Ryan Kirschner

Photographer, Objectivist, Radical for Capitalism

[Ryan Kirschner @RK_Objectivist]

@emprestheodora @Acyn Because Trump doesn't think in terms of principles or morality. He can't even conceive of those concepts. To him, everything is a deal, and people are to be evaluated by whether they treat Trump well or flatter him, not by the good or evil of their actions.

[Tahmineh Dehbozorgi @DeTahmineh]

The Western liberal media is ignoring the Iranian uprising because explaining it would force an admission it is desperate to avoid: the Iranian people are rebelling against Islam itself, and that fact shatters the moral framework through which these institutions understand the world.

Ideally, to cover an uprising is not just to show crowds and slogans. It requires answering a basic question: why are people risking death? In Iran, the answer is simple and unavoidable. The people are rising up because the Islamic Republic of Iran has spent decades suffocating every aspect of life—speech, work, family, art, women, and economic survival—under a clerical system that treats liberty as a crime. There is no way to tell that story without confronting the nature of the regime.

Western media refuses to do so because it has fundamentally misunderstood Islam. Or worse, it has chosen not to understand it.

Islam, in Western progressive discourse, has been racialized. It is treated not as a belief system or a political ideology, but as a stand-in for race or ethnicity. Criticizing Islam is framed as an attack on “brown people,” Arabs, or “the Middle East,” as if Islam were a skin color rather than a doctrine.

This confusion is rooted in historical illiteracy. Western liberal media routinely collapses entire civilizations into a single stereotype: “all Middle Easterners are Arabs,” “all Arabs are Muslim,” and “all Muslims are a monolithic, oppressed identity group by white European colonizers.” Iranians disappear entirely in this framework. Their language, history, and culture—Persian, not Arab; ancient, not colonial; distinct, not interchangeable—are erased.

By treating Islam as a racial identity rather than an ideology, Western media strips millions of people of their ability to reject it. Iranian protesters become unintelligible. Their rebellion cannot be processed without breaking the rule that Islam must not be criticized. So instead of listening to Iranians, the media speaks over them—or ignores them entirely.

There is another reason the Iranian uprising is so threatening to Western media is economic issues.

As you know, Iran is not only a religious dictatorship. It is a centrally controlled, state-dominated economy where markets are strangled, private enterprise is criminalized or co-opted, and economic survival depends on proximity to political power. Decades of price controls, subsidies, nationalization, and bureaucratic micromanagement have obliterated the middle class and entrenched corruption as the only functional system. The result is not equality or justice. It is poverty, stagnation, and dependence on government’s dark void of empty promises.

Covering Iran honestly would require acknowledging that these policies are harmful. They have been tried. They have failed. Catastrophically.

This is deeply inconvenient for Western media institutions that routinely promote expansive state control, centralized economic planning, and technocratic governance as morally enlightened alternatives to liberal capitalism. Iran demonstrates where such systems lead when insulated from accountability and enforced by ideology. It shows that when the state controls livelihoods, non-conformity becomes existentially dangerous. That lesson cannot be acknowledged without undermining the moral authority of those who advocate similar ideas in softer language.

Western liberal media prefers not to hear this. Acknowledging it would require abandoning the lazy moral categories that dominate modern discourse: oppressor and oppressed, colonizer and colonized, white and non-white. Iranian protesters do not fit. They show that authoritarianism is not a Western invention imposed from outside, but something many societies are actively trying to escape.

That is what terrifies Western liberal media. And that is why the Iranian people are being ignored.

So the silence continues.

[Ryan Kirschner @RK_Objectivist]

@3YearLetterman @TuckerCarlson Although that's a low bar. @TuckerCarlson knows next to nothing.

[Ryan Kirschner @RK_Objectivist]

@_iamblakeley @TuckerCarlson Israel is fighting our war, not the other way around. Iran calls us the Great Satan and seeks our destruction, and it's not just talk. They sponsor terrorism that has killed Americans and have carried out direct attacks on American troops. This is long overdue.

[Ryan Kirschner @RK_Objectivist]

@TuckerCarlson Why are you such a defender and apologist for the Iranian regime? Because they're just "innocent" religious nutcases like you? Just 2 peas in a pod I guess.

[Ryan Kirschner @RK_Objectivist]

@TuckerCarlson Giving this monster legitimacy by interviewing him is a moral atrocity, but I expect nothing less from Tucker

[Ryan Kirschner @RK_Objectivist]

@mrmenger @yaronbrook There is nothing to "understand" about those whose only goal is to wipe you off the planet. The only option is to eliminate them and their allies first. What's evil is to ignore that fact and turn the other cheek.

[Ryan Kirschner @RK_Objectivist]

@NathanJRobinson It's not collective punishment. It's unfortunate, but in war, some civilians will be killed, and the moral responsibility of those deaths are on the aggressor (in this case Hamas).

[Ryan Kirschner @RK_Objectivist]

@SamHarrisOrg The guest seems rational with regards to the virus and vaccine safety/efficacy. On the other hand, he has no problem supporting irrational oppressive government actions such as lockdowns, school closings, and ... https://t.co/j0K2633Hgv  @CastBox_FM #podcast

[Ryan Kirschner @RK_Objectivist]

@AOC is no match for @AlexEpstein. And like many of the congresspeople, she's very condescending to someone much more informed than she is.
https://t.co/K2GxwN88fK

[Ryan Kirschner @RK_Objectivist]

@sealandbloke @FoxNews So I guess regulators are omnipotent, benevolent, and incorruptable? But somehow businessmen are the opposite? Those with the guns should be trusted over those who produce?

[Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health @JohnsHopkinsSPH]

"The emerging data confirms what many of us thought would be the case—that not only do the vaccines stop symptomatic COVID, but they also make it highly unlikely that someone can even be infected at all," said @AmeshAA. https://t.co/K9i2ikuIqZ

[Ryan Kirschner @RK_Objectivist]

@SenWarren Clearly you don't understand the difference between political power and economic power. Amazon holds the power to trade - the power of the dollar. You hold the power of the gun - the power to harm and destroy, which is all you know how to do.

[Ryan Kirschner @RK_Objectivist]

@smash081012 @SenWarren @amazon If you're a shareholder, you should praise Amazon for upholding their fiduciary duty to maximize profits and minimize wealth-stealing taxes. Profits are a symbol of their incredible heroism and value creation.

[Ryan Kirschner @RK_Objectivist]

@inxctivist @SenWarren @amazon Anti-trust laws are some of the worst and most evil laws on the books. They're so vague and non-objective that almost anything a company does can be a violation. Real monopolies only exist when created by government.

[Ryan Kirschner @RK_Objectivist]

@Matthew57343840 @SenWarren @amazon Corporations don't pay taxes. Customers, employees, and shareholders pay the taxes. Corporate taxes destroy economic activity, and nothing more.

[Ryan Kirschner @RK_Objectivist]

@jonathanjewel @SenWarren @amazon Waging war against a power lusting politican is an act of justice and self preservation.

[Ryan Kirschner @RK_Objectivist]

@SenWarren @amazon You make power-lusting fascist threats to one of the most productive life-enhancing companies on the planet while you sit in Congress producing nothing and bringing zero value to the world.

[Ryan Kirschner @RK_Objectivist]

@Ayalectics @amazonnews Why shouldn't they reject the bloodsucking unions? If someone doesn't like working for Amazon they can quit. A union will just drag down their productiveness with ridiculous demands backed by government force.