Censorship – Pike & Hurricane

The Clash of the Titans – Public Figures against the Tech Giants

Julia Kavanto — Wed, 10 Feb 2021 20:17:53 +0000

President Donald Trump of the United States of America became the first president to achieve many things. He was the first US president to be impeached twice, and his administration was the first to declare that China was committing genocide on Uighurs, but now I am talking about Trump being the first world leader to be permanently suspended from Twitter.

Trump supporters stormed the halls of the United States Capitol on January 6th, and their agenda was to stop the inauguration of Joe Biden. Soon after the coup, Trump’s Twitter account was first suspended for twelve hours, and then for good, as he continued to violate the community rules of the platform.

Multiple social media platforms followed Twitter’s example and suspended Trump’s accounts. We are having this discussion because permanently suspending a person of authority is considered a threat to the freedom of speech. The concern is valid. The common social media platforms, especially Twitter, are crucial to the hectic politics of the modern world; it is there where the political debate is the most heated. So, is it right to suspend a political leader permanently?

What is freedom of speech? What is it not?

Freedom of speech essentially means that any individual should have the right to express their thoughts and feelings without fear of sanctions. The right is universal, so it applies to everyone regardless of status, race, religion et cetera. There is a limitation to it, though. Freedom of speech should not be exercised to harm. A very important question to this is that who decides when someone or something has been harmed. One would think that the person who is harmed decides if they have been harmed, but then there is the question of people who cannot reply or, for example, non-human entities like nature. Who decides for them?

Twitter decided for the people who were injured in the coup of Capitol. Five people died in the attack, and Twitter understood President Trump’s tweet on the 8th of January about not joining President Biden’s inauguration was an invitation for his supporters to be violent. Trump’s use of words was interpreted as violating the platform’s glorification of violence policy.

Yes, Twitter can decide, and they did right to protect American citizens from further acts of violence. However, this does not mean that there should not be a more democratic way to decide. The board of Twitter who presumably called the shot to suspend Trump’s account was not selected democratically, and should not, therefore, have the right to take away the freedom of expression, even from Donald Trump.

On the other hand…

The Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny travelled back to his home country from Berlin where he was treated after having been poisoned in August 2020. Navalny was immediately detained upon his arrival on the 17th of January, and he soon posted a video on Twitter where he urged his supporters to “take it to the streets” because of his jailing. The protests were unauthorized, but successful, as the demonstration was organized in 100 Russian cities and there were 40,000 participants only in Moscow.

It is no surprise, then, that someone got hurt in the protests; Navalny must have known that the riots were unauthorized and would be met with violence. Videos show how the police are dragging people and using batons relentlessly. For the western democrat, it seems obvious that Navalny, Putin’s arch-rival, would not be banned for social media. That would be a victory for tyranny. But essentially, Navalny and Trump used Twitter for the same: for rallying supporters to protest against the government. It can be that Navalny’s tweets were not seen “to incite violence”, as Trump’s tweets were, according to Twitter’s blog post on Trump’s suspension. That, though, is problematic, that there is no universal guideline to fall back on.

Of course, Trump was not banned solely because of the tweet to join him on the 6th, but also because of the countless times he posted fake news on the platform. A certain president of Russia would argue that Navalny has also posted fake news, as the opposition leader recently uploaded a video to Twitter exposing Putin’s palace of corruption. Putin denies that the palace is his or any of his close relatives. The media in the United States seems to have agreed that Trump often tweeted lies. The same could be said about the Russian media breaking the news of Navalny’s accusations, as Pravda and Russia Today repeat Putin denying that the palace is his. American media agrees that Trump posted lies, and Russian media that Navalny posted lies, but the reception is very different.

There needs to be a universal guideline for social media usage, which states when a person has crossed the line of what is accepted. The board of directors of tech giants should not be the ones who decide who has the right to be heard. There are many questions regarding the universal guideline for social media that I am suggesting, such as who should be trusted to tell the truth i.e. who says what is “fake news”. Russian media argues against Navalny’s allegations of Putin’s Palace, but the allegations are still not put down by Twitter as lies.

Navalny joined the suspension discussion

Navalny himself responded to the suspension of President Trump negatively by saying that it “is an unacceptable act of censorship”. He says that Twitter’s decision to suspend Trump is based on personal political views. Therefore it can be said that the decision was not democratic. But does it even have to be in a private company? I think so, as they carry so much power in the public speech arena where freedom of speech is exercised. It is a slippery slope that Twitter has entered, as with permanently suspending Trump they open the possibility to suspend other people who do not follow the prevailing ideology. Silencing people is too great a power for any company to have.

