tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/freedom-of-expression-23431/articlesFreedom of expression – The Conversation2024-01-08T16:43:08Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2202662024-01-08T16:43:08Z2024-01-08T16:43:08ZFreedom of thought is being threatened by states, big tech and even ourselves. Here’s what we can do to protect it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568035/original/file-20240105-27-gzzeml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=46%2C46%2C5184%2C3383&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/danang-vietnam-august-2019-photo-taken-2185304981">Beauty Is In The Eye Inc/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The idea of free speech sparked into life 2,500 years ago <a href="https://oll.libertyfund.org/reading-room/2022-08-17-review-free-speech-a-history-from-socrates-to-social-media-by-jacob-mchangama-basic-books-2022">in Ancient Greece</a> – in part because it served a politician’s interests. The ability to speak freely was seen as essential for the new Athenian democracy, which the politician <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Aspects-of-Greek-History-750-323BC-A-Source-Based-Approach/Buckley/p/book/9780415549776">Cleisthenes</a> both introduced and benefited from.</p>
<p>Today, we debate the boundaries of free speech around kitchen tables and watercoolers, in the media and in our courtrooms. The <a href="https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/human-rights/human-rights-act/article-9-freedom-thought-belief-and-religion">right to freedom of thought</a>, however, is more rarely discussed. But thanks to the growing influence of social media, big data and new technology, this “<a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3291586">forgotten freedom</a>” needs our urgent attention.</p>
<p>In democratic societies ruled by ballots not bullets, power is won through persuasion. Efforts at persuasion are ramping up: there will be <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_national_electoral_calendar">more than 50 national elections</a> involving half the world’s population in 2024, including in <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2024/01/03/2024-is-the-biggest-election-year-in-history-here-are-the-countries-going-to-the-polls-this-year/">seven of the ten most populous countries</a>. The results will <a href="https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/four-2024-elections-will-shape-second-half-decade">shape our century</a>, making it paramount that we protect people’s ability to think and vote freely. </p>
<p>But corporate and political actors know more about how our minds work than we do. They activate our biases rather than appeal to our reason, push us to share information without thinking, and control our attention to the point of addiction.</p>
<p>Advances in neuroscience may heighten this threat to free thought. Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerburg are among those in a <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/5/4/23708162/neurotechnology-mind-reading-brain-neuralink-brain-computer-interface">race to read our minds</a> with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). In 2021, the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/a76380-interim-report-special-rapporteur-freedom-religion-or-belief">UN warned of</a> the risks of neural technologies predicting, identifying and modifying our thoughts. Manhattan projects of the mind threaten to make lab rats of us all.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567634/original/file-20240103-25-nqv1bk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Suited man standing next to a brain imaging device." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567634/original/file-20240103-25-nqv1bk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567634/original/file-20240103-25-nqv1bk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567634/original/file-20240103-25-nqv1bk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567634/original/file-20240103-25-nqv1bk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567634/original/file-20240103-25-nqv1bk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567634/original/file-20240103-25-nqv1bk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567634/original/file-20240103-25-nqv1bk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Elon Musk’s brain implant company Neuralink received regulatory approval to conduct the first clinical trial in humans in 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elon_Musk_and_the_Neuralink_Future.jpg">Steve Jurvetson/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>We could respond by calling on our right to freedom of thought. It’s there waiting for us, created in 1948 by the <a href="https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights">Universal Declaration of Human Rights</a> (Article 18) and later <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-covenant-civil-and-political-rights">becoming international law</a>. But anyone reaching for this right may be horrified to find it hollow, bereft of any clear definition and unfit for purpose.</p>
<p>In recent years, the UN has sought to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13642987.2023.2227100">give this right more substance</a>. One of its special rapporteurs, Ahmed Shaheed, has made a <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/a76380-interim-report-special-rapporteur-freedom-religion-or-belief">series of recommendations</a> (which I will outline) that should, eventually, lead to a better defined, more muscular right to free thought. This process has promise – it could help shield our thoughts from prying eyes and protect our minds from manipulation.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/to-what-extent-are-you-truly-free-71188">To what extent are you truly free?</a>
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<p>But it also has the potential for harm. In international law, freedom of thought is an absolute right. This means it could run roughshod over other important concerns. Activists could, for example, use this right to silence their political opponents by claiming their opponents’ speech is manipulating thoughts.</p>
<p>This right could also go wrong by failing to protect all forms of thought. We must ask where “thinking” ends and “speaking” begins in today’s world: should performing an online search, writing a personal diary, or asking a question in a WhatsApp group be regarded as forms of thought, or outright speech?</p>
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<p><strong><em>This article is part of Conversation Insights</em></strong>
<br><em>The Insights team generates <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218">long-form journalism</a> derived from interdisciplinary research. The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.</em></p>
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<p>History suggests the right to free thought will only become globally relevant if political factions <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674064348">or states</a> use it to serve their purposes. And this looks increasingly likely as accusations of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/04/cambridge-analytica-data-leak-global-election-manipulation">mental manipulation</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48065622">“thoughtcrime” creation</a> fly between the political right and left, and the US looks for new weapons in its <a href="https://www.hoover.org/research/cold-war-ii-niall-ferguson-emerging-conflict-china">developing cold war with China</a>.</p>
<p>For both technological and (geo)political reasons, the right to freedom of thought’s time may have come. Whatever it is decided to mean, it will bind us all. As I argue in my new book <a href="https://oneworld-publications.com/work/freethinking/">Freethinking</a>, this makes it crucial that we can all have input into its design. </p>
<h2>Free thought past</h2>
<p>The term “freethinker” came into common use during the Enlightenment in late 17th-century Europe, describing people who questioned religious authorities. Today, freethinking typically refers to being <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/mono/10.4324/9780203429488-94/value-free-thought-1944-kenneth-blackwell-harry-ruja-bernd-frohmann-john-slater-sheila-turcon">guided by evidence and reason, not authority</a> – although this hasn’t stopped people who play fast and loose with evidence appropriating the term too.</p>
<p>Up against the freethinkers are those who seek to control thought to achieve and cement power. George Orwell’s classic vision of this threat, Nineteen Eighty-Four, actually came out 20 years after <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/thought-crime">Japan’s Peace Preservation Law</a> had already termed many people on the political left as “thought criminals”.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/T8BA7adK6XA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Nineteen Eighty-Four official trailer (1984)</span></figcaption>
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<p>In Orwell’s novel, the ruling party aims to “extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent thought”. Beginning in childhood, people are taught to deny the evidence of their eyes and ears. No one is to be left alone to think – yet nor are they able to think with others. People are encouraged to stop themselves on the threshold of dangerous thoughts, as the terrifying Thought Police find and punish those who commit “thoughtcrime”.</p>
<p>The ruling party also uses extensive surveillance, parallels to which can be seen today. Consider the effects of Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations that the US was heavily surveilling the internet. This led to <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2412564">a 10% drop</a> in internet searches that could have got Americans in trouble with their government, such as “domestic security”, “nuclear” and “organized crime”. Americans’ suspicion that they were being watched harmed their freedom of thought.</p>
<p>New technologies drive new laws. Just as photography spurred <a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/mslr2008&div=7&g_sent=1&casa_token=kSy5i8DmOnMAAAAA:SOLEoYd1oW26YL0UiKKPWV9aKVd7KfdzUfLUOgUyAMRLC2FF8L3RVWY33iU9bZ8gNTkQX8tW6w&collection=journals">a right to privacy</a> in 1890, today <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-84494-3">scholars</a> want to develop the right to freedom of thought in response to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24756752">neurotechnology</a> and the <a href="https://www.doughtystreet.co.uk/sites/default/files/media/document/Rethinking%20Freedom%20of%20Thought%20for%20the%2021st.pdf">digital world</a>. This means confronting the gulf between the extensive lauding of this right and the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13642987.2023.2227100">bewildering neglect</a> of what it practically involves. Enter the UN.</p>
<h2>Free thought present</h2>
<p>In October 2021, special rapporteur Shaheed <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/a76380-interim-report-special-rapporteur-freedom-religion-or-belief">presented a report</a> on the right to freedom of thought. To underpin this right, he proposed four pillars which I summarise as follows, including some questions I think we should consider about them:</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567687/original/file-20240103-510735-l12yif.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Universal Declaration of Human Rights document" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567687/original/file-20240103-510735-l12yif.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567687/original/file-20240103-510735-l12yif.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567687/original/file-20240103-510735-l12yif.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567687/original/file-20240103-510735-l12yif.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567687/original/file-20240103-510735-l12yif.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1017&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567687/original/file-20240103-510735-l12yif.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1017&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567687/original/file-20240103-510735-l12yif.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1017&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_universal_declaration_of_human_rights_10_December_1948.jpg">UN via Wikimedia</a></span>
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<p><strong>1. Mental privacy.</strong> People cannot be forced to reveal their thoughts. This means we must scrutinise technological developments that open new windows into our minds. But should our minds always be private?</p>
<p><strong>2. Mental immunity.</strong> People cannot be punished for their thoughts. This idea has existed since ancient Rome, though today we need to decide what exactly should count as a “thought”.</p>
<p><strong>3. Mental integrity.</strong> People and organisations cannot alter others’ thoughts without permission. We know subliminal advertising is wrong because it bypasses our conscious mind – but beyond this, we enter a grey zone. When does persuasion become impermissible manipulation?</p>
<p><strong>4. Mental fertility.</strong> This enshrines a government’s duty to create an enabling environment for free thought. But will governments really do this if free thought challenges their power? And even if they want to, how can they design a society that promotes free thought?</p>
<p>To build on these pillars, we need to answer basic questions about what thought is and what makes it free. Before we can protect thought, we must first define it.</p>
<h2>Free thought future</h2>
<p>Traditionally, the law views thoughts as happening inside our brains. Yet philosophers (and, increasingly, psychologists and technologists) have <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3328150">long claimed that</a> thought “ain’t just in the head”, proposing that our minds extend into the world. </p>
