Swiss Ph.D student’s dismissal spotlights China’s influence
To be clear, what happened to this kid is horrible and just demonstrates that we have to get serious on this problem.<p>However this comment annoyed me:<p>&quot;«I&#x27;m in Switzerland, not China,» Gerber replied. «I can say what I want here.»&quot;<p>You can tell this kid grew up in the la-la land that is the West, particularly Europe. I find this comment to be an infuriating mix anivete and patronizing.<p>For the naïveté Switzerland is a landlocked country of 10 million people. Tough guys, great companies, great economy, sure. But a minnow. China can and does throw it&#x27;s weight against people in countries like this.<p>For the patronizing part of the comment, it&#x27;s the Western attitude of &quot;this can&#x27;t happen here&quot;, or &quot;that will never get to be so bad&quot; typical of people that are 70 years removed from tyranny (I&#x27;m Western myself, but my parents lived through a dictatorship).<p>This is the attitude that allows people in the West to compartmentalize all the known abuses (snowden leaks, NSA spying on European leaders, Big Tech squashing our rights, etc) and live in a permanent state of double-think.