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·
      3 天前

      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·
        3 天前

        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 天前

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

      • Maeve@kbin.earthOP
        14·
        2 天前

        Imagine being so afraid of a different idea you wholesale swallow CIA propaganda and anyone who questions or disagrees with bourgeois propaganda pushes Russian propaganda. Boo! You’re skurred of your own shadow.

        • Dicska@lemmy.world
          3·
          2 天前

          Nah mate, I applied that flair when you tried to convince others in a different post about how the Russians were right against Ukraine.

          All I did was to post that flair and nothing else, of which you deducted that I must be swallowing CIA propaganda. With those reasoning skills I now double doubt whatever you claim.

          • Maeve@kbin.earthOP
            12·
            2 天前

            If you go far enough back in my post history, you’ll see where I started with “everyone who questions my favorite narrative is a Russian shill/bot/troll,” where I came to my senses, briefly reverted, and came to my senses again. It’s because I read and evaluated the evidence from Western sources, including declassified CIA file releases that I am thoroughly disabused of any Western propaganda, today.

            • Dicska@lemmy.world
              4·
              2 天前

              Does that mean you do not believe anymore that the Russians were just de-nazifying Eastern Ukraine by destroying entire cities by artillery?

    • BrainInABox@lemmy.mlEnglish
      46·
      3 天前

      Yes, they do. Are you going to start talking about how terribly oppressed white South Africans are next?

        • BrainInABox@lemmy.mlEnglish
          24·
          3 天前

          “The Uyghurs” are actually millions of individuals with their own beliefs and ideas, and not just an undifferentiated hivemind like westerner usually treat foreigners.

          And also that you’re comparing them with “white South Africans”, presumably with a straight face.

          Yes. But apparently comparing white people to non white people is so inherently absurd to your chauvinistic ass that you can’t even explain why you object, you’re just going to fall back on Reddit dork smugness.

              • Maeve@kbin.earthOP
                12·
                2 天前

                Sometimes people are so deeply invested in operative narratives and refuse to seek or even consider evidence to the contrary because we think they are our ideas, and/or because it would involve taking an honest and deep look at ourselves, which would shatter our illusions and delusions. I’ve been there and daresay you may have been, as well?

                Btw, here’s a song they won’t redo on radio or churches, anymore: https://youtu.be/5HhGfRf6eV4

  • DarthFrodo@lemmy.world
    42·
    2 天前

    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.