No you did not. The XX substitution is a clever rhetorical move, but it misses what’s actually being debated. This isn’t about whether a logical predicate can be made to fit many countries; it’s about whether certain state practices are becoming acceptable.
What’s concerning here isn’t “wrong opinions being criticized,” it’s administrative punishment without criminal process: loss of banking access, travel bans, and professional exclusion imposed by executive designation, justified after the fact as “they must be criminals anyway.” That logic works for any XX, and that’s exactly the problem.
This doesn’t make the EU “totalitarian,” but it does point to an illiberal drift where due process is treated as optional if the target is politically unsympathetic. The precedent matters more than the headcount. Once viewpoint + security assessment is enough to trigger real penalties, the boundary between law enforcement and political enforcement starts to blur, regardless of which XX you plug in.
My original intent was to show up a paradoxon: A group of 5 European NGO activists has been put under a travel ban by the US yesterday. Two of them are german members of an organisation called "HateAid", which provides psychological and legal support for victims of hate speech. They are blamed for supporting Internet censorship (= terrorism in US perception) and are therefore denied entry to the US.
Or, in other words:
"We (US) censor them (EU) for supporting censorship."
BTW: I did some research about EU journalists or citizens losing bank access or being put under travel restrictions by administration. I couldn't find an example. Would be great if you could provide some background!
What’s concerning here isn’t “wrong opinions being criticized,” it’s administrative punishment without criminal process: loss of banking access, travel bans, and professional exclusion imposed by executive designation, justified after the fact as “they must be criminals anyway.” That logic works for any XX, and that’s exactly the problem.
This doesn’t make the EU “totalitarian,” but it does point to an illiberal drift where due process is treated as optional if the target is politically unsympathetic. The precedent matters more than the headcount. Once viewpoint + security assessment is enough to trigger real penalties, the boundary between law enforcement and political enforcement starts to blur, regardless of which XX you plug in.