(Iraq ) Kurdistan rights body sues cleric over controversial take on female Kurdish fighters

12-01-2026
Rudaw



ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A Kurdistan Region human rights organization said on Monday that it is suing an Erbil-based religious cleric over remarks deemed disrespectful toward women, following comments he made in connection with the killing of a Kurdish female fighter in Syria last week.

A video widely circulated on social media showed Damascus-affiliated factions throwing the body of a female member of the Kurdish Internal Security Forces (Asayish) off a building during clashes in Aleppo’s Kurdish-majority neighborhoods, while hurling insults.

Asked about the incident in a recent interview with local media, controversial Kurdish cleric Mazhar Khorasani said that “in Islam, women must sit at their homes” and are meant “to pour tea for their husbands.”

The Independent Human Rights Commission of the Kurdistan Region (IHRCKR), which works closely with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), said in a statement that it is “pursuing the case [of Khorasani] through public prosecution and holding the aforementioned accountable before the law.”

Khorasani’s remarks “show great disrespect toward women and their role and position,” the IHRCKR said, adding that he “portrayed women as servants whose duty is only at home.”

The commission further added that the cleric’s statements were “completely against the foundations of religions” and urged the KRG’s endowment and religious affairs ministry, as well as the scholars’ union, to take action against those who disrespect others “under the name of religion.”

In a similar vein, Sleman Sindi, director of media relations at the IHRCKR, told Rudaw on Monday that Khorasani’s remarks violate Article 14 of the 2005 Iraqi Constitution, which stipulates that “all Iraqis are equal before the law without discrimination based on gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, origin, color, religion, sect, belief or opinion, or economic or social status.”

In a Monday interview with Rudaw, Khorsani said, “I apologize to the great and merciful God if I have had shortcomings toward my country, my [Kurdish] nation, or my religion.”

“To easily give up our cherished and valuable women to the enemy, to be held captive, killed... this made me upset,” he said, adding that, in his view, “women are not [meant] for war.”

The backlash against Khorasani followed deadly clashes that erupted on Tuesday in Aleppo’s Kurdish-majority Ashrafiyeh and Sheikh Maqsood neighborhoods after the Syrian Arab Army and its affiliated armed factions seized the areas from the Kurdish Asayish.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported on Sunday that at least 82 people were killed, including 43 civilians, 38 government-aligned fighters, and at least one Asayish member. An estimated 150,000 residents have fled Aleppo’s Kurdish quarters, according to the Erbil-based Barzani Charity Foundation (BCF).

An internationally mediated ceasefire came into effect on Sunday. Despite this, several videos emerged online showing armed militants affiliated with Damascus rounding up, arresting, and verbally abusing dozens of Kurdish civilians. Social media users have also shared images and videos of relatives they say have gone missing amid the violence.

Khorasani told Rudaw, “I support the people of [northeast Syria] Rojava - they are all our family.”

“I did not insult that woman,” the cleric said, referring to the slain female fighter whose body was gruesomely thrown from a building, and extended his condolences “to her family and the families of all the victims.”


Ranja Jamal and Shahyan Tahseen contributed to this report from Erbil.

'Darkest period yet': Once a regional leader, Iraq is now failing to protect its women

A viral video of a mob attacking a teenage girl in Basra lays bare the devastating decline of women's rights in Iraq over 30 turbulent years

Hadani Ditmars
13 January, 2026
The New Arab

Iraqi women woke up to the new year with horrific images of a mob attack against a teenage girl in Basra, whose only 'crime' was to walk alone along the riverside Corniche on New Year's Eve without a hijab.

The news outraged Iraqis and resulted in the arrest of 17 assailants who grabbed, groped, kicked, punched and beat the girl as someone filmed the entire sequence on their phone. The video, which the girl's mother has pleaded to be removed from social media as her daughter is now suicidal, went viral and outraged Iraqi women.

Veteran Iraqi journalist and activist Nermeen Al Mufti wrote about the incident in Basra, saying, "Let's all demand that the maximum punishment be imposed on these barbaric scoundrels! We demand that the existing laws on harassment, the articles contained in the Iraqi Penal Law (396, 403 and 404), are no longer sufficient to punish such morally degraded criminals."

While there are many harassment incidents in Iraq, she wrote, "This particular incident can serve as a model for a real social and psychological study — for a deep search for solutions that may be a cure for the Iraqi society, which is in decline. Let the cries of this hurt girl be an alarm bell to initiate such studies, and for the legislators to introduce a new law on harassment."

