Activism is an important thing. It sits within the core values of Democracy – Freedom of Speech, the Power of the People, and Equality. However, with the rise of social networks, conspiracy theories and misinformation on the internet and even worse – on leading TV news channels – we should all stop and wonder what happened to Human Morality and what is actually going on behind the scenes of those so-called social movements in the past decade. Are they completely genuine, honest and authentic? Is it really humankind at its best, fighting for the greater good? Or is there something else going on under the surface – bias, manipulation and misinformation – leading to the suspicion that some forces are hijacking our minds, our hearts and souls, steering it in different directions based on their own Agenda.

It was only a few years ago when activism was all about Climate Action, in a plea to Save Our World from the arguably inevitable Global Warming. Greta Thunberg, a Swedish climate activist known for her powerful advocacy for climate action among young people, initiated the Fridays for Future movement, a global student strike for climate action. Her endeavor to save the world peaked when she delivered a powerful address at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit, criticizing world leaders for their inaction on climate change, demanding urgent action. But where is Greta these days, along with the enthusiastic crowd of Climate Action warriors?

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) social movement started in 2013, with the aim to highlight racism, discrimination and racial inequality experienced by black people, and to promote anti-racism. Its primary concerns became prominent after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, highlighting police brutality and racially motivated violence against black people. The movement has seen a decline in public support and a shift in focus since then due to backlash, political polarization, and questions about the movement’s structure and funding.

The Me Too social movement focused on raising awareness about sexual harassment and sexual assault, particularly in the workplace. The movement gained widespread attention in 2017, following allegations of sexual misconduct against Harvey Weinstein, when Alyssa Milano used the hashtag #MeToo on social media, leading to a global conversation about the prevalence of these issues and encouraging survivors to share their experiences. However, today the Me Too movement is barely seen or heard, with a striking and shameful Silence over the sexual violence during the October 7 attacks, where Israeli women, girls and men were reportedly subjected to sexual violence, including rape, mutilation and sexual assault by Palestinian Terror Group Hamas and other Palestinian militants. October 7 exposed the hollowness of the #MeToo movement and it is not hard to see why the #MeToo_UNless_UR_A_Jew campaign was established, due to the selective silence international organisations shamefully demonstrated.

In fact, an activist movement becomes hollow or loses its moral authority in a moment like this. It strikes at the absolute core mechanism of human rights which is Universality. For any movement to possess legitimate moral authority, its principles have to be applied universally regardless of the victim’s nationality or geography or their alignment with a specific political narrative. You cannot just pick and choose who gets your sympathy, right? The concept of hollowness suggests that the moment a network filters its outrage through a geopolitical lens, the moment it implicitly decides violence is only condemnable when it happens to the correct demographic, it voids its own moral contract. It fails to apply its principles universally. However, even after international forensics, multiple witness testimonies, and verified reports of these specific sexual atrocities became undeniable, the silence from these movements persisted, exposing its deliberate selective exclusion towards Israelis and Jews. What is so jarring is the contrast. Because while one movement went completely silent, another movement erupted almost immediately. I’m talking about the massive rise of the Free Palestine movement and how misinformation distorts public perception.

The Free Palestine movement has washed our streets across the Western world since October 7, 2023. On that dark day, more than 1,200 men, women and children, including citizens of more than 30 countries, were slaughtered by Hamas – the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Israeli Authorities were still counting the dead, horrified mums and dads were still looking for their loved ones who may have been among the 251 hostages abducted into Gaza, when thousands of people around the world marched through the streets, celebrating the massacre, praising Hamas for their brutal and barbaric attack against humanity, and labelling it as Resistance.

Can we pause for a moment and repeat the facts: Palestinian terrorist organizations invaded the sovereign state of Israel, committed a genocidal massacre against Israeli communities along the border with Gaza Strip, murdered whole families and communities in cold blood, raped, beheaded and slaughtered young women and men who were dancing for peace at the Nova Dance Festival, and on October 8th, literally the very day after the attacks, while the extent of the massacre was still being uncovered, thousands of people were already marching in Western streets to rejoice, as we watched in horror the moral collapse of our western societies.