<p>A notebook can be the functioning memory of someone with dementia. Writing in a diary, as Winston Smith did illegally in Nineteen Eighty-Four, can also represent thinking. Writing doesn’t only express thought; sometimes “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511583360">the thinking is the writing</a>”. Similarly, some internet searches can be a form of thinking as we use them to question, reason and reflect.</p>
<p>If the right to freedom of thought is deemed to cover our “extended minds”, this will have important consequences. Authorities <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/2016/08/how-your-google-searches-can-be-used-against-you-court">often access the internet search histories</a> of people accused of crimes, using this as evidence. In homicide trials, searches such as “how to get rid of someone annoying” or “chloroform” have been <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/2016/08/how-your-google-searches-can-be-used-against-you-court">cited in court</a>. But if such searches are deemed to constitute thinking, then accessing someone’s search history could become a violation of their mental privacy.</p>
<p>Speaking aloud can also be regarded as a form of thinking – we sometimes speak to find out what we think. As novelist <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1600910X.2019.1630846">E.M. Forster asked</a>: “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?”</p>
<p>But we also speak aloud in order to think with other people – and we may <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geb.2009.09.003">think better with others</a> than we do alone. Thought can be at its most powerful when it is social, rather than the solitary act depicted by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thinker">Auguste Rodin</a>. So, for thought to be truly free, we require public as well as private thinking spaces.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567693/original/file-20240103-29-s0we6w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Rodin's statue The Thinker in a leafy garden." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567693/original/file-20240103-29-s0we6w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567693/original/file-20240103-29-s0we6w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567693/original/file-20240103-29-s0we6w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567693/original/file-20240103-29-s0we6w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567693/original/file-20240103-29-s0we6w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567693/original/file-20240103-29-s0we6w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567693/original/file-20240103-29-s0we6w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Thinking is not always best done alone, despite Rodin’s famous depiction.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rodin%27s_The_Thinker_-_panoramio.jpg">Roman Suzuki/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>To facilitate this, we may need a new legal concept of “<a href="https://oneworld-publications.com/work/freethinking/">thoughtspeech</a>”. This would represent the thinking aloud we do with others in the name of “good faith truth-seeking”. Thoughtspeech could be protected as absolutely as the thoughts inside our head: while one could (and should) still disagree with others, attempts to silence or punish thoughtspeech would be a human rights violation.</p>
<p>However, an obvious concern is that this concept could be misused to justify hate speech that <a href="https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/policies/justice-and-fundamental-rights/combatting-discrimination/racism-and-xenophobia/combating-hate-speech-and-hate-crime_en#:%7E:text=Hate%20motivated%20crime%20and%20speech,or%20national%20or%20ethnic%20origin.">Europe</a>, but <a href="https://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/hate">not the US</a>, has deemed illegal. The protestation that “I’m just asking questions” can easily be employed <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00207659.2021.1939946">as a cover to demonise people</a>. At the same time, a creeping prohibition of asking difficult or challenging questions is also potentially dangerous, not least to society’s minorities who seek to challenge the status quo. Where necessary, courts would have to decide whether the claimed thoughtspeech was genuine truth-seeking in good faith, or had darker motives.</p>
<p>To see these thorny questions in practice, consider how, in Ireland, both <a href="https://www.kildarestreet.com/debate/?id=2023-04-26a.380">the left</a> and right have argued that the proposed <a href="https://data.oireachtas.ie/ie/oireachtas/bill/2022/105/eng/ver_b/b105b22d.pdf">criminal justice (incitement to violence or hatred and hate offences) bill</a> 2022 will create “thought crimes”. Section 10(3) of this bill states that if you possess hateful material that you haven’t shown anyone, and it is reasonable to assume this material is not just intended for personal use, then you are presumed to be breaking the law. The police could then seek a warrant to enter your premises and access this information.</p>
<p>One <a href="https://www.independent.ie/podcasts/the-big-tech-show/the-big-tech-show-irelands-new-hate-speech-law-will-create-thought-crimes/a978548546.html">politician claimed</a> this bill would not create thought crimes because it involved “production of material”, and that “nobody is ever going to be prosecuted for what they’re thinking inside their heads”. This illustrates the restricted view of thought that some politicians hold – and suggests that legislators could leave much of our thinking naked and vulnerable.</p>
<p>Once we have settled on what thought is, we must work out what makes it free. The <a href="https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A32022R2065">EU’s Digital Services Act</a> forbids online platforms from deceiving or manipulating users, or impairing their ability to make “free and informed decisions”. But what counts as manipulation or impairing free decision-making?</p>
<p>Psychology suggests that free thinking requires us to control our attention, be able to reason and reflect, and to not need superhuman courage to think aloud with others. This makes platforms and products problematic that either capture our attention to the <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/14/2612">point of addiction</a>, or employ “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jla/laaa006">dark patterns</a>” that undermine reflection and reasoning.</p>
<p>For instance, in the “false demand” dark pattern, a shopping website may falsely tell you that “Abby in London” has just bought a pillow. This could undermine your reasoning by triggering a panicky sense of scarcity in you, or setting a false norm of others buying the pillow, making you more likely to purchase.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567710/original/file-20240103-19-2ta8k1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three UK local election ballot papers" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567710/original/file-20240103-19-2ta8k1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567710/original/file-20240103-19-2ta8k1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567710/original/file-20240103-19-2ta8k1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567710/original/file-20240103-19-2ta8k1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567710/original/file-20240103-19-2ta8k1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567710/original/file-20240103-19-2ta8k1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567710/original/file-20240103-19-2ta8k1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">UK local election ballot papers with candidates listed in alphabetical order.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ballot_papers_for_the_2021_United_Kingdom_local_elections.jpg">domdomegg/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The designers of systems need not even intentionally play on our mental biases for their products to be problematic. For instance, listing candidates in alphabetical order on a voting ballot paper may seem neutral, but the candidate named first gains a small <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2016.06.019">but measurable advantage</a>. This is partly because we have a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2016.09.002">mental bias to prefer</a> the first item on a list. </p>
<p>Some US states don’t use <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0261379414000584">alphabetical ordering on ballots</a> for this reason. Instead they randomly rotate the order of candidates’ names on ballots across districts. Yet, elsewhere, <a href="https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/guidance-acting-returning-officers-administering-a-uk-parliamentary-election-great-britain/voter-materials/production-ballot-papers/ballot-paper-design/candidate-details">including in the UK</a>, this alphabetical practice continues. Alphabetical ordering arguably violates voters’ right to freedom of thought.</p>
<p>I believe the right to freedom of thought should protect thinking wherever it occurs – in our heads, our diaries, on the internet, or when we’re engaged in good faith truth-seeking when thinking aloud with others. And crucially, to keep thoughts free, our environment must be designed and regulated to let us control our attention, think logically and reflectively, and not fear punishment for our thoughts. Unfortunately, new technologies threaten this ideal.</p>
<h2>The power to punish thought</h2>
<p>New technologies have the potential to undermine three of the UN’s pillars of free thought – mental privacy, immunity, and integrity. It is well known, for example, that social media can use knowledge of how our minds work to hijack our attention, discourage reflection, and facilitate the punishment of wrongthink, thereby <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13347-022-00567-7">harming our autonomy</a>. Less well known is how social media revives an old social pattern that threatens free thought.</p>
<p>Our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived in egalitarian communities with no dominant individuals. This was due to a “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/204166">reverse dominance hierarchy</a>” which meant that, if someone tried to rise above others, the group would work together to humble, exclude or even kill this would-be “tall poppy”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567734/original/file-20240103-23-v2f60j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Cave painting of hunter gatherers" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567734/original/file-20240103-23-v2f60j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567734/original/file-20240103-23-v2f60j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567734/original/file-20240103-23-v2f60j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567734/original/file-20240103-23-v2f60j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567734/original/file-20240103-23-v2f60j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567734/original/file-20240103-23-v2f60j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567734/original/file-20240103-23-v2f60j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived in egalitarian communities without dominant individuals.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/ancient-prehistoric-cave-painting-known-white-2005544015">R.M. Nunes/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>My book <a href="https://oneworld-publications.com/work/spite/">Spite</a> (2020) explains how anthropologists believe this was possible due to humans’ ability to moralise, wield weapons and use language. Language in particular, especially gossip, helped coordinate actions against tall poppies. When agriculture was invented, larger groups, private property and recognised authority figures came on to the scene, enabling a <a href="https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/christopher-boehm/moral-origins/9780465020485/">more hierarchical form of life</a>.</p>
<p>Social media has bought back the reverse dominance hierarchy. People online can unite to moralise and gossip, sometimes with the effect of bringing down individuals. And while this can helpfully check people who abuse their power, it can also harm freethinkers who disturb the status quo and undermine what they see as society’s “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_lie">noble</a>” (or ignoble) lies.</p>
<p>And not only can new technologies facilitate the punishment of thought, they also have the potential to powerfully manipulate our thoughts. AI will soon know exactly what to say to us to maximise the chances of us performing a desired behaviour. As OpenAI’s CEO <a href="https://youtu.be/e1cf58VWzt8?feature=shared&t=526">Sam Altman has warned</a> in relation to the 2024 elections:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What if an AI reads everything you have ever written online – every tweet, every article, every everything – then right at the exact moment, sends you one message, customised just for you, that really changes how you think about the world?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The power disparity between us and AI means that courts could deem AI to have improper undue influence over our minds.</p>
<p>New technologies can also uncover our hidden thoughts. This goes beyond what Big Brother was capable of. As Orwell wrote in Nineteen Eighty-Four, even the ruling party “had never mastered the secret of finding out what another human being was thinking”. </p>
<p>Today, brain-reading technology that detects thoughts via brain scans or neural interfaces threatens to uncover this secret. Meta (Facebook’s owner) <a href="https://ai.meta.com/blog/brain-ai-image-decoding-meg-magnetoencephalography/">recently showed</a> it could determine what people were seeing by examining their brainwaves using magnetoencephalography (MEG) technology. Behaviour-reading techniques that use our actions, such as <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2003-00779-011">musical preferences</a> or what we <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1218772110">“like” on Facebook</a>, can also be used to infer our internal states. </p>