The social decline Nermeen refers to began, she says, during the 12-year embargo.

Even during the UN sanctions, she wrote, men who harassed women were kept in psychiatric hospitals for three months, to make sure they were not a threat to women.

Sadly, none of the 17 men charged in the Basra attack have been sentenced yet, and all remain at large, technically free to harass other women. The governor of Basra has dismissed the incident as "nothing to make a fuss about" and said, "this kind of thing could have happened anywhere in Iraq," denying that it was particularly a Basran issue.

Unfortunately, he was correct. Sadly, this was not the first male mob attack against a young woman in Iraq, with high-profile cases occurring recently in Sulaymaniyah and elsewhere in the country.

When the country protected its women

This latest mob attack is a grim reminder of the decline in the status of Iraqi women, who, before the UN embargo and 2003 invasion, enjoyed one of the highest statuses in the Arab world, on a par with Tunisia.

They once benefited from state-subsidised day-care, education and health care, including reproductive health, at a time when many American women could not even access birth control.

In the early 80s, nearly half the doctors and half the civil service were women, and Iraq was the first country in the Arab world to produce a woman judge, an ambassador, and a government minister.

I remember reporting from Iraq in the 90's, when in spite of social collapse brought on by sanctions, Baghdad was still a safe place to walk alone and un harassed with or without hijab — much better than say, Cairo.

I recall an ominous turning point in 2002, as the regime lost control and the "mama Stata" was replaced by extremist Islam and criminal gangs, when I was interviewing people in a Baghdad market.

Even with my Ministry of Information-appointed "minder" on hand, I was grabbed by a man who disappeared into the crowd. A few minutes later, things turned ugly as the crowd threw rotten fruit at my minder, and we managed to escape in a taxi just in time.

Fast forward two decades, and now, according to the UN index, more than a million Iraqi women and girls are at risk of gender based violence, including honour killing.

According to UN Women, only about half of the legal frameworks that promote, enforce and monitor gender equality under the SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) with a focus on violence against women, are in place.

Even getting accurate statistics is daunting, as state bodies dedicated to women's rights that existed before 2003 have never been fully replicated, so most are underestimates. Still, they are damning evidence of the decline in Iraqi women's status.

As of December 2024, 27.9% of women aged 20–24 years old were married or in a union before age 18. Women and girls aged 10+ spend 24.1% of their time on unpaid care and domestic work, compared with 4.2% for men.

Women of reproductive age (15-49 years) often face barriers with respect to their sexual and reproductive health and rights: despite progress, in 2018, only 53.8% of women had their need for family planning satisfied with modern methods.

According to UN Women, only 41% of indicators needed to monitor the SDGs from a gender perspective were available, with gaps in key areas, in particular: violence against women and key labour market indicators, such as the gender pay gap.

In addition, many areas — such as gender and poverty, physical and sexual harassment, women's access to assets (including land), and gender and the environment — "lack comparable methodologies for regular monitoring. Closing these gender data gaps is essential for achieving gender-related SDG commitments in Iraq."

While the American invaders facilitated the rewriting of the Iraqi constitution along sectarian religious lines, weakening the old civil code that had championed divorce, property and child custody rights, legislation passed last January under Prime Minister Sudani's watch effectively legalised child marriage.

The amendments give Islamic courts increased authority over family matters, including marriage, divorce and inheritance. Activists argue that this undermines Iraq's 1959 Personal Status Law, which unified family law and established safeguards for women.

Iraqi law currently sets 18 as the minimum age of marriage in most cases. The changes passed let clerics rule according to their interpretation of Islamic law, which some interpret to allow marriage of girls in their early teens, or as young as nine, under the Jaafari school of Islamic law, followed by many Shia religious authorities in Iraq.

Proponents of the changes, which were advocated by primarily conservative Shia lawmakers, defend them as a means to align the law with Islamic principles and reduce "Western influence" on Iraqi culture. The "Coalition 188" – a group of women activists and lawyers – continues to advocate for the repeal of this law.

Sudani's Iraq

According to activist Awatef Rasheed, who works in Baghdad as a consultant on gender issues, a de facto ban on using the term "gender" has undermined efforts to advance the cause of Iraqi women

In August 2023, the Iraqi Communications and Media Commission (CMC) issued a directive banning all media outlets and internet providers from using the word "gender". The commission also ordered that the term "homosexuality" be replaced with "sexual deviance".

