Freedom of Speech

With the Republican frontrunner Donald Trump poised to receive another 19 months of substantial media attention ahead of the 2024 US presidential election, it is crucial for American media outlets to reconcile with the role sensationalized media coverage of his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns played in the global proliferation of right-wing authoritarian populism.

Throughout the 2016 presidential election, Trump’s term in office, and the 2020 campaign, American journalists, lured by the financial gains of Trump’s divisive rhetoric, continually failed to uphold their responsibility to provide balanced political coverage.

Coverage of his 2016 campaign, in particular, revealed the media’s financially-motivated affinity for sensationalism and the powerful allure of the increased readership associated with Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric and character. The press is expected to justify differing levels of candidate coverage using specific criteria for candidate viability: fundraising levels, endorsements, and polling results. However, even though Trump maintained shortfalls across all three criteria, he received 63% of the media coverage throughout the primaries and 15% more coverage than Clinton during the general election. And, data collected by mediaQuant shows that Trump received more free media coverage than Clinton, Sanders and Cruz combined, the equivalent of $5.6 billion dollars in paid advertising.

Skewed media coverage of Donald Trump has, in this sense, made American journalists complicit in the global increase in democratic backsliding, continually providing a platform through which Trump’s rhetoric has legitimized violent extremism, radicalization and charged narratives surrounding race, nationalism and nativism.

Throughout the Trump era, the U.S. experienced a dramatic shift toward autocratization. According to data from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) research project, a global social science data collection effort which aims to examine the successes and failures of global democracies, the U.S.’s Liberal Democratic Index score decreased from 0.85 to 0.72 and the country’s ranking among the world’s liberal democracies dropped from 17th to 29th during Trump’s term in office.

Similar trends were experienced globally as 2017 represented a period of democratic crisis during which foundational principles including minority rights, freedom of the press, and free and fair elections, deteriorated. According to V-Dem’s 2018 Democracy Report, the number of countries experiencing democratic backsliding equaled the number of countries making democratic progress for the first time in 40 years, signaling an increase in the momentum of global autocratization. The report also found that the factors which make elections meaningful–freedom of expression and media autonomy–were similarly at risk.

And, although it would be unfair to hold Trump solely accountable for this global democratic recession, a trend which has been ongoing since 2006, his inflammatory rhetoric and actions played an undeniable role in emboldening global authoritarian leaders and augmenting the political acceptability of right-wing demagoguery tactics.

Parallel to the rise of Donald Trump in the United States, populist authoritarian leaders have experienced success in other democracies across the world including Brazil, India and the Philippines.

Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, for example, nicknamed the “Tropical Trump,” found electoral success in 2018 with a platform that borrowed heavily from Trump. The first right-wing Brazilian President, Bolsonaro openly admitted his admiration for Trump and has even adopted his persona at times, making use of similarly inflammatory homophobic, misogynistic and racist comments. Notably, the intense anger of his campaign rhetoric and platform played perfectly with the Brazilian people’s frustration with the ongoing economic crisis and corruption scandals, mirroring Trump’s ability to tap into the economic anger of white working-class voters.

Furthermore, the American media’s obsession with the former president, combined with Trump’s embrace of autocratic leaders from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Russia has created a global environment in which totalitarian regimes are more digestible, emboldening repressive behavior and loosening the constraints on authoritarian leadership. Particularly, in Egypt’s case, Trump’s admiration for President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s leadership style appears to have opened the way for Sisi to crack down on freedom of the press. Employing Trump’s ‘fake news’ rhetoric, in 2018, the country passed a restrictive law thinly veiled as a crackdown on the spread of misinformation.

Before 2018, Egypt had already been using ‘fake news’ charges to prosecute and charge journalists. But, with the new law, their Supreme Council now has the power to suspend websites, fine editors, and require licenses for websites. And, many other countries including Belarus, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Russia, and Singapore have also been inspired by Trump’s ‘fake news’ rhetoric and are similarly using the spread of misinformation as an excuse to clamp down on journalists.

Additionally, the success of Trumpism in America has also inspired an increased use of right-wing demagoguery tactics globally. Across Europe, for example, right-wing populist parties and candidates, willing to capitalize on a growing sense of disillusionment with economic inequality as well as heightened fears of immigration, experienced significant electoral success throughout the two years immediately following Trump’s 2016 victory. The Alternative for Germany, a right-wing, anti-euro and anti-immigration party, won 12.6% of the vote in September of 2017, allowing them to enter the Bundestag for the first time. French far-right candidate Marine Le Pen won 34% of the vote share in the May 2017 presidential election and the far-right party in Sweden became the third largest bloc in their parliament in 2018.

And, beyond figures like Bolsonaro, who openly avow adoption of Trump’s tactics, many other right-wing politicians have more subtly borrowed from Trump, refraining from vocalizing any direct support, but still making strategic use of his demagoguery tactics.

In a study commissioned by the Guardian, for example, Team Populism analyzed the speeches of 138 world leaders and found Theresa May’s rhetoric, British Prime Minister from 2016-2019, to be as populist-leaning as that of Trump, Bolsonaro, and Orbán. In speeches given throughout 2016 and 2017, May, a champion of Brexit, played upon the British working-classes’ disdain for “people in positions of power,” emphasizing the validity of working-class patriotism, as well as their concerns about immigration, crime, and job security. May’s choice to frame her populist discourse around the idea that the liberal elites are ignoring the needs of the common people and continue to betray them by supporting immigration distinctly calls back to the nativist and nationalist discourses that Trump leaned so heavily upon.

Additionally, in 2017, former President of Argentina Mauricio Macri, similarly reproduced Trump’s “America First” rhetoric, making reference to the “criminals” coming to Argentina “to commit offenses” and the need to prioritize Argentines above all others. And, shortly after a string of immigration restrictions from the Trump administration, Macri, an immigrant himself, announced measures allowing the government to more easily restrict the entry and initiate the deportation of immigrants.

However, as Trump prepares for another presidential run and the global democratic recession continues, it is unclear whether the American media has learned from their mistakes. Media coverage of the January 6 insurrection, as well as CNN’s May 11 town hall paint an unpromising picture.

For some experts, Biden’s 2020 victory signaled the beginning of the end of the global popularity of right-wing autocrats. However, American journalists failed to refocus their coverage after the Jan. 6 insurrection, continuing to put Trump in the spotlight. A study conducted by Pew Research Center, which analyzed coverage of Biden’s first 60 days in office across 25 news outlets, found that Trump was mentioned in roughly half of the stories that should’ve been focused on the early work of the Biden administration. And, even as the Biden administration continued to progress through their early days in office, rather than shifting focus to coverage of Biden’s policy goals, reporters remained fixated on Trump.

