Seth Leibsohn: Our Human Rights Hypocrisy

Tuesday, February 10, 2026

A genocide against Christians in Nigeria is taking place. This week one attack there killed at least 170 people.  Most of the slaughter is from the Islamist organization Boko Haram.  For those that don’t know, Boko Haram means “Western civilization is sacrilege.”

Last month, the leadership of Iran mowed down at least 30,000 Iranian civilians in two days.  But: from our colleagues to the Golden Globes and Grammys all this has been met with silence, even as they preen over their commitments to human rights elsewhere.

The whole point of the notion of human rights is there should not be one rule of torture for people of one faith or ethnicity and another rule for another—we used to call these concepts universal. The selectivity we see from our elites is exactly why there are post-World War II laws and declarations on human rights and genocide. The silent are in league with those that caused us to create universal norms in the first place. Sadly, Hollywood used to understand that silence equals death. It no longer does.

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