The current Iran war has exposed an uncomfortable truth in Britain. In a country that prides itself on defending freedom, some have taken to the streets waving the flag of a regime that violently suppresses it.

At the end of January, I spotted one of the regular pro-Palestine marches heading through London. But things were different this time. Rather than the usual advocacy for Palestinian rights, people were marching through London’s streets chanting in support of the murderous anti-British Iranian regime, proudly waving Iranian flags and displaying photos of Ayatollah Khamenei with the words, “Be On The Right Side of History” written neatly on the placards. The irony could hardly be starker. After the Iranian regime massacred more than 30,000 protesters, dozens of people in Britain took to the streets, freely exercising their right to protest, to wave Iranian flags and voice support for the very regime that brutally slaughtered its own demonstrators.

Iranians have a diaspora of over 114,000 people in Britain with many Iranians having fled Iran in the last decade. January and February marked one of the hardest months for the Iranian diaspora amidst the protest crackdowns and internet blackouts across Iran. To this day, the true scale of the crackdown remains unknown, with sources putting the death toll even higher. Yet, in Britain, with such a strong Iranian community, many of the British people sat idly as everything unfolded in Iran. The sad truth slowly became clear: for many on the hard left, Iranian freedom is not aligned with left-wing values. As Israel’s war raged on in Gaza and as ICE agents harmed and even killed protestors in America, modern progressives took to the streets immediately, protesting the actions of their respective governments. In Britain, after the ban on Palestine Action, thousands went out to protest, claiming the ban went “against free speech.” The protests went on for weeks, with over 2700 protestors arrested as a result. For months, the Western world was filled with progressive protestors demanding to end police ‘repression’ and call for government reforms to stop harming and arresting protestors.

This is where the irony comes in.

In Iran, as citizens went out to protest its repressive government, they were gunned down and violently butchered in the thousands by their own police. Tens of thousands were arrested and faced either execution or torture. But for some reason, the vast majority of Western progressives failed to address the horrifying situation in Iran. In Britain, America and Iran, people went out to protest against the actions of their government. In one country, those protestors were slaughtered en masse. And there was complete silence across the West, particularly in Britain.

The reasoning behind this is relatively simple. Those on the hard left are anti-Capitalist, anti-Western and anti-Israel. The Iranian regime ticks two of those boxes in full. Whilst Iran is technically Capitalist, it is an Islamic theocracy, whose members of Parliament often call for “death to America,” regularly burning the American flag in government sessions. But what has been more attractive for the hard left is Iran’s stance on Israel. For years, Iran has set up Middle Eastern proxies in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq to attack Israel and kill Israeli civilians. The October 7th attack was successful primarily thanks to Iran’s support and funding. As a result of Iran’s stances against Imperialism, America and Israel, Western progressives often finding themselves linking arms with anti-British Islamists, who often infiltrate pro-Palestinian rallies. 

As someone who is proudly gay, I found the silence amongst my ‘community’ sickening. After two years of jumping on every fashionable anti-Western cause, from Palestine to Pakistan to defending Maduro, I assumed that a regime that executes gay people might finally snap the woke crowd out of it. Apparently not. Instead of defending the Western freedoms that allow people to love whom they choose, many in Britain’s gay community seem content to align themselves with radical Islamist regimes that would happily persecute—or kill—them for who they are.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)