This was a regulatory directive from the media commission rather than a law passed by the Iraqi parliament at that specific time. However, this directive was part of a broader anti-LGBTQ+ campaign that preceded the passage of an anti-LGBTQ+ law in April 2024, which explicitly criminalised same-sex relations and transgender expression.

"Within the last four years," Awatef told The New Arab, "Since Sudani came to power, gender equality in the larger context of human rights and freedoms has declined. First, he outlawed the term gender and then, even though there is still a huge need for the UN, he asked the UN to leave Iraq."

Now she says, anyone working for gender equality is harassed by the government, including those who worked for UN Women.

While things are difficult for Iraqi women everywhere, Awatef, who advises the Iraqi government on IDPs, says that internally displaced women who face impoverishment after losing their government subsidies and are still often unable to return to their homes for security reasons, are doubly impacted by gender issues.

While some government proponents proudly point to the 25% quota system for women in parliament as a sign of progress, Awatef says it's a "fake system."

"There is no space for liberal women who speak a feminist language. They are effectively voiceless, brought in by heads of political parties who ask them to toe the line. They are totally submissive to the conservative religious parties.”

While Western countries are more concerned with stability and security in Iraq, Awatef feels they have abandoned Iraqi women, just like George W Bush, who paid lip service to feminism in the build-up to an invasion that made life miserable for women.

"There needs to be a firmer statement from the international community," she told The New Arab.

"They need to tell the Iraqi government to give voice to women who seek gender equality and freedom."

The 'darkest period'

According to Iraqi academic Ruba Ali Al-Hassani, SJD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School and Research Consultant at King's College London, domestic violence is on the rise throughout Iraq, as are online verbal attacks, character assassination and death threats.

The trend, she says, can be partially attributed to "the militarisation of society since 2003."

Moreover, she says, the latest election saw "a much lower turnout rate for women throughout Iraq, which points to greater female distrust in the political system than in previous election cycles." This is not surprising, she notes, after the Personal Status Law amendments were passed, "as they heavily disadvantage women's and girls' rights."

Women in Iraq, says Ruba, are "gradually being ousted from many public, recreational spaces, where sexual harassment has been gradually growing. Where women and girls expect to feel safest — in their homes — we are witnessing a rise in domestic abuse."

Now, she told The New Arab, "It is the darkest period of time for women in Iraq's history."

As I reflect on Ruba's dire pronouncement, I recall my last trip to Iraq in May. En route to Babylon one morning to visit the temple of Ninmakh, the Sumerian mother goddess, currently being restored to its former glory by the World Monument Fund, I met her contemporary counterpart.

My driver had brought along his mother, a formidable woman only a few years older than me. She turned out to be a treasure. After a week spent dodging gropers and mukhabarat, I relished the opportunity to speak with a lady who, like so many of her generation, had witnessed Iraq's shift from secular to sectarian.

She immediately opened up to me about her past — she studied English at university in the 80s and once ran a tourism agency — and current realities.

"Now," she told me, "the men are taking advantage of the situation, marrying several wives and abandoning them and their children."

Even though her husband was killed by Saddam's forces in 1991, his remains were found in a mass grave near the same potholed highway we were driving on, "things were better before for women," she said.

As we approached the domain of Ninmakh, she embraced me, wished me luck on my journey and smiled, saying, "Don't worry. You are strong – like an Iraqi woman!" And with that, I went to pay my respects to the ancient mother goddess, as my new friend continued down an uncertain highway.

Hadani Ditmars is the author of Dancing in the No Fly Zone and has been writing from and about the MENA since 1992. Her next book, Between Two Rivers, is a travelogue of ancient sites and modern culture in Iraq. www.hadaniditmars.com

 

Faking It ‘Til We Break It

by Nolan Higdon / January 13th, 2026

“Video showing Maduro allegedly torturing Venezuelan dissidents is going viral, with 15 million views and 81k likes already. The only problem? It is actually a scene from a movie.” This tweet from journalist Alan Macleod captured just one droplet in a flood of disinformation following the U.S. capture of Nicolás Maduro. As The Guardian noted, AI-generated images of the event reaped millions of views, instantly saturating social media with fiction.

