There’s a bizarre vein of voyeuristic narcissism that runs through the heart of the American Left, in which every tragedy across the world, observed, of course, from afar, is somehow actually about them.
No one is more demonstrative of this mind-blowing selfishness than Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who responded to the explosion of deadly protests in Iran, which intensified following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in police custody, by comparing the radical Islamic dictatorship of Iran to an imaginary collection of nefarious men in the United States who remain hell-bent on stopping women from murdering their unborn babies.
“Solidarity with the courageous women and allies in Iran protesting for their freedom,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted on Friday.
So far, so good.
“Mahsa Amini was senselessly murdered by the same patriarchal and autocratic forces repressing women the world over,” the congresswoman continued. “The right to choose belongs to us all, from hijabs to reproductive care.”
There are too many problems with this one social media post to address succinctly, including the absurd notion that anything other than abortion on demand is comparable to the policies of a regime that brutalizes both its own people through totalitarian control and others by funding terrorist groups across the world. But one higher-level problem shines through: Men, women, and children in Iran are truly suffering, enduring a form of ruthless mistreatment that privileged political hacks such as Ocasio-Cortez could never imagine in their wildest nightmares.
By every available metric, women in the U.S. are not suffering. But in order to keep their voter base living under fear of ever-looming oppression, figures such as Ocasio-Cortez must convince them otherwise. And if that means bastardizing the horrific suffering of others for political gain, so be it.
Of course, this style of narcissism is nothing new. Politicians are masters of leveraging tragedy and suffering in order to achieve underlying, and often irrelevant, objectives. Some are ridiculously hyperbolic, such as comparing the air-conditioned transfer of illegal immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard to the treatment of Jews under Nazi Germany during the Holocaust, while some are simply performative, such as the immediate desire to be seen on the ground in the aftermath of a natural disaster. But in this instance, Ocasio-Cortez went one step further.
By claiming an undeserved kinship with the women of Iran because “pregnant people” in the U.S. aren’t able to apply a ridiculous level of subjectivity to the value of human life, Ocasio-Cortez does two things.
First, she devalues the unimaginable bravery of those in Iran who are risking their lives to stand up for the kinds of rights we in the West take for granted, as if those screaming outside Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home in response to the reversal of Roe v. Wade are demonstrating comparable levels of bravery.
Second, she also devalues the debate over abortion, as if the right to choose whether or not to wear a headscarf is comparable to the nonexistent right to terminate the life of an unborn baby.
Regardless of how you cut it, Ocasio-Cortez showed her true colors. In reality, not only does she not understand suffering, and she doesn’t care about suffering unless it can be leveraged for personal advantage, even if that means undermining the fight against true tyranny. Because, for Ocasio-Cortez, the fight against imaginary tyranny is far more important.
Ian Haworth is the host of Off Limits with Ian Haworth.
