I’m certain that a key pillar of Russian propaganda in the USA is to repeat the horseshit that Europe is some degenerate shithole/caliphate arresting people left right and centre for tweeting. See also the US’s total obsession with London and its supposed “no go zone” for white people. The irony is that the US is far less white than Europe is, so they really cannot point fingers at us. It’s worked fantastically at separating the US from all of its allies. We saw that at the Munich security conference last year.

A lot of the racist and islamophobic talking points get exported from the US, then they seem to mull around in Europe for a while, and eventually the US right wing points at what the right is saying there (particularly in the UK) and reimports the rhetoric, often as if it's now solid evidence.

It happened with anti-vax as well. I remember finding it very striking when I started hearing US anti-vaxxers refer to "the jab" in 2020. That's a term we never used in American English.

e.g. the 4chan meme about the Yuropean Caliphate, etc. etc.

Yeah this is one conspiracy I believe. There's this narrative at the moment that the UK is some dystopian hellhole where you'll get arrested for basically anything you post online. It's very pervasive to the point that fairly normal American people I follow online have repeated such things.

Now, the UK has plenty of problems, I do not deny that. But the situation is nothing like it is presented online.

My thinking is that this is meant to make people in the US feel that the rising authoritarianism isn't so bad in relative terms "well the UK is far worse!".