Once upon a time, people celebrated heroes for what they did—for their courage, for defending justice and for paying the price for standing up for what was right. Today, a few loud slogans, a scandalous interview or a good social-media photo dump is all it takes, and suddenly, a criminal becomes a legend. The public cheers, the media puts them on a pedestal, and the facts are drowned out by sensationalism.
It feels as if we are living in a world where cheaters, con artists and professional loudmouths get stages, kudos, films and fan clubs, while those who promote facts stand in the corner like unnoticed guests.
Once upon a time, traditional storytelling and Hollywood filmmaking were full of character-building archetypes, where the good win and the bad get their well-deserved punishment. Yet today the script has flipped. Evil gets applause, and the good only makes it to the credits.
Unfortunately, this troubling phenomenon isn’t limited to films.
Let’s start with Kneecap, the Irish rap group that has been crowned as Gaelic heroes, with anti-British lyrics and a fitting biopic. Fans love their “rebel” energy, which includes chanting “Brits Out,” flirting with IRA nostalgia and using lyrics and posts that critics interpret as a call for violence against Tory members of the U.K. Parliament. At the 2025 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Southern California in April, they wished death on Israel while glorifying Hamas and Hezbollah. Most recently, in a video message played at the Hungarian Sziget Festival this summer, they called on their audience to “Oppose Orbán. Oppose Israel. Oppose genocide. Free Palestine.”
British authorities labeled the band “unacceptable,” and investigations were launched for incitement to violence. Hungary banned the group from entering the country for three years based on their rhetoric tied to a terrorist organization. Yet the organizers of the Sziget Festival, a private company, turned Kneecap into festival favorites by allowing their video message to be played on the main stage because, it seems, swearing at the current government, threatening its prime minister, Viktor Orbán, and inciting hatred against a sovereign country is totally “cool.” Shouting about murder is just prime-time entertainment.
Then there’s Mahmoud Khalil, the pro-Palestinian poster child at Columbia University. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) held him for more than 100 days for alleged lies on his green-card application, and for using his university presence to “incite hatred against Jews” and promote intifada. He aided protesters at Columbia, who eventually occupied buildings, attacked Jewish and pro-Israel students and professors, and set up tent encampments on campus. Khalil lied on his green-card application, and when ICE took him into custody, he was celebrated by many as a “double refugee” martyr.
Released on bail, he returned to New York City, posed for photos with New York state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani—a Democratic Socialist and mayoral candidate for the Democratic Party—and continued chanting for people to “globalize the intifada.” U.S. President Donald Trump called Khalil radical. Legal documents show that he supported violent acts against Jews. He still faces deportation, but the protesting crowds see him as a hero. Is detention and prison a new VIP badge?
Then there’s the rising political star Mamdani himself. He comes from an elite, wealthy family but poses as poor, feeding Marxist mantras to young Americans. On his Columbia admissions application in 2009, he marked “black or African American” and “Asian,” although he was born in Uganda and is of Indian descent. A data leak exposed the lie, and he wasn’t admitted. While Mamdani claimed that he wanted to indicate his “complex” Indian-Ugandan heritage, current New York City Mayor Eric Adams called it a “deeply offensive” trick to exploit affirmative action. Despite his deceptions, Mamdani’s progressive rhetoric has made him a darling of young voters. Faking Ivy League applications is evidently an OK stepping stone for becoming a mayor in New York.
Then we have, for us Hungarians, Péter Magyar, the current golden boy opposition leader of the Tisza Party, who has rebranded himself as an anti-corruption crusader. Yet he has allegedly harassed his now ex-wife, former Minister of Justice Judit Varga, and his lies fall as fast as summer flies. He vowed never to enter politics, then launched an “opposition” party weeks later. He claimed that he would skip Brussels as a member of the European Parliament and then took his seat anyway. Yet fans celebrate him as Hungary’s authentic savior. It seems that in 2025, deception is merely “calculated reinvention.”
Why do people love villains? Because of a mix of human foolishness and social conditioning. Sociologists call it the “Robin Hood” effect: Break the law against the “oppression,” and suddenly, you’re a rebellious star. Émile Durkheim argued that rule-breakers can reshape society, but today’s “heroes” often exploit this for fame rather than actual progress. And the media adores “bad guys,” they’re what sells, and if they also fit the currently pushed narrative, such as anti-colonialism, anti-racism, anti-Western ideology, etc., then they become a legend. If they can be labeled as a “victim,” their crime disappears faster than a TikTok trend.
So here we are as a society with people loudly celebrating cheats and aggressors, while facts gather dust. And as society elevates criminals over quiet heroes, it erodes the moral foundation that holds people together, rewarding spectacle over substance. It is time to demand better heroes; those who earn their status through sacrifice and integrity, not scandal and spin.
