surveillance, censorship, journalists sanctioned into destitution, innocent people brutalised by police. This is everyday life in the liberal, democratic west.

…No discussion of Western hypocrisy is complete without Ursula von der Leyen, the unelected queen of the European Commission and an unequivocal master of the genre.

There is a video, widely circulated at this point, of von der Leyen being heckled by a member of the public. The man asks a difficult question. She responds with a smile and a line that was clearly rehearsed:

‘If this was in Russia, he would be arrested.’

The crowd laughed.

The man was arrested.

Crosspost from https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11847282

    • SuiXi3D@fedia.io
      61·
      2 days ago

      I was about to post the same comment. It’s wild to me that so many see it as one or the other is bad. Both have massive problems and frankly I don’t want anything to do with either of them.

      • BrainInABox@lemmy.mlEnglish
        17·
        2 days ago

        I was about to post the same comment.

        “I was also about to robotically recite, word for word, the same assertion that everything the West says about its enemies is true.”

    • BrainInABox@lemmy.mlEnglish
      65·
      3 days ago

      Yeah, the West would never lie about it’s enemies. Every single thing it says is pure truth, right?

  • DarthFrodo@lemmy.world
    42·
    2 days ago

    Ah yes, the finnish police fined someone for disturbing a political event and this is of course comparable to systematic human rights abuses and massacres like tiananmen square.

    Like there are enough troubling developments in the west we could discuss, but instead we get highly misleading RT propaganda stories to whitewash authoritarianism.