The same emotions and scenes that played out under communism play out everywhere, they are depressingly human scenes. The triumph of liberalism is coming up with systems that, if followed, transcend the natural monkey-isms of humans. Things like law courts that decide based on evidence rather than common knowledge or deciding tricky questions by vote rather than by what "good people" think. And giving people freedom to do icky things and then letting the good be remembered with the bad.

It can simultaneously be true that the West is a long way from communism and that these scenes look a lot like what happened in times when communism was seriously tried. These are the same dynamics that got out of control and into the halls of power.