The Far Left’s Obsession with Victimhood Is Making Minorities Less Safe
This essay was written by Matthew Nouriel, an LGBTQ+, Iranian-Jewish writer
Why is Jewish survival treated like a threat? Why is Palestinian suffering glorified over Palestinian freedom? I’ve watched this play out firsthand—in comment sections, on campuses, and in conversations that erase people like me simply for refusing to stay a victim.
This essay examines the dangerous standard now shaping far-left activism: empowerment disqualifies you from inclusion. And survival itself is framed as aggression.
There’s a dangerous standard at the heart of far-left ideology: minorities are only seen as valid if they stay victims. This isn’t some fringe belief. It’s a core component of a worldview that’s growing louder and more accepted.
Rebuild your life? Reclaim dignity? Gain power or safety? Suddenly, you’re not oppressed enough to count. You’re erased from the narrative. You’re accused of being the oppressor.
That’s not liberation. That’s ideological control.
I saw it firsthand in one of my recent Instagram posts. A commenter scoffed, “What oppressed group can weaponize the police?” As if the Jewish struggle vanished the moment we secured even the most basic safety. As if centuries of exile, pogroms, and genocide are erased because Jews refuse to remain powerless.
This mindset isn’t just corrosive. It’s lethal.
Within a matter of days, two shocking antisemitic attacks took place in the United States. Two Israeli embassy employees, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, were executed in cold blood outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. Their killer shouted “Free Palestine” as he was arrested—caught on video yelling the slogan as police took him into custody. Here’s the cruel irony: they had just left an event dedicated to humanitarian aid and interfaith dialogue—specifically supporting relief efforts in Gaza. They were working for peace. And for that, they were murdered.
Then, in Boulder, Colorado, Jewish community members peacefully marching for the release of Israeli hostages were attacked with Molotov cocktails and a makeshift flamethrower. The assailant, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, injured fifteen people—including an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor. He told authorities he had planned the attack for a year, intending to “kill all Zionist people.”
What was the response?
Influencers like Guy Christensen—with millions of followers—took to social media to justify the killings. To rationalize them. To frame them as understandable, even righteous, under the guise of “resistance.”
Why? Because they’ve created a villain of the highest order in Zionism—a movement that achieved everything the far left claims to support: anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, land back, liberation, and survival in the face of genocide.
But instead of celebrating it, they demonize it. They compare it to Nazism. They use it to justify murder.
It makes no moral sense—until you recognize the real ideology at play: stay oppressed, or be villainized. Liberation is only acceptable if it never actually arrives.
All of this is wrapped in the language of a “Free Palestine.” But the truth is: Palestine could have been free. Peace was offered. Statehood was offered. Coexistence was possible. But again and again, it was rejected—because war, martyrdom, and rejectionism were chosen instead.
Liberation is in their hands, and they’ve refused it. That’s not oppression—it’s self-imposed. And that’s exactly why the far left has elevated the Palestinian cause into a symbol of its worldview: permanent struggle over resolution, endless conflict over compromise. In their eyes, you’re only worthy if you stay broken.
The Palestinians have become the perfect poster children for this ideology. Held up as eternal victims, despite initiating every major war with Israel and choosing conflict over coexistence. Their cause has become sacred—not because it demands liberation, but because it refuses it.
They are not victims of Zionism. They are victims of Islamist imperialism—an imperialism that has succeeded across much of the region, but failed in one place: Israel. And that failure is intolerable. Instead of holding Palestinian leadership accountable, the world blames Israel—for refusing to submit, for surviving, for thriving.
Israel’s refusal to be destroyed is framed as aggression. Its determination to live is treated as violence. And its Jewish citizens are told that their empowerment disqualifies them from being seen as human.
And in the end, it’s the Palestinians themselves who pay the highest price—trapped in a cycle of violence, failed leadership, and endless war, all in service of a cause that demands their suffering over their liberation.
Meanwhile, Jews are accused of being too privileged. But who are they talking about?
The Jews who arrived in America fleeing pogroms, the Holocaust, and war—arriving with nothing but trauma and desperation?
The 850,000 Jews ethnically cleansed from Arab lands—stripped of citizenship, land, and identity by Arab nationalist regimes often infused with Islamist ideology, now reframed by the far left as anti-colonial?
We weren’t handed power. We fought for it. We rebuilt. We survived. And now, because we’ve refused to stay victims, we’re told we no longer qualify as oppressed.
It’s an impossible standard—and a revealing one. If empowerment disqualifies you, then oppression isn’t something these ideologues want to end. It’s something they need to preserve.
Because victimhood is their currency. It’s how they gatekeep inclusion. It’s how they maintain control.
And I say all of this as someone whose very identity should matter to those who claim to care about justice. I’m gay. I’m Iranian. I’m Jewish.
The regime in Iran—an antisemitic theocracy—didn’t issue a formal expulsion. It didn’t have to. It reinstated the humiliations of dhimmitude through fear, surveillance, executions, and systemic discrimination—driving 90% of Iran’s Jewish population into exile. And it murders people like me—gay Iranians—publicly, with impunity. You would think that would be worth talking about.
But they don’t. Not because they’re unaware—but because they’ve decided it’s not their fight.
Influencers like Mattxiv, for example, have said outright that we shouldn’t “judge gay rights by a Western standard.” In other words, equality is worth fighting for here—but not for the LGBTQ activists risking their lives every single day in the Middle East and North Africa. He’s effectively saying gay rights are good enough for him, but not for them. Talk about privilege. My rights become negotiable depending on the region. My life matters less—because challenging non-Western oppressors makes them uncomfortable.
I can’t think of a more blatant example of the racism of low expectations.
This is the price of a narrative that demands Jews stay silent. This is what happens when empowerment is framed as oppression, and survival as violence. It doesn’t just distort discourse—it endangers lives.
I’m not embraced unless I reduce myself to a victim. Unless I denounce my Jewish pride. Unless I stay silent about the Islamic Republic. Unless I make myself small and digestible—just another checkbox in their curated display of “marginalized voices.”
But I refuse.
I won’t dilute myself to be palatable. I won’t apologize for surviving, for being proud, or for speaking hard truths. And ironically, it’s that refusal—that dignity—that makes me more of a target.
Because in the end, this was never about justice. It was never about protecting minorities. It was about controlling them.
