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In my answer, I already conceded that corruption exists in the West - though corruption in Russia is orders of magnitude larger, both in absolute monetary value, and in the overall participation of the regime in corruption.
Again, that wasn't my point. My point was that the claim: "the rights and freedoms available in the West are the same as those afforded to Russian citizens" is false.
That's factually incorrect. There are Russian provinces that are under martial law (those on the border with Ukraine), but Russia overall isn't. This is because, of course, according to the midget-in-chief, Russia is not at war, it only conducts a policing operation in Ukraine. You can still be thrown in jail in Russia if you publicly say the word "war".
Your paragraph summarizes the faulty reasoning pushed by Russia: there are freedoms and human rights abuses in the West, and so Russia is no different that the West. The same discourse is used in China as well.
No. Russia and China are totalitarian regimes where the politics, policies and leadership are never under discussion. Period. This is nothing like the West, nothing like Romania, nothing even like Iliescu's regime in 1990s, which was a very flawed kind of democracy, that luckily has improved since.
True, that's why "hate speech" laws should be abolished. They're exactly the same as "blasphemy laws" in Islamic regimes, tools to persecute wrong think.
But again, censorship in Russia or China is incomparably more oppressive and failure to follow the guidelines can lead to political imprisonment and death.
Also, Russian, Chinese, Iranian etc media outlets should be banned in the West, until Western media is allowed to operate in those countries. These state sponsored media conglomerates are not honest drivers for the interests of regular Western citizens. We should adhere to strict reciprocity with those shithole countries (to use Trump's legal language) and ban their media until the they unban Western media on their internal markets.
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