Daily Archives: July 15, 2020

The task that appears most urgent today is the destruction of the authoritarian right. Not because the authoritarian right is more malicious than the authoritarian left, but because it holds power across the west. Liberal-minded people making an informed calculation must surely decide to avoid distractions and concentrate their fire on the enemy that matters. Or so a seductive argument goes.

If you are an American voter, your sole priority should be the removal of Donald Trump. If you are British, you must concentrate on building a viable opposition to a Conservative party whose neglect and stupidity have wrecked the economy and killed tens of thousands. The slogan no enemies to the left is never more appealing than when it can be dressed in language that appeals to those who pose as tough-minded.

But it wont wash, and not just because the motives of those who scour the web to find evidence of the sins of others are those of the inquisitor and stool pigeon. In the world of practical politics, refusing to confront leftish authoritarianism leaves you with two options. You will either lose and deserve to lose, for you should have known that every time the far left has taken on the authoritarian right in the west it has lost. Or, and this may be worse, you will win and repent your failure to check that your new bosses were worthy of your trust.

According to the supposedly tough-minded view, signing a letter to Harpers protesting at the stifling of debate can only weaken our side. A defence of the signatories should begin by noting that they were telling the truth when they complained that writers, artists, and journalists fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement. Note the precision. The signatories were not saying it is wrong for people to lay into others: freedom of speech is the freedom to criticise or it is nothing. Their point was that many live in fear of campaigns to destroy them if they dont mouth the right opinions.

Im surprised such a statement of the obvious could be controversial. No honest observer can deny that the dominant factions in the modern progressive movement reject freedom of speech. They punish opinions they disagree with when they have power; and the more power they have, the more they will punish. You may think the censorship justified, but to deny its existence is absurd. Tellingly, few bother to deny it now. Occasionally, you can see them raise the exhausted excuse from the grave that only the state can censor. On this reading, Islamists killing cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo, or CEOs firing whistleblowers, are not censoring because they are not civil servants. More popular in the past week has been the claim that writers with the reach of Margaret Atwood, Noam Chomsky, JK Rowling and Salman Rushdie cannot take a moral stand because no one can suppress their thought even though their critics give every impression of wanting to do just that.

Panic at the fear of denunciation and bad faith posing as rectitude can be found across the west

Leave aside their belief that ad hominem and ad feminam attacks can refute an argument, and consider that the worst of the old elite directed its attention to silencing the marginalised because it knew that their voice was often the only weapon the latter possessed. Then look around. Now as then, people without access to lawyers and influential friends suffer the most.

To take an example of that encapsulates the cowardice of our times: the Washington Post, a newspaper I admire and have written for, went to enormous lengths to destroy the life of one Sue Schafer, a middle-aged woman who made a mistake. She turned up to a Halloween party at the home of one of its cartoonists in blackface. She did not mean to insult African Americans but had come dressed as a ghoul in the guise of a conservative morning show host who had defended whites blacking up. The joke didnt work, as several guests forcefully told her. Because the words Washington Post and blackface could be said in the same sentence, and because several guests looked as if they might go public two years later, the paper gave 3,000 words to the story the amount of space normally reserved for a terrorist attack or declaration of war. Her employer, a government contractor, fired her. Everyones back was covered except Schafers and, frankly, she was a woman of no importance.

Panic at the fear of denunciation and bad faith posing as rectitude can be found across the west. A comparison with the right shows how deep the decay has reached. Conservatives know there are thoughts they cannot whisper Brexit is a mistake comparable to Munich and Suez, anti-black and anti-Muslim racism are tangible evils, poverty makes a nonsense of equality of opportunity. Likewise on the liberal left, the canny careerist takes care to avoid being caught on the wrong side of arguments about trans and womens rights, leftwing antisemitism, and bigotry in ethnic minorities. The canniest decide the best course is to say nothing at all.

The British ought to know the dangers of thinking there are no enemies to the left. Because Labour members failed to confront the crankery and racism of the Corbyn movement, they drove millions into Boris Johnsons clammy embrace. I doubt the same will happen in the US. Joe Biden has his faults, but he is no ones idea of a commissar. That is not to say there wont be a heavy price to pay. The nationalist right is determined to police opinion. In Hungary and Poland, the media are becoming its propaganda organs. Trump incites hatred of reporters who tell the truth about his administration. Johnson threatens the independence of the BBC and Channel 4. Yet they can pose as the champions of free expression because the loudest strain in progressivism has embraced censorship. The practical danger in giving up on freedom of speech is that the day will come when you find you are lost for words just when you need them most.

Nick Cohen is an Observer columnist

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The spectre of censorship and intolerance stalks todays left - The Guardian

Bari Weiss, one of the most polarizing journalists in the country, has resigned from the opinion section of The New York Times, citing a "hostile work environment" and an institutional yielding to an increasingly extreme ideological "orthodoxy."

