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Global Censorship

America’s First Amendment set a standard and a goal for the rest of the planet, establishing freedom of speech as a key standard of an advanced civilized society.

However, as the Left within the United States continues its relentless assault on this cornerstone of the Bill of Rights (using a variety of excuses) those portions of the globe with governments eagerly seeking any excuse to silence critics sense a shifting paradigm, and are moving to clamp down on dissent. They are using all the tools at their disposal to not only attack free speech within their own borders, but across the world as well.

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Radio Free Europe reports that “A controversial Russian law on the Internet came into force on November 1 amid warnings from critics that the legislation is an attempt to increase censorship. The so-called ‘sovereign Internet’ law …requires providers to install equipment that could route Russian web traffic through points that are controlled by the state. It also includes provisions on the creation of a Russian domestic domain-name system… critics have warned the law will lead to censorship across wide parts of the Internet and allow for greater surveillance of Internet users by Russian intelligence agencies…Human Rights Watch (HRW) says the Russian government gained ‘even greater control over freedom of speech and information online’ when the legislation went into effect.

China has been the most powerful assailant. Using its financial might, it has successfully attacked its governments’ critics not only at home but even within America as well, as certain NBA players recently discovered. Mike Gonzalez, writing for the Chicago Tribune   notes that “Russia has drawn a lot of criticism for its heavy-handed manipulation of U.S. social media, and deservedly so. But almost unnoticed, another nation has been trying to control what Americans think by censoring free expression at our universities, the internet, media, movies and even sports clubs: China… China’s obsessive actions represents nothing less than an attempt by a foreign power to shape the views of a democratic electorate whose opinions, translated through the ballot box and other means, shape public policy. Beijing gives millions to universities in exchange for silence on its human rights transgressions, forces Hollywood studios to submit their productions to Chinese censors and buys radio stations here. More recently, it censored what NBA players and executives can say about China, even threatening NBA Commissioner Adam Silver with “retribution sooner or later.”

In a speech at Georgetown University, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg discussed China’s growing influence: “China is building its own internet focused on very different values, and is now exporting their vision of the internet to other countries. Until recently, the internet in almost every country outside China has been defined by American platforms with strong free expression values. There’s no guarantee these values will win out. A decade ago, almost all of the major internet platforms were American. Today, six of the top ten are Chinese… It’s one of the reasons we don’t operate Facebook, Instagram or our other services in China. I wanted our services in China because I believe in connecting the whole world and I thought we might help create a more open society. I worked hard to make this happen. But we could never come to agreement on what it would take for us to operate there, and they never let us in. And now we have more freedom to speak out and stand up for the values we believe in and fight for free expression around the world.”

Russia and China are not alone, either in their attempts to suppress dissent at home or in their efforts to stifle criticism abroad. As the United Kingdom’s Daily Mail notes, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is suing a French magazine for criticizing his incursion against the Kurds in Syria.

Illustration: Pixabay

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Foreign Censorship Influences U.S. Freedom

It has become disturbingly evident that there is a growing trend against free speech. The increased influence of international norms over U.S. standards bears a significant part of the responsibility, a pattern that will expand significantly when Obama’s move to place the internet under international control becomes complete before he leaves office.

But the President’s inappropriate internet divestment is only part of the problem. The number of excuses used to justify the disregard for America’s greatest achievement—the First Amendment—continues to grow. Political correctness, college “safe spaces,” campaign regulation, and other factors all play a role.

Of extraordinary importance is the desire of major communications companies to appease foreign dictatorships, in order to gain entry into their nations’ marketplace.  Disturbingly, U.S. internet giants have demonstrated their willingness to reject American free speech principles in return for access to foreign markets.

The Bloomberg news service notes that:

“In recent years, founder Mark Zuckerberg has made clear his intention to bring the platform to China. To win favor, much to the amusement of Chinese netizens, he’s handed out copies of  [General Secretary of the Communist Party of China] Xi’s tome, The Governance of China, to Facebook employees; showed off his Mandarin skills; and posted photos of himself jogging through hazardous Beijing smog. It remains to be seen whether that multi-faceted courtship will be effective.”

However, Bloomberg reports that Zennon Kapron, managing director of Shanghai-based consulting firm Kapronasia, believes that unless China’s censorship rules are incorporated into Facebook’s practices, the company will not succeed in its quest, noting that  “All the kowtowing and meeting the leadership maybe won’t matter so much if Facebook won’t agree to allow some level of censorship, or allow the Chinese government access to data on the site, in exchange for market access,” Bloomberg notes that ‘Linkedin operates in China, but only by agreeing to abide by content restrictions.”
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China has moved to reduce its already limited tolerance for any semblance of free speech. The Financial Times notes that   “Since Xi came to power, China’s situation has become more and more worrisome,’ says Murong Xuecun, a prominent author and commentator. ‘Things that we could openly discuss before, such as the Cultural Revolution, are now considered sensitive or even forbidden. In the past there was some room for non-governmental organisations and rights lawyers. Now all of them have been suppressed.’ In an internal document issued just a month after Mr Xi became president in March 2013 and later leaked, the Communist party identified the very notion of civil society as ‘an attempt to dismantle the party’s social foundation…That puts NGOs, journalists, activists, researchers at a much higher risk……China’s internet regulator moved to rein in original reporting by online news portals, in the latest setback for an already tightly muzzled media sector.”

Facebook has been increasingly criticized for its censorship activities, even outside of China. WND  found that “Facebook…temporarily blocked talk-radio host Michael Savage from posting stories to his page after he put up a link to a story about a Muslim migrant killing a pregnant woman in Germany…In December, as WND reported, Facebook removed a post on Savage’s site of photographs of a 2006 protest outside the Embassy of Denmark in London that featured signs warning of beheading and death for ‘those who insult Islam.’ At that time, Facebook also ‘determined that it violated Facebook community standards.”

During the Cold War era, the influence of foreign information served to open up the closed societies behind the Communists’ “Iron Curtain.” Now, however, the reverse is occurring: the censorship proclivities of dictatorships of all kinds, Communist, Moslem extremists, or others, appear to be changing the free-speech culture of the West.

American cultural tolerance for the repression of free speech continues to grow.  There has been little push back against U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s comments regarding criminal prosecution of those that disagree with the White House’s view on man-made climate change, or actions by state attorneys general to engage in legal harassment of think tanks with views counter to that of the President.

The trend is manifest on the streets, as well. The Gateway Pundit recently reported that “A young white man wearing one of Donald Trump’s red ‘Make America Great Again!” hats was violently forced out of New York City’s City Hall Park by a screaming Leftist racist mob of predominantly self-described ‘black and brown’ activists–all while police stood by and did nothing. The mob was gathered to protest police as part of a “#ShutDownCityHallNYC” rally in the park.