[greatgib]

This is the usual hypocrisy of european politicians.

Things are ok and not problematic when it is them that do it because they have the power. But when they are the subjects of similar things, then they don't like and want to have this power for them.

There is a very good and ironic example of that in France:

The former president Nicolas Sarkozy created and pushed a lot of nefarious 'security' laws when he was president. For example, the possibility for police to monitor phone calls without a warrant and things like that.

To critics, he was replying that the state is 'trustful' and that only bad people could fear for their privacy.

Back now, a few years later, police wiretapped a phone line that he opened under a fake name to secretly discuss about another police investigation that is currently targeting him and he allegedly used this line to abuse of authority and try to get insider knowledge from law officials in exchange for a special position.

At his trial and in medias, he cried everywhere that it is unfair and abused that his phone lines could have been wiretapped like that to provide evidences against him. Like if he is a victim and not the person that pushed these bad security laws against the population despite a lot of critics of people concerned by freedom and privacy topics.

[SpicyLemonZest]

I don’t know that I’d call it hypocrisy. Most European politicians who’ve commented on this seem to be expressing a strong, principled view that the state is on top and nobody should be allowed to exercise power over it. This sounds strange to a lot of us in the US, where we don’t generally believe the government deserves special respect, but it’s our attitude that’s atypical from a global perspective.

[greatgib]

I can understand that from far you could have this impression that they have good will and for them "the state is on top and nobody should be allowed to exercise power over it".

But make no mistake, this is just communication/propaganda and what makes me say that it is hypocrisy. Politics here are champions of double talk. Despite pretending to be democracies, a lot of leaders are now trying to grab the maximum power and undermine citizen decision power.

For example, in France, normally the President and government is just here to execute the laws decided by the national assembly. But in the past decade, majority members of the national assembly are now in a party whose purpose is to "support the president" and so, you could be excluded if you would not vote like the president want you to.

Also, more and more the government decide new laws unilaterally, sometimes in secret or after secret negotiations with lobbies, and will do everything needed to force the assembly to approve it.

Sometimes it is just pressure, sometimes it is manipulations like presenting multiple time the same law, even if it is rejected, until it will pass. Or a present it at a specific time, like at night when there are other events, so that opposition will not have time to come to vote.

They are also more frequently using anti democratic tools when they can't manage to have their law to pass, like something call 49.1 that enact a law without vote of the national assembly.

And lastly, we have seen the case a lot with "fake news" and "hate speech", where governement or governement member will spread "fake news" or send bad "hate" messages.

But when you have breaking news of bad behavior of them, then they will pretend that it is "fake news"/"hate" message, and that the state should be able to censor that. In this regard, they are very similar to Trump.

To give one last example, during the first part of the covid crisis, the government knew that they did not have enough mask, because of bad management, and instead of telling the truth, they said that pharmacy were not allowed to sell them, because people would not know how to use them and that they are useless to deal with the covid.

Later the proof was given that they were voluntarily lying.

[oscargrouch]

> This is the usual hypocrisy of european politicians.

If a chimp somehow learned that 2 + 2 = 4, would you point out that given he is a chimp and "chimps don't not math", that the statement about the subject is wrong, even that is clear it has a merit in itself and who says what basically don't matter when we think about something being right or wrong?

This is not as simple as 2+2 of course, but i rather prefer that the merit of what being discussed is taken the proper focus while who says what, only have more prominence when hidden intentions that can actually cause harm cant be neglected.

And i think this is clearly not the case unless your name is Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey or anyone who will profit from this digital neo-feudalism power grab.

People seen to forget easily how and why sovereign states with the rule of the law were built, and how, if we forget the lessons of the past, it will be very hard to get out of a state where we all have no recourse against our new lords once we go through this path of powerless, anemic sovereign states.