Hypocrisy: Trump cheers Tehran protests, condemns US demonstrators | Opinion

Last weekend, hundreds of protesters gathered in California’s state capitol to denounce the killing of 37-year-old Renee Good by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In California alone, demonstrations took place in 60 different communities. Most proceeded without incident, but on Tuesday, a protester at an ICE facility in Santa Ana was hit in the face by a projectile fired by a federal agent.

President Donald Trump has denounced the anti-ICE protests, saying they are being organized by “professional agitators,” and that law enforcement “should not have to put up with this stuff.”

At the same time, however, he is cheering on protests in Iran, calling the people taking to the streets abroad “patriots.” On Tuesday, Trump encouraged them to “KEEP PROTESTING” via Truth Social.

The president urged Iranian protesters to “TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!” And he asked them to “Save the names of the killers and abusers,” and promised that “They will pay a big price…” for “the senseless killing of protesters.”

Trump proclaimed, “HELP IS ON THE WAY.”

However, his sympathy and support for protests abroad don’t apply when Americans protest what “the killers and abusers” in this country are doing. The president labels people in Minnesota protesting ICE’s presence in Minneapolis and Good’s death “anarchists.”

And instead of help, the president says, “THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING!” The president’s transactional view of the world is well known, but, even for him, the disparity in his reactions to protests in Tehran and Minneapolis is head-spinning.

Trump should be careful what he wishes for. Anti-authoritarian movements in this country can learn a lot from movements in Iran and under other repressive regimes.

What Americans can learn from Iran

Street protests in Iran have been massive and continuous. As The New York Times notes, “Iran is witnessing the most expansive protests in years against the country’s authoritarian clerical rulers after economic grievances snowballed over the past two weeks into a broader challenge to the regime.”

Iranians seem no longer willing to tolerate a government that is rigidly hierarchical and puts adherence to its ideology over the well-being of its people. Over the course of several weeks, millions of Iranians have taken to the streets.

They are pushing back against policies that have created untold amounts of human misery and the corruption of a government that imposes sacrifice on some while rewarding its allies and cronies.

The Iranian journalist Mohamad Machine-Chian argues that “the chants echoing across Iranian cities demand … dignity over obedience, participation over submission, a future to build rather than one to forfeit.”

Over the past year, protests against the Trump administration have attracted millions, but so far, they have been episodic and not yet focused on a single set of demands.

Last April, a “Hands Off” day saw protests against Trump and Elon Musk’s attacks on federal government programs. And a nationwide No Kings protest, which took place in October, was the largest protest in the history of the United States. That said, the targets of the protests have been diverse, and none has imposed substantial costs on the Trump administration.

This is not to say that the protests have been ineffective. Quite the contrary: They have contributed to the substantial erosion of support for Trump. Yet they have not struck a nerve in the government, as the Iranian protests have.

Repression and violence

The second lesson of the Iranian protests is a sad one: A protest that strikes such a nerve is often met by repression and violence.

In Iran, the government has deployed snipers on rooftops to fire into crowds, and turned peaceful protests into “scenes of carnage.”

Recall that, during his first term, the same president who is now encouraging Iranian protesters was enraged by what occurred in the summer of 2020 in the wake of George Floyd’s death.

As his Defense Secretary Mark Esper later recounted, Trump “thought that the protests made the country look weak, made us look weak and ‘us’ meant him. And he wanted to do something about it.”

“Can’t you just shoot them,” the president asked, “Just shoot them in the legs or something?”

And after the massive No Kings protests in October, the president posted a meme of himself sitting in a fighter jet, wearing a crown on his head. He was dropping what looked like excrement on protesters.

In typical Trumpian fashion, he said the protesters were “not representative of this country” and “paid for by Soros and other radical-left lunatics.”

Protesters are patriots in Iran, but leftist lunatics here.

Care about freedom

Freedom of speech is the very first tenet of our constitution. There should be nothing more American that letting one’s views be heard in massive, continuous, targeted and nonviolent ways. Many times in our history, protesters have had to care enough about their cause to risk the wrath of government. This is one of them, here and in Iran.

Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College.