Furthermore, the May 11 CNN town hall highlighted the ongoing challenges faced by American media outlets in balancing their desire to provide coverage of the former president without giving him free reign to espouse dangerous far-right extremist beliefs. The event essentially turned into a campaign rally for the former president with the audience cheering on his most instigative statements and laughing along as he ridiculed E. Jean Carroll. And, with the backing of a friendly audience, Trump quickly realized that he could say and do whatever he wanted and pounced on every opportunity to steamroll the moderator, Kaitlan Collins.

Facing heavy criticism from the public, CNN defended the town hall as an attempt to allow Trump to speak to a more mainstream audience, removed from the far-right extremist bubble he typically operates in. However, the event has simultaneously been characterized as a calculated effort by CNN leadership to lure back some of the viewership lost to Fox News over the course of Trump’s GOP dominance.

Therefore, as the 2024 presidential primary bids roll in and Trump once again launches on the campaign trail, it seems likely that his ongoing indictments, criminal investigations, and civil trials may lure the media into a repeat of 2016. However, this skewed coverage has tangible impacts not just for American politics, but for the global stage as well, a reality that should encourage American journalists to re-evaluate their pitching instincts, newsroom practices and the necessity of striking an appropriate balance between financial incentives and responsible political coverage.

July 22, 2023 0 comment

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Unraveling Freedom: The Demise of Roe v. Wade and Threats to Global Reproductive Rights

written by Nina Parsee

In the landmark 1973 decision of Roe v. Wade, the United States Supreme Court ruled that an individual’s right to terminate or continue a pregnancy was their own, completely independent of government involvement. In this case, a Texas law banning abortion without medical consent to save a woman’s life was challenged by Jane Roe. The Court found that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment granted all citizens a fundamental right to privacy, and ruled that a woman’s right to access an abortion is encompassed within this Amendment. As a result, the federal government mandated that within a woman’s first trimester of pregnancy, state legislatures were no longer allowed to regulate or restrict a woman’s ability to have an abortion.

Following this ruling, the US was venerated as a leading nation advancing gender equality and women’s rights. However, its longstanding rival, the Soviet Union, was the first modern state to legalize abortion in 1920, over half a century earlier. Relative to other countries, where society’s foundations lie in the purest expression of patriarchal regulation, mandates restricting women seemed absent in the US. In Afghanistan, women are forced to wear a hijab and are closely regulated from decision-making as fundamental as their outer garment clothing. Similarly, until 2018, women were prohibited from driving in Saudi Arabia. This same year the Saudi King signed a royal decree aiding progressive reform, the United States began a pattern of regressive development. The SCOTUS ruled that individuals working at crisis pregnancy centers could provide misleading information and wrongfully pose as medical professionals, breaching medical credibility. This ruling went unaddressed and later became subject to manipulation, undermining democracy and leading to greater violations of human rights foreseen a few years later.

In June of 2022, a case by the name of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was brought to the Supreme Court of the United States. This case questioned whether Mississippi’s recent law, titled the “Gestational Age Act,” was unconstitutional, as it banned all abortions 15 weeks into pregnancies. In analyzing this statute, members of the Supreme Court concluded that there was no mention of the right to abortion within the Constitution, and as such, this right should not be endowed with protection. In reaching this determination, the precedent established in 1973 by Roe v. Wade was overturned. As a result, abortion rights in the United States are no longer federally protected.

With the US at the forefront of international authority and influence, the ruling set forth by Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization will likely set a precedent for future judicial legislation. This monumental verdict is expected to influence countries that remain skeptical about protecting reproductive rights while serving as justification for those with existing strict regulations. As the only country in the European Union with restrictive laws on abortion, Poland has faced strenuous pushback from the international community. Since the start of 2021, the state’s seemingly Christian government has implemented nearly a complete ban on abortion. Legislation passed alongside the nation’s Constitutional Tribunal has deemed the most common abortion measures illegal. However, with the overturn of Roe, Polish leaders now turn toward the US in moments of dissent, arguing that one of the EU’s primary allies promoteshas implemented parallel policies.

The US has already seen a surge in funding toward anti-abortion groups and a divestment in reproductive health. A recent study by the Associated Press found that around $89 million in tax dollars had been funneled into religiously affiliated pregnancy centers in the past fiscal year. As a global superpower with the world’s largest economy, the US and its funds are relied upon by many nations to aid their endeavors. These states will likely align themselves with the country’s new politicized stance on reproductive rights in the hopes of economic reprieve.

In 2020, Kenya recognized access to abortion as a human right endowed to its citizens under the nation’s constitution. The decision was made due to a petition, citing the US Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade as a tool justifying access to abortion and sexual health services. A similar act was decreed in Cape Verde and Malawi, where abortion became legalized until certain weeks of gestation due to its favorable reception in the States. Domestic policy in the United States often catalyzes international effects; as such, the overturn of Roe has the potential to hinder the growth of progressive reform on a global scale.

There exists an underlying overlap between the religious, cultural, and governmental beliefs surrounding female worth and compulsory heterosexuality in which women are assumed to be passive recipients of divinely ordained male sexuality. While in the past 30 years, nearly 60 countries have made extensive progress in expanding access to reproductive rights, some have regressed, including Nicaragua, Poland, El Salvador, and now, the United States. Initiating control over women through increased surveillance and the governance of their bodies may begin insidiously; however, it establishes a troubling precedent for the future. In the United States, the land known as the epicenter of freedom, women lack control over their own bodily autonomy. Who is to say other countries will not follow? Accepting this system allows it to endure and ultimately fuels a social dynamic where women have become valuable assets for exploitation. This patriarchal-based culture in which women are exiled from the ability to choose is a weapon used to control and render freedom – the essence of humanity.

July 17, 2023 0 comment

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Another Page in the History Book: Arab Spring Revisited

written by Nathan Akiyoshi

In early 2010, protests erupted in Tunisia in response to the rising government corruption and the resulting economic stagnation. These protests that had begun in Tunisia spread to five other countries in the Middle East: Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain.

The protests in Tunisia spread rapidly because of the rise of social media, which widely publicized the efforts in Tunisia to hold their government accountable for generations of abuse. These uprisings caused President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali to flee to Saudi Arabia after holding power for 23 years. The publicizing of the turmoil in Tunisian is what inspired other countries such as neighboring Bahrain to call for the release of political prisoners and governmental reform. Effects reached as far as Egypt, where protests forced President Hosni Mubarak to step down after 30 years in office. In Kuwait, the protests forced the pro-government parliament to be dissolved due to public pressure. Muammar Gaddafi of Libya and Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen abdicated their positions of leadership as a result of the revolts spreading to their countries as well.

However, despite the initial success of the Arab Spring rebellions, 10 years later, little progress has been shown in the region. As stated in the play Hamilton, “Winning was easy young man, governing’s harder.”

