative.
Feminist voices are especially absent. Iranian women have lived under systemic oppression for nearly 47 years, subject to forced dress codes, restricted movement and brutal punishment for defiance. They are beaten, jailed and killed for demanding basic freedoms. Activists who flood social media, claiming to defend women everywhere, remain silent. Feminism filtered through ideology becomes performative rather than principled.
The silence from LGBTQ organizations is equally revealing. Homosexuality is criminalized under Iran’s regime, and public expressions of LGBTQ identity are punishable by death. If slogans and flags in American protests were serious, Iran would be condemned first. Instead activists look away, showing that their concern is political alignment, not life or liberty.
Contrast this with the Gaza protests. Every banner, every chant, every Instagram post receives nonstop amplification. Celebrities march alongside activists who openly embrace movements hostile to America and Israel.
Symbols of terror-linked groups are tolerated or ignored. Meanwhile, ordinary Iranians who oppose the same terror-sponsoring regime receive barely a whisper. This is not moral consistency; it is ideological selectivity.
Most liberal universities provide a stark example.
Administrations have tolerated or encouraged anti-Israel demonstrations while staying silent on Iranian protesters. Students who shut down lecture halls over foreign conflicts now say nothing as a regime executes dissenters and suppresses women. Silence becomes policy when outrage is inconvenient.
President Trump provides a sharp contrast. Unlike celebrity activists, Trump has consistently condemned the Iranian regime’s violence and warned of consequences if the crackdown continues. That is leadership. He stands with people who fight for freedom, not people who kneel for photo ops. The president doesn’t pick and choose human rights based on hashtags. He knows that regimes that brutalize citizens and export terror are enemies of freedom.
If the left truly believed in universal human rights, outrage over Tehran would match outrage over Jerusalem. Its imbalance reveals priorities that are political, not principled — and this issue is about principle, not theology.
Iranian protesters demand liberty and dignity — the same rights claimed by Americans at our founding. But modern activist leftists treat Iranians’ struggle as an afterthought.
Any conflict framed as “us versus the West” gets broadcast; real freedom fighters are ignored.
Where were Sarandon and Ruffalo when Iranian women faced batons and bullets? Where were the big-name voices condemning internet blackouts, executions and arrests?
Their outrage is transactional and performative. When there is no ideological payoff, there is no protest. When there is no camera angle, there is no solidarity.
Real conservatives and courageous Americans see tyranny for what it is, wherever it occurs. They support Israel because it is a democratic ally amid hostile regimes. They support Iranians’ fighting for freedom because liberty is universal.
The left has an opportunity to prove it genuinely cares about human rights. Until it does, its moral hypocrisy will remain on full display. Outrage on demand is not justice. True courage stands with freedom — everywhere, every time.
Ari Brown represents the 20th Assembly District.