The shocking effect of the immediate aftermath of the October 7 massacre did not dissolve since then. Western governments are protecting the right of free speech but fail to identify those who abuse this right and call for hatred and murder of Jewish people. The failure to set any limits on this so-called Activism resulted in a massive spike in hate-crime and antisemitism, attacks against Jews and Jewish institutions around the world and most tragically, when words turn into action, a sequence of fatal terror attacks around the world against Jewish people. The murder of two young Israeli diplomats in Washington D.C. while the perpetrator was shouting “Free Palestine”, the killing of an 82-year-old Colorado woman in a Molotov cocktail attack on demonstrators in support of Israeli hostages held in Gaza, the attack on a Jewish Synagogue in Manchester on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, resulting in the deaths of two worshippers. And ultimately, after all the warning signs were flashing red for two years, came the horrific antisemitic terror attack at Bondai Beach, Sydney, during a Hanukkah celebration, resulting in the murder of 15 innocent lives and over 40 injuries. These are the direct result of chanting “Globalize the Intifada” on our streets, week after week. The outcome of governments inaction, lack of leadership and complete blindness to hatred and support of terrorism.

The Broken Democracies in Europe, America and Australia fail to understand the long term risks to our societies. Western governments are so focused on protecting free speech, that they are failing to curb Racism, Hatred and literal calls for the murder of Jewish people. As we watch the Free Palestine movement taking over social media and our streets for nearly two years and counting, it is evident that behind big words like Freedom, Justice and Humanity, these activists are praising Islamic Jihadi Terrorist Regimes in the likes of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Taliban and ISIS, as we have seen on the iconic Sydney Harbor Bridge so-called “March for Humanity”. Any support of terrorism is unlawful, yet it is accepted by law enforcement who don’t seem to be worried about the new trend of burning an Australian flag in Melbourne’s Federation Square while calling for the Death of our country. The paradox of tolerance essentially leads to highly disturbing real world scenarios with a massive quantifiable spike in global hate crimes and antisemitism.

What is it that Western democracies are yet to understand? How can they allow for this ongoing Wave of Hatred to keep going for so long without calling out the fake nature of social movements and ignoring the disruption it is causing to social cohesion, national unity and simply every day lives? Where are all those 21st century social warriors who are meant to be caring for gender and race equality? Have they just moved on to the next popular trend, without even realizing they have joined an anti-democratic movement fuelled by a well orchestrated propaganda, praising terrorist organizations who openly wish to wipe out our democracies? How come this particular conflict between Israel and Palestine is at the hearts of so many young people, while they could not care less about other conflicts around the world – Syria, Sudan, Yemen, Iran, Haiti and others – where millions of people are suffering, displaced, starving, yet they get zero attention from the algorithm-driven activist networks. What we are witnessing is a trend-based activism, a Selective Outrage.

We are watching in front of our eyes the total collapse of activism and social movements as we know it. Millions of people are marching for a cause while failing to truly understand what the cause is, or consider the complexities of issues occurring on the other side of the globe, confidently relying on misinformation and manipulation. All I know is: when the war will eventually diminish, these so-called activists would have a lot to explain to their children about being on the wrong side of history.

How do democratic societies protect their core freedoms like the right to protest without allowing extremist propaganda and calls for violence to just flourish under the guise of activism? It’s a terrifying vulnerability because how do so many people get swept up in these massive street movements in the first place? How does a normal person end up marching next to someone holding a flag for a designated terror group. We have to look at the mechanics of modern information consumption and how it is specifically targeting Gen Z. in this era of social media.

You have to stop and wonder how did we get to a point where hundreds of thousands of people around the Western world, including many Gen Z students who seem to be lacking any form or shape of critical thinking (one of the basic requirements for academic studies), are taking advantage of our free-speech democracies, parroting a load of lies and nonsense about a place they have never been to. They lack even the most basic geographic knowledge of the Middle East and couldn’t even point to the region on a map. Let alone, they do not understand the deep historical complexities of the causes they are marching for. They are relying almost entirely on online misinformation.

If you only care about human suffering when it involves one specific nation while completely ignoring massive global tragedies everywhere else, you’re activism is not rooted in universal human rights. It’s driven by targeted engineered narratives. This is like the concept of ideological fast food. Let’s expand on that metaphor for a second. Because fast food is literally engineered in a laboratory to hit all the bliss points on your tongue, the salt, the sugar, the fat. It’s designed to taste incredibly satisfying and give your brain a massive dopamine hit, right? But it provides absolutely zero nutritional value to your body. In fact, if you eat too much of it, it makes you deeply sick. These viral binary narratives are ideological fast food. They are engineered to make you feel full of moral superiority, giving you a massive dopamine hit of self-righteousness, but they provide zero actual tangible help to the people suffering. And they’re making our broader society deeply sick with polarization. It’s engineered to make you feel like you’ve done something meaningful without requiring any actual sacrifice or deep understanding.

