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