John Ondrasik On the Silence Of the ‘Free Palestine’ Shams

Remember all of those “stop the genocide” chants on American college campuses? Hollywood celebrities demanding to “free Palestine”? Progressive elites joining radicals in spewing Hamas propaganda, chanting “from the river to the sea” and demanding an end to oppression in Gaza?

John Ondrasik certainly remembers. And after watching the Golden Globes, the Five for Fighting singer-songwriter wonders when the Left suddenly developed laryngitis, amnesia, and outright dereliction. The regime that runs Hamas and Hezbollah just spent the past week slaughtering as many as 20,000 unarmed protesters in the streets with indiscriminate gunfire, and these same self-described anti-genocidists have issued nary a peep in response to these atrocities.

In an op-ed at the Wall Street Journal, John called out the Left and Democrats for what I call “the silence of the Free Palestine shams”:

In recent days the tyrannical Iranian regime has shut down the internet and phone service in the country, conducted mass arrests and massacred thousands—if not many thousands—of protesters.

Yet American college campuses, so recently the site of passionate encampments in support of the Palestinian people, are eerily quiet about what’s happening in Iran. The congressional microcaucus known as the Squad, so quick to decry the suffering of women and children in Gaza, are oddly mum about the suffering of women and children in Iran. And Greta Thunberg’s flotilla of humanity has yet to set sail for the Persian Gulf. …

The Iranian people are fighting to end a 46-year reign of murder, oppression and brutal submission of women. The media is downplaying the protests or ignoring them outright. Why?

Come on … we all know why. The limousine Left and the radical activists don’t care about a “Free Palestine.” If they did, they’d be demanding an end to Hamas, not attacking Israel. They want an end to the West, and they see Iran as a key ally in that quest. John understands this, as does Tahmineh Dehbozorgi, whom he quotes in his essay, and whom I also linked a few days ago:

As you know, Iran is not only a religious dictatorship. It is a centrally controlled, state-dominated economy where markets are strangled, private enterprise is criminalized or co-opted, and economic survival depends on proximity to political power. Decades of price controls, subsidies, nationalization, and bureaucratic micromanagement have obliterated the middle class and entrenched corruption as the only functional system. The result is not equality or justice. It is poverty, stagnation, and dependence on government’s dark void of empty promises.

Covering Iran honestly would require acknowledging that these policies are harmful. They have been tried. They have failed. Catastrophically.

This is deeply inconvenient for Western media institutions that routinely promote expansive state control, centralized economic planning, and technocratic governance as morally enlightened alternatives to liberal capitalism. Iran demonstrates where such systems lead when insulated from accountability and enforced by ideology. It shows that when the state controls livelihoods, non-conformity becomes existentially dangerous. That lesson cannot be acknowledged without undermining the moral authority of those who advocate similar ideas in softer language.

Western liberal media prefers not to hear this. Acknowledging it would require abandoning the lazy moral categories that dominate modern discourse: oppressor and oppressed, colonizer and colonized, white and non-white. Iranian protesters do not fit. They show that authoritarianism is not a Western invention imposed from outside, but something many societies are actively trying to escape.

That is what terrifies Western liberal media. And that is why the Iranian people are being ignored.

So the silence continues.

Late yesterday, John and I talked about his column and Dehbozorgi’s observations, which I amusingly forgot that John had pointed out to me in the first place. (You’ll see the realization in the video.) John has seen this issue since the day that the Free Palestine crowd sided with the hostage-taking rapists/murderers/terrorists on October 7, 2023. This has never been about freedom in any sense. It has been about the destruction of Israel and the expansion of oppressive regimes like Iran’s, in service of “deconstructing” Western liberty and replacing it with Stalinist constructs that differ little in practice from the regime in Tehran. 

This is a signal moment in the West. It’s time to distinguish between those who have legitimate differences in approaches to liberty, and those who just want it destroyed and replaced with the antithesis of freedom. As always, John provides a clarity of thought earned by walking on the front lines of this fight. Also, check in at Five for Fighting’s official website for information on his upcoming events, and follow John on X/Twitter for his continuing observations … and cool hockey-fight clips. 

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