The Left's Silence on Iran Is NOT Hypocrisy

When college students returned from winter break last week, they didn't find a single encampment supporting the Iranian uprising against one of the world's most brutal regimes.

Nor are there any emergency meetings or condemnations from the United Nations. Member states were busy denouncing the United States for removing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro and Israel for its recognition of Somaliland. The more people might be free, the more the U.N. is distressed.

Outlets such as the BBC, which spread virtually every fictitious claim about the Gaza "genocide" and "famine" that was handed to them by Hamas propagandists, could barely spare a segment for the widespread protests in Iran.

A year ago, Mark Ruffalo, Billie Eilish, Guy Pearce and scores of other moral ignoramuses were seen wearing red and orange pins featuring a hand around a black heart symbol — referencing a Ramallah lynching of two Israeli reservists in 2000 who drove down the wrong street and were literally torn apart by a Palestinian mob. One of the murderers deliriously displayed his blood-soaked hands from the window to a cheering throng.

This year, the Golden Globes didn't feature a single celebrity championing the Iranian people.

All the silence is revealing. Not because it's hypocrisy. It isn't. It expresses a consistent political position. The progressive Left and woke Right are on the side of the mullahs. There are many reasons for it.

The charge of "hypocrisy" against leftist defenders of the mullahs reminds me of the mockery we throw at members of groups such as "Queers for Palestine." It misses a larger point. The red-green alliance between leftists and political Islamists is nothing new. They have all the same enemies.

The press? As Tahmineh Dehbozorgi recently noted, the Western media largely ignore the Iranian uprising "because explaining it would force an admission it is desperate to avoid: the Iranian people are rebelling against Islam itself, and that fact shatters the moral framework through which these institutions understand the world."

Indeed, Western progressives in the media treat Islam with, at best, a self-destructive moral equivalence or, at worst, reverence. The same people who cover domestic immigration enforcement as a portend to the Fourth Reich treat the Iranian regime, which regularly executes women for crimes against Islam, with kid gloves.

This deceptive coverage of political Islam is reminiscent of the Left's complicity in Stalin's terror in the 1930s, whitewashed to shield the broader communist cause.

Like the Soviet Union, the modern Iranian state is a full-blown totalitarian system. Not merely because it functions under an array of fundamentally illiberal ideas but because it controls virtually every aspect of life, from the spiritual to economic. What's worse is that the Iranian state is the biggest exporter of this brutal ideology, responsible for at least 1,000 American deaths over the years.

Let's call the Iran-championing "intellectuals" in Washington who would like to see the mullahs obtain nuclear weapons as a bulwark against Israeli regional hegemony the Ben Rhodes faction. The brutality of the regime doesn't concern them whatsoever.

And let's call the Israel-obsessives on the right the Tucker Carlson faction, who find modern Western ideals, "neocons" and the AIPAC far more offensive and dangerous than the theological fascism of political Islam.

A successful revolution against the Shia radicals would almost surely benefit the region. The clerics' fixation with Israel has little rational geopolitical reasoning. It is theologically motivated, while also useful in deflecting attention away from the regime's domestic failures.

Of course, we don't know whether this new uprising will succeed or what would happen if it did. This isn't the first time Iranians have rebelled. Thousands have probably been murdered already. Tens of thousands are in prison.

It seems unlikely that an Iranian revolution would succeed without a political or military coup or some external force. The Twelver Shi'ism of the clerics makes them different from the shah or other secular dictators who might be concerned about the lives of their people or their own fortunes. Mullahs would likely rather see the entire country in flames than surrender. Just look at how much needless peril and pain they place themselves and their nation in chasing nuclear weapons.

The president is reportedly weighing military options to support the protesters' efforts to dislodge these murderous fascists. You may support him in this effort or not. But any true champion of human rights is rooting against the mullahs.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