Many of the protests yielded no results and despite some dictators fleeing their countries, the violence conceived under their rules continued. In Syria, matters were actually worsened: overthrowing the government led to the United States being drawn into a costly war in the Middle East.

Looking back at Arab Spring, it seems that the costs of the uprisings outweigh the benefits of establishing democratic governments. The director of the Brookings Doha Center, Tarik Yousef stated that returning home is to return to “fear and intimidation [with] the region experienc[ing] setbacks at every turn.” The aftermath of the Arab Spring shows that the corruption of the governments was so deeply entrenched in society that a few turnovers in administrations would not be enough to wash it out.

Of the countries that rose up in rebellion against their autocratic leaders, only Tunisia remains a democracy. Tunisia is the only country to institute a new constitution, which gave more rights to its citizens through the National Assembly. Comparatively, Egypt and Libya both briefly established democratic governments, but the success was short-lived with both countries returning to autocratic leadership within 2 years. Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria all remained autocratic and continue to be to this day.

The situation within the countries has not improved despite the protests. The job market in countries such as Egypt has continued to decline. According to Ragui Assaad, a research fellow at Cairo Economic Research Forum, the chances for a male Egyptian college graduate to find a job is less than 25% as of 2016. Even in Tunisia, despite reforms and improvements, there are still extremely high unemployment rates, having risen to 37% in 2021.

Part of the problem is the lack of foreign and domestic investment in these countries. There is a vicious cycle in these countries because of a lack of private investors. Investors fear investing their money in the country due to the instability but the lack of investments continues to cause these countries to become increasingly more unstable.

The lack of investment in the countries has sent them into a downward spiral into poverty. Egypt’s economy, despite being the same size as South Korea in 1960 is now less than ¼ the size despite its population being nearly double that of South Korea. The IMF predicted a 4.1% decline in the Middle Eastern economies, part of which can also be attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic and falling oil prices. The stagnation of the economy and the rampant poverty caused another wave of protests that, unfortunately, have gone nowhere. In Iraq, protests were quelled by the use of deadly force where 500 protesters were killed and other activists have been assassinated. In addition, the Covid-19 pandemic allowed many states to implement restrictions on crowds preventing further protests.

An unintended consequence of the Arab Spring uprisings has caused the new authoritarian leaders to tighten their grip on their countries. Many doubt that there will be another uprising as “the first time was kind of [a] miracle. People were fearless and the regime was weak. But now everyone has lost hope. Everyone sees the revolution as a failure that caused more economic problems and more oppression.”

While at the time the Arab Spring uprisings seemed to herald a new era for countries that had languished under brutal authoritarian regimes for decades, the reality was unsuccessful revolutions that led to greater oppression and hopelessness. The Arab Spring has simply become a page in another history book instead of global change. If the Arab Spring had been successful in its goal of establishing democratic governments in countries that had been authoritarian for decades, it could have set a precedent for the spread of democracy around the world. However, the protests never bore the desired fruit, and instead, despite initial progress, internal and external factors have prevented real change from occurring in these countries.

June 29, 2023 0 comment

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Colombia’s Tumultuous Summer in Review

written by Annabelle Werner

Earlier this year, surreal images poured out of major Colombian cities and into international news headlines. Videos emerged of thousands gathered in the streets, draped in Colombian flags and carrying posters composed of mismatched materials and biting phrases. Dramatic photos of collisions with policemen dressed in layers of black armor depicted dystopian-like scenes. These dramatic images are evidence of a nearly seven weeklong, nationwide protest that initially began as a resistance to a tax hike amidst the state’s economic crisis. The government’s security forces had countered the initial demonstrations with a militarized police response, and tales of abuse at the hands of officials escalated the situation. The protests soon evolved into a mass movement against police brutality as well as a cry for social and economic reform. It is important to note that 88.5% of the protests were peaceful, but it was these instances of excessive force that drew international condemnation from human rights groups, leaders of international organizations, and other governments alike. The National Protests called into question the taboo attached to peaceful protest in Colombia’s post conflict society.

As of July 20^th, the National Strike Committee has technically resumed these protests, although the initial movement between April 28^th to June 15^th of 2021 was an exceptional period of mass mobilization. The world will watch and anticipate any new reforms announced by the new Congressional session, and wonder if the relationship between security and the right to peaceful protest in Colombia will be reconceptualized. Until then, this article will review the timeline of the initial protests, highlight the findings of various human rights reports, and provide an update of the latest political and legislative outcomes.

In late April of 2021, President Iván Duque Márquez proposed a new tax reform policy that would have lowered the salary threshold that could be taxed, eliminated many current tax exemptions, and increased the amount of goods included in Value Added Tax (VAT). This anticipated financial burden catalyzed massive resistance. Colombians were already suffering from exorbitant poverty rates and rampant income inequality that is only being exacerbated by the pandemic: 3.6 million people have been pushed under the poverty line in just a year while the state’s three richest men own more than 10% of Colombia’s GDP. Protests broke out all over the country, and the National Strike Committee formed in order to represent a multitude of subgroups within the protest movement including unions, indigenous organizations, civil society, and student groups.

While a large majority of the protests were peaceful, demonstrators were met with violent force from the state security forces including Colombia’s police riot unit, ESMAD. According to an Atrocity Alert in early June by the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect, “Colombian human rights organizations have identified almost 3,500 cases of abuse, including killings, excessive use of force, torture, disappearances and sexual violence”. Types of excessive use of force include tear gas, water cannons, rubber bullets, and even live ammunition. The abuses committed by the police perpetuated and escalated the situation.

While protests broke out over the entire nation, the majority of the violence against protestors was centered in the city of Cali. This is most likely due to a culmination of factors such as the ongoing economic recession and instances of social inequality, but also structural racism against the large Afro-descent and indigenous populations within the city. Further complicating the situation and contributing to the social unrest is the region’s history of conflict with internal armed groups. One prominent lens of explaining why so much of the violence occurred in Cali is that the security forces in this region are equipped to fight against paramilitaries, and were not trained to handle peaceful protestors. In regard to such conflicts, the police have been regarded as a “critical player in a counterinsurgency strategy” which was key to holding territory and bringing about the 2016 Peace Agreements. Yet many are calling for a paradigm shift in use of the police, particularly how they view peaceful political protest: as a human right exercised by fellow citizens, not as an act of armed rebellion.

Throughout the first seven weeks of protests, Amnesty International found three major human rights violations that were committed in Cali, including an attack on the Indigenous Minga community, an attack near Valle University, and a joint incursion known as “Operation Siloé”. These violations were characterized by excessive and lethal force by National Police Officials or by armed citizens with the acquiescence of police officials.