<p>Now, imagine if a government had someone in custody suspected of having planted a nuclear bomb in a city. There would be a strong temptation to use mind-reading technology to identify the location of the bomb from that individual’s brain – but this would violate the suspect’s right to free thought. Some people, perhaps many, would argue that this right <em>should</em> be violated in such circumstances. </p>
<p>Perhaps the future could include places where free thought is legally limited. While this is a challenging idea, it would be ironic if we failed to think critically about free thought itself. Legal scholar Jan Christoph Bublitz has speculated on the idea of “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24756752">zones of restricted freedom of thought</a>” in places vulnerable to terrorism, such as airports. In these zones, our thoughts could be permissibly accessed by the state to prevent calamities. </p>
<p>Likewise, the philosopher <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Moral-Landscape/Sam-Harris/9781439171226">Sam Harris has suggested</a> that once mind reading technology can detect lies, it could be used to create “zones of obligatory candour”. These would be locations, such as courtrooms, where lies would be automatically detected from your brainwaves.</p>
<p>Yet, concerns about mind-reading technologies are frequently blighted by <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13642987.2023.2227100">hyperbole, alarmism and exaggeration</a>. One does not simply fall into an MRI scanner; one must consent. Once inside, <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.29.509744v1">we must cooperate</a> with researchers for brain-reading to work. The extent to which our mental content can be accurately identified is often over-hyped, as it requires extremely specific conditions.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/does-ai-have-a-right-to-free-speech-only-if-it-supports-our-right-to-free-thought-212555">Does AI have a right to free speech? Only if it supports our right to free thought</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>It’s also important to recognise that the same technologies that threaten free thought can also benefit thought. Brain-computer interfaces, where we interact with computers simply by thinking, could <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/09/29/1080472/elon-musk-bandwidth-brains/">boost our mental bandwidth</a>. AI systems such as ChatGPT can stimulate new ideas. So, over-regulating these technologies could be seen as harming free thought.</p>
<p>Clearly, we need to protect free thought in response to new technologies. But in my view, overreacting with unnecessary laws won’t lead to freer minds – it will simply enable other people’s anxieties to rule our lives.</p>
<h2>Protecting employees’ and users’ thoughts</h2>
<p>Traditionally, governments were seen as the main threat to our freedoms. Today, corporations, particularly those involved in controlling flows of information such as media and technology companies, vie for this crown. </p>
<p>Such companies influence what information we do and don’t see. They can also overwhelm us with too much content, creating “<a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.7312/poze19712-002/html">reverse censorship</a>” that harms our ability to think. Corporations also threaten free thought through their ability to fire employees for thoughtcrime, potentially in response to a public outcry. </p>
<p>The British philosopher Bertrand Russell warned <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Thought_and_Official_Propaganda">a century ago</a> that “thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living”. Russell said this problem would grow unless the public insisted that employers controlled nothing in their employees’ lives except their work. Today, employers can influence their employees’ <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26842250">morality</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.4135/9781526488664">opinions</a>, and even <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2012/10/employers-increasingly-telling-employees-workers-how-to-vote.html">voting decisions</a>. As a starting point, we need laws that protect employees from being fired for their thinking.</p>
<p>To take another example, while the anti-discriminatory aims of implicit bias training are laudable, corporations could require employees to reveal their thoughts when doing it. The designers of a common element of this training, the implicit association test, <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1998-02892-004">admit it is</a> “a method that gives the clearest window now available into a region of the mind that is inaccessible to question-asking methods”. Forcing someone into this training could therefore be a breach of mental privacy.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/social-networking-sites-may-be-controlling-your-mind-heres-how-to-take-charge-88516">Social networking sites may be controlling your mind – here's how to take charge</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Turning from employees to users, perhaps big tech companies should be required to design their products to support, promote and protect their users’ free thoughts. For example, social media platforms could set their default options to those that minimise the risk of addiction.</p>
<p>Woodrow Wilson once noted that chewing tobacco “gave a man time to think between sentences”. Big tech could provide digital gum in the form of options that <a href="https://profilebooks.com/work/how-to-think/">give users time for thought</a>, like timeouts before responding to posts or making purchases. X (formerly Twitter) already <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jun/11/twitter-aims-to-limit-people-sharing-articles-they-have-not-read">asks users</a> if they want to share articles they have not yet read.</p>
<p>Similarly, search engines could offer options to show information that challenges users’ existing views rather than confirming their opinions. Websites <a href="https://ground.news/">such as Ground News</a> already highlight which stories are primarily featuring on left or right media, helping people see what is happening outside their own thought bubbles.</p>
<p>Big tech companies such as <a href="https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/public-policy/our-ongoing-commitment-to-human-rights/">Google</a> and <a href="https://humanrights.fb.com/annual-human-rights-report/">Meta</a> assess their human rights impacts, including through <a href="https://about.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Human-Rights-Due-Diligence-of-Metas-Impacts-in-Israel-and-Palestine-in-May-2021.pdf">independent assessments</a>. But freedom of thought is often overlooked. And while the UN has issued its Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, these have been described as “<a href="https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/related_material/business.pdf">woefully inadequate</a>” by Human Rights Watch as they lack any enforcement mechanism.</p>
<h2>It’s not just ‘them’, it’s us</h2>
<p>It is not just governments and corporations that threaten free thought – we the people do too. Free thinking has often been risky. “Tell the truth and run,” an old Yugoslavian proverb counsels. </p>
<p>Throughout history, though, some societies have tried to protect free thought and truth-telling. The ancient Athenians had the concept of a “parrhesiast”, someone who spoke truth despite the risks. An example of this came when the aged statesman Solon challenged <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250009104/thecourageoftruth">politician Pisistratus’s</a> quest for power in Athens. After arriving at the Greek Assembly dressed in armour to highlight Pisistratus’s aim to use force, Solon declared:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I am wiser than those who have failed to understand the designs of Pisistratus, and I am more courageous than those who have understood but remain silent out of fear.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>To benefit from the parrhesiast, Athenians had to be willing to bear what philosopher Michel Foucault calls “<a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250009104/thecourageoftruth">the injuries of truth</a>”. In this parrhesiastic contract, the truth-teller risked speaking out and the listeners promised not to punish them. There again, Solon was not thanked for his contribution, being labelled mad by his colleagues.</p>
<p>Creating a safe space for truth requires a “<a href="https://oneworld-publications.com/work/freethinking/">deep enlightenment</a>” that goes beyond simply educating people to think critically. Designing a society that protects and promotes free thought among its population at all levels could even include city planning.</p>
<p>A Brazilian colleague once told me how the design of the country’s modern capital, Brasília, with its lack of street corners, was meant to prevent people assembling and thinking together – because such thinking could one day threaten the ruling powers. Indeed, the Portuguese for street corners can translate as “points of solidarity”. The <a href="https://politicalscience.yale.edu/publications/seeing-state-how-certain-schemes-improve-human-condition-have-failed">design of Brasília</a> is an offence against free thought.</p>
<p>Rather, we need to design physical and virtual spaces that protect, promote and support “<a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262581080/the-structural-transformation-of-the-public-sphere/">people’s public use of their reason</a>”. This function was partially performed by coffee houses during the Enlightenment. New spaces should allow a diverse range of voices to be brought together in debate – in order to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X10000968">help us best find truth</a>. Yet all of this hinges on simultaneously building <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Trust/Francis-Fukuyama/9780684825250">a culture of trust</a> that makes people feel safe to think.</p>
<h2>The oxygen of freethinking</h2>
<p>The principle of free thought is in trouble. Today, public thinking is difficult unless you are rich, reckless or anonymous. Online public spaces, such as much social media, typically prioritise engagement and profit over truth-seeking, and can exclude challenging views. A corporate-controlled mainstream news media routinely excludes or distorts important perspectives <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801488870/framed/">such as labour issues</a>. Some academics feel compelled to publish ideas anonymously in outlets such as the <a href="https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/">Journal of Controversial Ideas</a>. These are all warning lights of flashing failure on the dashboard of democracy.</p>
<p>The first freethinkers challenged religious authorities and were associated with egalitarianism and the political left. Yet they had their own “<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/enlightenment/">faith of the Enlightenment</a>” – the belief that developing one’s own reason could create a better life. Today, as well as sharing this faith in reason, many of us have faith that <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/13399/the-end-of-history-and-the-last-man-by-fukuyama-francis/9780241991039">liberal democracy creates the best form of life</a>.</p>
<p>However, some modern freethinkers are pushing back against these faiths. Such individuals tend to be pro-hierarchy and on the political right. The <a href="https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/A-Conservative-Manifesto.pdf">conservative</a> psychologist Jordan Peterson <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEP5ubPMGDU">argues</a> that we’re at the start of a “counter enlightenment”, while legal scholar Adrian Vermeule maligns the “<a href="https://www.firstthings.com/article/2017/01/liturgy-of-liberalism">evidence-based freethinkers of the quiet car</a>” who won’t speak out about liberalism’s problems. Alternatively, so-called “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/japp.12331">Dark Enlightenment</a>” thinkers such as <a href="https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/">Curtis Yarvin</a> and <a href="https://www.imperiumpress.org/shop/the-dark-enlightenment/">Nick Land</a> question the benefits of democracy. </p>
<p>Whatever you think of these views, an important question is: will the descendants of the egalitarian left, who used freethinking to challenge societal norms, support the hierarchical right’s freedom to do the same? Or do they regard the political right as <a href="https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/publications/1960s/1965-repressive-tolerance-fulltext.html">in need of silencing</a> rather than debating?</p>
<p>Of course, freethinking on the left is silenced too – including those who oppose the “religion” of capitalism. Consider what happened when a declared socialist, Jeremy Corbyn, ran for prime minister in the 2017 UK parliamentary elections. An academic report on his <a href="https://www.lse.ac.uk/media-and-communications/research/research-projects/representations-of-jeremy-corbyn">coverage by the mainstream media</a> concluded by asking whether it was:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>acceptable that the majority of British newspapers uses its mediated power to attack and delegitimise the leader of the largest opposition party against a rightwing government to such an extent and with such vigour?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Whatever one’s views on democracy, liberalism, capitalism, or any other important topic, freethinking on these issues can prove profoundly valuable. If someone’s ideas have value, we may adopt them to live better lives. If we adjudge them mistaken, we will still emerge with a better understanding of precisely why our own ideas are valuable, having remade them as <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm">living truths rather than dead dogmas</a>.</p>
