Progressive Moral Reasoning and Iran’s Revolt
3rd February 2026
The Iranian revolt of 2026 has exposed a profound flaw in Western progressive thinking. While people in Tehran and Mashhad and dozens of other Iranian cities risk their lives in the name of secular nationalism and constitutional law, progressive activists in the West seem to have nothing to say. If a movement isn’t checking the usual boxes of Western identity politics, they tend to view it as confusing, suspicious, or even reactionary.
Consequently, the Iranian people are showing us, mostly by accident, just how narrow the Western moral imagination has become. Many observers have attempted to interpret the uprising through familiar human-rights and liberationist frameworks, recasting it as another episode of identity-based politics. Others, finding no comfortable place for themselves within it, have chosen silence instead. The result has been a striking absence of sustained global attention.
This is the most pernicious effect of the Narrative Media. Sure, there are other sources of ‘news’, but the Narrative Media, by what they cover, tend heavily to influence what people think they know and especially what they think and talk about.