Across the world, Western nations face relentless criticism for their historical misdeeds. Slavery, colonialism, and inequality fill textbooks, dominate headlines, and animate the slogans of activists from London to New York. Yet a more subtle trend has emerged: silence around abuses by non-Western powers, both past and present, reveals a double standard that shapes global debates on justice and human rights.

No other civilisation has made such a habit of public self-critique to the extent seen in the West. It is common to see Western schools, universities, and parliaments debating past failings in detail, often to the exclusion of almost everything else. However, as Western societies interrogate their histories, equally grave or worse crimes in China, Russia, or the Middle East often escape scrutiny or are simply explained away.

The very concepts of reason, liberty, and equality are products of the West, but these values are now used by critics who do not apply them equally across cultures.

This selective outrage carries real consequences. Modern slavery continues to flourish across Africa and Asia, yet rarely draws the attention of those who campaign fiercely against the historical slave trade in Britain or the United States. Religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East and China still suffer persecution with little outcry.

International protests regularly target Western oppression, while contemporary abuses outside the West are too often ignored or rationalised. In a striking irony, critics who rail against the West often use rights and freedoms such as free speech and protest that would land them in prison or worse in the very societies they ignore.

The Western tradition of self-examination is a strength, and it is rooted in the freedoms of speech and conscience that arose from the Reformation and Enlightenment. When honest assessment turns into perpetual self-condemnation, however, the result is moral blindness and the weakening of universal standards.

If rights and freedoms are to mean anything, their defence must be consistent and global. Western societies set an example when they hold themselves to account and also call out abuses wherever they occur. To ignore present-day oppression beyond the West is not progress, but a failure of principle.