Amnesty International published a recommendation that the Colombian authorities should not respond to peaceful protests by trying to “stigmatize” protestors as criminals. One could conclude that by painting such a narrative over the seven week period, the government incited enough fear to drive counter protests, enable armed civilians, and publicly justify the deployment of military troops. The situation seemed to be increasingly escalating as protestors responded to the troops by blockading roads and bridges trying to cause economic damage and block the flow of goods.

The situation deescalated when the National Strike Committee announced the pause of protests after nearly seven straight weeks in order to allow for political negotiations. While the initial negotiations for a pre-agreement failed, the National Strike Committee developed a 10-point plan of demands to propose at the next congressional session on July 20^th. Some of these asks included the dismantling of ESMAD (the riot police unit), health care reform, and universal income. Protestors also promised to restart the protests during the next legislative period to further pressure government officials for these demands.

So far into the new legislative period, President Duque’s administration has asked Congress to implement human rights training for police and measures such as visible QR codes on police uniforms, but has not called to dismiss ESMAD. Rather, Duque has said that Colombia “will seek international expert advice on best practice for the ESMAD”. Currently, three police officers are facing murder charges and seven will be tried for “failing to uphold their duties” when they allegedly stood by while civilians opened fire at protestors.

During this new session, the Duque administration has presented a $3.95 billion tax reform bill to congress. The bill is supposed to raise 15.2 trillion pesos per year, which is significantly less than the 23.4 trillion pesos per year that was defined by the tax reform bill back in April.

“‘The social investment law, which we will build between all of us, is the largest jump in human development in recent decades’” Duque said on July 20^th. His administration also spoke on how important the new bill is to ensuring social programs. Yet, do the reforms represent a meaningful shift in how the state views the right to protests and the role of security forces, or are these reforms just designed to be enough to placate domestic and international pressure?

Some Colombians worry that the reforms in the new bill are superficial. Journalist Mario Murillo describes one particular example of this outcome in an interview by Democracy Now. He referenced one component of the 10 reforms, the demand to move the National Police from the Defense ministry into the Interior Ministry, which was hoped to bring about the demilitarization of the police and to encourage a paradigm shift to thinking of protestors as citizens, not as combatants. Yet, instead of removing the National Police from the military, the new reform bill simply gives them new, different color uniforms that are supposed to be less threatening.

The international community spoke out throughout the summer about the right to peacefully protest in Colombia, and recently human rights groups and international organizations have compiled and published reports on the violence that occurred during this period. The Inter-American Court on Human Rights (IACHR) released its reports and recommendations in July, finding human right violations and urging social reconciliation. Furthermore, the Inter-American Commission will be conducting a Special Monitoring Mechanism for Human Rights in Colombia “to support the consolidation of peace within the various sectors of Colombian society”(OAS).

While these protests and political movements and reforms are still unfolding, the international community envisions a Colombia where the rule of law, security, and the human right to peacefully protest all coexist.

August 24, 2021 0 comment

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Social Media, Protest, and the Freedom of Speech

written by Annabelle Werner

This article is the fourth of five pieces from our summer series for 2020. The theme this summer is “Challenging Narratives.” In the coming days and weeks, The Generation will publish more articles where our writers challenge various notions to provide new and different perspectives on the debates and events shaping your world.

State violence, racial protest, and debates on the freedom of speech are not novel phenomena, but with the advent of social media and its global proliferation, 2020 especially has witnessed a fundamental change in how citizens criticize their government and conduct political protest. In
order for citizens to actualize their fundamental rights in the 21st century, one must navigate the complex relationship between free speech, democratic institutions, and the broadcasting power of social networks. From the Arab Spring a decade ago to the Belarusian election and George Floyd protests of this summer, social media platforms have democratized the ability to rapidly spread information about injustice to millions. Yet as these platforms become increasingly inseparable from our lives, online spaces have become battlegrounds between governments and protesters, and between information and misinformation. Now, the private companies who created these virtual domains must take on a balancing act that was previously reserved for states: protecting the freedom of speech while maintaining public safety. The complication with this role shift is that as international corporations, they must balance many countries’ cultural norms regarding the freedom of speech. To what extent will individual domestic laws be able to influence private, global platforms? In addition, social media companies have the task of remaining politically neutral while protecting election security. They are responsible for codifying checks on their own industry which inherently profits off of scandalous, viral information. The U.S. has seen the influence of online conspiracy theories increase from the 2016 election until now, demonstrating that what goes on in online chat rooms can have effects in the physical world. Conspiracy theories, inflammatory accusations by state leaders, hate speech, and calls for revolutions all violate some sort of public order in physical space, so how will social media platforms design cyber policies that will actualize people’s right to speech while protecting public order? Overall, because social platforms have become whistles for injustice and democratic tools for political organizing, social media companies must develop social media policy that helps users to actualize these freedoms online while fighting against misinformation and hatred that could pose as threats to our democracies.

Social media has catalyzed social and political movements since the Arab Spring in 2011. A viral video filmed by a common bystander ignited this powerful and paradigm altering movement. Mohamed Bouazizi was a 26-year-old fruit vendor who lit himself on fire in front of a government building after refusing to pay a police bribe. He had been unable to find work as a lawyer due to his involvement in the opposition Progressive Democratic Party, and he publicly committed suicide in protest of police harassment and President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s regime. Bouazizi’s death and his funeral were both filmed and sparked mass protests across Tunisia; President Ben Ali fled the country after a 23 year long reign four days after Bouazizi’s funeral. Like dominos, protests erupted across Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, all objecting to autocratic regimes. Social media created the ability for common citizens, especially young people, to collect and share evidence of state brutality. This technology has served as a system for fact checking government propaganda and has allowed opposition movements of repressive regimes to quickly galvanize and organize people in real life. While the results of the Arab Spring did not result in the “political reform and social justice” that was hoped for (Tunisia was the only nation that gained substantial changes in the form of a new constitution), technology was intrinsic to sparking these revolutionary movements and defining a new, 21st century method of actualizing one’s right to speak and assemble.

More recent examples of how social media has empowered everyday people and helped corroborate state brutality can be found in Lebanon and Belarus. In Lebanon, the government’s handling of the harrowing August 4th explosion in Beirut’s port, in addition to existing outrage over the governmental fiscal policy decisions during the nation’s grim economic recession, has ignited protest around the country. Videos of the explosion were disseminated widely across global news, and soon after, videos of excessive uses of force such as the use of tear gas on peaceful protesters began circulating on social media. According to Human Rights Watch, researchers “observed security forces fire a tear gas canister directly at a protester’s head, in violation of international standards, severely injuring him.” A video of the aftermath of that event where the man is being treated for his injuries was posted on Twitter and currently has 119,000 views. In Belarus, protests have broken out after attacks on members of the opposition party and the corruption of the sitting president. Aisha Jung, Amnesty International’s Senior Campaigner on Belarus, said:

“The people who have gathered to denounce the elimination of opposition presidential candidates from the election list have every right to take to the streets…Protesters claim that the sole reason Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s political opponents have been purged from the campaign is so that he can seek a sixth consecutive term as President, effectively unopposed.”