This cycle repeated days later when Renee Good was killed by an ICE agent in Minnesota. NPR reported that “AI images and internet rumors spread confusion,” fueling a rush to judgment that bypassed all evidence. Rather than awaiting verified facts, the public retreated into partisan scripts: Democrats immediately condemned the agency, while Republicans vilified the victim. This reflexive tribalism illustrates a nation that has abandoned the patience of critical analysis in favor of viral, evidence-free outrage. This reflexive rush to judgment is now weaponized by a new tool of deception: the deepfake.

The emergence of deepfakes has introduced a volatile new dimension to the challenge of disinformation. This technology preys upon systemic vulnerabilities: a widespread lack of media literacy, a ‘greed is good’ hyper-individualism, and a techno-utopian ethos that prioritizes innovation over decency, truth, and social cohesion. The result is a fractured digital landscape where ethically bankrupt creators and profit-driven platforms engineered for engagement oversee the steady demise of civil society. This marriage of cutting-edge deception and ancient tribalism has created a perfect storm where the most successful lie wins and the truth is buried under a million algorithmically-driven clicks. To survive this era of manufactured outrage, we must move beyond passive consumption and demand systemic accountability for the engines of our deception.

The Mechanics of Deception

So-called AI is just the latest tool in a Big-Tech shed that fosters and incentivizes propaganda. Studies have long shown that falsehoods spread more widely than truth on social media, not due to individual behavior, but because Big-Tech platforms are engineered to incentivize the spread of false and misleading content.

AI has complicated the problem of disinformation. Seventy years ago, AI was envisioned as the pursuit of human-like cognitive reasoning; today, that label is frequently marketed to describe technologies that bear little resemblance to those original intellectual ambitions. Modern systems of so-called AI rely primarily on massive datasets and statistical pattern recognition. As a result, they are far from intelligent, and limited in their capacity. Indeed, AI bots are prone to getting things wrong and fabricating information: One study found that AI bot summaries of news content were inaccurate 45% of the time. Other studies have found AI fabricating information from 66% to over 80% of the time.

Beyond deploying bots that circulate misinformation, Big-Tech has released AI tools that empower average users to produce highly convincing, yet entirely fabricated, content with ease. For example, more than 20 percent of videos shown to new YouTube users are “AI slop,” meaning low-quality, mass-produced, algorithmically generated content designed to maximize clicks and watch time rather than inform. These types of deepfakes shaped audience interpretations of recent conflicts such as Israel-Gaza and Russia-Ukraine.

After Maduro’s extraordinary rendition, the internet was quickly flooded with AI-generated content designed to persuade Americans that his capture was an act of justice welcomed by the Venezuelan people. These posts showed Venezuelans supposedly “crying on their knees” to thank President Donald Trump for their liberation. One such video, flagged by Ben Norton, racked up 5 million views.

Similarly, after Good was shot and killed by ICE on January 7, 2026, deepfakes circulated online falsely claiming to reveal the face of the agent involved.

However, the image did not depict the actual agent, Jonathan Ross, an Iraq War veteran with decades of experience in immigration and border enforcement, who had been wearing a mask at the time of the incident.

Ross was not the only one falsely identified; immediately after the shooting, photos circulated online claiming to be of Renee Good. In reality, the images were a confusing mix of a former WWE wrestler and another woman who had previously participated in a poetry contest with the actual victim. The digital desecration continued as users weaponized AI to undress an old photo of Good and manipulate images of her lifeless body, generating deepfakes that placed the victim in a bikini even as she lay at the scene of the shooting.

The Shield of Immunity: Section 230 and Beyond

At a time when approximately 90% of U.S. citizens have access to smartphones and 62% use so-called AI, the U.S. government has largely allowed Big Tech platforms and devices to remain unregulated. Indeed, U.S. policy has favored the tech industry for decades, prioritizing immense corporate profits over meaningful accountability for the societal impacts of these platforms.

Thanks to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), which protects internet platforms from legal liability for content users post, and a religious devotion to the idea that “what’s good for tech is good for America,” these companies enjoy total immunity. Similarly, Trump recently signed an Executive Order shielding the industry from AI regulations at the state level. These actions stem from a shared conviction among Big-Tech and its allies in government that regulation is the fundamental enemy of progress and innovation. The few regulations that do exist typically place the burden on users rather than on platforms, such as requiring individuals to show identification, which further contributes to the surveillance mechanisms that define these tools.

