The Protest That Shouts At Freedom And Whispers At Fear

Lede

Selective outrage becomes very brave when the target has courts, cameras, newspapers and police complaints forms.

Hermit Off Script

I admire people in Western countries who support oppressed people under authoritarian and terrorist regimes. That part is not the problem. People suffer. Children die. Governments protect their interests. Some Western governments do too little, too late, or pretend morality begins after the trade deal is signed. Fine. Shout at that. Blame that. Demand better. But my question is simple: how can the same people raise their voices against Western governments and then go strangely quiet about the tyrants, terror groups and regimes crushing ordinary people every day?

In some of these places, people can’t freely protest for their own suffering, their own freedom, their own sexuality, their own religion, their own conscience, or even their own sentence. LGBT people can be criminalised. Women can be treated as property. Journalists can vanish into prison. Ordinary citizens can be beaten for speaking. There is no polite middle ground where someone says, “I disagree with the regime, but I respect the process.” There is the regime’s way, the tyrant’s way, the armed group’s way, and then there is silence.

This is why this kind of protest can happen only in a democratic world. The freedom to condemn your own country is a privilege built by the same system people sometimes treat as uniquely evil. That doesn’t mean Western governments are innocent. It means the target list is lazy if it stops there. If you care about oppressed people, then say the full sentence. Condemn the bombing of civilians. Condemn state repression. Condemn terrorism. Condemn laws that crush LGBT people. Condemn regimes that ban opposition, speech and normal human choice.

Otherwise, the result will not be liberation. It will be more radicalised politics, more parties feeding from public anger, more attacks on free speech, and more people eventually discovering that the freedoms they used for performance now need defending for survival. Maybe one day the same people shouting safely in a democracy will ask why the world became colder around them. The answer will be simple: they fought for suffering abroad while forgetting the freedom under their feet.

P.S. The megaphone and the mirror

P.S. There is another strange part of this. Some of the loudest voices in Western LGBT and queer activist spaces speak with real emotion for oppressed people in Gaza, Iran and other places crushed by war, religious power, totalitarian regimes or terrorist groups. I understand that instinct. People who know what it means to be marginalised can recognise suffering faster than people who have never had to explain their own existence. Maybe this is how some of them release their own grief, refusal and anger. Maybe defending those who cannot speak becomes a way to heal something inside themselves. That part is human, and it is good that a civilised world still has people who shout for the voiceless. But the sentence cannot stop halfway.

If you shout against Western governments, shout also against the regimes and armed groups that crush the same people you claim to defend. Shout against Israel’s mistakes and crimes if that is your case, but also shout against Hamas, against authoritarian rule, against political prisons, against religious police, against laws that would make your own life illegal. In Iran, the same people holding rainbow flags in London would not have the same freedom to stand in a square and perform moral theatre for the cameras. In Gaza, LGBT rights are not exactly waiting behind the next press release. In Russia, LGBT advocacy itself has been pushed into the language of extremism. That is the warning.

Because otherwise it begins to sound like some activists want to weaken the very democratic world that allows them to exist openly. I am totally against that. I know with certainty that if extremism and hate take power in free countries, the first people to lose their rights will be the same people who thought shouting was enough. Then they will ask what happened. By then, freedom may not answer from a stage with a microphone. It may answer from a battlefield, where our ancestors already paid the bill in blood.

What does not make sense

• Demanding perfect morality from democracies while giving authoritarian regimes a discount for being openly brutal.
• Defending oppressed people without naming the people, parties, armies or religious police oppressing them.
• Using free speech in the West to excuse movements that would ban free speech if they won.
• Speaking loudly about LGBT rights at home while going soft on places where LGBT people are criminalised.
• Treating every Western failure as proof of evil, while treating every non-Western tyranny as “complex”.
• Mistaking guilt relief for justice. The oppressed don’t need your emotional laundry service. They need clear eyes.