Social networks algorithms are designed to generate engagement and nuance is terrible for engagement. So the algorithm actively suppresses the complex messy realities of regions on the other side of the globe and instead it pushes these incredibly simplistic narratives – the oppressor versus the oppressed. It reduces a multi-layered century old geopolitical conflict into a simple binary that fits into a 15-second video. And young people lacking that foundational critical thinking are left incredibly vulnerable to manipulation.

So if the architecture of our digital lives is actively working to manipulate us, how do we fix it? Let’s explore some actionable steps to reclaim our moral clarity. Let’s shift from identifying the problem to offering a way out. Because if we don’t, we may end up on the wrong side of history. When the dust finally settles on all of this and the algorithm moves on to the next trend, people who relied on this kind of manipulation will have to explain their stances to future generations. You don’t want to look back and realize you were an unwitting node in a propaganda network.

Navigating between Truth and Narrative

How can you navigate out of this maze? If the internet is a minefield of emotional manipulation and algorithmic propaganda, how do you actually walk through it safely? We have to offer an optimistic, actionable toolkit and explicitly lay out clear psychological steps you can take, to verify information and protect your own mind before you lend your voice or your energy to any social movement. Let’s go through five simple steps to verify information before you join any online trends:

Step one is what we call the the Geography Test. Simple in theory, but incredibly rigorous in practice. Let’s call it Pause and Locate. Ground Yourself in Reality. Before you share a slogan or post a highly emotional infographic, you need to literally ground yourself. Can you actually point to the region on a map? If you can’t locate the geography, if you can’t point to it on a map, you have to admit to yourself that you don’t know enough to voice an opinion about it. It requires you to overcome the digital pressure to react instantly, which is hard. But before you chant a slogan, before you share an infographic, you must research the basic geography of what you are talking about. If you are chanting about a river to a sea and you don’t know the actual name of the river and the sea, do not chant about it. If you cannot locate the region on a world map, you have not done enough to hold a valid public opinion, hold a sign in the street or post online about it. It sounds so incredibly basic, but let’s be honest about why people fail this test. Admitting ignorance online is socially punished time. The algorithm demands a hot take immediately. Saying, “I don’t know enough about the geography to have an opinion” gets you zero likes. It might even get you accused of silence or complicity. However, the Geography test is the ultimate defence against parroting, and it will force you to learn the actual physical facts on the ground.

Step two is the History Test. Build a Foundational Timeline. Do you know the basic timeline or name the key historical dates of the region? Do you know the actual facts about the place, the people, the history going back ten, twenty, a hundred or even thousands of years ago. Knowing the facts is not optional, it is mandatory to understand the nature of any conflict around the world. Unfortunately facts are not likely to be found on social media, and you cannot possibly capture the history of any region or people in a short video. It requires the hard work of doing some research. Without this foundational knowledge, participation in digital outrage is merely parroting a narrative. The history test is a way to force yourself to apply critical thinking. It’s like a circuit breaker for your emotional reaction. If you don’t know the historical events then how can you possibly form your own opinion.

Step three is what we call the Hypocrisy Test. Perform a consistency check. If a movement demands outrage for one conflict while remaining silent on atrocities in other places around the world like Sudan, Syria, Russia or Iran, it is likely a targeted narrative rather than a universal stand for human rights. Genuine morality requires universal consistency regardless of the victim’s identity. Beware of selective outrage. Ask yourself a very deliberate question, is this campaign or influencer asking me to ignore other massive global tragedies just to focus exclusively on this one? And if the answer is yes, you need to take a massive step back. If the outrage demanded of you is highly selective, it’s highly likely that you are dealing with a targeted narrative, one designed to manipulate your empathy for a specific political goal rather than a universal cause advocating for human rights. Consistency is the hallmark of genuine morality. This step circles back to our earlier point about the hollowness of movements. You must demand universal consistency. This is the big and crucial one. You have to apply the principles of human rights universally. If you are part of a movement and you notice that this movement ignores massive atrocities in some parts of the world or if it dismisses horrific violence based on the nationality. identity, race or religion of the victim, then you have to question the absolute integrity of that movement.

Step four is the Organization Test. Follow the Money and Leadership. It is vital to look past the “slick infographic” and examine the foundation of the movement. Who is funding it, who are the leaders? Follow the money and the leadership. This requires you to look past the aesthetic of the movement and really look at its architecture. You have to ask, who actually organized this protest? Who is funding the creation of this slick infographic? Are the organizers related to or supporting terrorist organizations or regimes? You have to look at the core values of the leaders driving the movement. If a group limits free speech in their own territory, if they oppress women, if they murder political dissident or journalists or anyone who identifies as gay, lesbian or LGBTQ, they are not fighting for your concept of freedom. They are only taking advantage of you. The underlying point here is that you cannot achieve democratic justice by aligning yourself with anti-democratic values, let alone terror. You have to look at the track record of the entity handing you the megaphone. You can’t just look at the catchy slogan on the front of the t-shirt. You have to look at the geopolitical tag on the back to see who actually manufactured it. You have to pay attention not to end up aligning with groups that may be designated terrorist organizations or those that do not share democratic values, such as free speech or women’s rights.

