Dave Rubin did what honest journalists and real patriots do: he pulled back the curtain on performative outrage and let Americans see the rot. By sharing a behind-the-scenes DM clip of his conversation with voices like former intelligence officer Mike Baker and Iranian activist Elica Le Bon, Rubin exposed a pattern — loud, moral posturing on some causes and total silence on others. This isn’t an isolated clip; Rubin’s Direct Message segments regularly spotlight the media and activist class refusing to answer uncomfortable questions about consistency and human rights.
Elica Le Bon, an Iranian attorney and activist, laid out the obvious truth: many on the American left misunderstand Iran and, worse, excuse or ignore the regime’s brutal treatment of women. Her interview with Rubin explains how decades of ideological blinders — and bad foreign-policy choices by American elites — have warped the way some activists perceive Iranians’ struggle for freedom. That firsthand perspective undercuts the smug moral superiority displayed on campus quad signs and Twitter threads that never mention the women risking everything back home.
Diaspora Iranians and independent journalists have repeatedly called out progressive silence, noting how the Iran story gets tangled up with geopolitics and identity politics until the victims disappear from view. News outlets documenting these critiques show a pattern: when a cause doesn’t fit a convenient narrative about imperialism or Western culpability, activist energy evaporates. This is not compassion; it is convenience — the very definition of hypocrisy — and it’s a scandal for anyone who claims to champion universal human rights.
Meanwhile, America’s campuses spent the last year awash in anti-Israel encampments, BDS campaigns, and nonstop Gaza solidarity rallies, with student leaders and faculty militants pouring their fury into one narrow cause. The result is predictable: the moral capital of our universities has been spent selectively, leaving other oppressed peoples — Iranian women, for example — without allies where they most need them. Reports cataloging campus activism make it clear that one-sided outrage has become the new status quo, and our institutions are answerable for that failure.
Mike Baker, who brings a national-security lens to these conversations, reminded viewers that geopolitics and human rights are not mutually exclusive and that credibility matters in the long game. When the people who claim to care about “oppressed populations” pick and choose based on tribal loyalties, our country’s moral leadership erodes and tyrants around the world take heart. Those who sit on the sidelines while Iranian women are beaten, arrested, or worse are not activists; they are collaborators in cowardice, and conservatives should call them out without apology.
Hardworking Americans know the difference between courage and performance. We stand with real people who risk everything for freedom, not with the virtue-signalers who weigh their hashtags against career risk and donor preferences. Universities that teach critical thinking yet reward one-sided protests are failing their students and betraying the principles of liberal education they claim to uphold.
If the leftist campus mobs have a single consistent principle, it is inconsistency — a readiness to scream for some victims and shrug for others. Conservatives should demand better from our institutions, from our media, and from anyone who claims to care about human dignity. Support for the brave Iranian women fighting for basic rights is not a partisan act; it is an American one.
Patriots must use these moments to expose hypocrisy and mobilize real solidarity — petition administrations, back authentic human-rights organizations, and refuse to let moral selective outrage become the new normal. The fight for freedom abroad often starts with the courage to speak the truth at home, and it is past time our campuses, our commentators, and our leaders stopped choosing sides based on fashion and started choosing the side of liberty.