Classroom Capture: Big-Tech’s Educational Influence

In the absence of a robust regulatory framework, many argue that media literacy education offers the most promise for mitigating the influence of misinformation on the public. In the U.S., media literacy is broadly defined as “the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create, and act using all forms of communication.” Indeed, media literacy education has been associated with a reduction in users accepting disinformation. However, the lack of a central education authority to establish a national curriculum, combined with opposition from traditionalists resistant to new media in the classroom, has significantly hindered the spread of media literacy education. Most Americans lack access to a formal media literacy education, even though more than three-fourths of the population believe it is a critical skill that everyone should develop.

While efforts to integrate media literacy into the classroom are growing, they are increasingly dominated by the very companies they should be critiquing. Big Tech has leveraged the vast wealth gained from harvesting user data to exert an outsized role in shaping educational standards. By offering content and programs for classroom use, these corporations provide tools of “corporate indoctrination.” Their curricula emphasize the opportunities of technology while framing issues like “fake news” and bullying as individual moral failures, such as a lack of character or excessive screen time, rather than systemic results of the dopamine loops and profit models the industry intentionally built.

In contrast, critical media literacy scholars argue that a robust education must teach students to interrogate power dynamics, ownership, platform design, and profit motives. However, because their work challenges the industry, these scholars receive almost no corporate funding and must rely on nonprofits and volunteer labor.

Despite these concerns, educational institutions are leaning further into corporate partnerships. For example, the California State University system, the nation’s largest public university with nearly half a million students, recently announced a $17 million deal with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. This massive investment in “Big Tech” occurred even as the CSU system was simultaneously cutting faculty and staff positions across its 23 campuses.

From Social Capital to Content Creation

While Big-Tech algorithms are complicit, they are not solely to blame. In the post-Cold War era, the United States concluded that capitalism had definitively triumphed over all other systems, treating the Cold War as a final, accurate contest of ideas. This ushered in a fundamental shift in the nation’s cultural and political compass, famously epitomized by the mantra from Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: “greed is good.” Researchers like Robert Putnam, in his influential work Bowling Alone, noted that this shift eroded the social capital and communal bonds essential for a functioning democracy. This hyper-individualistic context has profoundly shaped every generation since, leading to what Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell refer to as a “narcissism epidemic.” The nation has become so individualistic that even some people associated with the left, which historically has believed in collectivism, such as Matt Taibbi and Cenk Uygur, joined conservatives in outrage when New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani used the word “collectivism” in his inaugural speech this month.

The resulting culture of narcissistic individualism has engendered a generation of ethically hollow influencers and content creators who worship at the altar of Big-Tech, sacrificing collective integrity for personal profit. As commentator Krystal Ball noted, the incentives for these creators are so perverse that even when videos, such as those regarding Maduro, are debunked, users continue to share them for engagement.

Perhaps the most egregious example is influencer Nick Shirley, who went viral for ‘exposing’ alleged fraud at daycare centers in Minnesota. Although the New York Times had previously reported on a legitimate multimillion-dollar fraud case in Minnesota, where the state and federal governments under the Biden Administration were actively prosecuting individuals for embezzling childcare funds, Shirley fabricated his own distorted narrative. He produced videos alleging a deeper, hidden layer of corruption that the government was supposedly ignoring; however, he relied on a blend of fabricated evidence and baseless accusations to support a “cover-up” narrative that simply did not exist. Nonetheless, Shirley’s video has over 100 million views within a week across different platforms. It was reposted by Vice President J.D. Vance and FBI Director Kash Patel.

Beyond merely inspiring copycat content, these viral fabrications were weaponized by the Trump administration to justify freezing federal funding in five Democratic-led states. Under the guise of addressing fraud and systemic misuse, the administration withheld billions of dollars earmarked for essential childcare and social services. Simultaneously, the Department of Homeland Security deployed as many as 2,000 federal agents to Minnesota in a massive law enforcement surge that resulted in Good’s death.

Shirley reflects a broader culture where viral lies are rewarded with wealth. In this environment, deception has become a viable business model because fraud no longer carries a social stigma when used for profit. Instead, it is often rewarded. Just look at Elon Musk. He is one of the richest men on Earth and was a distributor of some of the fake online content following Maduro’s capture. At the same time, Musk is expanding his wealth in the age of AI with tools that spread baseless racist conspiracies such as the myth of white genocide in South Africa, a new version of Wikipedia that refers to Adolf Hitler simply as “The Führer,” and AI tools that enable users to create deepfake images undressing women and children.