"The truth is that intellectual curiositylet alone risk-takingis now a liability at The Times," Weiss wrote in a scorching resignation letter self-published Tuesday morning. "Why edit something challenging to our readers, or write something bold only to go through the numbing process of making it ideologically kosher, when we can assure ourselves of job security (and clicks) by publishing our 4000th op-ed arguing that Donald Trump is a unique danger to the country and the world? And so self-censorship has become the norm."

This is the latest development in a remarkably turbulent and potentially far-reaching eight-week period within America's leading liberal institutions. Beginning with the videotaped police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in late May, then the subsequent protests, riots and crackdowns, the country's newspapers and universities and cultural organizations have experienced social media-fueled waves of internal revolts and leadership changes, frequently though not solely over questions of race.

One main fault-line, illustrated most starkly in the opposing open letters published last week about free speech and cancel culture (the first of which, in Harper's Magazine, was signed by Weiss and 152 others, including 15 Reason contributors), is the divide between those journalists and academics who feel like they are defending the very foundations of liberalism, and those who feel like they are chipping away at the institutions of systemic prejudice. To witness the two sides talking angrily past one another, open up your Twitter feed.

In Weiss's telling, the Times is retreating from the ethic of journalistic open inquiry and pluralistic debate, replacing it with a pre-baked notion of what readers ought to think.

"The lessons that ought to have followed the [2016 presidential] electionlessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic societyhave not been learned," she charged. "Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn't a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.[T]he paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative."

That last sentence in particular is surely a reference to the paper's controversial 1619 Project, helmed by Pulitzer-winner Nikole Hannah-Jones, that seeks "to reframe American history, making explicit how slavery is the foundation on which this country is built." Hannah-Jones, who spearheaded the intentionally publicized internal revolt last month that resulted in the resignation of Opinion Editor James Bennett, has been a longtime public critic of Weiss.

"My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views," Weiss wrote, at the beginning of a three-paragraph section that carries the distinct whiff of both drama and potential legal action. "They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I'm 'writing about the Jews again.' Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly 'inclusive' one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are."

It is both easy and appropriate to be mostly irritated by the overhyped internal personnel battles of elite coastal institutionsincluding at New York magazine, which today lost star columnist Andrew Sullivan a few weeks after having spiked one of his pieces. In a country beset by an 11.1 percent unemployment rate, 139,000 coronavirus deaths, massive economic uncertainty, and the mental degradations of extended familial quarantine, it's hard to get exercised about a well-paid writer/editor noisily walking away from her job.

I have zero doubt that Bari Weiss (who is a friend), will not just land on her feet, but probably find herself at or near the center of a new media grouping of some kind. "As places like The Times and other once-great journalistic institutions betray their standards and lose sight of their principles," she wrote, almost teasingly, "Americans still hunger for news that is accurate, opinions that are vital, and debate that is sincere."

But even if you don't care about the ongoing nervous breakdown of the media, that doesn't mean the breakdown doesn't care about you. The New York Times, for better and worse, has been the go-to model for the country's other newspapers for at least the past half-century; what happens on 8th Avenue definitely does not stay on 8th Avenue. Basic media literacy suggests paying attention when an entire industry that contributes to the way we interpret the world announces loudly that it is rethinking its basic orientation.

More immediately, the name-and-shame defenestrations of the past two months have long since jumped the banks from media/academia to the more prosaic corners of the economy. "Showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper," Weiss observed, "should not require bravery." Nor should it at a restaurant or software company, but there we might well be going.

Bonus links: In January 2018, Weiss came on The Fifth Column podcast to talk about, among other things, how she left The Wall Street Journal editorial page after it became too pro-Trump. And in July of that year, Nick Gillespie interviewed her for the Reason Podcast.

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Bari Weiss Resigns From The New York Times, Alleging That 'Self-Censorship Has Become the Norm' - Reason

In an open letter published in Harpers Magazine, 152 writers, including JK Rowling and Margaret Atwood, claim that a climate of censoriousness is pervading liberal culture, the latest contribution to an ongoing debate about freedom of speech online.

As we grapple with this issue in a society where social media allows us all to share extreme views, the Victorian writers offer a precedent for thinking differently about language and how we use it to get our point across. How limits of acceptability and literary censorship, for the Victorians, inspired creative ways of writing that foregrounded sensitivity and demanded thoughtfulness.

There are very few cases of books being banned in the Victorian era. But books were censored or refused because of moral prudishness, and publishers often objected to attacks on the upper classes - their book-buying audience. Writer and poet Thomas Hardys first novel, The Poor Man and the Lady, was never published because the publisher Alexander Macmillan felt that his portrayal of the upper classes was wholly dark not a ray of light visible to relieve the darkness.

