John Robson: We May Laugh at Totalitarian Rhetoric and Ideology, but the Pronouncements of the ‘Woke’ Are No Less Ridiculous
Commentary
It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry at the news that the Chinese communist authorities might release COVID whistleblower Fang Bin after three years in jail for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” It’s a classic unfree-society story in that we don’t really know whether they’ll release him, where he’s been, what his sentence was or anything else except that their conduct was as appalling as their rhetoric was absurd. But we who live in free societies could learn an important lesson from the stilted way totalitarians justify their cancellation of unwelcome opinions and their holders….