Comments by "bj0rn" (@TheLivirus) on "Financial Times" channel.

  1. His assertion that Russia is more democratic than UK is extremely questionable. I'm sure Russian elections employ legitimate "universal direct secret ballot", but democracy is so much more than what happens on the election day. As Boss Tweed famously put it: "I don't care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating". For example, for democracy to work properly, all citizens should have fair and equal opportunity to: (1) form an accurate understanding of how society works, its social and economic situation and the challenges it faces, (2) to learn or form new ideas and to communicate and discuss them with other citizens (3) to participate in the election as a candidate. All political candidates/parties should also have a fair and equal opportunity to communicate their ideas to the electorate sufficiently before the election. The fact is that liberalism addresses these concerns by upholding rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press/media, etc. Putin, on the other hand, has a record of showing little respect for these principles. I'm not saying UK is perfect in this regard, but surely it is ahead of Russia.
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  2. Putin's diagnosis of the rise of Trump, Brexit, and anti-establishment sentiment in the west rings very true. We need to take this opportunity to look inwards and reevaluate what kind of society we are trying to build and if that is what we want.
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