<p>Free thought is not merely about gaining more perspectives. It is about duelling perspectives. The left and right could find common ground not in a <a href="https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/campus-disinvitation-database">commitment to mutual cancellation</a>, but in a renewed dedication to debate. We must embrace the value of thinking. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, we often find thought a painful effort. Evolution has shaped us to make decisions using minimal energy, pressuring us to become <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13546783.2018.1459314">cognitive misers</a> who are “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13546783.2018.1459314">as stupid as we can get away with</a>”, as psychologist Keith Stanovich argues. Many of us are not merely disinclined to think but actively prefer electrocution to being left alone with our thoughts, <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.1250830">according to one 2014 study</a>.</p>
<p>The rise of generative AI threatens to make this situation worse. One vision of the future imagines <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/291221/the-singularity-is-near-by-ray-kurzweil/">a singularity</a> where we merge with machines by connecting our brains directly to AI. But what if we approach a bifurcation point rather than a singularity? Humans could become a mere source of animalistic appetites and desires, while machines do the thinking for us.</p>
<p>If we abandon free thought, homo sapiens will have been a brief candle between ape and AI. Humanity’s flame cannot continue to burn in an authoritarian vacuum – it requires the oxygen of freethinking. A right to free thought can give us this air, but we still have to breathe in.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>For you: more from our <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Insights series</a>:</em></p>
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<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/ocd-is-so-much-more-than-handwashing-or-tidying-as-a-historian-with-the-disorder-heres-what-ive-learned-219281?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">OCD is so much more than handwashing or tidying. As a historian with the disorder, here’s what I’ve learned
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon McCarthy-Jones receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program via a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Innovative Training Network.</span></em></p>Corporate and political actors know more about how our minds work than we do. The right to free thought can no longer be our ‘forgotten freedom’Simon McCarthy-Jones, Associate Professor in Clinical Psychology and Neuropsychology, Trinity College DublinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2151922023-10-07T13:39:47Z2023-10-07T13:39:47ZNobel peace prize 2023: award for Iranian women’s rights protester highlights fight against declining democracy around the world<p>One hundred days after Iranians first protested the killing of 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini for wearing her hijab incorrectly, Narges Mohammadi sat down in her prison cell to <a href="https://iranwire.com/en/politics/111879-nargess-mohammadis-shocking-letter-about-sexual-assault-against-prisoners/">write a letter</a> to the country’s women. She promised: “We shall not back down until the moment of victory, meaning the establishment of democracy, peace, human rights and an end to tyranny”. </p>
<p>In recognition of her indomitable spirit – and the bravery shown by thousands of Iranians at the forefront of the woman-life-freedom movement – Mohammadi has <a href="https://theconversation.com/nobel-peace-prize-narges-mohammadi-wins-on-behalf-of-thousands-of-iranian-women-struggling-for-human-rights-215190">won the 2023 Nobel peace prize</a>. </p>
<p>The Nobel committee recognised her “fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all”. But it also pointedly extended the accolade to all of those women who have taken to the streets in protest against the oppressive theocratic government, including <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/iran-protests-death-count-human-rights-report/32224340.html#">more than 500 demonstrators who were killed, thousands injured and 20,000 arrested</a>.</p>
<h2>Women’s fight for rights and justice</h2>
<p>Mohammadi is not the first Iranian woman to win the Nobel peace prize. In 2003, lawyer Shirin Ebadi was <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2003/ebadi/facts/">awarded the distinction</a> for her work promoting human rights which had also seen her imprisoned by the regime. Ebadi gave me this statement after this year’s announcement: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have known Narges Mohammadi for many years. She was the spokesperson for the Defenders of Human Rights Centre which I co-founded. For her activities, Narges has been in prison for a long time. She is still in prison now. I hope that the Peace Prize awarded to Narges for her brave work for women’s and human rights will help to bring more attention to Iran and women’s fight for democracy. Because it is women who will open the doors to democracy in Iran.</p>
</blockquote>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nobel-peace-prize-narges-mohammadi-wins-on-behalf-of-thousands-of-iranian-women-struggling-for-human-rights-215190">Nobel peace prize: Narges Mohammadi wins on behalf of thousands of Iranian women struggling for human rights</a>
</strong>
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<p>The executive director of the Nobel Women’s Initiative, Maria Butler, <a href="https://www.nobelwomensinitiative.org/narges_mohammadi">commented that</a>: “Too often in times of conflict women are seen only as victims, their contributions to justice and peace-building are overlooked, and their voices excluded.” </p>
<p>Since it was established in 1901, the Nobel Peace Prize has only gone to 19 women including Mohammadi, compared to more than 90 men. If Mohammadi is the “symbol of what it means to be a freedom fighter in Iran”, as the chair of the Nobel prize committee <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2023/summary/">Berit Reiss-Andersen has said</a>, she is also a powerful symbol for all women and girls around the world. </p>
<p>It’s also significant that alongside Mohammadi, in the <a href="https://www.prio.org/news/3009">shortlist assembled by Henrik Urdal</a>, the director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) was Mahbouba Seraj, who is fighting a similar campaign for the rights of women in Afghanistan. As Seraj <a href="https://www.prio.org/news/3009">wrote in August</a>, this year about the takeover of her country by the Taliban in 2021: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The women of Afghanistan went from existence – from being part of society, from working, from being part of every aspect of life as doctors, judges, nurses, engineers, women running offices – to nothing. Everything they had, even the most basic right to go to high school, was taken away from them. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Declining democracy</h2>
<p>When she announced the prize winner, Nobel committee chair Berit Reiss-Andersen said that the choice of Nobel peace laureates over the past few years had reflected a decline in democracy around the world. Just as Mohammadi’s 2023 award represents the struggle of all Iranian women against oppression, the 2022 award to <a href="https://theconversation.com/nobel-peace-prize-goes-to-belarusian-russian-and-ukrainian-human-rights-activists-192110">Ales Bialiatski</a> from Belarus was also aiming to represent a broader struggle for democracy in an autocratic country.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/I_ycb9mZFag?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Berit Reiss-Andersen, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, announces the winner of the 2023 Nobel peace prize.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The award to Bialatski, who remains in prison having been jailed without trial in 2021 for his role in pro-democracy protests, reflected the value of civil society against the dictatorial powers adopted by the Belarus president, Alexander Lukashenko, in 2016. Bialiatski shared the award with Russian human rights organisation, Memorial and the Ukrainian human rights organisation Centre for Civil Liberties. As the Nobel committee put it: “Together they demonstrate the significance of civil society for peace and democracy.”</p>
<p>The 2021 award went to two journalists: Maria Ressa in Philippines and Dmitry Andreyevich Muratov in Russia. Ressa, the founder of the investigative news website Rappler, consistently risked her life and liberty to bring to light abuses of power under the authoritarian rule of former president, Rodrigo Duterte. She has spent years <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/12/philippine-nobel-prize-winner-maria-ressa-acquitted-of-tax-charges">fighting multiple charges</a> filed against her by the Duterte government in order to stay out of prison. She and a Rappler colleague are appealing against a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/08/philippines-nobel-laureate-maria-ressa-loses-appeal-against-cyber-libel-conviction#">cyber libel conviction </a> which could have a seven-year prison sentence.</p>
<p>Muratov won for his leadership of the opposition newspaper and website Novaya Gazeta in Russia. He has since been <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/russia-declares-nobel-prize-winning-editor-dmitry-muratov-to-be-a-foreign-agent">declared a “foreign agent”</a> by the Kremlin. He moved the editorial offices and staff of Novaya Gazeta to Latvia soon after Russia invaded Ukraine, but has stayed in Moscow where he <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/aug/20/dmitry-muratov-russian-nobel-peace-prize-winner-who-wont-be-silenced-by-putin">faces regular harassment</a>.</p>
<p>International IDEA, an independent organisation which tracks democracy around the world, said that at the end of 2021, “nearly one half of the 173 countries assessed by International IDEA are <a href="https://www.idea.int/democracytracker/gsod-report-2022#chapter2.1">experiencing declines</a> in at least one sub-attribute of democracy”. </p>
<p>Whether these are legal clampdowns on public right to protest, as in the new <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/public-order-laws-are-we-losing-the-right-to-protest-12878592">Public Order Laws in the UK</a>, illegal military-backed coups on democratically elected governments as seen in various African countries such as <a href="https://www.idea.int/democracytracker/gsod-report-2022#chapter2.1">Gabon and Niger</a> in 2022 or deliberate attempts to exploit religious divisions, such as by <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2023/09/30/arundhati-roy-in-india-the-political-thinkers-in-modi-s-party-openly-worshiped-hitler-and-mussolini_6142003_4.html">India’s Modi government</a>, respect for democratic principles is under pressure.</p>
<p>Making the Nobel award to Mohammadi, committee chair Reiss-Andersen said that she hoped that offering solidarity with the jailed human rights activist and the broader woman-life-freedom movement in Iran would spark change.</p>
<p>“But I would also like to remind you that it took three Nobel prizes before apartheid fell in South Africa, she added: "Peace is not a quick fix.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215192/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leïla Choukroune does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Nobel peace prize committee noted that awards in recent years highlight pressure on democracy which they say is in decline around the world.Leïla Choukroune, Professor of International Law, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2102202023-10-05T12:34:25Z2023-10-05T12:34:25ZSupreme Court is increasingly putting Christians’ First Amendment rights ahead of others’ dignity and rights to equal protection<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549184/original/file-20230919-25-z2689l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=140%2C0%2C5389%2C3673&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Supporters of web designer Lorie Smith, the owner of 303 Creative, demonstrate in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on Dec. 5, 2022. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/supporters-of-web-designer-lorie-smith-protest-in-front-at-news-photo/1446995982?adppopup=true">Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When the Supreme Court ruled in <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-476_c185.pdf">303 Creative v. Elenis</a> in 2023 that a businessperson could not be compelled to create art that violates their religious beliefs – specifically, a wedding website for a same-sex ceremony – supporters of the decision celebrated it as a victory for freedom of religion and expression. </p>
<p>On the day the ruling was issued, the conservative Family Research Council called it “<a href="https://www.frc.org/op-eds/303-creative-is-a-big-win-for-religious-liberty-at-the-supreme-court">the latest in a trend of victories for free speech and religious liberty</a>,” while the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression hailed “<a href="https://www.thefire.org/news/fire-statement-supreme-court-decision-303-creative-v-elenis">a resounding victory for freedom of expression and freedom of conscience</a>.”</p>
<p>But contrary to these claims, the Supreme Court’s decision does not protect the freedoms of all Americans. Rather, it represents the culmination of a decadelong strategy by conservative Christians – known sometimes as the Christian right – to use the courts to limit the freedoms of groups of Americans of whom they disapprove. On issues where the Christian right’s First Amendment claims directly threaten the equal citizenship of sexual minorities, for example, the court left no question about which side it was on. </p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=RHXgn2sAAAAJ&hl=en">As experts</a> <a href="https://lsa.umich.edu/polisci/people/faculty/andrew-murphy.html">on religion and politics</a> globally and in the United States, we think the effectiveness of this strategy has the potential to degrade both the quality of American democracy and freedoms of religion and expression. </p>