Peaceful protestors are now camped out in front of the Minsk parliament building in what is known as Independence Square. Anyone in the world with access to Twitter can be witness to these powerful moments; they can see the overwhelming crowd from a bird’s eye view and hear the ringing echo of thousands of voices bounce off the buildings. Yet, one can also find graphic videos of unnecessary and excessive force on peaceful Belarusian protesters in the media. These videos and images serve as evidence of state violence, dispel propaganda, and have captured the world’s attention.

One final example of social media’s role in galvanizing protests includes the recent demonstrations for racial justice across the United States which may be the largest social movement in U.S. history. Everyday people of all races and backgrounds, in addition to celebrities, sports teams, and corporations, have been contributing their support for the Black Lives Matter Global Network. The protests were ignited by the George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police on May 25th. 17-year-old Darnella Frazier captured the shocking image of the killing, which showed one officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck as he begged for his life while three other police officers looked distantly on. In America, protests over police brutality and racism have been catalyzed in the past by similar videos taken by bystanders. The Rodney King Riots of 1992 erupted after four Los Angeles policemen were acquitted for a brutal beating of Rodney King, a violent act caught on camera that made national and global news. Since then, technology has become heavily integrated into our lives and vastly accessible to many, so now more than ever the everyday citizen has the ability to record chaotic and events that could later be used to inform others or corroborate eyewitness accounts.

In an analysis of these events, one can view social media and technology as a widely accessible, democratic outlet where nearly anyone can exercise their human right to the freedom of expression. The people can share their voices, experiences, and opinions in ways that can check political regimes. But social media platforms are also private companies that, especially after the 2016 U.S. election, are reviewing their policies and investigating how they will balance the. universal right to free speech and the need to maintain public safety as well as stopping the spread of maliciously false information that could lead to real life disasters and threaten civic
institutions.

In 2016, a bizarre example of how fake social media accounts and conspiracy theories could develop real consequences arose. Crazed rumors about presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s connection to a child sex trafficking ring hidden in a Washington D.C. pizza parlor spread on social media. Bot accounts, which are accounts that “automatically create tweets without direct human oversight”, helped to share and promote information on what became known as “Pizzagate” along with radical online “personalities” like conservative radio host Alex Jones. Edgar Welch, a believer of such theories, showed up to the supposed center of this satanic ring, Comet Ping Pong Pizza, with a “Colt AR-15 assault rifle, a .38-caliber Colt revolver and a folding knife, [and] fired his gun two or three times.” No one was injured, but this strange incident serves as an example of how fake media accounts created for the purposes of smearing a political figure online can have real and violent consequences. More recently, a group founded on similar beliefs to “Pizzagate” called QAnon has amassed followers on mainstream platforms. The Washington Post defines QAnon’s beliefs as

“… a concoction of allegations against Democratic politicians, celebrities and supposed members of a ‘deep state’ government bureaucracy, against whom Trump is seen as waging a valiant battle. Purported pedophilia rings are central to the conspiracy theory, along with Satanism and secret judicial proceedings’. QAnon believers await the ‘Great Awakening,’ or the moment the general public realizes the conspiracy exists, and the ‘Storm,’ when thousands of wrongdoers face justice.”

Despite being labeled a domestic terror threat by the FBI, Facebook only began removing QAnon platforms in August of 2020; this included 790 groups and 440 pages. Conspiracy theorists with fringe opinions spread false information to promote their own interests, interests defined by a system where the more followers one has, the more money one stands to make from advertising deals. For example, Alex Jones was “permanently suspended” from Twitter in 2018 on the grounds that his tweets violated Twitter’s community guidelines against abusive behavior which states “you may not engage in the targeted harassment of someone, or incite other people to do so. We consider abusive behavior an attempt to harass, intimidate, or silence someone else’s voice.” Recently in 2020, Alex Jones and his “InfoWars” app were banned from the Google Play store after spreading false information about the coronavirus; Jones also “lost an appeal in a defamation case about his claims related to the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting” and racked up nearly $150,000 total in legal fees before the trial. Yet, cases where platforms that are actually taken down are the exception, and usually after significant harm has done. The spread of maliciously false information has terrible consequences in reality, especially during a pandemic that requires a collective effort and understanding which is constantly undermined by this misinformation complex.

The benefit of social media is that a single person has the potential to reach millions of people at once, but that also serves as a complication in the balancing act between protecting one’s right to self-expression and ensuring public safety. In America, hateful or inflammatory speech is usually thought of as “lawful but awful” and protected as long as it is not meant to incite imminent violence. But social media platforms span across many nations, all with differing regulations regarding one’s speech. An NPR podcast about free speech and social media discussed how hate speech is not protected in Europe and the EU has developed a solution of writing their guidelines into the terms of service that is signed by users of their regions; they warn platforms of passing restrictive laws against them if these rules are not factored in, while the Trump administration is also threatening legislative action if platforms do not conform to their own standards. This creates a tension unique to an international platform that has to balance the various cultural norms regarding free speech laws.

Another debate influencing free speech online is the one of the major components of Trump’s platform known as “Fake News” which is the idea that traditional media coverage and social media algorithms discriminate against conservative viewpoints. Despite this pervasive allegation from the Right, there has been no evidence to substantiate this claim. In one study, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and the National University of Singapore debunked this assertion of online conservative bias in their work “The Ideological Landscape of Twitter: Comparing the Production versus Consumption of Information on the Platform” where they found that “while partisan opinion leaders are certainly polarized, centrist or non-political voices are much more likely to produce the most visible information on the platform”. Online platforms are methods where both politicians and citizens of many countries can actualize their freedom of expression, but the struggle between governments and these private companies over algorithms and guidelines will only continue as these platforms age and grow.

Finally, other corporations are also weighing in on the issue as Coca Cola, Target and other major companies have recently limited or stopped advertising on Facebook in order to push Facebook to codify new rules regarding hate speech. This debate over the role of the platform in protecting the public order has not only been reactivated by false information about the COVID- 19 pandemic, but about the validity of the U.S. 2020 presidential election as well. Twitter has tacked two disclaimers on President Trump’s tweets this past year about voter fraud and the validity of US elections as well as a tweet “implying [that] protesters in Minneapolis could be shot.” A key factor in this debate over expression on online platforms involves the profile of the speaker. Should public figures with the ability to reach so many, compounded by the legitimacy of their position, have different standards of what they can say on social media than the average person?