However, more common than publishers turning down books was the refusal of circulating libraries to distribute them. These institutions were an integral part of literary consumerism during the Victorian period as the main means of distributing books.

Most influential of these was Charles Mudies Select Library, established in 1842. Mudies library was select because he would only circulate books that were suitable for middle-class parents to read aloud to their daughters without causing embarrassment.

This shaped how publishers commissioned and what writers could get away with. Victorian literary censorship, while limiting, managed to inspire writers to develop more creative and progressive ways to get their points across.

George Eliots publisher, John Blackwood, criticised her work for showing people as they really were rather than giving an idealistic picture. He was particularly uncomfortable when Eliot focused on the difficulties of working-class life.

In Mr Gilfils Love Story(1857), Eliots description of the orphan girl, Caterina, being subjected to soap-and-water raised Blackwoods censorious hackles:

I do not recollect of any passage that moved my critical censorship unless it might be the allusion to dirt in common with your heroine.

As well as dirt, alcohol consumption was also seen as an unwanted reminder of working class problems. Again in Mr Gifils Love Story, Eliot describes how the eponymous clergyman enjoys an occasional sip of gin-and-water.

However, knowing Blackwoods views and anticipating she may cause offence galvanised Eliot to state her case directly to the reader within the text itself. She qualifies her unromantic depiction of Mr Gilfil with an address to her lady readers:

Here I am aware that I have run the risk of alienating all my refined lady readers, and utterly annihilating any curiosity they may have felt to know the details of Mr Gilfils love-story let me assure you that Mr Gilfils potations of gin-and-water were quite moderate. His nose was not rubicund; on the contrary, his white hair hung around a pale and venerable face. He drank it chiefly, I believe, because it was cheap; and here I find myself alighting on another of the Vicars weaknesses, which, if I cared to paint a flattering portrait rather than a faithful one, I might have chosen to suppress.

Here, literary censorship enriches Eliots writing. Eliots refusal to suppress her work becomes part of the story and reinforces her agenda to portray Mr Gilfil as he really is, a vicar who mixes gin with water because he is poor.

As well as inspiring narrative additions, censorship was also powerful because of what was left out of a text.

One of Hardys most loved books, Tess of the DUrbervilles, highlights the crimes of sexual harassment in the workplace and of rape. Because Hardy had to be careful about the way that he presented the sexual abuse of Tess, his descriptions were very subtle. This is how he portrays the scene where Tess is sexually assaulted by her employer, Alec DUrberville:

The obscurity was now so great that he could see absolutely nothing but a pale nebulousness at his feet, which represented the white muslin figure he had left upon the dead leaves. Everything else was blackness alike. DUrberville stooped; and heard a gentle regular breathing. He knelt, and bent lower, till her breath warmed his face, and in a moment his cheek was in contact with hers. She was sleeping soundly, and upon her eyelashes there lingered tears.

The influence of censorship meant that Hardy could not describe this scene in graphic detail. Instead, his depiction is more sensitive and thoughtful. Hardy does not dehumanise Tess by depicting her as a sexual object to entertain the reader.

By focusing on Tesss gentle regular breathing and the poignant image of her tear-stained eyelashes, Hardy avoids gratuitous depictions of violence while at the same time making us painfully aware of the injustice she has suffered. This makes his portrayal of Tess more powerful and poignant. It can be argued that this was achieved because of the limits placed on his writing, not in spite of them.

In these instances, we can see how literary censorship influenced writers to tread more carefully upon difficult territory. It made them think about whether including violence or socially controversial depictions were necessary or gratuitous to their narratives.

For Hardy and Eliot, censorship and its limits inspired creativity, sensitivity and thoughtfulness. These examples can provide food for thought in the debate today about free speech and censorship. As Hardy and Eliot wrestled with as they wrote, can things be said differently and, in some cases, do they need to be said at all?

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How literary censorship inspired creativity in Victorian writers - The Conversation UK

TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--TunnelBear has today partnered with four Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) to campaign against censorship threats which have impacted communities and activists across the world since the COVID-19 pandemic and global protests. In total, twenty thousand free VPN accounts have been distributed to these organizations which include Access Now, Frontline Defenders, Internews, and one other undisclosed participant.

This unique and timely program aims to empower individuals and organizations with the tools they need to browse a safe and open internet environment, regardless of where they live. The VPN provider is encouraging other NGOs or media organizations across the world to reach out if they too are in need of support.

At TunnelBear, we strongly believe in an open and uncensored internet. Whenever we can use our technology to help people towards that end, we will, said TunnelBear Cofounder Ryan Dochuk.

He continued, We also understand that the protests happening all over the world mean that safe digital spaces are now more important than ever. We are happy to provide these accounts to human rights defenders at no cost to them.

TunnelBear encrypts its users internet traffic to enable a private and censor-free browsing experience.

