Dave Rubin recently aired a Direct Message clip that pulled back the curtain on something many patriots have suspected for months: campus activists who thunder about injustice abroad are strikingly quiet when the victims are women fighting for basic human rights in Iran. Rubin’s segment included a frank exchange with Iranian-born attorney and activist Elica Le Bon and commentary from security analyst Mike Baker, forcing the very people who traffic in moralism to confront their double standards.
The silence from the leftist commentariat and many college protest movements is not accidental — it’s ideological. When the media and campus radicals were quick to amplify every grievance about Gaza, they have been muted about Iranian women risking their lives to tear off compulsory hijabs and demand freedom; several outlets have documented this glaring asymmetry in coverage and outrage.
What Rubin and Le Bon exposed is a pattern conservatives have long warned about: virtue-signaling that’s selective, performative, and useful only when it scores political points. Too many student demonstrations today are rehearsals for identity politics theatre rather than genuine human-rights advocacy, and reporting suggests a large portion of those protests are organized or infiltrated in ways that don’t reflect principled concern for the oppressed.
Patriots should applaud Le Bon and others who refuse to let the left’s hypocrisy stand unchallenged; they deserve platforms, not silence. Rubin’s willingness to shine a light on inconvenient truths — even when it makes fashionable opinion uncomfortable — is exactly the kind of fearless journalism modern America needs to remind young people what principled solidarity actually looks like.
Universities that preach moral leadership must be held to account when their campuses become echo chambers that silence dissenting victims and lift only the causes that fit a political script. The real test of any movement is whether it stands for liberty and human dignity universally — from Gaza to Tehran — and not just when it’s convenient for the narrative of the moment.
If conservatives are serious about defending freedom, we must keep exposing this hypocrisy and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Iranian women demanding liberty. Let the record show: courage doesn’t pick its victims based on ideology, and neither should we.
