“If you are not from Venezuela, you better shut the fuck up!” begins an Instagram video of a woman with long dark hair explaining how Venezuelans have suffered under Maduro’s rule. This sums up one of the defining attitudes of political discourse in 2026. Since the start of the year, my social media feed has been awash with content creators from Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran trying to convince us that they are reliable sources of information and unchallengeable authorities simply by virtue of being from the countries that the US government is currently trying to enact regime change in. Front-facing camera videos and infographics dispensed by both well-meaning but useless liberals stuck in 2016, and bad-faith, right-wing stooges who seem to have discovered a passion for identity politics despite spending the last ten years railing against ‘woke’, tell us that the only legitimate way to form political opinions on these complex geopolitical issues is by “listening to X voices”.

This conflation of lived experience – or even tangential ethnic connection – with expertise has led to genuinely farcical instances of political commentary that would be hilarious if they weren’t so harmful. We are told to accept that “lived experience is knowledge” by accounts suddenly devoted to “amplifying voices” - but crucially, only the voices that align with US interests. The harsh truth is that the only knowledge lived experience gives you is knowledge of your lived experience. Anecdotes and feelings are not a solid basis for political opinions, and experiencing something doesn’t automatically make you an expert on the topic – in fact, many of those with experience of life under these governments seem to have completely lost the ability for all rational thinking whatsoever, becoming driven only by blind hatred and a desire for revenge.

When the United States swooped in to Venezuela in early January and kidnapped the President, reactionary Venezuelan expats told us to “listen to Venezuelan voices” and insisted that all Venezuelans were happy about his removal. The prevalent message on social media was that, as non-Venezuleans, none of us had a right to question or express concern at the ramifications of a US president invading a sovereign nation and forcefully removing its sitting head of state, because that man was Bad. Never mind that hundreds of thousands of working-class Venezuelans took to the streets of their country to protest this flagrant breach of international law, or that many supported Maduro.

Similarly, as Cuba is strangled by the escalation of a longstanding US blockade specifically designed to stoke the fires of regime change and bring about a “Free Cuba”, we are pointed towards the opinions of white Cubans in Miami wearing ‘Make Cuba Great Again’ hats. Much like their Persian counterparts in Los Angeles, many of these Cubans are now second or third-generation descendants of political exiles with no personal memory of the preceding events, uncritically rehashing the views of their elders and the powerful, disproportionately conservative Cuban-American lobby.

It is ludicrous to think that any member of any diaspora or a citizen of any country can speak for everyone. Venezuelans, Cubans, Iranians, Americans – and any people of any nationality – hold different and often opposing views. There are indeed people in Iran who are happy about US military intervention and who want regime change at any cost. There are also millions of people who are vehemently anti-imperialist and support the current government, just as there are countless people who oppose the government and still don’t believe their freedom lies in being bombed. To have consistent politics is to have values rooted in actual principles and an understanding of history. It is not listening to and amplifying every voice regardless of outcome, particularly when that outcome is civilian death and the expansion of US political hegemony, something that has never once benefited the people of any nation. 

The problem, to paraphrase Kim Kardashian, is that nobody wants to get their ass up and read any more, believing they can circumvent real critical analysis by watching a content creator “explain the Iran protests in 60 seconds”. As evidenced by the epidemic of people turning to AI to solve simple problems or process their feelings, increasing numbers of people don’t want to engage their brains in any capacity whatsoever, and so have contented themselves with scrolling TikTok and watching front-facing camera videos by people who have no credentials beyond access to green screen software and an expired passport. 

It’s not a coincidence that these peddlers of vibes-based politics reserve their harshest condemnations for the left, and specifically people who have been vocal about the genocide in Gaza, who they they accuse of hypocrisy. Thousands of almost identical posts ask why people were silent when the Iranian government was killing its own citizens, but are only speaking up now when they are being killed by US bombs, or why they spoke up about Palestine but did not do so for Iran. The accusation here is usually that the left’s hatred of US imperialism and Israel is more important to them than taking a stand against the loss of civilian life, when doing so doesn’t fit their “ideology”. 

The answer, for anyone with even a basic understanding of cause and effect, is obvious: our governments do not fund the governments of Venezuela, or Cuba, or Iran. It is unclear what the objective is of taking to the streets against countries already heavily sanctioned and opposed by our governments, except a child-like understanding of politics that seems to go no deeper than “condemning bad things”. This is partly because the intertwining of protest with social media has resulted in a flattening of the understanding of protest into optics rather than a demand for specific political outcomes. 

This shallow narrative, which has become the de facto politics of social media, is incapable of creating real change because it is rooted in a delusional fantasy of what should be happening in an ideal world rather than what is actually happening in the shitty world that we do live in and the political dynamics that shape it. This misguided understanding of power has led to 2026’s other favourite phrase: “two things can be true at once.” Theoretically, yes. Unfortunately, what these nuance-mongers don’t seem to realise is that two things cannot be true at once in a situation where the only tangible options on the table are being invaded or not being invaded.

Social media platforms are inherently ill-suited to genuinely leftist politics, which generally require a broader and more complicated analysis, while the attention economy favours simplistic, emotionally-charged content that is designed for maximum likes, shares, and reactions. The overwhelmingly milquetoast politics of social media is one of aestheticised infographics, hollow buzzwords about individual agency, and vague emotional appeals to humanity and social justice that centre feelings over geopolitical reality and global power dynamics. These social media platforms are also increasingly being captured by reactionary, right-wing billionaires who are deliberately skewing algorithms to promote their worldview.

It is absolutely morally consistent for people in the West to speak out when our governments bomb or invade a country and not to do so in regards to that country’s internal issues, for the simple and obvious reason that, as citizens of the US, the UK or wherever else – whose taxes fund these atrocities – we are in a position to do something about the former but not the latter. There is no moral imperative that demands you should listen to the voices of people that proudly fly American and Israeli flags three years into a genocide, who wear MAGA hats and gleefully dance when their own families are bombed, or who carry placards with ‘Islam out of Iran’ during their protests, in much the same way most of us understand that we are not obligated to listen to the voices of white supremacists or your racist uncle when forming political opinions on other issues.

Identity is not monolithic, nor is it a magical substitute for basic economic observations and logic. A political worldview that centres individual voices instead of analysis and a materialist conception of history can never amount to anything more than hollow platitudes. Taking to social media to denounce Cuba, Iran, or Venezuela does not lead to freedom and democracy in these countries, but only helps to manufacture consent to destroy them, whether through starvation or by carpet bombing. 

In spite of what Instagram infographics, TikTok educators, and verified accounts on X posting thousand-word screeds instruct you, you remain a self-possessing individual with your own moral and intellectual agency. In an age where much of our political education happens in digital spaces heavily shaped by reactionary forces, it is your political duty not to outsource your principles to other people based on their identity, and instead assess behaviour which appears cruel, malignant or amoral on your own terms. If you conclude that it is, in fact, precisely that, perhaps your discomfort is justified, and not borne from a failure to listen to the right voices.