Is Jacques Baud the 1st of a new EU classification of ‘Soviet-style’ dissidents?..

 

'Europe still holds elections. Ballots are cast, votes are counted, governments are formed. And yet an uncomfortable question can no longer be avoided:

What is the real value of free elections when entire political outcomes are delegitimised before voters even speak?..........

Historically, the media’s democratic function was adversarial: to question power, interrogate fear narratives, and test official claims. That role has eroded. In its place, we increasingly find narrative alignment rather than scrutiny.

Security framing now substitutes for argument. The familiar refrain—“the Russians are coming”—functions less as geopolitical analysis than as epistemic discipline. Certain questions are no longer answered; they are declared irresponsible to ask.

When media abandons scepticism in favour of message transmission, pluralism collapses without the need for formal censorship......

The lesson is not that contemporary Europe resembles the Soviet Union in brutality or scale. It clearly does not. The lesson is more uncomfortable: systems that lose confidence in pluralism first isolate dissenters socially and institutionally, long before they criminalise them.

Modern technology makes this even easier. Today’s dissident needs not be jailed. He can simply be deplatformed, financially excluded, reputationally blacklisted, and denied access to any forum of consequence—while remaining formally “free.”....

If elections are to retain meaning, they must once again allow voters to choose real alternatives. Otherwise, democracy will not fall dramatically. It will fade quietly—legally, procedurally, and in plain sight.



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