Indeed, at this point the west has become objectively more repressive than Russia. There's far more censorship, far more people get arrested for social media posts, and now EU is going after communication platforms. Meanwhile, Chomsky pointed out recently that the U.S. censorship is now worse than USSR during Stalin years https://scheerpost.com/2022/07/30/video-is-u-s-censorship-worse-than-soviet-russia/