Hollywood’s selective silence on Iran exposes the lie of celebrity activism
In the glittering ballroom of the Golden Globes, the air is usually thick with self-congratulatory speeches about the power of art to change the world.
But this year, as the Iranian regime escalated its brutal crackdown on a generation of freedom fighters, that same room was defined by a haunting, comfortable silence. Many of the night’s most visible moral arbiters, including Mark Ruffalo, Wanda Sykes, Ariana Grande, Jean Smart, Natasha Lyonne and Bella Ramsey, proudly wore pins against ICE after Renee Good was shot. They signaled their concern for one cause while saying and doing nothing for Iran, where people are being beaten, imprisoned, and killed for demanding basic freedom.
We are told that "silence is violence" when it suits a domestic political narrative, yet when a tyrannical theocracy hangs young men from cranes and blinds women for the crime of showing their hair, the cameras stop rolling.
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The truth is as simple as it is ugly: Hollywood’s celebrated culture of activism has been hollowed out by a selective outrage that stops exactly where the Iranian regime’s interests begin.
Just days after reports surfaced of a total internet blackout in Iran, a digital shroud used to hide a bloody surge in state-sanctioned executions, the world’s most influential cultural voices chose to look away. When the West’s loudest moralizers go quiet, it sends a clear message to the Iranian people: you are on your own.
This silence is not accidental. It is a bizarre, unholy marriage of convenience between the Western far left and Islamic fundamentalists. Despite standing for everything the progressive left claims to loathe, the oppression of women, the execution of LGBT individuals and the total erasure of religious freedom, the Iranian regime is given a pass because it positions itself as an anti-Western force.
We must stop treating the threat of the Islamic Republic as a distant regional dispute. Its reach hits the West in ways we can no longer ignore. Whether it is through the funding of terrorist groups, supporting proxies that destabilize our trade routes, or the ideological subversion of our university campuses, the regime is not interested in coexistence.
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These efforts have reached a decade-high peak, yet our cultural gatekeepers remain paralyzed by a fear of being labeled Islamophobic for criticizing a murderous state.
Inside Iran, the people are not waiting for our permission to be free. From the streets of Tehran to the corners of Mashhad, the chants are no longer about reform; they are about the total rejection of a system that has hijacked their culture and stolen their future. When Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi speaks of a secular democratic transition, he is echoing a population that has outgrown its captors. They have found their courage; it is we in the West who have lost ours.
The era of talks and deals is over because you cannot negotiate with a regime whose fundamental identity is built on your disappearance. It is time for Hollywood and our political leaders to stop waiting for a safe moment to speak. We do not need more performative hashtags or empty gestures that disappear with the next news cycle. We need a sustained, unapologetic commitment to the total dismantling of the Iranian regime’s influence.
If we continue to choose silence over solidarity, our society is not just failing the people of Iran; it proves that the majority is actually choosing a side. It is time to stop being the regime’s silent partners and start being freedom’s loudest advocates.
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The most recent incident at a Beverly Hills theater, which banned Israeli comedian Guy Hochman, was political intimidation and anti Jewish discrimination. An Israeli comedian was pressured to renounce his identity to perform. That is not activism. It is authoritarianism. Radical left and pro Palestinian activists are using coercion and moral blackmail to silence Jews, Israelis, and Zionists. Free speech dies when mobs enforce ideological conformity. In a free society, no artist should have to denounce Israel to speak. Targeting Jews while claiming human rights is hypocrisy, and America should reject it outright.
The American government must immediately move beyond targeted sanctions and implement a policy of maximum support for the Iranian people’s internal resistance. Simultaneously, the American public must demand that cultural and corporate institutions that claim to value human rights stop allowing intimidation and ideological pressure to silence moral clarity.
Iranians around the world need to be heard in their plight fighting against the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Stop waiting for a convenient headline to support a secular, democratic Iran; the time to choose the side of freedom is now.