The names of protests change, but their basic core stays the same

Protests against illegal-immigration enforcement, as well as the Black Lives Matter movement, Occupy Wall Street, No Kings and the umpteen demonstrations against Israel and basically for terrorism—they are all branches of the same ideological tree. These are not like the civil-rights marches of previous generations, despite their best efforts to convince the public that they are. Many of these people have exposed themselves to be divisive and hateful.

Until people recognize that connection, they will keep losing the arguments, one issue at a time. Americans who oppose today’s protest movements and understand the connection can unite to preserve Western civilization. They need to stop fighting these battles in isolation. You can’t defeat an ideological movement by treating each protest as a one-off.

A recent protest put on by PAL-Awda NY/NJ, a pro-Hamas group, was canceled on Jan. 7 so the rally-goers could attend an anti-ICE protest in a different part of Manhattan on the same day.

Each movement comes wrapped in its own moral packaging. One claims to be about racial justice. Another about immigration. Another about economic inequality. The anti-Israel protests claim to be about humanitarian concern. But strip away the slogans and the hashtags, and a single idea remains: the belief that Western civilization itself is the root of all evil.

That belief drives everything.

If these movements were truly about justice or human rights, then their outrage would be consistent. The lack of outrage on the part of these so-called humanitarian protesters in the face of real massacres, such as what is happening in Iran now, is unbelievable.

This is a regime that beats women for showing their hair, imprisons journalists, executes dissidents, and persecutes religious minorities. It still stones people for adultery. If there were ever a cause tailor-made for campus encampments, street marches and viral outrage, this was it.

And yet, there are no tent cities on college quads. No mass protests shutting down city centers. No celebrities rushing to post black squares or slogans. No general media coverage framing Iran as the moral crisis of our time.

Iran gets a pass because it defines itself as anti-Western and anti-Israel. A regime can murder its own people by the tens of thousands, and it will still be treated as morally superior to a Western democracy, as long as it points its hatred in the “right” direction.

Sadly, this silence is predictable given the fact that it is not about individual humanitarian concerns, but about something much larger. Their actions and lack thereof betray their belief that the ends justify the means; in actuality, it also shows that the Islamo-fascist state of Iran is their de facto ally.

This moment presents opportunities for people to recognize the true colors of these disrupters and to link these protest movements together.

When protesters chant about “genocide” in Tel Aviv but shrug at mass murder in Tehran, they prove that the issue was never Palestinian welfare, just as earlier movements were never really about policing, wages or borders.

Those were entry points. Israel is the current front line. The end goal is bigger. It’s about weakening the rule of law and convincing ordinary citizens that their own civilization is something to be ashamed of.

The silence on Iran, the silence on the butchery of Christians in Nigeria and Uyghurs in China, and the silence on the starvation of the Yemeni children are but a few examples. This is not an oversight; it is a confession. It proves this was never about justice. It was about power and control.

The silver lining is that these examples lay bare the agitators’ moral bankruptcy and expose their lies. They have lost the ability to claim the moral high ground.

And the sooner the vast majority of Americans make these connections, the sooner these provocateurs will realize that the American people are not behind them.

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