<p><a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-1/">The First Amendment</a> protects <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-the-first-amendment-really-says-4-basic-principles-of-free-speech-in-the-us-197604">a cluster of core rights and freedoms</a>: religion, speech, press, peaceful assembly and petitioning the government. </p>
<p>The 303 Creative decision threatens to undermine this crucial set of rights by privileging a particular group’s version of what it means to exercise speech and religion. We believe that will have harmful consequences for sexual minorities’ pursuit of inclusion and full citizenship across a range of domains, from intimate behavior and expression to inclusion in the commercial and economic realms.</p>
<p><a href="https://apnews.com/article/us-supreme-court-lifestyle-religion-couples-a5edfc7184a85dde5775994b8bd86a7c">Lower courts that ruled against 303 Creative</a> argued that the state has a compelling interest to protect the “dignity” of members of marginalized groups that has been a cornerstone of <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/06/27/196280855/explaining-justice-kennedy-the-dignity-factor">previous Supreme Court decisions securing gay rights</a>. </p>
<p>By overturning these lower court decisions, the Supreme Court’s ruling upends this standard of human dignity as central to liberty. It may also encourage other groups to seek exemptions from anti-discrimination laws, thus depriving the government of a crucial tool to protect those who face intolerance. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549185/original/file-20230919-23-7pktdl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three men in suits and ties at a lectern." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549185/original/file-20230919-23-7pktdl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549185/original/file-20230919-23-7pktdl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549185/original/file-20230919-23-7pktdl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549185/original/file-20230919-23-7pktdl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549185/original/file-20230919-23-7pktdl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549185/original/file-20230919-23-7pktdl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549185/original/file-20230919-23-7pktdl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Ronald Reagan, left, shakes hands with Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell at a convention of national religious broadcasters on Jan. 30, 1984, in Washington, D.C.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/ReaganReligiousRight/040027e6b6c442e18101e4ddb20fb780/photo?Query=Moral%20Majority&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:asc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=35&currentItemNo=16">AP Photo/Ira Schwarz</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Moral majority’ builds a movement</h2>
<p>The Christian right <a href="https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/twenty/tkeyinfo/chr_rght.htm">emerged during the 1970s</a> in response to a range of cultural and political upheavals in American society, including the civil rights movement, the sexual revolution and Supreme Court rulings that struck down public school prayer and guaranteed rights to contraception and, later, abortion. </p>
<p><a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691137407/the-democratic-virtues-of-the-christian-right">Some scholars</a> have argued that the Christian right’s growth benefited American democracy by mobilizing millions of Americans who had previously felt alienated from the political system, incorporating them into the democratic process. </p>
<p>The movement’s claim to represent a “<a href="https://www.npr.org/transcripts/98505916">moral majority</a>” animated its efforts, both legislative and in the courts, to seek political change consistent with its religious convictions on issues like abortion, public school prayer and homosexuality. </p>
<p>Its embrace of traditionalist conservatism – support for school prayer, outlawing abortion, opposition to gay rights – did not always yield concrete successes, but the movement played an important role in the political process and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/28/us/religion-politics-evangelicals.html">grew influential within the Republican Party</a> from the 1980s into the 21st century. </p>
<p>By the early 2000s, the Christian right focused its efforts on countering the growing public support for same-sex marriage on both the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/defense_of_marriage_act_(doma)">federal</a> and <a href="https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/2014/11/04/nov-3-2004-ohio-voters/10508524007/">state</a> levels.</p>
<h2>Strategy shifts</h2>
<p>By the mid-2000s, the limitations of this strategy were becoming apparent, including a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-018-9463-7">stark rise in support for same-sex marriage</a> and an equally stark <a href="https://www.prri.org/press-release/survey-church-attendance-importance-of-religion-declines-among-americans-overall-yet-regular-churchgoers-largely-satisfied-with-church-experiences/">decline in religiosity among Americans</a>. </p>
<p>These changes were reflected in Supreme Court decisions like <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2012/12-307">United States v Windsor</a> in 2013, which struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, which had banned federal recognition of same-sex marriage, and <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2014/14-556">Obergefell v Hodges</a> in 2015, which guaranteed same-sex couples the right to marry.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/end-of-moral-majority/407359/">So the leaders of the Christian right</a> decided <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-christian-right-has-a-new-strategy-on-gay-marriage/">on a different strategy</a>. Rather than seeking to change laws or policies that conflicted with their religious views, conservative Christians sought to be exempted from following them. </p>
<p>While the movement’s leaders had earlier attempted to secure legislation or court rulings consistent with their moral positions, it now sought exemptions to anti-discrimination law based on their religious opposition to the groups being protected. </p>
<p>Substantively, they moved away from solely invoking their rights to free exercise of religion under the First Amendment. They began, instead, emphasizing their right to creative expression and free speech, also protected by the First Amendment, as the foundation of their claims to exemptions. </p>
<p>This shift can be seen most starkly when 303 Creative is viewed in light of two other recent cases – the <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2013/13-354">Hobby Lobby</a> case in 2014 and the <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2017/16-111">Masterpiece Cakeshop</a> case in 2018. All three cases present legal arguments based on religious grounds, but they present them in different ways. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/01/us/hobby-lobby-case-supreme-court-contraception.html">Hobby Lobby</a>, the plaintiff claimed that providing employees with insurance that included access to contraception violated the corporation’s right to religious exercise. In <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/04/us/politics/supreme-court-sides-with-baker-who-turned-away-gay-couple.html">Masterpiece Cakeshop</a>, the defendant instead grounded his refusal to bake a cake for a same-sex couple’s wedding on his right to free speech and creative expression. As in 303 Creative, the argument relied on the “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/05/us/politics/compelled-speech-first-amendment.html">compelled speech doctrine</a>,” which prohibits the government from forcing individuals to express ideas with which they disagree. </p>
<p>In ruling for Hobby Lobby, Masterpiece Cakeshop and 303 Creative, the Court endorsed the exemption-based strategy and the transition from religion to speech as justification for those exemptions.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549187/original/file-20230919-25-6k4jsd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man wears a costume of the Bible and a sign saying " src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549187/original/file-20230919-25-6k4jsd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549187/original/file-20230919-25-6k4jsd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549187/original/file-20230919-25-6k4jsd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549187/original/file-20230919-25-6k4jsd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549187/original/file-20230919-25-6k4jsd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549187/original/file-20230919-25-6k4jsd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549187/original/file-20230919-25-6k4jsd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A demonstrator in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on Dec. 5, 2017, when it was hearing the Masterpiece Cakeshop case.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/SupremeCourtWeddingCake/eed35f89f3244786aed5ac650a58d24a/photo?Query=masterpiece%20cakeshop&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=105&currentItemNo=58">AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Snowballing threats</h2>
<p>The success of this strategic shift, from seeking to overturn objectionable policies to seeking exemptions from them, threatens to upset the delicate balance among the cluster of core-related rights and freedoms – religion, speech, press and assembly – protected by the First Amendment. </p>
<p>These core rights and freedoms are placed at risk when anyone is exempted from the constitutional requirement to treat their fellow Americans as equal citizens under the law.</p>
<p>The emphasis on free speech in these Supreme Court decisions, moreover, has obscured the crucial role played by religion as the basis for objecting to anti-discrimination laws. The objection to compelled speech in 303 Creative is about religious convictions – evident in the plaintiff’s complaint that “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUHTDLp2nVc">the state of Colorado told me that I couldn’t speak consistent with my beliefs</a>.”</p>
<p>The Supreme Court’s decision in 303 Creative has another potentially serious consequence for American democracy: It undermines the force of anti-discrimination law, depriving the government of a crucial lever for protecting those who face religiously based hostility while disregarding the burdens that such exemptions place on others. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/06/30/1185339349/colorado-supreme-court-same-sex-marriage-decision">Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent</a> in the 303 Creative case makes clear, these burdens include one group of Americans being denied access to goods and services that are otherwise publicly available, and consequently, a loss of dignity for that group. </p>
<p>Sotomayor provides several concrete examples, including one about a gay man going to a funeral home and not being able to bury his husband. Thus his grief is compounded by humiliation based on his sexual orientation.</p>
<p>We are, of course, not the first to point out the <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/americas-true-history-of-religious-tolerance-61312684/">tensions between religious freedom and democracy in American history</a>. Anti-discrimination laws are one way to address these tensions because they can level the playing field among citizens of different faiths and between those with and without faith. Liberty pertains to both freedom of and freedom from religion. </p>
<p>But it is increasingly clear from the nation’s highest court that religious objections can invalidate these protections and provide popular intolerance with an end run around the law. Writing before the 303 Creative decision, one observer <a href="https://harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-136/pandoras-box-of-religious-exemptions/">predicted a Pandora’s box of religious exemptions</a>. That box now seems to be wide open.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210220/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Using the rhetoric of the First Amendment, a string of US Supreme Court cases has allowed members of some religious groups to limit the freedoms of other Americans.Pauline Jones, Professor of Political Science, University of MichiganAndrew Murphy, Professor of Political Science, University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2116892023-08-16T14:14:02Z2023-08-16T14:14:02ZUnderstanding why burning the Qur’an isn’t illegal in Sweden means looking at the country’s long-held commitment to freedom of expression<p>To people outside Sweden it may seem surprising that police have, on several recent occasions, granted people express permission to burn copies of the Qur’an in public. The incidents have caused upset and triggered a significant debate about the far right co-opting the right to free speech to spread hate for political gain. </p>
<p>But the fact that permits have been granted for these acts does not mean that Swedish authorities celebrate the message or even endorse it. Rather, it reflects the central role freedom of expression plays in the national constitution. </p>
<p>To fully understand this debate, one needs to look back at the history of Sweden’s commitment to freedom of expression.</p>
<h2>A pioneering law</h2>
<p>Starting in school, Swedish students learn about a period of parliamentary history between 1719 and 1772 called “the age of liberty”. This marked the end of autocratic monarchy and the beginning of an era of parliamentary power – a shift triggered by the death of the great warrior king, Karl XII (Charles XII), who had, despite a history of successful warfare, been defeated by Russia in Poltava 1709 and thereafter killed in combat in Norway, 1718.</p>
