It’s become something of a global reflex: condemning Trump. Dismiss him as a narcissist, a populist, a threat to democracy. And in many ways, he is all those things. But let’s be honest about why the chorus is so loud.
Because it’s safe.
Condemning Trump Is Easy and Safe
Western liberals, from drawing rooms in London to cafés in Copenhagen, find catharsis in skewering Trump precisely because they can. In America and its democratic cousins, one can mock the President, criticize the intelligence community, accuse the judiciary of bias, and still walk home unafraid. You might be canceled – but you won’t be killed.
That’s not the case in much of the world.
Try the same in Egypt, Pakistan, Iran
In over 150 countries – from Pakistan to Egypt, from Russia to China – such liberties are dangerous luxuries. Try tweeting against the “establishment” in Pakistan or Mr Modi in Delhi and you’ll learn what a midnight knock sounds like. Criticize the Ayatollahs in Iran, and you may not see the sunrise. Say the wrong word in many parts of Asia, China, Russia, North Korea, Africa and even South America, and it’s not public opinion that comes for you – it’s the state.
But here’s what’s even more troubling: the silence of those who live in such countries and yet spend their energy condemning the West. Some of the loudest voices attacking American or European policies come from those who, in their own lands, would never dare speak with the same honesty about the systems they inhabit.
Cowardly Intellectuals
The truth is, many self-proclaimed intellectuals from the Global South – especially those educated in Western institutions or comfortably ensconced in expatriate bubbles – engage in a kind of moral tourism. It’s safer to criticize a flawed but functioning democracy like America than to speak against the dictators, clerics, military mafias, or dynastic parasites that rule their own homelands.
Why? Because there’s no real cost to bashing the West. You’ll still get your visa renewed. You’ll still be invited to panels. You might even get a fellowship or two. But speak against corruption in Islamabad, or caste violence or forced conversions in India – or worse, write those truths under your real name – and you’ll quickly discover just how thin your protection really is.
I write this not to glorify the West or dismiss its sins. The West has its hypocrisy. Its foreign policy under different leaders has enabled coups, propped up despots, and triggered waves of migration that now define the global crisis of our age. But let’s not forget: the West also built the systems that still allow self-correction. It has the institutions – flawed but fighting. It has courts that occasionally convict presidents. It has journalists who uncover abuse. It has satire that still punches up.
Most of the rest of the world has none of that.
Democracy Focus
So when we only focus on Trump or Le Pen or Netanyahu, without confronting the more existential threats posed by Kadyrov in Chechnya, Xi in China, theocrats in Iran, and uniformed power brokers in South Asia, we aren’t being brave. We’re being selective.
And the victims of our selective silence? They are the faceless and forgotten – Ahmadis beaten to death in Pakistan, Dalits raped in India, women imprisoned for dancing in Tehran, or Uyghur Muslims erased from existence in Xinjiang, or the Rohingyas in Myanmar under peaceful “Buddhists.” They pay the price while we tweet with self-righteous fury about America’s border policies or Europe’s colonial hangover.
Real Moral Courage
Let me be clear: criticizing Trump isn’t the problem. But if that’s the only critique you’re capable of making, then you’re not a reformer – you’re just a tourist in someone else’s freedom.
Real moral courage is universal. It looks inward before it points outward. It doesn’t stop at the gates of one’s tribe or passport or ideology.
As a Pakistani Muslim, I’ve spent the last twenty years confronting my country’s demons – from religious extremism and political thuggery to judicial cowardice and elite corruption. Not because I hate Pakistan – but because I love it enough to want it to change.
So yes, call out Trump. But also call out tyrants who jail poets. Clerics who silence girls. Generals who sell democracy like it’s a bargain in a bazaar. That’s how justice works – or it doesn’t work at all.
It is easy to condemn the devil who doesn’t hunt you. It is harder to speak against the one who shares your address.
And until we do that, we have no business pretending to stand on the side of truth.
