We have seen our freedom of speech slowly eroded over the past decade quite significantly, when criticized, generally it is defended by using the perspective argument of China. ‘You don’t know how lucky you are, we are relatively free – just look at China!’ – right?
While many independent journalists and activists out there have been warning of this continual march towards our own oppression, the majority of the press and indeed the populous have remained relatively ignorant to it. Well, until now at least.
The coronavirus COVID19 pandemic is turning out to be less an attack on our immune system, with less than 80% of the population having little to no symptoms, but more an attack on 100% of the populations freedom and civil liberties.
One Narrative
With such a huge amount of speculation and unknowns surrounding the pandemic doctors, scientists, researchers, journalists, conspiracy theorists and just everyday people have been taking to social media and YouTube to air their views, give advice, analyse the data, speculate or even just rant.
The problem is, the official narrative is so clouded, vague and often insanely inaccurate that the content and narratives of these ‘dissenters’ is grabbing a lot of serious attention from those that watch, listen and read it. Which of course, for the global cabal is a problem.
The cabals control arm of the internet, Google has been hard at work creating new policies allowing them to quickly remove and delete any content which contradicts the official narrative. The argument for this censorship is that it poses a risk to public health, but in reality it’s about controlling the narrative.
Mainstream Media Embrace Censorship
As you would expect, much of the mainstream media is defending and applauding the censorship, after all it gives their fake news more visibility online as independent media gets culled out of existence.
Some are even now saying that we were wrong and China was right after all in regards to our Internet freedom, this comes from an article out of The Atlantic[1]:
In the great debate of the past two decades about freedom versus control of the network, China was largely right and the United States was largely wrong.
Significant monitoring and speech control are inevitable components of a mature and flourishing internet, and governments must play a large role in these practices to ensure that the internet is compatible with a society’s norms and values.
This, to me, is possibly one of the most frightening articles I have read since the beginning of the pandemic. Controlling the flow of speech, regardless of the validity of the content, is dangerous. When the article states ‘ensure that the internet is compatible with a society’s norms and values’ they actually mean ‘is the content compatible with the state’
its not just censorship
If you think the west has just fallen in love with China’s censorship policies, think again. Just about every horrific infringement on personal freedom in China that you’ve read about over the past few years is coming this way, from tracing apps to drone surveillance.
The social crediting system recently introduced shocked us all and yet here we are laying the groundwork for the same very system. The biggest difference is between China and Countries like the UK and the US is that Governments will not need to enforce such systems. All you need is a suitable crisis, whether it be organic or fabricated, if you can generate enough fear, then offer the system as the solution. If the fear is great enough, most people will almost accept anything.
There is hope
The hope is you, me, all of us choosing to not accept. Social Media and YouTube can censor us all they want, we can just build the World we want to see. A World where all speech is treated equally, a World where our phones do not track us and report us, a World where your theory on some current event has a right to be online, regardless of how controversial it may be.
These tools are being built as we speak, many of us are already using them. But use them we must.
Sources:
[1] theatlantic.com