<p>This was a period of large-scale legislative projects and freedom of speech became central to the idea of freedom from tyranny. The most important piece of legislation was the <a href="https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/svensk-forfattningssamling/tryckfrihetsforordning-1949105_sfs-1949-105/">Freedom of the Press Act of 1766</a>, a law that aimed to protect freedom of information as a means of promoting democracy. </p>
<p>It has been amended since but its tenets remain the same. These tenets include a principle of “responsible publisher” (which means that the whole responsibility for a publication such as a newspaper lies on one single person – often the editor in chief), and a far-reaching protection for whistle blowers.</p>
<p>In 1990, the Freedom of the Press Act was followed by a <a href="https://www.government.se/articles/2023/01/freedom-of-expression-and-freedom-to-demonstrate-in-sweden/#:%7E:text=Freedom%20of%20expression%20in%20Sweden,without%20interference%20by%20the%20authorities.">Freedom of Expression Act</a>. This extended the protection of freedom of expression from the printed press to more modern forms of expression – radio, TV and some digital media (although not many forms of the latter from a contemporary perspective). </p>
<p>These constitutional statutes provide the world’s most far-reaching protection for media. It not only covered criminal responsibility but also private law. <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-61673676">Johnny Depp</a> would not have had a case in Sweden against Amber Heard for her article in a newspaper, to use a current example. She would have been free to write her views about him without being sued.</p>
<p>In addition to the two freedom of expression statutes, Sweden has two other basic laws, the government code and the Act on Succession. These four basic laws together form the <a href="https://www.riksdagen.se/en/how-the-riksdag-works/democracy/the-constitution/">Swedish constitution</a>. The most important act is the government code. It includes a chapter on basic human rights and freedoms, in many aspects similar to human rights catalogues in international law (such as the UN charter and the European convention) and different national laws.</p>
<p>An important difference between the Swedish human rights catalogue and those in other jurisdictions is that the first rule is on the protection of freedom of expression. This is broadly defined and includes freedom of speech, freedom of information, freedom of assembly, freedom of demonstration, freedom of association and freedom of religion. It is notable that this rule comes before rules protecting the right to life, privacy or ownership.</p>
<p>In Swedish legal culture, freedom of expression thus has a peculiar role as a superior human right. In legal cases, there is often a presumption in favour of protecting freedom of expression over other interests or values – such as privacy or honour.</p>
<p>This is also reflected in general criminal law. There are, as in all jurisdictions, many restrictions on freedom of expression in criminal law. It is unlawful to threaten, defame or harass. It is also unlawful to distribute child pornography, show sexual violence in public or to provoke a mob to attack someone. But the restrictions are often limited in scope.</p>
<h2>How the law deals with hate speech</h2>
<p>Sweden does not have a specific rule on hate speech. Instead there are three provisions that are considered as hate speech legislation. A provision in the criminal code states that when someone commits a crime with a hate motive, the punishment may be harsher. If someone tries to burn down a mosque because it is a mosque the punishment is more severe than if someone tries to burn down her school because it is her school, for example.</p>
<p>A second, infrequently used, provision in the same code prohibits unlawful discrimination. This is not to say that discrimination is not penalised, but it is more often handled within the civil law system rather than criminal law. The third provision that belongs to the hate speech category is named “incitement against an ethnic group”.</p>
<p>Incitement against an ethnic group has been central in the discussion of Qur’an burning in Sweden. It is the only criminal law rule that provides an opening for bringing charges against the people involved in these actions.</p>
<p>“Incitement against an ethnic group” has a misleading name because the rule does not, in fact, focus on “incitement” but on derogatory or defamatory comments against a group. It also protects not only ethnic groups but also religious groups. </p>
<p>Describing Muslims, to allude to the situation of the Qur’an burnings, as criminals would be criminal. But to burn the Qur’an is in itself not, according to the current formulation of the law, an attack on Muslims. It is rather seen as an attack on the religion of Islam. Such attacks are not illegal because the aim of the attack is not directed against a protected group of people but against a belief – an idea. That is not illegal.</p>
<p>In one of the most secular countries in the world, with a more than 250-year-old tradition of giving freedom of expression priority before all other interests, the presumption is that every expression is allowed. Even expressions that offend people. The current situation is not a bug of the Swedish legal system. It’s a feature.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211689/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mårten Schultz is affiliated with The Swedish Law and Internet Institute, a non-profit, non-political organization that works with freedom of speech issues on the Internet. He has several assignments for Government agencies, including The National Media Council (Statens Medieråd), The Crime Victim Authority (Brottsoffermyndigheten) and The Equality Ombudsman (Diskrimineringsombudsmannen). </span></em></p>The legal context behind a political controversy.Mårten Schultz, Professor of Civil Law, Stockholm UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2077062023-06-22T20:07:19Z2023-06-22T20:07:19ZWho benefits most from the protection of free speech – the haves or the have-nots?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533357/original/file-20230622-33216-dsgdgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C40%2C6689%2C3450&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Whether it be repression of free speech under authoritarian regimes or instances of
“<a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/05/19/americans-and-cancel-culture-where-some-see-calls-for-accountability-others-see-censorship-punishment/">cancel culture</a>” in various countries, the importance of freedom of expression <a href="http://www.article19.org">is as hotly contested as ever</a>. But does freedom of speech benefit all groups equally?</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268123002007">recently published research</a>, we tackled the question of who actually benefits the most from having freedom of speech. Is it people with the most resources – either income or education – who benefit more, or is it people with few resources?</p>
<p>The idea that those with resources benefit most falls in line with the “<a href="https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html">hierarchy of needs</a>” developed by American psychologist Abraham Maslow. He argued that people would seek to meet their most pressing needs – such as food and shelter – before looking to achieve “luxuries” such as freedom of speech. </p>
<p>But the view that freedom of speech most benefits those with few resources is consistent with the idea that marginalised people have less scope to influence decisions in society through their spending or networks. They require freedom of speech to influence societal decisions.</p>
<h2>The right to say anything</h2>
<p>The principle of free speech was perhaps best illustrated in 1906 by the writer Evelyn Beatrice Hall, paraphrasing French philosopher Voltaire. She wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Free speech was entrenched as a right by the United Nations in Article 19 of its 1948 <a href="https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights">Universal Declaration of Human Rights</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But it is recognised that even in countries with a high degree of free speech there may be restrictions against <a href="https://lawecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1040&context=facpubs">hate speech, terrorism and treason</a>. Following the Christchurch massacre, for example, the terrorist’s manifesto and video were classified as objectionable and <a href="https://www.dia.govt.nz/Response-to-the-Christchurch-terrorism-attack-video">banned from distribution in New Zealand</a>.</p>
<p>And, while the right to freedom of expression is enshrined in most constitutions, people in many countries face restrictions on their speech. During the recent coronation of King Charles, for example, <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/172508/hold-coronation-britain-suppressed-free-speech-thats-insane">52 protesters in the United Kingdom were arrested</a> before their protest even started. This was criticised as an assault on their free speech. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533360/original/file-20230622-25-z8x16t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533360/original/file-20230622-25-z8x16t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533360/original/file-20230622-25-z8x16t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533360/original/file-20230622-25-z8x16t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533360/original/file-20230622-25-z8x16t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533360/original/file-20230622-25-z8x16t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533360/original/file-20230622-25-z8x16t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protesters were arrested during the King’s coronation, including pre-emptive arrests of anti-monarchy activists in London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wiktor Szymanowicz/Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Free speech and wellbeing</h2>
<p>Our research tested whether changes in countries’ restrictions on free speech were associated with rises or falls in the wellbeing of well-resourced people relative to poorly-resourced people in those countries.</p>
<p>The analysis included 300,000 individuals from more than 90 countries over a 40-year period. It used wellbeing and other individual data from the <a href="https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp">World Values Survey</a> and the <a href="https://www.latinobarometro.org/lat.jsp">Latino Barometer</a> survey. Wellbeing was measured by how people rate the overall quality of their life.</p>
<p>We supplemented the individual wellbeing data with measures of country-level free speech and human rights, sourced from two independently compiled databases (<a href="https://cirights.com/">CIRIGHTS</a> and <a href="https://v-dem.net/">VDEM</a>). Many countries in the surveys had marked changes in their free speech levels over the study period.</p>
<p>The research produced two key findings.</p>
<p>First, people with more resources place greater stated priority on freedom of speech (when asked to rank its importance).</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/oath-keepers-convictions-shed-light-on-the-limits-of-free-speech-and-the-threat-posed-by-militias-195616">Oath Keepers convictions shed light on the limits of free speech – and the threat posed by militias</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Second, it was actually the people with fewer resources who benefited most from free speech. The results indicated that free speech empowered those with fewer resources, providing a greater lift to the wellbeing of more marginalised people.</p>
<p>The two results are not incompatible: people with fewer resources may need to prioritise basic needs more than “luxuries” such as free speech but, being in marginalised populations, they may still benefit most from having freedom of expression.</p>
<p>We also found that people who said they valued free speech benefited from living in countries with free speech. And, preferences towards free speech varied according to certain characteristics within the population (in addition to income and education). </p>
<p>Groups more likely to prioritise free speech included the young, students, non-religious people and those on the left of the political spectrum. Preferences also reflected country circumstances, with people in the West being more supportive of free speech than people in other regions of the world.</p>
<h2>In defence of the marketplace of ideas</h2>
<p>In a world in which freedom of speech is increasingly being placed at risk, it may become important to protect the “<a href="https://rdi.org/defining-democracy-marketplace-of-ideas/">marketplace for ideas</a>”. As 19th century thinker John Stuart Mill argued, ideas should “compete” in an open marketplace and be tested by the public to determine which ideas will prevail.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/there-are-differences-between-free-speech-hate-speech-and-academic-freedom-and-they-matter-124764">There are differences between free speech, hate speech and academic freedom – and they matter</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Notwithstanding current risks with social media “<a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2023301118">echo-chambers</a>”, this basic insight still has much to recommend it. People must be able to express their views and receive the views of others openly. </p>
<p>The UN Declaration of Human Rights emphasises this two-way aspect of freedom of expression – that is, people have “the right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas”.</p>