No matter how much I disagree with Trump’s views, he, too, has the right to be heard. Imagine if Navalny was suspended. How radically would the Western world react to silencing the one figure who is against the all-mighty Vladimir Putin? In a democratic world, everyone needs to be heard, regardless of views. In a democratic world, everyone is treated equally, and with the universal guideline of social media usage, the same rules would be applied to everyone, regardless of power they possess.

Related articles:

Delusive Donald

The Social Network of Ethnic Conflict

Photo credits:

Tech/Book Special NRC Handelsblad, by Jenna Arts, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Freedom of Speech, by Vladan Nikolic, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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Politics in Verse

Merle Emrich — Sat, 10 Mar 2018 17:58:14 +0000

While one might think that mere words stand no chance against the power of governments, poetry is banned and censored, and poets are imprisoned and exiled out of fear of a few verses. Yet, there is still hope. Words possess a power that violence can never have, and it is difficult-if not impossible-to silence everyone who speaks.

Iran, 1988-today

From 1988 to 1998 over 80 Iranians, among them poets, are killed for political reasons. One of the killed poets is Mohammad Mokhtari. His ‘crime’: Mokhtari intended to re-start the Association of Iranian Writers. Even today, poetry is censored in Iran – at times seemingly randomly. Some poets are even forced into exile. Yet, no matter how many poets’ works are censored, they continue to write and make their political voice heard. And sometimes there even is a chance to get away with it. After all, what is better suited than poetry and metaphor to hide meaning between the lines?

Israel, 2000

Israel’s minister for education, Yossi Sarid, seeks to include Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s work in the school curriculum. Following Sarid’s suggestion, right-wing members of the government threaten to introduce a motion of no-confidence should Darwish’s poetry be included in Israel’s school curriculum. The poet comments: “It is difficult to believe that the most military powerful country in the Middle East is threatened by a poem.” As it turns out, a few verses might have the power to make even the smallest voice heard, and to bring down a government.

England, 2017

It’s been two months since Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, a few days since he announced his Muslim ban. From 10 Downing Street to Westminster Station the streets are flooded with people. They are here to protest against Trump, his Muslim ban, and Theresa May’s “appeasement policy”. Somewhere in the ocean of bodies and protest signs, somebody holds up a piece of cardboard that shows a drawing of the Statue of Liberty and a quote from Emma Lazarus’s poem The New Colossus. The poem was written in 1883 and it is still relevant today: a symbol of hope used to express political discontent with governments, and solidarity with fellow human beings.

(Protest in London, January 2017. Photo: Merle Emrich)

Turkey, 2017

Bulaşıcı Cesaret (Contagious Courage) is the title of Selahattin Demirtaş’s poem that is banned because it contains “terrorist propaganda”. In November 2016, Demirtaş, the co-leader of the pro-Kurdish opposition party HDP (People’s Democratic Party), was sent to prison for five months. There he wrote the now banned poem: “They will say, let there be no voice/ Let there be no color, they will say./ You have rebelled by laughter […] They will say let there be no sunrise/ They will hold Hope at gunpoint/ You have rebelled, running/ They will put the blame on you/ Let us run then.”

Poetry Is the Fuel That Feeds the Fire

Audre Lorde wrote that poetry “forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change.” Throughout time, all over the world, poets have framed their hopes and dreams in words-be they personal and individual, or political. UK-poet Matt Abbott’s call for a Labour government got nearly 250 likes on facebook. Rhythmical Mike’s poem on immigration receives applause, and Salena Godden’s poem written for the Nasty Woman movement remains uncensored. Elsewhere, poets are imprisoned and their work censored or banned completely. In Iran, for example, Godden’s poem would be censored since it is forbidden – especially for women-to write about the body.

The Sword and the Pen

Poetry is not a privilege-not for the writer at least. Poetry is existence and survival, identity and catharsis, boiled down to a few lines. Like a novel or a newspaper article, a poem contains a message. Sometimes that message is a call for action and change. But unlike most newspaper articles, poetry does not only function on an intellectual, but on an emotional level. And therein lies the (political) power of poetry. After all, there is a reason why “the pen is mightier than the sword”. As the cases of Turkey and Iran, Israel and England show, there is a power in language that authority and violence-be it physical or nonphysical, legitimate or illegitimate violence-can never possess. While state power demands respect and obedience and at times induces fear, the power of words sparks inspiration, fuels dreams and worldviews, and gives hope that opposes fear. And if you give back hope to those starved of it, who can tell what might happen?

By Merle Emrich

Photo Credit:

Burning Book, August Allen, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Iranian Flag, Blondinrikard Fröberg, CC BY 2.0

Mahmoud Darwish, Reham Alhelsi, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Turkish Flag, erdalde, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Salena Godden, Isabelle Adam, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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