Perhaps nothing has done more to expose the authoritarian tendencies of many “democratic” leaders throughout the world than COVID-19. Australia has perhaps been the most visible example, with numerous viral videos showing police viciously beating people for transgressions as small as not wearing a mask in public. Then there are the COVID concentration camps where people are forced into multi-week confinement — even if they aren’t positive for the virus.

The scenes out of Europe are hardly better. Today, a video emerged that is so brutal that you’d think it was filmed in mid-’30s Germany. It comes from Amsterdam, and involves police assaulting people and attacking them with dogs.

NOW – People mauled by police dogs, beaten with batons at unauthorized protest against Covid restrictions in #Amsterdam.pic.twitter.com/BR5pUBqHuc

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) January 2, 2022

If you can’t watch the video, what it shows is a dog latching onto a man’s arm, while police beat him (and others) with batons for “breaking” COVID restrictions. Worse, once the man is on the ground, arm bent back, and likely injured, the police just continue to hit him instead of ordering the dog to release him. As the scene unfolds, other police officers gather around to block the view of cameras filming the incident.

It was an absolutely disgusting spectacle, and it happened in a nation that is ostensibly a “free” democracy. Yet, these Western countries aren’t operating as such. Rather, they are mimicking the tactics of communist and fascist nations throughout history, all the while still insisting they hold some moral superiority over the next tin-pot dictator.

But that moral authority is burning down before our eyes, and that’s assuming these nations even had any left after the last two years of draconian, tyrannical, COVID mitigation measures. If Western democracies can morph into the CCP over a virus, what can’t they do?

There will always be the “next crisis” to feed the next power grab, and once you allow authoritarians a taste for total control, they never relinquish it. That’s why those who are fighting back in the streets right now, including that man in that video, are so important. While many on the left in the United States scoff at the idea of individual rights right now, we cease to have a society worth preserving the moment those rights are taken away — no matter what the excuse is.

Here’s the bottom line: You cannot claim to be better than the tyrants when you aren’t actually better than the tyrants. Right now, Western nations that once claimed to be beacons of freedom and prosperity are showing their true colors. That’s not only morally repulsive, but it’s a dangerous situation for the world. China and Russia are more than happy enough to use the moral ambiguity fostered by many of the world’s “democracies” over the last two years to justify their own authoritarian goals.

This didn’t have to happen, but far too many people got far too comfortable with the idea that their leaders were “different” and could be trusted. But they aren’t different, and now the Overton window has been moved to the point where public beatings for not wearing an ineffective facemask or daring to exit one’s home are now seen as acceptable and necessary.

Decades of built trust and moral authority in the West have been flushed down the toilet. And for what? To combat an airborne virus we can’t control anyway? One can only hope this represents a wake-up call for enough people that some ground can be retaken.