<p>Countries’ laws should reflect Hall’s insistence about freedom of expression – at a national level we should defend people’s right to say what they want. At a personal level, we should also respect the importance of being a good listener, even when, to paraphrase Hall, we disapprove of what is being said.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207706/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Arthur Grimes received funding from Victoria University of Wellington and from Motu Research for this work.</span></em></p>New research highlights how the people who value free speech may not be the ones who benefit from it the most.Arthur Grimes, Professor of Wellbeing and Public Policy, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of WellingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2018042023-03-21T14:49:02Z2023-03-21T14:49:02ZWhen can your boss fire you for social media use? An expert on the law explains<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515859/original/file-20230316-24-y3drc5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=160%2C43%2C4705%2C3195&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/sad-teen-being-victim-cyber-bullying-1395898511">Burdun Iliya/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Gary Lineker isn’t so special. He might be a millionaire celebrity whose tweet criticising the government led to a <a href="https://theconversation.com/gary-lineker-tweet-scandal-shows-how-the-bbc-has-struggled-to-adapt-to-the-social-media-age-201806">crisis at the BBC</a> and a national argument. But in being suspended from his job for something he’d posted on social media, he actually experienced something that could happen to almost anyone.</p>
<p>Even if your employer doesn’t have the kind of political impartiality rules the BBC has, they can still limit what you say on social media. And in some cases, you can even be dismissed from your job because of your online conduct.</p>
<p>In today’s digital age, it is likely that your employment contract contains a social media policy. Failure to adhere to that policy, could at best get you in trouble with your boss, and at worst, leave you unemployed for breach of contract. Here’s what you need to know.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Quarter life, a series by The Conversation" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/quarter-life-117947?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">This article is part of Quarter Life</a></strong>, a series about issues affecting those of us in our twenties and thirties. From the challenges of beginning a career and taking care of our mental health, to the excitement of starting a family, adopting a pet or just making friends as an adult. The articles in this series explore the questions and bring answers as we navigate this turbulent period of life.</em></p>
<p><em>You may be interested in:</em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/lucky-girl-syndrome-the-potential-dark-side-of-tiktoks-extreme-positive-thinking-trend-198439?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">Lucky girl syndrome: the potential dark side of TikTok’s extreme positive thinking trend</a></em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-ditch-fomo-and-foster-jomo-the-joy-of-missing-out-200400?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">How to ditch ‘fomo’ and foster ‘jomo’ – the joy of missing out</a></em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/managing-people-for-the-first-time-expert-tips-on-how-to-succeed-198615?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">Managing people for the first time: expert tips on how to succeed</a></em></p>
<hr>
<p>For your employer to find you in breach of their social media guidelines, the policy must be robust, and clearly articulate (with examples where possible) of what you cannot say. It must also clearly identify who is subject to the policy. </p>
<p>Failure to have a clear and robust policy leaves you with grounds to appeal. If you have been dismissed, you could argue unfair dismissal and take the case to an employment tribunal. </p>
<p>This was made clear in a 2011 case <a href="https://uk.practicallaw.thomsonreuters.com/6-505-8064?transitionType=Default&contextData=(sc.Default)&firstPage=true">involving a manager</a> at a Wetherspoons’ pub, who was fired after posting several offensive comments about customers on her Facebook page. The daughter of one of the customers spotted the comments and complained to Wetherspoons. </p>
<p>The employee was later dismissed for gross misconduct. An employment tribunal upheld her dismissal, finding that Wetherspoons had a clear and robust social media policy in place, which was highlighted in the employment contract.</p>
<h2>What about private social media accounts?</h2>
<p>Even if you post on a private social media account, and don’t specifically name your employer, they may still be within their right to limit what you, as an employee, post.</p>
<p>In another 2011 case, <a href="https://www.theglasgowlawpractice.co.uk/latest-news/employment-law/social-media-and-employment-law-apple-unfair-dismissal-case-update.html?tmpl=component&print=1&format=print#:%7E:text=Samuel%20Crisp%20v%20Apple%20Retail%20(UK)%20Limited&text=He%20discussed%20with%20his%20employer,his%20relationship%20with%20his%20employer.">an employee in an Apple store</a> was fired after posting derogatory comments about Apple, including mocking the company’s slogan, on his private, personal Facebook page.</p>
<p>An employment tribunal found that he was fairly dismissed, despite not mentioning in the posts that he worked for Apple, and deleting the comments soon after posting them (it had been brought to his attention that his manager was not happy). He argued that only his Facebook friends were able to see the comments. </p>
<p>But in the employment tribunal’s view, it should have been obvious to the employee that he was subjected to a social media policy. Apple had provided training courses on social media use, specifically stressing the importance of protecting the company’s image.</p>
<h2>What about comments that are not about my employer?</h2>
<p>In <a href="https://employmentcasesupdate.co.uk/content/game-retail-ltd-v-laws-ukeat-0188-14-da.85785ade5e514cc6abac89ce995d16a6.htm">a 2014 case</a>, an employee of video game retailer Game made several offensive comments on Twitter about an array of topics, including golfers, the police and the NHS. Another employee brought these comments to the attention of his employer. Though offensive, none of the comments made were about or aimed at Game, and all tweets were sent outside of work hours. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Overhead view of the hands of six people holding smartphones, seated around a table" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515863/original/file-20230316-28-londr7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515863/original/file-20230316-28-londr7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=267&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515863/original/file-20230316-28-londr7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=267&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515863/original/file-20230316-28-londr7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=267&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515863/original/file-20230316-28-londr7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=335&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515863/original/file-20230316-28-londr7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=335&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515863/original/file-20230316-28-londr7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=335&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Be smart about what you post, even if you think just your friends can see it.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/group-friends-having-fun-together-smartphones-553608886">DisobeyArt/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But Game dismissed the employee, deeming his behaviour gross misconduct, particularly as a senior staff member. Initially, an employment tribunal found in favour of the employee, concluding that he had been unfairly dismissed, deeming the dismissal an overreaction. For any dismissal to be considered lawful, including those related to social media conduct, employers must act reasonably.</p>
<p>The decision was later overturned by the employment appeals tribunal, who gave significant weight to the fact that the employee’s Twitter page was publicly available, and that he followed other employees and Game shops.</p>
<p>The tribunal did <a href="https://employmentcasesupdate.co.uk/content/game-retail-ltd-v-laws-ukeat-0188-14-da.85785ade5e514cc6abac89ce995d16a6.htm">note</a> that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Generally speaking, employees must have the right to express themselves, providing it does not infringe on their employment and/or is outside the work context.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But in this case, the tribunal found that Game had a social media policy in place, and that the employee’s posts amounted to gross misconduct, as they could have brought the company into disrepute. </p>
<p>While there have likely been more recent examples than the three above, employment cases are not often publicly reported. Most companies will ask for confidentiality clauses to be included in an employment tribunal, especially if such comments could tarnish the business.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/wagatha-christie-what-the-vardy-v-rooney-case-can-teach-you-about-avoiding-libel-on-social-media-182969">Wagatha Christie: what the Vardy v Rooney case can teach you about avoiding libel on social media</a>
</strong>
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<h2>Freedom of expression</h2>
<p>In the UK, everyone has the right to freedom of expression, even in the course of our employment, as protected under <a href="https://www.echr.coe.int/documents/guide_art_10_eng.pdf">Article 10</a> of the European Convention on Human Rights. But this is not an absolute right, it can be restricted and limited in certain situations. </p>
<p>That’s not to say your employer can restrict everything you say. Even when a case comes before an employment tribunal, weight must be given to freedom of expression. </p>
<p>But these and other cases make clear that, provided a robust social media policy is part of the terms and conditions of your employment, your employer can limit what you put online – even when you think it is private.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201804/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laura Higson-Bliss does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s not just the likes of Gary Lineker who can get in trouble for tweeting.Laura Higson-Bliss, Lecturer in Law, Keele UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1904862022-09-15T12:18:39Z2022-09-15T12:18:39ZUS is becoming a ‘developing country’ on global rankings that measure democracy, inequality<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484375/original/file-20220913-4673-1pyfbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C43%2C4785%2C2687&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People wait in line for a free morning meal in Los Angeles in April 2020. High and rising inequality is one reason the U.S. ranks badly on some international measures of development.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/homeless-people-wait-in-line-for-a-morning-meal-at-the-fred-news-photo/1210677779?adppopup=true">Frederic J. Brown/ AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The United States may regard itself as a “<a href="https://www.americanforeignrelations.com/E-N/Exceptionalism-The-leader-of-the-free-world.html">leader of the free world</a>,” but an index of development released in July 2022 places the country much farther down the list. </p>
<p>In its global rankings, the United Nations Office of Sustainable Development dropped the U.S. to <a href="https://dashboards.sdgindex.org/rankings">41st worldwide</a>, down from its previous ranking of 32nd. Under this methodology – an expansive model of 17 categories, or “goals,” many of them focused on the environment and equity – the U.S. ranks between Cuba and Bulgaria. Both are widely regarded as developing countries.</p>
<p>The U.S. is also now considered a “flawed democracy,” according to <a href="https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/02/09/a-new-low-for-global-democracy">The Economist’s democracy index</a>.</p>
<p>As a political historian who studies U.S. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathleen-frydl-0406b21a5/">institutional development</a>, I recognize these dismal ratings as the inevitable result of two problems. Racism has cheated many Americans out of the health care, education, economic security and environment they deserve. At the same time, as threats to democracy become more serious, a devotion to “American exceptionalism” keeps the country from candid appraisals and course corrections.</p>
<h2>‘The other America’</h2>
<p>The Office of Sustainable Development’s rankings differ from more traditional development measures in that they are more focused on the experiences of ordinary people, including their ability to enjoy clean air and water, than the creation of wealth. </p>
<p>So while the gigantic size of the American economy counts in its scoring, so too does unequal access to the wealth it produces. When judged by accepted measures like the <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI?locations=US">Gini coefficient</a>, income inequality in the U.S. has risen markedly over the past 30 years. By the <a href="https://data.oecd.org/inequality/income-inequality.htm">Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s measurement</a>, the U.S. has the biggest wealth gap among G-7 nations.</p>
<p>These results reflect structural disparities in the United States, which are most pronounced for African Americans. Such differences have persisted well beyond the demise of chattel slavery and the repeal of Jim Crow laws.</p>
<p>Scholar W.E.B. Du Bois first exposed this kind of structural inequality in his 1899 analysis of Black life in the urban north, “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt3fhpfb">The Philadelphia Negro</a>.” Though he noted distinctions of affluence and status within Black society, Du Bois found the lives of African Americans to be a world apart from white residents: a “city within a city.” Du Bois traced the high rates of poverty, crime and illiteracy prevalent in Philadelphia’s Black community to discrimination, divestment and residential segregation – not to Black people’s degree of ambition or talent.</p>