Previously:
• 12/26/25: For JD Vance, Free Speech Only Means His Friends Can't Be Criticized
• 12/12/25: The Left Doesn't Believe in the Constitutional Order
• 12/07/25: War Powers Are Dead
• 11/27/25: MTG Embodies the Inanity of Populism
• 11/14/25: Gaslighting Americans is latest Dem Disaster
• 11/11/25: Trump's Filibuster Nuke Would Hand Dems the Keys To Remake America
• 11/04/25: Let's Talk About the Real Genocide of Christians in Africa
• 10/16/25: Obamacare Is a Massive Failure. The GOP Shouldn't Bail It Out
• 10/10/25: Why Aren't 'Ceasefire Now!' Activists Celebrating Trump's Gaza Peace Deal?
• 09/12/25: Israel's Strike on Qatar Should Have Happened Years Ago
• 09/05/25: An Open Letter to My Esteemed Colleagues at the International Association of Genocide Scholars
• 08/29/25: The President Doesn't Get to Dictate How We Express Ourselves
• 08/22/25: Is Socialism as Popular as the Media Think?
• 08/15/25: Save the Little Sisters of the Poor!
• 08/08/25: RFK Jr.'s War on Vaccines and Public Health Continues
• 08/01/25: Europe's Recognition of 'Palestine' Is a Cynical Joke
• 07/18/25: Legacy Media Still Covering for Biden
• 06/27/25: Trump Learned the Lessons of Iraq
• 05/30/25: We Have No Constitutional or Moral Duty to Subsidize Harvard
• 05/30/25: Welcome to the Intifada, America
• 05/16/25: Scapegoating Biden Isn't Going to Solve the Dems' Problems
• 05/09/25: The Pulitzer Prizes Have Become a Sad Joke
• 05/05/25: How Do You Do, Fellow White People? Tim Walz Says Hello!
• 04/25/25: Ketanji Brown Jackson Makes a Powerful Argument for School Choice
• 04/18/25: If Everyone Is an Expert, No One Is
• 03/31/25: The Left's Imaginary COVID 'Reckoning'
• 03/21/25: Sorry, Conspiracy Theorists -- Lee Harvey Oswald Acted Alone
• 03/03/25: Mitch McConnell: A GOP Hall of Famer?
• 02/21/25: RFK's Dangerous Autism Lie
• 02/14/25: It's Time to End the EV Racket
• 02/07/25: If You Really Support Immigration, Stop Excusing Chaos
• 02/03/25: Trump's Gaza Proposal Makes Complete Sense
• 01/24/25: How Biden's Pardons Normalize Abuse of Power
• 01/17/25: Israel Makes a Deal With the Actual Devil
• 01/13/25: Why Javier Milei Matters
• 12/20/24: The Obama Doctrine Is Dead
• 12/13/24: It's time for a national conversation about left-wing violence
• 12/09/24: It's time for a national conversation about left-wing violence
• 11/08/24: Don't Trash the Constitution to Dunk on the Libs
• 11/08/24: This 'liberation' will NOT be reported
• 11/01/24: HARRIS Is the Bigger Threat to the Constitutional Order
• 09/20/24: Fact checked! Harris Is the Extremist
• 07/13/24: Explain Yourself, Kamala Harris!
• 07/05/24: How Biden's Mental Decline Went From 'Misinformation' to Fact in a Week
• 04/12/24: Biden Is Now Chasing the 'Death to America' Voter
• 03/15/24: Turns Out Biden Lied About Hur, Beau, And Why He Pilfered Classified Docs
• 02/09/24: Why Biden Is Threatening to Veto Aid to Israel
• 02/09/23: Electric Cars Are a Scam
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• 03/03/23: Questioning Biden's Ukraine Policy Doesn't Make You an 'Isolationist'
• 01/20/23: No ribbons? Don't hide behind religion!
• 01/13/23: On Classified Documents, Joe Biden Is Out of Excuses
• 04/29/22: Biden's Ministry of Truth
• 04/08/22: The Most Radical Abortion Law in the Nation
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• 03/25/22: No, School Boards Are Not 'Banning Books'
• 03/11/22: Let Them Drive Teslas
• 01/28/22: It's Not Government's Job to 'Root Out' Misinformation
• 01/14/22: Biden's Big Elections Lie
• 01/07/22: Schumer's Ugly 'Voting Rights' Gamble
• 12/24/21:AOC's Grasp on American Governance Is a 'Farce'
• 12/17/21: Dems Pivot from Build Back Better to Useless Extremism
• 11/19/21: Reckoning' Over Steele Dossier?
• 10/15/21: The Biden White House Will Pay for Playing Inflation Games
• 09/24/21: The most demonstrable political scandal still ignored
• 09/17/21: Sorry, AOC, The Rich Already Pay Their Fair Share
• 09/02/21: Why Isn't Biden to Blame for COVID-19 Deaths?
• 08/06/21: Biden's Unprecedented Attack on the Constitution
• 07/30/21: Jan. 6 Was Deplorable. It Was NOT a Coup
• 06/21/21: The Myth of Republican Obstructionism
• 05/21/21: What Does Putin Have on Biden?
• 04/16/21: Kristen Clarke Is Unfit to Be in Government
• 03/26/21: No to DC Statehood is far from GOP being reflexive
• 03/22/21: Biden Prepares to Strip College Students of Due Process Rights The Hypocrisy of the Filibuster Busters
• 03/12/21: Biden Prepares to Strip College Students of Due Process Rights
• 03/05/21: AOC's Terrible Minimum Wage Argument
• 02/12/21: The Dem Party Is Radicalizing against the Constitution
• 02/05/21: What NOT to Do with Marjorie Taylor Greene
• 01/15/21: Free Speech Is a Value Not Just a Right
• 12/31/20: It Can't Get Any Worse Than 2020. Here's a 2021 Political Wish List
• 10/26/20: Wanted: An Honest Debate about the Death Penalty
• 10/26/20: These are the questions 'Big Guy' Biden must be forced to answer about Hunter's emails
• 09/11/20: The Dems' Dangerous Delegitimization of the Election
• 08/28/20: Biden Is Underperforming Hillary in Battleground States
• 08/14/20: Kamala Harris, Imaginary Centrist
• 07/24/20: Who you calling a fascist?
• 07/17/20: Speech Police have finally gone too far
• 07/03/20: 'But Gorsuch' Is Still Trump's Best Argument
• 06/22/20: Welcome to America's Cultural Revolution
• 06/12/20: The color of my skin is not an indictment of my morality, nor does it strip me of my agency
• 06/05/20: What this son of immigrants knows about bulding bussinesses --- and the dismay of destruction
• 05/28/20: The Folly of Twitter's Fact-Check
• 05/22/20: Dems Warning Trump Will Reject Election Results Should Look in the Mirror
• 05/15/20: Obamagate Is NOT a Conspiracy Theory
• 05/08/20: Really, Joe --- due process is the opposite of justice?