In the West, We Have Freedom of Speech
It is common to contrast "The Free World" with dictatorships in the East
It is a common belief among people in Europe and the USA, Australia, and other parts of the world considered “The West”, that we are somehow better at everything regarding human rights, freedom, and democracy.
When Chine puts someone in prison for having expressed a slight unhappiness with something the Chinese government has done, we put it on the front pages of the newspapers and talk about the totalitarian regime in China.
Russia also reaches the front pages, quite often, and so does Iran, who seems to enjoy killing everybody who is not a fan of the regime and happened to say that in a post on the internet, or in their own diary that the government spies somehow got to read.
Depending on who we are, we either feel lucky for our own situation, or we feel sorry for the people in the East and the Middle East, who have no freedom – and in particular freedom of speech.
But what exactly makes us believe that we are better off here?
Guantánamo, for instance, is an illegal prison for political prisoners. They have been captured in other countries and kept in that prison for years without any trial and without any way of getting out. Their freedom was taken from them by a government, that doesn’t care about these people’s individual freedom, or their rights. The rest of the West silently approves of this practice, and various episodes have popped up now and then, proving that the USA maintains other prisons around the world for their political prisoners (CIA prisons). Also, these are silently agreed on, even by the governments and people of the countries where they are illegally placed.
The Internet, and especially social media accounts, are now being scrutinized officially by authorities in various situations. Recently, it has been decided that people seeking a visa to the USA must show their social media accounts to the border controllers, and if there is anything negative to find about Donald Trump or the USA, they will not be let in. Jobseekers, also from private companies, will often experience that their social media accounts have been checked, so that people who do not express the correct opinions – or, indeed, people who do express opinions in general, even the less dangerous ones, can be weeded out of the pool of applicants.
Political parties are very careful to pick only those as their candidates for political positions who haven’t expressed anything at all, and who do not know anyone who has, etc. – as far as they can. Sometimes they miss out on something, and when the press gets hold of the news that a politician has a cousin whose neighbor knows a man who once met a criminal, then that politician is quickly thrown out.
Of course, in some countries (the USA) the political climate works the opposite just now, letting criminals get the highest positions, but also there, very many people are excluded from doing and saying what they want, from taking a job, or from getting an education, or just about any other thing in life, just because of their voiced opinion. They have expressed something, or someone they know has done that, and it limits their possibilities.
The worst part of this concept is, what I have written about previously, the “selfshittification”, where we all censor ourselves by not writing things we have on our minds, because that could have consequences as mentioned above, or we avoid reading other people’s writings about such things, or avoid liking, commenting, or, if we can, to be anywhere near anybody who may express anything that potentially could be considered bad by one or another authority or employer.
Through selfshittification, we limit our lives drastically, and when something slips through, we are seriously in danger of being met with sanctions by other people – unfollowing, unsubscribing, etc., or being one of those who will get fired at the next round of organizational adjustments.
In fact, the fear that lies behind selfshittification is exactly the same as lies behind the feeling of being suppressed in China, Russia, or Iran.
By giving in to that fear and censoring our own words, we are doing the work of our suppressors, and we are limiting the world from developing into a better world. And, in particular, we never get rid of the problems we see, because we don’t dare to mention them.
So, we are not any more free than those in the East, and in particular, we are not using the technical possibility to speak up, that exists – shutting up when we actually could speak is to me a more severe form of lacking freedom. Our freedom of speech being held in a cage, by ourselves.
Factoids
It's not about right or wrong, it's about thinking – capturing typical thoughts and turning them around, inside out, to see what they're made of