France has recently arrested Pavel Durov, creator of the Telegram application that serves as a free speech platform, as part of the intensifying crackdown on free speech in the increasingly totalitarian West.

They accused him of, basically, enabling all kinds of real or imaginary crimes that someone did or could do using his platform because he didn’t censor enough and didn’t allow the governments to spy on people enough.

The thing is, if they actually have evidence for any of those things, it means they caught the people who committed crimes, proved it in court, and those people are now behind bars, so the problem doesn’t exist. If they couldn’t prove those accusations in a court of law, then they are mere slander and people making them should be punished.

Which is it?

Also, if drug dealers or pedophiles used Telegram to enable their activities, they also likely used the local grocery store to buy food, also to enable their activities. They also used electricity, water and other communal infrastructure to enable their activities. The argument that someone used something to enable some illegal activity is perfectly worthless, because until someone is actually sentenced for a crime in a court of law, everybody should treat them as if they were innocent and not pass any judgment, unless, for instance, they actually witnessed a crime, in which case they need to report it and testify to that effect in a court of law.

Everything in the West has been turned upside down and is currently the exact opposite of what used to be a free society. For instance, the financial system is legally obliged to constantly pressure everybody to provide evidence of their innocence of either money laundering or financing terrorism or whatever is currently fashionable. This is sheer insanity. Rather, the state should offer evidence of crimes being committed, the state attorney should request seizure of documentation, suspension of service and so on, based on the actual facts that infer guilt, instead of asking everybody to continue proving their innocence in order to keep having access to services, which is what a totalitarian state would do, and in fact does. People are being prohibited from using services right now, not because they did anything wrong, but because their nationality or place of residence was put on some “entities list” by America, which seems to spread totalitarianism and everything else that is in stark contrast to the wording and intent of their own constitution, around the world. Also, the fact that America and its allies seem to be extremely threatened by any restriction on their ability to perform complete, unconditional and unrestricted control over every single person in the world, in their actions, words and thoughts, is the most sinister and totalitarian thing in history.