Emotional Incontinence: How Progressives Enable Oppression

In May 2020, George Floyd's death at the hands of a police officer sparked massive international outrage, with images circulating on social media igniting protests and riots across the United States. Later that year, a research report from Stanford's Cyber Policy Center revealed that these protests were amplified by a seditious Iran-linked cyber operation, which aggressively promoted BLM narratives on social media.

Fast forward to 2022, when Iranian teenager Mahsa Amini was brutally beaten to death by the Islamic Regime's morality police in Tehran for wearing an "improper" hijab. The absence of any response from the so-called Woke feminists and BLM activists spoke volumes. That year, I came to a sobering realization: while our world grew exponentially more complex, our moral and factual reasoning capacity sharply declined.

The past decade has been a profound betrayal of fundamental feminist values by those who claim to champion them. For Middle Eastern women like myself—women who fled Islamic patriarchy and theocracy, seeking refuge in Europe—it was a moment of disillusionment. We watched in disbelief as European female politicians, heralded as paragons of feminist and inclusive values, traveled to Iran to shake hands with the murderous Mullahs clad in the very hijabs imposed on us by force. The recent visit to Syria by German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock was equally crude. Under the banner of her so-called "feminist foreign policy," she engaged with terrorists like Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa—better known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammad al-Julani—a former member of ISIS and Al-Qaeda.

Syrian Leader Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa Refuses to Shake Hands with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.

Why would these Woke feminists who claim to oppose patriarchy support the most significant patriarchal system ever created: Islam?

Why would they cancel and silence Middle Eastern women feminists, invalidating our experiences and suffering, by calling us Islamophobic?

Why would LGBTQ activists align themselves with the most homophobic patriarchy and march alongside antisemites?

These contradictions lay bare an obscene inversion. Most people agree that societies evolve through constant self-challenge. We grow individually and culturally by questioning our ideas and applying critical thinking. Without this process, stagnation becomes inevitable. But why do some who consider themselves progressive and open-minded claim progress for themselves while denying it to others based on race, religion, or culture?

Take this glaring double standard as an example: it's acceptable to criticize the Catholic Church, but criticizing Islam is labeled Islamophobic. This inconsistency is a manifestation of white supremacy disguised as tolerance—a form of racism that infantilizes entire cultures by denying them the opportunity to evolve. For reasons that defy logic, many feminists and so-called intellectual progressives refuse to acknowledge the injustice and brutality embedded in theocratic societies. They hesitate to challenge archaic norms, even when it means ignoring misogyny and homophobia. This is a grave problem because culture matters. A society's quality is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable members—women, children, and animals.

Sweden’s self-declared “first feminist government in the world” walking before Iranian President Rouhani in Hijab.

Why, then, do these feminists and intellectuals fail to make sense?

Because fear and identity crises drive them to irrationality, paralyzed by white guilt and shame, they seek redemption by reconstructing themselves as part of a larger, righteous, intellectually and morally superior movement. Hans Kundnani aptly termed this phenomenon "moral narcissism." However, this narcissism isn't just individual—it scales into collective narcissism, forming a tribal identity that binds them to other perceived victims in a simplistic, binary worldview.

This worldview, which reduces humanity into categories of Oppressed and Oppressors, is a classic example of narcissistic splitting: an "all-or-nothing" mentality. Such thinking cannot tolerate the ambiguity and contradictions inherent in human nature. As Obi-Wan Kenobi wisely observed, "Only a Sith deals in absolutes."

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Though loudly proclaimed, their empathy is synthetic—fundamentally inverted and laced with grandiosity, entitlement, and self-righteousness. It aligns seamlessly with the DSM-5 definition of narcissism. At its core lies self-victimization, a cornerstone of the narcissistic mechanism for compensating shame. These moralists deflect responsibility for reality, shield their egos from confronting privilege, and occupy a moral high ground without genuine introspection or change by positioning themselves as perpetual victims of societal structures or historical injustices.

What they frame as a fight for social justice is, in reality, a facade—an external projection of their unresolved insecurities and deeper issues. They convince themselves they uniquely understand and can fix the world's problems, yet their actions often perpetuate the very systems they claim to oppose. This toxic cycle of guilt, victimization, and grandiosity stifles genuine empathy and critical thinking, trapping them—and the groups they profess to support—in a state of arrested development.

What role do our institutions play in this dysfunction?

It's the classic toxic dance of the narcissist and the co-dependent: the abuser and the enabler. Governments and institutions often act as co-dependents, enabling the self-victimizing narcissists of the far Left—embodied in movements like Wokeism, BDS, BLM, DEI, and others. This poisonous trade benefits no one except the narcissist, as institutions continually placate them instead of setting firm boundaries.

It's like indulging a raging child rolling on the floor of a supermarket: without boundaries, the tantrum grows louder and more destructive. Unless society collectively learns to draw clear lines and reject this toxic dynamic, chaos will persist at the expense of genuine progress and the principles that underpin healthy, evolving societies.