"Access Now's Helpline provides incident response assistance and direct technical support on digital safety to at-risk users from civil society across the globe. We always advise our constituents to think critically about their security, and to pick the tools and services that best respond to their specific needs. When it comes to VPNs, trust is key. TunnelBear's approach to securityincluding annual security audits, easy to read privacy policy and regular transparency reportsprovides a solid foundation to cultivate trust," said a Spokesperson for Access Now.

"By undergoing and releasing independent audits of their systems, adopting open source tools, and collaborating with the open source community, TunnelBear has proven itself to be an industry leader in the VPN space and a valuable private sector partner within the internet freedom movement. Internews is happy to support TunnelBear in extending its VPN service to the media organizations, journalists, activists, and human rights defenders around the globe who can benefit from it," said Jon Camfield, Director of Global Technology Strategy at Internews.

TunnelBear has so far given away a total of 20,000 accounts, and is open to requests from organizations who can help their networks with free secure internet. Visit this webpage for more information and to submit a request for support.

This program marks the beginning of a company-wide initiative to combat online censorship, stay tuned for whats next.

TunnelBear is a very simple virtual private network (VPN) that allows users to browse the web privately and securely. It makes sure that browsing is safe from hackers, ISPs, and anyone that is monitoring the network. TunnelBear believes you should have access to an open and uncensored internet, wherever you are.

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TunnelBear Kicks Off Anti-Censorship Initiative With Free Accounts for Activists - Business Wire

In the past two weeks, Hong Kong publisher Raymond Yeung has hastily made changes to a draft paper copy of a book entitled To Freedom (), replacing the word revolution with protests, tweaking a banned slogan and cutting passages that advocate independence for the Chinese territory.

The changes were hard to make, he said, but impossible to avoid since China passed a National Security Law on June 30, making the broadly defined crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces punishable by up to life in prison.

This is really painful, Yeung said, as he flipped through pages of the collection of essays by 50 protesters, lawyers, social workers and other participants in the pro-democracy demonstrations that shook Hong Kong last year.

This is history. This is the truth, he said, holding up the book with blue sticky flags on many pages to mark changes made because of the new law.

Just as demand for political books was surging in Hong Kong after a year of protests, the territorys once unbridled and prolific independent publishers are now censoring themselves in the face of the new law.

Hong Kong authorities say freedom of speech remains intact, but in the past two weeks public libraries have taken some books off the shelves, shops have removed protest-related decorations and the slogan Liberate Hong Kong! Revolution of our times has been declared illegal.

To Freedom is the first political book Yeung has taken on as a part-time publisher.

After Beijing introduced the security law, the books original printer bailed, and two other printers declined, he said.

Another printer agreed to take it anonymously, but wants to get a better sense of how the law is implemented first.

The Hong Kong Trade Development Council, which organizes the annual Hong Kong Book Fair, told exhibitors not to display what it called unlawful books at this weeks planned fair.

The council postponed the fair at the last minute on Monday due to a recent spike in COVID-19 cases. It did not specify a new date for the event.

Three non-governmental pro-Beijing groups had teamed up to urge people to report stalls at the fair selling material promoting Hong Kong independence, a subject that is anathema to the Chinese government.

Every citizen has a duty to report crime, said Innes Tang (), chairman of PolitiHK Social Strategic, one group behind the campaign. We are not the police. We are not the ones to say where the red line is.

Jimmy Pang (), a veteran local publisher who has participated in every fair since it began in 1990, called this year the most terrifying year because of the security law and the economic downturn that was already hurting publishers.

He said the law has prompted publishing houses and writers to halt projects while printers, distributors and bookstores have turned down sensitive books.

For example, Breakazine, a local Christian publication, said it suspended the distribution of its mid-July issue called Dangerous Reading while seeking legal advice for navigating the security law.

Everyone is avoiding risks by suffering in silence, said Pang, a spokesman for 50 exhibitors at the fair.

Last year, a unit of Pangs Sub-Culture Ltd published Chan Yun-chis () 6430 () a book of interviews with surviving pro-democracy protesters in the run-up to the 30th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, a subject heavily censored on the mainland.

In the future, there will be no sensitive books related to politics, he said.

Bao Pu (), the son of Bao Tong (), the most senior Chinese Communist Party official jailed for sympathizing with Tiananmen protesters, founded New Century Press in 2005 in Hong Kong to publish books based on memoirs and government documents and other sources that often differ from the official versions of events in China and could not be published on the mainland.

His customers were mostly mainland visitors, a lucrative niche in Hong Kong until China began to tighten border controls a decade ago, making it harder to bring back books to the mainland.

Given the drop off in demand, Bao Pu said he no longer plans to publish such books in Hong Kong. However, he urged other publishers to avoid self-censorship.

If everybody does that, then the law would have much more impact on freedom of speech, he said.

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Self-censorship on the rise in HK -