Step five is the Algorithm Test. Resist Narrative Curation. We need to actively question the algorithm. That means recognizing that your feed is not an objective window into the world. If your feed is only showing you one highly emotional, incredibly aggressive side of a deeply historical conflict, you have to recognize that you are being served a narrative. You are not being served the whole objective truth. The algorithm is optimizing for your outrage, not your education. We call it Emotional Hijacking. How can you actually spot this out in the wild? This is about recognizing how the algorithms target your amygdala, the part of your brain responsible for the fight, flight, or freeze response. When you’re scrolling, pay attention to your physical reaction. Does the social media post use extreme polarizing apocalyptic language? Is it intentionally meant to make you panic or feel guilty? Does it try to instil intense guilt or shame if you don’t immediately share it with your followers? This emotional hijacking is manipulation, plain and simple. True education invites questions. It provides historical context, and it allows for nuance. Propaganda demands absolute compliance, rushes your decision making, and uses emotional extortion. You have to actively seek out the friction of other perspectives to break out of that echo chamber. Being open to other perspectives will allow you to make better choices.

Moral Clarity

I really want to address you directly right now, especially those of you in high school, in college, or just anyone trying your absolute best to be a good moral person in a very loud, confusing world. The internet tells you every single day that you must have a loud, immediate, unyielding opinion on everything from climate policy to complex geopolitical wars. But it is actually a sign of supreme intelligence, intellectual humility, and real bravery to look at an issue and say, “Don’t know enough about this to post about it yet.” Pausing is your superpower. Taking a breath, stepping away from the screen, closing the app, and deciding to read a deeply researched book or a long-form article instead of watching a 15-second emotional video. That is an act of profound Intellectual Rebellion today. It is the only way to short circuit the algorithmic day trading we are witnessing today.

We are constantly told that to care about the world, we have to constantly be posting and shouting and joining the viral march, right? The pressure to always be reacting. But what if in today’s highly manipulated digital environment, the most radical act of activism you can possibly participate in isn’t marching or posting a hashtag at all. What if the most powerful thing you can do is choosing to sit in silence, open a physical history book, and absolutely refuse to let an algorithm dictate your morality? Taking your mind back from the machine. Taking back the ownership to yourself. Because then and only then you can be confident that you will be standing on the right side of history.

Finally, when the digital noise eventually dies down, when the algorithms inevitably move on to the next shiny distraction and the wars diminish, these manipulated activists are going to have a very difficult time explaining to their children why they stood on the wrong side of history. It is a profoundly sobering reality because history does not judge us by our momentary digital intentions or how many likes we got on a post. It judges us by our tangible actions and most importantly who we chose to align ourselves with. If you allow yourself to be manipulated into marching alongside those who praise terror or target civilians or celebrate a massacre, history will remember that alignment long after the hashtag is forgotten. That is why it is so critical to reclaim your critical thinking right now without delay. It really makes you wonder what if the most revolutionary impactful form of activism you can engage in today is not shouting through a megaphone in a crowded street or performing your morality on a digital stage, but quietly, humbly, and relentlessly pursuing the truth on your own. That quiet pursuit is the most authentic activism there is.

We have covered a massive amount of incredibly heavy ground looking at these fractured movements, the algorithmic manipulation and the real world consequences on the streets. But we should end with an optimistic vision. The ability to clearly distinguish between right and wrong, that moral clarity, is not lost. It’s just buried under digital noise. By applying critical thinking, by consciously stepping away from the algorithmic herd mentality of social media, young people have immense power. If you commit to genuine education and universal principles, you have the power to build truly authentic, impactful social movements that won’t just burn out like a firework. Movements that can actually change the world for the better because they are built on a solid foundation of truth, not a sugar rush of outrage.

Because true activism is not a viral trend. It requires the hard, quiet work of reading history. It requires understanding complex governance and it requires recognizing that real world problems rarely if ever fit into a 15-second video format. It’s not glamorous. It’s actually just a lot of reading and a lot of sitting with uncomfortable realities. Equipping yourself with facts, maintaining your moral clarity, demanding consistency, and refusing to be swept away by the digital mob, that is how you actually build the foundation to making real change. I believe in your ability to apply these tools and to cut through the noise. Stay informed, stay curious and seek the truth.