Social media has equipped the everyday person with the ability to document injustice and corroborate their experience with evidence. It has catalyzed protests against racial injustice and state brutality in the United States, facilitating one of the largest social movements the world has seen. It has been utilized to ignite revolutions and check autocratic regimes. But social media platforms must practice a balancing act. They must protect the public against false information spread with malicious intent – like defamatory rumors about a political figure spread by an opposition party or hostile government – while also confronting structural incentives that encourage peddlers of misinformation to make millions by circulating hateful conspiracy theories. But who has the right to determine what is a lawful expression of one’s opinion and what are lies intended to incite violence? We know that social media has the power to stir revolutions and instigate social movements. Which movements should be allowed to grow at the risk of violating public order? We also know that social media has the power to make fringe opinions or conspiracies appear to be mainstream understandings. How will companies protect free expression and public safety? Should widely followed accounts of public figures be held to different standards of the acceptability of what they share? Ultimately, this election year will help define this gray area as private social media platforms write new cyber policies to govern virtual communities that have become inseparable from how we exercise our right to expression and protest in our physical ones.

October 27, 2020 0 comment

Asia Cartoon Featured Freedom of Speech

Censor the Pooh

written by Landon Hsieh

September 5, 2018 0 comment

Featured Freedom of Speech Globalization Immigration Interview Journalism Populism UCLA and the World United States

An interview with Fareed Zakaria

written by Andrea Zachrich

Dr. Fareed Zakaria is the host of CNN’s show GPS, a columnist for the Washington Post, a contributing editor for The Atlantic, and a New York Times bestselling author of three books. Born in India, he immigrated to the United States to attend university and went on to receive his Bachelor’s of Arts from Yale and a PhD degree in Philosophy of Government from Harvard. Dr. Zakaria was invited to UCLA to give the annual Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture in Journalism and International Relations. He was kind enough to sit down with members of The Generation before he gave the lecture and answer our questions about immigration, democracy, and journalism with patience, insight, and humor.

Immigration:

The Generation’s first question for Dr. Zakaria concerned the relationship between immigration and populism that he has explained in one of his past articles for the Washington Post, and why this issue is so potent at this particular moment. Zakaria noted a visible rise of “right wing populism” in countries that are both lagging behind economically and those that are succeeding. Yet regardless of their economic prospects, “the one common trait you see is immigration.” What’s to blame for the backlash? Zakaria says its the forces of globalized capitalism.

“Globalized capitalism is a very dynamic but destructive force. We always think about the upside, the new products, the new companies, but we forget about the downside, the destruction of companies and communities. Now that’s what gives [globalized capitalism] its power, its dynamism, its productivity. But there’s a real downside…. And in that, when you go through a particularly accelerated phase of it, which I think we’ve been going through ever since the end of the Cold War, I think it’s easy to accept the globalization of goods, of services, of capital, these are all abstractions. But the globalization of people, that’s very hard.”

In addition, Zakaria observes, paradoxically, that places without many immigrants have the strongest reaction to immigration.

“Where is it that you find this rhetoric about [Donald Trump’s proposed border] wall has played the best? Its in rural Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan. These are not places that have vast numbers of immigrants. The places that have immigrants- New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, the Bay Area – they’re fine, because it’s much easier to fear the unknown, the image, the stories, the scare tactics.”

The combination of the globalization of people and the fear of the unknown person are the causes of this current rise in populism worldwide. Furthermore, Zakaria finds political leadership to be at fault for the populism rearing its head today as opposed to in the past.

“At the end of the day, political leadership matters. You have had one party, and within one party, one person, who systematically drummed up this fear. And of course he had something to play with, there was a great deal to play with in terms of the underlying anxiety. But that’s what leadership does for better or for worse. It takes that raw material and then it can fashion it as it wishes. And it’s always easier to scare people. It’s always much easier to scare people than to give them hope.”

Dr. Zakaria is, of course, referring to President Donald Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric. Throughout his candidacy and presidency, Trump has spewed rhetoric almost daily about building a wall on the Mexican-American border and implementing a ban on Muslim travel to the U.S. According to Zakaria these campaign promises exacerbated fears of immigration and helped lead to the rise populism in the United States.

We also asked Dr. Zakaria about struggles of assimilation in Europe and the United States for new immigrants. He discussed the differences between the two regions, and how he believes it to be much easier for immigrants to assimilate into American society, calling it an “assimilation machine”, and noting that “as an immigrant I can tell you the great challenge for American immigrants, for me with my kids, is to make them retain some small element of the old culture. That is the biggest challenge.” This is in contrast to Europe, where there is “a certain degree of multicultural relativism that said everyone can just live their own lives and practice their own practices even if they were very illiberal practices” and that Europeans have “tended to neglect the issue [of immigration]”. He goes on to make the point that in the U.S every immigrant is trying to assimilate, that every immigrant in the U.S wants themselves and their children to speak English as there are huge economic incentives for doing so. As opposed to the xenophobic rhetoric of President Trump, who often portrays immigrants as the “other,” and as foreigners seeking to come into the country bringing elements of the old culture here, Zakaria paints a different picture of immigrants. He describes immigrants not as people who wish to come to the U.S and retain an “other-ness” but as people who wish to become American and assimilate into the country’s culture.

Democracy:

In the face of numerous events at UCLA that have been canceled or disrupted by student protestors, The Daily Bruin reporter Megan Daley asked Dr. Zakaria about the excessive “political correctness” that is often at fault for such disruptions on university campuses across the country. These students subscribe to a type of individual identity politics that Zakaria finds detrimental to free speech. Last year, for example, Bruin Republicans had planned on hosting conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, but canceled the event amid fears of protests similar to those that occured at UC Berkeley and UC Davis that turned violent and forced the event’s cancellation.

In relation to these events on our campus and others, Zakaria spoke about how excessive political correctness can be detrimental to the university’s goal of creating an environment for discussion and academic discourse. While acknowledging that he understood the impulses of historically marginalized groups who “feel that they want to be full participants, that they want to have their voices heard, [that] they don’t want to be demeaned or marginalized again, or excluded again,” Zakaria argued that the instinct to shut out and not listen to speech they find offensive is harmful and might actually make that speech more attractive to people who see this type of inflammatory speech as “ideas that nobody wants to hear”. He argues that the problem with completely shutting down these ideas “is that the nature of an intellectual arena has to be one that allows open, unfettered conversation, discussion, and debate. And the best answer to bad ideas are good ideas, not to shut down those ideas, to not hear them”. He then broadened his explanation of what he believed to be a systematic problem with the way politics are framed on college campuses.

