Quote:
Originally Posted by GirlySports
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Every new Saudi leader in the last 30 years has also been a "moderate reformer" in western media. Because the western media is gullible (and also because western media likes to think that western educated people would be moderate).
As for China, in the nineties it was a widely accepted "truism" that capitalism and democracy are inseparable, so it was a very genuine belief among most countries leaderships that introducing more capitalism to China (and Russia and other autocratic former soviet states) would automatically lead to advancements in democracy. This was a major part of "the end of history" that was presumed to be happening after the collapse of the soviet block, and a central part of the Clinton era optimism.
Of course now we all know (something that leftists have been saying all along) that capitalism and dictatorships actually go together quite beautifully, and instead of capitalism bringing democracy to the east it's played a notable part in eroding democracies in the west.