Instead of being treated like a James Bond villain, Musk is worshipped as an aspirational figure. He embodies the ultimate “fake it ’til you make it” con man: a self-brander who convinced the world he was a self-made, intelligent inventor, when in fact he relied heavily on $38 billion in government funding, investments from his father, and piggybacked on the creations of truly brilliant inventors.

The Architecture of Hypocrisy: Why One Standard is No Longer Enough

The toxicity of narcissistic content creators and hyperpartisan figures seeking to expand their brands in the attention economy goes beyond the mere production of falsehoods; it is a symptom of a culture seemingly unable or unwilling to shame even the most glaring contradictions.

For instance, many conservatives backed Trump when he labeled the law enforcement officer who shot a woman during the January 6 Capitol riot a “thug,” yet his allies staunchly defended the agents involved in the Good incident. In fact, even before an official investigation had been launched, let alone concluded, Vice President J.D. Vance argued that Ross possessed “immunity.” Furthermore, while these same circles argue that individuals must take personal responsibility for their actions, rejecting the idea that Trump’s rhetoric created the context for January 6, they paradoxically blame leftists for creating the environment that led to Ross shooting Good.

Yet, even these double standards pale in comparison to the reaction following Charlie Kirk’s death in September 2025. In the ensuing months, conservatives frequently bemoaned a lack of empathy and decorum from the left, which criticized Kirk’s legacy of divisive rhetoric while his wife and loved ones were still grieving. However, those same voices, with notable exceptions such as Tucker Carlson, refused to extend that same grace or “decorum” to the wife and loved ones of Good.

Fox News Channel’s Jesse Watters dismissed Good’s claim that she is a poet and mocked her for listing pronouns in her online bio, a relatively mild attack compared to others. Without evidence, former President Trump called Good a “professional agitator.” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem labeled her actions an “act of domestic terrorism.” Meanwhile, Vance described Good’s death as a “tragedy of her own making.”

They accompanied these baseless claims with rhetoric directly contradicted by witnesses and video. Trump falsely claimed that Good “viciously ran over” Ross who was recovering in the hospital. In reality, Good’s car did not run over anyone, and Ross walked away from the scene unassisted. Relatedly, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, falsely claimed that multiple ICE officers were hurt. McLaughlin also falsely accused Good of “stalking agents all day long, impeding our law enforcement.” In reality, video evidence reveals that Good had been on-site for a few minutes. She had just dropped off her now-orphaned six-year-old child at school and was not blocking the road; in fact, cars can be clearly seen passing her vehicle throughout the footage. A crowd had gathered because an ICE vehicle was immobilized in the snow. Unlike the U.S. Postal Service, which is famously expected to operate in all weather conditions—under the creed, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds”—ICE was visibly struggling to function in the elements.

These fabrications and baseless accusations reveal a profound callousness toward Good’s grieving family, most notably her wife and orphaned child. This stands in stark, bitter contrast to the demands for decorum and empathy that conservatives issued following Charlie Kirk’s death. One would expect a civilized nation to extend basic sympathy whenever a citizen dies: whether they are shot during a chaotic political protest or killed and denied medical attention. Faced with such blatant double standards, the nation must finally direct Joseph Welch’s famous rebuke of McCarthyism toward itself: ‘Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?'”

Rhetorically, most claim to view these incidents as tragedies; in practice, however, they operate with blatant double standards: empathy for one side while displaying callousness, or even cruelty, toward the other. A more sophisticated culture would remember comedian George Carlin’s wisdom: “Let’s not have a double standard. One standard will do just fine.”

Conclusion

To restore the soul of a nation fractured by digital fabrication, there must be a collective refusal to continue this cycle of reflexive tribalism. Engaging in a perpetual war of “us versus them,” where truth is sacrificed for the sake of a partisan win, ensures that everyone loses, and the country remains a casualty of its own division. It is insanity to continue entrusting the national discourse to unregulated algorithms and narcissistic creators, expecting that more of the same will somehow yield a different, more unified result.

The time has come to demand a higher standard: one that prioritizes evidence over engagement and human decency over ideological dominance. By rejecting the lure of the deepfake and the ease of the echo chamber, a path can be cleared toward a more sophisticated culture, one that values critical analysis, insists on corporate accountability, and understands that without a single standard of truth and empathy, the foundations of a functioning democracy cannot hold.

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Nolan Higdon is a Project Censored national judge, an author, and university lecturer at Merrill College and the Education Department at University of California, Santa Cruz. Read other articles by Nolan, or visit Nolan's website.