“People want politics to be primarily about their experience, their identity rather than a shared experience and a common identity. Because if it becomes all about your identity, first of all it becomes impossible to have a common, joint conversation that includes everybody. Secondly, if it’s all about your identity, almost by definition, nobody else can understand it as well as you, so your answers are always going to be right. And again that can’t be the basis on which you can construct a policy. So I think there’s almost a bigger problem which is that politics has become very narrowly personal and very narrowly about these kind of identity issues”.

More recently on February 26th, US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin came to UCLA to give the Arnold C. Harberger Lecture. I attended the lecture that afternoon after the Generation interviewed him. During the lecture, protestors were extremely disrespectful and hissed at Mnuchin as he was speaking. He attempted to laugh off this hissing, and even addressed a protestor directly about why he was hissing, to which the protester replied “I think you’re full of shit!”. These protests made Mnuchin very hostile, flustered, and essentially prevented him from discussing what he came here to discuss, which was United States economic policy and international sanctions. This is an excellent example of Dr. Zakaria’s discussion of identity politics and how this type of politics can prevent academic discourse. These students were only reflecting on their own personal identity as people who feel as though they have been harmed by the Trump administration, and failed to allow for a productive academic discussion. You may not agree with Mnuchin’s policy or business decisions, but shutting down his ideas and not allowing them to be heard only further polarizes people and does not fight “bad ideas” with “good ideas” as Dr. Zakaria advocates academic discussion should do.

Given that that the U.S was recently downgraded from a “full-democracy” to a “flawed-democracy” by The Economist’s Intelligence Unit, Zakaria also discussed the concept of an illiberal democracy as described in his book “The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad.” A liberal democracy is one that we find in places such as the United States, where there is protection of individual liberties from the majority and the government and popular participation in democratic processes. An illiberal democracy is one that keeps its democratic processes but loses its individual liberties and checks and balances. Dr. Zakaria finds this lose of liberal democracy in the United States problematic on “two levels”, for Americans and non-Americans alike. Using disenfranchisement of African American voters as an example to illustrate how this is a problem for citizens, Zakaria stated:

“We are the only democracy that I know of, I haven’t done an extensive study, but certainly the only advanced democracy I can think of where there are systematic efforts to disenfranchise people, to ensure that certain parts of the public don’t vote. You can see this happening today as the supreme court relaxed it’s interpretation of the Voting Rights Act. A whole series of states put in place laws that had only one purpose, which was to make it harder for certain groups of people, primarily African Americans to vote. That’s a pretty big flaw to be living with in a democracy”.

The Supreme Court Case Zakaria is referring to, Shelby County v. Holder (2013), struck down sections 4b and 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which required states to get preclearance from the federal government before changing their voting practices and declared which states must obtain this preclearance based on analysis of past discrimination. Since the decision, states such as Texas and North Carolina among others have enacted Voter ID laws and gerrymandered districts to disadvantage minority voters.

Zakaria then discussed how the downgrade of American democracy is damaging on an international level:

“When you look at violations of democratic rights, of civil rights, of human rights around the world, over the last 25 years certainly, the United States has been a pretty consistent and strong voice opposing. It didn’t always do as much as it could have but this is one thing I think Americans can take a great deal of pride in that the United States was always a voice cataloging these issues and highlighting them”.

This is in stark contrast to what Zakaria sees happening now.

“Today we have a completely different atmosphere. Almost every authoritarian ruler in the world today that has in some way attacked, imprisoned, bankrupted or punished members of the media in his own country has cited Donald Trump’s use of the word ‘fake news’… So here we have our situation where the United States is becoming a role model for an illiberal democracy rather than for democracy, human rights, liberty, and the free expression of ideas. I cannot think of a time in recent memory when you have had dictators around the world using the United States as an example to justify its practices.”

Leaders in Syria, Cambodia, Libya, and China have all used Trump’s term of “fake news” to deny or downplay atrocities in their country or silence political opposition. Rhetoric from leaders of the United States has global influence, and this can either be used to promote democracy or to weaken it. As Dr. Zakaria points out, it currently appears to be doing the latter.

Journalism:

The students from Daniel Pearl Memorial High School asked Dr. Zakaria about the atmosphere when covering stories at the White House during the presidency of Donald Trump. While he does acknowledge that “it’s a great time to be a journalist because the public is fascinated by the news”, he finds covering the White House difficult for two reasons. “One of which is a lot of the interest frankly is in the circus of what is going on in Washington”. He goes on to compare now with what it was like shortly following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center or the collapse of the Soviet Union. Back then, people were concerned about policy and why these events were happened, but “what now we are witnessing is the fascination with the circus of the Trump administration and Trump personally”,

The second reason Zakaria finds it frustrating to cover the White House is because of the hostility towards the press coming from the White House.

“You are living, working in a circumstance where the President of the United States and the administration are systematically and actively hostile to the press, hacking it, threatening legal punishments, non legal punishments, demeaning it, and that’s a very weird atmosphere to live in.”

As discussed earlier, the term “fake news” has spread to leaders around the globe thanks to Trump’s. In January, President Trump handed out “Fake News Awards” to organizations who had given him unfavorable coverage. Dr. Zakaria says these attacks on the press can be especially dispiriting because the United States is meant to be one of the freest countries in the world and the oldest constitutional democracy. He also postulates on what this attitude may mean for the future of democracy in America:

“You think to yourself it’s fine, the institutions are strong but you know, they are only strong until they collapse, until they get weak. I’ve seen that happen in other countries. America is not somehow you know endowed by the creator with some kind of magic force field that will prevent that so that’s the worrying part about this”.

To conclude the interview, I asked Dr. Zakaria what advice he had for novice international affairs journalists such as ourselves. He emphasized that the challenge of writing about foreign places and people in the United States is making Americans care about it. Zakaria elaborates:

“I think we have a huge problem in this country in that we are a vast continent surrounded by two benign neighbors and two vast oceans and so it’s easy to think that the world doesn’t affect the United States and that you can imagine an America First or America Alone agenda, but the reality is that we are deeply interconnected with the world, as we should be.”

Yet Zakaria thinks this problem can be overcome by making the issues more salient to readers. As journalists, he believes we need to show this connection and explain why these problems are important to an American audience. While broader issues such as ethnic rivalry or sectarianism often catch people’s attention, sometimes just “telling a great human story” allows people the opportunity to relate. He concluded, “just recognizing those people out there who look different, and sound different, and worship different gods, you know, there’s often an element of common humanity that we forget.”

Dr. Zakaria was incredibly articulate and a pleasure to speak with. I was both impressed and grateful that he took the time answer all of our questions thoughtfully and thoroughly despite the fact he usually works with higher profile individuals, including presidents and prime ministers. His comments and ideas on immigration, democracy, and journalism come from years of experience as a journalist, and this experience showed. Many thanks to him for taking the time to sit down and talk with us.

