Objective political differences do not explain authoritarian double standards.

Evidence

If you are about to say, “Well, the two cases are not comparable. Canada is a democracy, whereas the Soviet Union was a dictatorship,” or “Ottawa never tried to starve the population of Quebec to death the way Stalin did Ukrainians,” or so on—I agree with you. But such differences, it turns out, have little to do with the double standard shown above. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1529

Categorization

• XREF: This preemptively blocks the rationalization that the double standard is justified by actual differences — a key move in demonstrating motivated reasoning rather than reasoned disagreement. — connects to: Class politics and anti-authoritarianism are a false choice to refuse outright — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1910