Politics of the West are 'normalizing' by becoming more like Kazakhstan

Here is a story of two statues. Last week, in the Kazakh railway town of Taldykorgan, protesters looped ropes around the bronze likeness of their former autocrat, Nursultan Nazarbayev, and hauled him off his pedestal.

On the same day, in the English port city of Bristol, four protesters were acquitted of causing criminal damage despite cheerfully admitting having toppled the statue of Edward Colston (1636–1721), a local philanthropist, part of whose fortune had derived from the slave trade. Their lawyer argued that the statue was so offensive that rolling it into the harbor constituted the prevention of a hate crime. Incredibly, the jury agreed.