Freelance journalist Leonid Ragozin. Photo courtesy Leonid Ragozin/Facebook.

An old Soviet joke recounts the story of a Englishman and a Russian debating the merits of their respective political systems. “The difference is this,” says the Englishman, “I can stand outside Number 10 Downing Street, wave a placard, and shout ‘Down with Margaret Thatcher,’ and nobody will arrest me.” “But I can do that too,” says the Russian, “I can stand outside the Kremlin, wave a placard and shout ‘Down with Margaret Thatcher,’ and nobody will arrest me either!”

I am reminded of this by the reaction of a large number of Western journalists and political commentators to the news that the Latvian government plans to declare emigre Russian journalist Leonid Ragozin “persona non grata” and expel him from the country (precisely where to isn’t clear, as probably the only country that would be willing to take him would be Russia, and then, one suspects, primarily in order to lock him up in jail).

Take for instance, the reaction, of Latvian economics journalist Ivo Butkevics, who remarked on X that “No one is restricting Ragozin’s free speech. He is simply free to express it elsewhere.” On New Year’s Eve, Russians like to watch a film called The Irony of Fate, and it is perhaps an irony of fate that the Western world has begun to sound very like someone out of a Soviet joke. But it is symptomatic of the Orwellian turn in liberal “democratic” politics. For the “defence of democracy” against the alleged threats of foreign interference and disinformation now serves as the cover for the suppression of unwelcome voices.

A freelance journalist, who has reported for the likes of the BBC and Al Jazeera, Ragozin has lived in the Latvian capital Riga since 2014, having left Russia due to his opposition to the government of Vladimir Putin. He is of what I would call the........

© Canadian Dimension