If Russia can be sufficiently demonized in the eyes of the Western public by their governments, then the political context is created for drastic measures, which would otherwise be seen as unacceptable infringements of democratic rights. Measures that go way beyond economic sanctions and into the realm of media censorship. How weird is that? The "free world" which deplores «Russian authoritarianism» moving towards media censorship and policing what it deems as "thought-crime".

It was inevitable: West now going full guns for ban on Russian media

Ahead of the vote, the issue was debated at a plenary sitting, with a report "calling for stronger counter measures" having been presented the lawmakers, according to the European Parliament. The report, written by a Polish member of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, Anna Fotyga, said that Russia aims to "incite fear and divide Europe" along with terrorist organizations, such as Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).
[..]
RT was cited as one of the alleged propaganda "tools". It said that Moscow has an influence on media markets and societies in the EU and other countries. Fotyga told the European Parliament, "surely the citizens of the United States of America are also the target of Russian propaganda with the use of many tools such as Russia Today [RT]."

"It comes to being ridiculous when the same report includes a threat coming from ISIL and from Russia, it demonstrates that people have lost their mind and sense of reality," French MEP Jean-Luc Schaffhaueser told RT, adding that the situation is now at a point where he doesn't know "whether to cry or to laugh".

The EU "desperately needs an enemy, be it Russia or any other," that it can blame for any of its own failures, the MEP said. "No one [in the parliament] wants to admit that EU ideology has led to the current situation, the bloc's economic, social and political fiasco," Schaffhaueser added.

"We are lucky that there is Russian media and other media that stand against [the EU's] official propaganda. In Europe, its institutions and parliament, they refuse to see the obvious, to see the truth. And I am saying that we are lucky because it's European democracy that is at stake," he said.

During the debate, Spanish MEP Javier Couso Permuy denounced the report as an "insult to the intelligence of Europeans."

"This report is insane. It fosters hysteria against Russia and neo-McCarthyism in Europe. It's a caricature of Russia," Permuy said. "This is a dangerous report. It's headed at confrontation and it's an assault on freedom of information. To put terrorist groups like Daesh, which disseminates live videos of torture and murders, on the same footing as a member state of the Security Council and other multilateral organisations which we have a grievance with, is an insult to the intelligence of Europeans."

In the meantime British right-wing UKIP party MEP James Carver noted the report is "worryingly reminiscent of the Cold War."

"Diplomacy and deterrence are delicate mechanisms," Carver said. "Escalation can spiral out of control and lead us to places that I trust nobody in this chamber wishes to go. You have to stop your neo-colonialism and your justification for more European Union and remember the hard learned lessons of the Cold War."

[RT's editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan] said freedom of speech apparently became an "unnecessary luxury" in the European Union once alternative voices such as RT and Sputnik gained popularity.

"Don't they realize that by taking such small steps, related to unwillingness to listen to another opinion, states turn into blind dictatorships and start wars, which no one needs," she added.

Simonyan also slammed Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontieres, or RSF), which she said was selective about journalists it chooses to protect.

"Reporters Without Borders is no longer pretending to protect journalists from all over the world and has finally proved it protects reporters only of its own little world," she said. Earlier in the day, Sputnik's head of the German service, Christoph Dreyer, addressed RSF, a non-governmental organization that is supposed to stand for press freedom, regarding the adopted EU resolution designed to "respond to information warfare by Russia."
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The EU resolution was adopted in Strasbourg with 304 MEPs supporting it, 179 voting against and 208 abstaining. It was drawn up by a Polish member of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, Anna Fotyga, and is based on a report dubbed 'EU strategic communication to counteract propaganda against it by third parties'.

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