Sense check / The numbers

1. Freedom House says global freedom declined for the 20th consecutive year in 2025; 54 countries deteriorated and 35 improved. [Freedom House]
2. Human Dignity Trust says 65 countries have jurisdictions that still criminalise LGBT people, and 12 countries have jurisdictions where the death penalty is imposed or legally possible for private, consensual same-sex activity. [Human Dignity Trust]
3. Amnesty International recorded 2,707 executions in 2025, a 78 per cent rise from 1,518 in 2024; Iran accounted for 2,159 recorded executions. [Amnesty International]
4. CIVICUS says civic freedoms are under severe attack in 122 of 198 countries and territories, and protester detention was the most common violation in 2025, recorded in at least 82 countries. [CIVICUS]
5. Freedom House says transnational repression involved 1,375 direct physical incidents by 54 governments in 107 host countries between 2014 and 2025. [Freedom House]

The sketch

Scene 1: The safe megaphone
Panel description. A protester stands in a democratic square with police barriers, journalists and legal observers nearby.
Dialogue:
Protester: “This system silences us.”
Journalist: “You’re live on six channels.”

Scene 2: The missing sentence
Panel description. A large sign says “Freedom for the oppressed”, but the names of tyrants are blanked out.
Dialogue:
Observer: “Who oppresses them?”
Protester: “Let’s keep it general.”

Scene 3: The regime smiles
Panel description. A shadowy ruler watches Western arguments on a wall of screens while a citizen behind him has tape over their mouth.
Dialogue:
Ruler: “Excellent.”
Citizen: “Can I speak?”
Ruler: “No.”

What to watch, not the show

• Which governments get blamed, and which regimes get treated like weather.
• Which victims are defended, and which victims are inconvenient.
• Whether protest language protects civilians or excuses armed power.
• Whether platforms reward outrage that is loud, simple and morally lazy.
• Whether authoritarian states use Western confusion to sell their own propaganda.
• Whether democratic societies weaken their own freedoms while trying to prove they are morally pure.

The Hermit take

Defend the oppressed, yes.
But if your courage disappears when the oppressor has no appeals process, it was never courage.

Keep or toss

Keep / Toss.
Keep the defence of suffering people.
Toss the selective blindness that shouts at flawed democracies and whispers at tyrants.

Sources

• Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2026: https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2026/growing-shadow-autocracy
• Human Dignity Trust, Map of Jurisdictions that Criminalise LGBT People: https://www.humandignitytrust.org/lgbt-the-law/map-of-criminalisation/
• Amnesty International USA, Death Sentences and Executions 2025: https://www.amnestyusa.org/reports/amnesty-international-global-report-death-sentences-and-executions-2025/
• CIVICUS Monitor, Global Findings 2025: https://monitor.civicus.org/globalfindings_2025/
• Freedom House, Transnational Repression: https://freedomhouse.org/report/transnational-repression
• Freedom House, Tracking Transnational Repression in 2025: https://freedomhouse.org/report/special-report/2026/collaboration-and-resistance-tracking-transnational-repression-2025
• ILGA World, Pride Month 2025 LGBTI data and maps: https://ilga.org/news/pride-month-2025-lgbti-data-maps/
• Reuters, Rome Pride bars Jewish LGBT group from parade over Gaza stance: https://www.reuters.com/world/rome-pride-bars-jewish-lgbt-group-parade-over-gaza-stance-2026-05-28/
• Human Dignity Trust, Iran country profile: https://www.humandignitytrust.org/country-profile/iran/
• Human Dignity Trust, Palestine country profile: https://www.humandignitytrust.org/country-profile/palestine/
• Amnesty International, Palestine State of 2025 report: https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/middle-east-and-north-africa/middle-east/palestine-state-of/report-palestine-state-of/
• GOV.UK, Proscribed terrorist groups or organisations: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/proscribed-terror-groups-or-organisations–2/proscribed-terrorist-groups-or-organisations-accessible-version
• Freedom House, Russia Freedom in the World 2025: https://freedomhouse.org/country/russia/freedom-world/2025