March 28, 2018 0 comment

Asia China Featured Freedom of Speech History

The Non-Legacy of Tank Man – The Chinese Government’s Suppression of Activism

written by Xinong Wang

Though technically classified as a “developing country”, the People’s Republic of China holds an enviable place in the international arena as the world’s second largest nominal GDP and third largest global firepower. Governed by of the Communist Party of China (CPC) since 1949, China’s autocratic government presides over a population of almost 14 billion. Though these 14 billion people reside in one of the world’s most powerful countries, they are amongst the world’s most politically disempowered people; China as a country currently ranks eleventh worst in personal freedoms and fifth worst in freedom of press. Travellers to and from China are subject to a strict system of visa regulations, which, along with heavy government censorship, help insulate China from the rest of the world. Activism, from political reform to investigating fair trade practices in Chinese factories, is treated negatively by the government. In a country so large the people theoretically hold a tremendous amount of power. China’s vast population gives rise to the largest standing army in the world. Even if only the smallest fraction of people chose to participate, small insurgencies could escalate to a sizeable revolutionary force. As such, the CPC opts for the harshest of measures, from internet censorship to disappearances of dissenting individuals, to control its massive population under its dictatorial regime – it is a government that fears its own people.

The CPC has a history of using force against the civilian population to suppress their movements. Almost thirty years ago, military tanks opened fire and killed an unknown number of university students (estimates range between several hundred to over a thousand) who were advocating for political reform. This is what is now known as the Tiananmen Square incident of June 4th, 1989. This incident spawned the internationally famous “Tank Man” – the unidentified man who was removed by the authorities for standing in front of four tanks to slow their path towards the protesters. The identity and fate of this man remain speculative to this day. An iconic photo of his moment of defiance is widespread overseas, but Tank Man is not common knowledge within China. The entire incident at Tiananmen Square, including Tank Man, has been meticulously erased from history books, textbooks, films and television. News reports, documentation, statistics of casualties, or any mention of the event by news and entertainment are banned within mainland China. Censorship is meticulous; over 260 words, phrases, and dates categorised as “sensitive” are blocked, regulated, or filtered online. Some are as seemingly innocuous, random, or indirect as “63+1” (adding up to 64 – the date of the incident), “stock market” (referencing the Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index falling 64.89 on the 23rd anniversary of the massacre), or “gugudian” (a nonsensical phrase which has become a euphemism for tanks rolling over people). On the 24th anniversary of Tiananmen Square, an image which replaced the tanks in the iconic Tank Man photo with giant rubber ducks circumvented censorship and began circulating the internet. Following this, Chinese media began monitoring the words “big yellow duck”.

This entire incident and the government’s response enshrines how threatening activism is to the CPC’s autocratic rule. It relies on the inaction of its truly massive population, and censorship helps erase both the insurgency behind protests and the government’s brutality towards its own people. Statistics show that this censorship is working. Only 15 out of 100 students across four college campuses in China’s capital, Beijing, recognised the image of Tank Man in 2015. Even overseas in Chinese territories Hong Kong and Taiwan, sympathy for the protesters and their memory is dwindling while support for China’s actions is growing. In an Orwellian manner, the CPC has recrafted history to remove the offending incident from public memory. The population finds it harder and harder to hold onto an incident it cannot remember, much less prove.

China’s suppression of activism is not limited to the Tiananmen Square incident. Activism validates both the idea that it is legitimate for citizens to be dissatisfied with their government, and that individuals can be effective agents of change – allowing such momentum to build amongst such a large population would be hazardous for the CPC. Undercover investigators documenting poor worker conditions in a Chinese factory producing Ivanka Trump branded shoes disappeared in May 2017 after ignoring warnings by the Chinese police to desist. Five female activists planning a march for women’s rights on International Women’s Day in 2015 were arrested and detained for 37 days even as President Xi attended the UN’s Fourth Annual Conference on Women in Beijing. Activist Liu Xiaobo was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 for promoting democratic reform in the late 20th century. He was, however, unable to attend the ceremony as he had been incarcerated for “inciting subversion of state power”. He had been imprisoned in isolation without access to his family or his lawyer for eleven years when he passed away in July 2017 from liver cancer, for which he was denied treatment until it grew inoperable. News of his death was not broadcasted or announced in China.

While such incidents are often picked up by foreign reporters and journalists, the average Chinese citizen may never hear about them or only hear a biased account from state-approved sources. China’s attack on activism is inseparable from its meticulous regulation of media. Internally controlled social media sites, news, and entertainment create a filtered environment for communication which insulates China from ideas circulating in the international arena. State sponsored media is the most ubiquitous channel of mass communication in China. Chinese president Xi Jinping personally asked for continued loyalty to the CPC and their party line from the three largest state media organisations. They are the source of editorials informing the public of the dangers of western democracy, often incorporating current events outside China. Lately in particular, American politics are used as negative examples. From the healthcare bill estimated to eventually cause the loss of healthcare for 26 million Americans to the 2018 government shutdown, the US political system is framed as “chronically flawed” and democracy in general denounced as chaotic. This ensures that, since the Chinese people do not consider any alternative forms of governance more desirable, the political atmosphere of China remains stable and the majority of people continue their inaction. Overall, China has crafted a nationalistic narrative whereby the Chinese people currently live under the best system of governance offering optimal conditions to the people. This way of thought entrenches itself in the popular consciousness over time, as there is no free access to unregulated media which could contradict the state-sponsored narrative.

Yet even as media continues to deliver a carefully curated reality to Chinese citizens, a small number are able to view and use blocked sites through rerouting their IP addresses with VPNs The VPNs encrypt their location, which allows them to bypass the firewall and access the unregulated internet of the world outside China. This practice is not unknown to the government, which allows it on the premise that language barriers prevent this from being a significant threat. Not only this – this practice is most common in younger, millennial generations. Their parents tend to be of the generation who were activists in the 1980s, and were most immediately impacted by the consequences of student protests at Tiananmen Square. Given this precedent, they are typically more reluctant to engage in political activism, including raising their children to be politically aware or active. As a result, political apathy is widespread amongst those technologically savvy enough to overcome internet restrictions.

Freedom of speech is technically protected by the Chinese Constitution. However, it is superseded by regulations reserving the government’s right to exert its authority on matters deemed to endanger state secrets or the well being of the country – regulations which are evidently fairly flexible in their interpretation. Government suppression continues. The combination of reluctance from older generations, lack of overall political inclination, and inaccessibility of free information is causing the stagnation of mass political awareness. With no further upheavals to the regime since 1989, the Chinese government’s crackdown on activism continues to be successful.

January 24, 2018 0 comment

UCLA's Foreign Affairs Magazine since 2010