The Crisis of Cowardice

Suddenly, everyone is brave! Out of nowhere, voices are screaming from the rooftops about the vast array of injustices that have plagued society for the last decade! “No transing kids!” “Equity is bullshit!” “Diversity isn’t our strength, merit is!” Adding to this chorus of vocal denouncements of conspicuously deranged ideas, there’s a new crop of anonymous X accounts that are calling for mass deportations of Muslim immigrants in the EU. Such bravery!

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It's easy to be “brave” when you’re anonymous. It’s easy to be “brave” when the moral tide has turned and criticizing clearly demented ideological pronouncements is an effortless indulgence. It’s easy to be “brave” when nothing is at stake. But beyond people believing they’re brave for just now denouncing obvious idiocy, the most frustrating feature of this new found bravery is smugness. One can’t help but to notice a kind of zealous self-righteousness among the nouveau-brave. It’s the unearned pride when one wants to convince others they’ve shown courage in the face of danger. And it oozes from every pore.

There’s really no point in saying anything. What is there to be said? “Why didn’t you speak up when doing so came at a cost?” “You’re not brave. You’re a grifter.” There’s no point to calling people out.

There’s no calling people out because no one wants to hear it. The newly emboldened don’t want to be reminded of their silence during the years when speaking up carried consequences. They’ve rewritten the script to cast themselves as heroes, as if courage is retroactive, as if a tide they followed was one they helped turn. And who’s left to call them out? Those who spoke when it mattered are now either exhausted, ostracized, or dismissed as relics of a fight the nouveau-brave think they’ve only just begun.

This crisis of cowardice isn’t merely a moral failing—it’s a cultural pathology. We live in an age where timing is mistaken for principle, where safe posturing is celebrated as daring conviction. Social media has only amplified this phenomenon, rewarding those who enter the fray just as the real risks subside. The algorithm doesn’t care who was right when it counted—it promotes who is loudest now. And so we see a parade of latecomers, shouting at the top of their lungs, convincing themselves they’re warriors when they’re really opportunists.

But the real cost of this crisis isn’t just the cheapening of bravery—it’s the erosion of trust. When everyone is suddenly brave, no one is, and the line between genuine courage and performative bluster blurs to nothing. Those who were silent when the stakes were high and those who spoke too late become indistinguishable in the public eye. The noise has drowned out the signal, leaving us with a culture where courage is neither recognized nor rewarded, and where silence, waiting for the “right moment,” is another word for complicity.