What’s going on in Shanghai, China as I write this may be one of the most disturbing stories in modern history. That’s not because great atrocities haven’t occurred before. No doubt, they have (and in China, no less), but it’s rare to have such a stark look behind the curtain of an authoritarian regime.

Because of advances in cell phone technology and the existence of VPNs, videos are coming out of Shanghai that will make your skin crawl.

The Chinese government is currently instituting a city-wide COVID-19 lockdown that is going further than anything we’ve seen before. People are being sealed into their homes, starving, and without any way to get food while their dogs and cats are being murdered on the streets. Shockingly, those may be the lucky ones, though. Others are being beaten and dragged off by police to “quarantine” centers. Whether they will ever be heard from again is a very real question.

Tucker Carlson dove into the story on Monday evening and put together the most thorough montage I’ve seen covering exactly what is transpiring. As he described it, the CCP has truly instituted hell on earth.

Tucker Carlson on the COVID lockdown in Shanghai: "Has there ever been a clearer picture of what hell is like?" pic.twitter.com/6I1RPtjPIV

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) April 12, 2022

Some of the scenes seem like something out of a dystopian novel. The wails of people crying, unable to leave their apartments as they slowly die due to a lack of nourishment, cut to the bone. And though it’s far less important overall, as someone who has multiple dogs and cats, it’s sickening to see Chinese police systematically murder animals that have had their owners “disappeared.” All the while, government drones are flying around telling people to resist their soul’s urge for freedom.

As I said, atrocities are nothing new, but we’ve never seen anything quite like this. This is next-generation tyranny that has been previously reserved for works of fiction. Yet, here we are, all watching it unfold in real-time. In one clip Carlson shows, a CNN reporter talks about how the police are locking buildings from the outside with padlocks. In another clip, we see a “quarantine” center where people are imprisoned, left with a single toilet and without basic necessities. And for what? Some asinine pursuit of COVID-zero?

Yet, as striking as all this is, it’s important to remember that Chinese communists are not the only ones to promote these kinds of gross, dictatorial tactics. Last fall, Leana Wen, former Planned Parenthood head and now CNN talking head, actually came out in support of not allowing unvaccinated individuals to leave their homes. President Joe Biden himself tried to use the force of government to get the unvaccinated fired from their jobs and isolated from society. It’s a very short walk from those actions to padlocking people in their apartments.

So while I’m absolutely disgusted by what the Chinese are doing, we shouldn’t forget that a lot of mainstream figures right here in the United States wanted the same thing. They just wanted it with a slightly more gentle touch, and if it weren’t for states like Florida standing up and saying no, who knows how far things would have gone. COVID-zero was a mainstream goal of the Biden administration until it wasn’t.

Still, the most pressing matter at this moment remains what’s happening in China. Will the Western world finally grow a spine and extract economic costs from the communists for these rabid human rights violations? I wouldn’t count on it. As of just a few days ago, Dr. Anthony Fauci actually refused to even criticize the Chinese response. Weak leadership produces chaos around the world, and we are getting that in spades under the current administration. You can expect things to get worse.