Zelenskyy is an autocrat, bans and arrests political opposition. By Tucker Carlson.
You should know about a political party in Ukraine called Opposition Platform for Life. With 43 seats in parliament, it is the largest opposition party in that country. Over the weekend, the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, banned that party. Opposition Platform for Life is now prohibited from “all activity within Ukraine.”
So, with a single command, Zelenskyy made it impossible for anybody to run against him for president. He did this not just to Opposition Platform for Life, but to ten other political parties that he believed were insufficiently loyal to him. They’re all illegal now.
Obviously, there’s a war underway in Ukraine, and on that basis, Zelenskyy has declared martial law, but we must tell you, there is no evidence that the opposition parties he banned were aiding Russia in its war against Ukraine.
Opposition Platform for Life, for example, denounced the Russian invasion the moment it happened, just like everybody else. But Zelenskyy took the opportunity to turn Ukraine into effectively a one-party state, which it now is.
So having banned all opposition, he then seized control of the country’s media outlets. Zelenskyy signed a decree that combines all national television channels into a single platform that he controls. He described this as a “unified information policy,” and it certainly is unified. …
Zelenskyy has been solidifying complete control over Ukraine for a long time, since long before the Russian invasion and the war. Last year, he had his main political opponent arrested and his assets seized by the state. At the same time, Zelenskyy shut down three of Ukraine’s most popular television networks — channels that, not coincidentally, had criticized him. …
Uh oh, look what Washington is saying:
On the very same day that Zelenskyy shut down opposition media and all opposition political parties, professional liar and Atlantic Magazine pundit David Frum posted this on Twitter verbatim: “Ukraine may be the first example in human history of a country that, under the pressure of war, is becoming ‘more’ tolerant and ‘more’ liberal.”
Right, so when you outlaw all criticism of yourself, that’s called tolerance. It’s called democracy. Don’t take the word of a single Canadian warmonger, propagandist. David Frum is hardly alone in telling you that. All of Washington is telling you that. …
It’s entirely natural to root for the Ukrainians to expel the invaders, and obviously we are rooting for them to expel the invaders, Russia. But just because what Russia has done in Ukraine was wrong doesn’t mean you have to lie about the Ukrainian government. In fact, if you really cared about the Ukrainian people and all the people you saw on TV — “we care so much” — you wouldn’t want them to live under a dictator, so you’d be highly upset about what Zelenskyy just did, but our leaders are not upset in the slightest. They’re cheering it on even when they know better. So, some of it is too dumb to know, but some of them do know.
Michael McFaul, for example. He’s Barack Obama’s ambassador to Russia. … McFaul actually understands Eastern Europe. He has lived there. He knows exactly who Zelenskyy is and exactly what he’s doing. So, here’s his assessment of the Ukrainian government, not the people, the government, as of this afternoon. “If Zelenskyy remains in power, Ukrainian democracy is preserved.” …
Again, Ukraine was invaded by its neighbors, and we oppose that, we should oppose that, but that doesn’t mean Ukraine is a democracy. It’s not and we shouldn’t tell Americans it is because that’s a lie. We should tell the truth, but virtually no one is telling the truth. Everyone is lying.
So why? Why is everyone lying? Why not just say, “Look, it’s outrageous that Russia did this and….we like Ukraine better. We’re going to support Ukraine.” Fine. Why go the extra step to tell us that Ukraine is a model democracy when it’s not at all? Why are they doing that? Maybe because Ukraine now has exactly the sort of democracy they’d like to see here in the United States. They hate to think that could be true. It’s scary to think that’s true, but ask yourself. Play this word game. If they can find a “national security pretext” for a war, for example, do you think Adam Schiff and Kamala Harris or Mitch McConnell would pause for even a second before banning their political opponents for running for office in this country? Do you think they would hesitate before pulling this show off the air forever? No, of course not. They’d do it in a flash. Then they call it democracy.
So, maybe you’re starting to conclude these people love Zelenskyy, not because he represents the Ukrainian people, but because Zelenskyy is exactly the leader they would like to be with wildly expanded war powers to make everyone who complains shut up at gunpoint.
hat-tip Stephen Neil
