Eamon Dyas

Although placing limits on freedom of expression has always been a feature of western democracies — particularly in angst-ridden Germany — I’ve noticed since Covid an upsurge in the way in which public figures in the west are increasingly describing freedom of expression as a privilege. 

In Britain the establishment’s use of antisemitism to get rid of Corbyn has ensured a further advance of the idea that democracy can survive as a concept without the guarantee of freedom of expression being anything other than a privilege. 

The extent to which this concept of democracy has further advanced since the war in Ukraine has made democracy increasingly difficult to define. 

Western populations are being expected not only to make significant material and economic sacrifices for defending Ukraine but also to risk nuclear obliteration all in the cause of defending what is defined as democracy in that country. 

That the current concept of democracy as it operates in Ukraine has been built on a legacy that includes the violent overthrow of two elected governments in the past 20 years has created a bit of a paradox for those in the west who would have us believe that Ukraine is among the family of democracies that need defending from a totalitarian Russian regime that threatens us all. 

The problem of explaining that paradoxical idea of democracy is compounded by the way in which it operates in Ukrainian civil society. It’s something that now has to accommodate the banning of the main opposition parties, the confiscation of religious property, the widespread oppression of a minority language and culture and the fact that the current political leadership no longer has an elected mandate to govern. 

It is in the context of having to make that accommodation that western democracies are now increasingly compelled to view freedom of expression as a privilege rather than an essential ingredient of democracy. 

It seems that this is rapidly becoming the justification for an attack not only on those opinions that challenge the open-ended support for Ukraine but, in the case of Germany, the banning of a popular political party that would challenge the government’s policy that is based on seeing Russia as a threat to Europe. 

Meanwhile in Britain, it is openly admitted by a recent government minister that the current leader of Russia commands overwhelming and genuine popular support. However, that is also something that cannot be accommodated within the former minister’s concept of democracy. Rather it is described as an aberration in the Russian character that, by implication, reveals the limitation of freedom of expression. 

We are rapidly approaching the farcical situation where those who present themselves as the leaders of western democracies are reduced to advocating the banning of political parties who refuse to define Ukraine as a democracy and at the same time the same people use openly racist arguments to define the outcome of a democratic process that continues to endorse Russia’s leadership in its conflict with the west.