<p>More than a half-century later, with characteristic eloquence, Martin Luther King Jr. <a href="https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/the-other-america-speech-transcript-martin-luther-king-jr">similarly decried</a> the persistence of the “other America,” one where “the buoyancy of hope” was transformed into “the fatigue of despair.” </p>
<p>To illustrate his point, King referred to many of the same factors studied by Du Bois: the condition of housing and household wealth, education, social mobility and literacy rates, health outcomes and employment. On all of these metrics, <a href="https://theconversation.com/black-americans-mostly-left-behind-by-progress-since-dr-kings-death-89956">Black Americans fared worse</a> than whites. But as King noted, “Many people of various backgrounds live in this other America.”</p>
<p>The benchmarks of development invoked by these men also featured prominently in the 1962 book “<a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Other-America/Michael-Harrington/9780684826783">The Other America</a>,” by political scientist <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-socialism-stopped-being-a-dirty-word-for-some-voters-and-started-winning-elections-across-america-156572">Michael Harrington, founder</a> of a group that eventually became the Democratic Socialists of America. Harrington’s work so unsettled President John F. Kennedy that it reportedly <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-a-new-yorker-article-launched-the-first-shot-in-the-war-against-poverty-17469990/">galvanized him</a> into formulating a “war on poverty.” </p>
<p>Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, waged this metaphorical war. But poverty <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/poverty-and-place">bound to discrete places</a>. Rural areas and segregated neighborhoods stayed poor well beyond mid-20th-century federal efforts.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Tents line a leafy park; some people can be seen chatting outside one tent" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484374/original/file-20220913-4701-2mulzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C19%2C4275%2C2824&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484374/original/file-20220913-4701-2mulzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484374/original/file-20220913-4701-2mulzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484374/original/file-20220913-4701-2mulzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484374/original/file-20220913-4701-2mulzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484374/original/file-20220913-4701-2mulzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484374/original/file-20220913-4701-2mulzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Camp Laykay Nou, a homeless encampment in Philadelphia. High and rising inequality is one reason the US rates badly on some international development rankings.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/camp-laykay-nou-celebrated-a-stay-in-the-city-of-news-photo/1227676000?adppopup=true">Cory Clark/NurPhoto via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>In large part that is because federal efforts during that critical time accommodated rather than confronted the forces of racism, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/american-history-after-1945/gi-bill?format=HB&isbn=9780521514248">according to my research</a>. </p>
<p>Across a number of policy domains, the sustained efforts of segregationist Democrats in Congress resulted in an incomplete and patchwork system of social policy. Democrats from the South cooperated with Republicans to doom to failure efforts to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/universal-health-care-racism.html">achieve universal</a> <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/the-fight-for-health-care-is-really-all-about-civil-rights/531855/">health care</a> or <a href="https://www.salon.com/2018/06/07/big-business-and-white-supremacy-the-racist-roots-of-americas-right-to-work-laws/">unionized workforces</a>. Rejecting proposals for strong federal intervention, they left a checkered legacy of <a href="https://www.sc.edu/uofsc/posts/2022/04/conversation-jim-crow.php#.YyHMrOzMK8p">local funding for education</a> and <a href="https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2021.01466">public health</a>. </p>
<p>Today, many years later, the effects of a welfare state tailored to racism is evident — though perhaps less visibly so — in the inadequate <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanam/article/PIIS2667-193X(22)00081-3/fulltext">health policies</a> driving a <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2022/20220831.htm">shocking decline</a> in average American life expectancy.</p>
<h2>Declining democracy</h2>
<p>There are other ways to measure a country’s level of development, and on some of them the U.S. fares better. </p>
<p>The U.S. currently ranks 21st on <a href="https://hdr.undp.org/">the United Nations Development Program’s index</a>, which measures fewer factors than the sustainable development index. Good results in average income per person – $64,765 – and an average 13.7 years of schooling situate the United States squarely in the developed world.</p>
<p>Its ranking suffers, however, on appraisals that place greater weight on political systems. </p>
<p>The Economist’s <a href="https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/02/09/a-new-low-for-global-democracy">democracy index</a> now groups the U.S. among “flawed democracies,” with an overall score that ranks between Estonia and Chile. It falls short of being a top-rated “full democracy” in large part because of a fractured political culture. This growing divide is most apparent in the divergent paths between “red” and “blue” states.</p>
<p>Although the analysts from The Economist applaud the peaceful transfer of power in the face of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-sore-loser-effect-rejecting-election-results-can-destabilize-democracy-and-drive-terrorism-171571">insurrection intended to disrupt</a> it, <a href="https://www.eiu.com/n/campaigns/democracy-index-2021/?utm_source=economist&utm_medium=daily_chart&utm_campaign=democracy-index-2021">their report laments</a> that, according to a January 2022 poll, “only 55% of Americans believe that Mr. Biden legitimately won the 2020 election, despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/05/us/politics/america-first-secretary-of-state-candidates.html">Election denialism carries with it the threat</a> that election officials in Republican-controlled jurisdictions will reject or alter vote tallies that do not favor the Republican Party in upcoming elections, further jeopardizing the score of the U.S. on the democracy index. </p>
<p>Red and blue America also differ on access to modern reproductive care for women. This hurts the U.S. gender equality rating, <a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/gpr/2015/10/onward-2030-sexual-and-reproductive-health-and-rights-context-sustainable-development">one aspect</a> of the United Nations’ sustainable development index.</p>
<p>Since the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/06/24/1102305878/supreme-court-abortion-roe-v-wade-decision-overturn">Supreme Court overturned</a> Roe v. Wade, Republican-controlled states have enacted or proposed grossly <a href="https://today.westlaw.com/Document/I1ebf6cf01a6a11ed9f24ec7b211d8087/View/FullText.html%22%22">restrictive</a> <a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy">abortion laws</a>, to the point of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/10/us/abortion-bans-medical-care-women.html">endangering a woman’s health</a>. </p>
<p>I believe that, when paired with structural inequalities and fractured social policy, the dwindling Republican commitment to democracy lends weight to the classification of the U.S. as a developing country.</p>
<h2>American exceptionalism</h2>
<p>To address the poor showing of the United States on a variety of global surveys, one must also contend with the idea of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/06/03/obama-and-american-exceptionalism/">American exceptionalism</a>, a belief in American superiority over the rest of the world. </p>
<p>Both political parties have long promoted this belief, at home and abroad, but “exceptionalism” receives a more formal treatment from Republicans. It was the first line of the Republican Party’s national platform of <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiukdmw2pT6AhU6FVkFHRpPDLUQFnoECAsQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fprod-cdn-static.gop.com%2Fmedia%2Fdocuments%2FDRAFT_12_FINAL%255B1%255D-ben_1468872234.pdf&usg=AOvVaw0ZlBtj2Rrovr9mA9DZJCOy">2016</a> and <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/The_Republican_Party_Platform,_2020">2020</a> (“we believe in American exceptionalism”). And it served as the organizing principle behind Donald Trump’s vow to restore “<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/31/trump-patriotic-education-406521">patriotic education</a>” to America’s schools. </p>
<p>In Florida, after <a href="https://www.orlandoweekly.com/news/florida-board-of-education-approves-new-curriculum-touting-american-exceptionalism-29639851">lobbying by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis</a>, the state board of education in July 2022 approved standards rooted in American exceptionalism while barring instruction in <a href="https://www.edweek.org/leadership/what-is-critical-race-theory-and-why-is-it-under-attack/2021/05">critical race theory</a>, an academic framework teaching the kind of structural racism Du Bois exposed long ago.</p>
<p>With a tendency to proclaim excellence rather than pursue it, the peddling of American exceptionalism encourages Americans to maintain a robust sense of national achievement – despite mounting evidence to the contrary.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190486/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kathleen Frydl does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The United States came in 41st worldwide on the UN’s 2022 sustainable development index, down nine spots from last year. A political historian explains the country’s dismal scores.Kathleen Frydl, Sachs Lecturer, Johns Hopkins UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1865822022-07-12T07:27:35Z2022-07-12T07:27:35ZZondo Commission’s report on South Africa’s intelligence agency is important but flawed<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473381/original/file-20220711-14-lesf18.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Cyril Ramaphosa, right, receives the final State Capture Report from Chief Juistice Raymond Zondo. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GCIS/Flickr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa’s judicial probe into state capture and corruption, the <a href="https://www.statecapture.org.za/">Zondo Commission</a>, has concluded that the <a href="https://www.ssa.gov.za/">State Security Agency</a> was integral to the capture of the state by corrupt elements. These included former president Jacob Zuma’s friends, <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/how-gupta-brothers-from-india-landed-south-africas-ruling-party-in-its-biggest-crisis-397138">the Gupta family</a>.</p>
<p>The agency has been unstable for some time. <a href="https://www.lse.ac.uk/international-development/Assets/Documents/PDFs/csrc-background-papers/Intelligence-In-a-Constitutional-Democracy.pdf">Previous</a> <a href="https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201903/high-level-review-panel-state-security-agency.pdf">investigations</a> have made findings to improve the performance of civilian intelligence. Yet problems relating to poor performance and politicisation persist. They escalated during <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/The_Zuma_Years.html?id=BwxbDwAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">Zuma’s tenure</a>.</p>
<p>The commission’s <a href="https://www.statecapture.org.za/">hearings</a> were remarkable for an institution that had become <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-01-26-commission-hears-of-alleged-covert-ops-in-media-judiciary-civil-society-academia-and-unions-costing-taxpayers-hundreds-of-millions/">used to operating secretly</a>. Spies testified in detail, and in public, about what had gone wrong at the agency during the Zuma era (<a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/profiles/president-jacob-zuma-0">May 2014 to February 2018</a>). Some did so <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-01-28-security-alert-images-circulating-on-social-media-may-put-state-capture-commissions-unidentified-witnesses-at-risk/">at great personal risk</a>.</p>
<p>I have researched intelligence and surveillance, and served on the <a href="https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201903/high-level-review-panel-state-security-agency.pdf">High Level Review Panel on the State Security Agency</a>. In my view, the Zondo report is a globally significant example of radical transparency around intelligence abuses. But it lacks the detailed findings and recommendations to enable speedy prosecutions. It also fails to address the broader threats to democracy posed by unaccountable intelligence. </p>
<h2>Covert operations</h2>
<p>The commission heard evidence pointing to fraud, corruption and abuse of taxpayers’ money at the agency. It also heard how the Guptas benefited from these abuses. The agency shielded them from investigations that indicated they were a national security threat. </p>
<p>The most significant recommendation is that law enforcement agencies should further investigate whether people implicated in the report committed crimes. The commission expressed particular concern about covert intelligence projects that appeared to be “special purpose vehicles to siphon funds”. It made specific reference to three people who should be investigated further.</p>
<p>The first is former director-general <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/investigations/arthur-fraser-a-law-unto-himself-helped-by-zuma-to-hide-pure-crime-linked-to-r600m-spy-network-20220624">Arthur Fraser</a>, for <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-12-05-the-principal-agent-network-pan-dossier-zuma-and-mahlobo-knew-about-arthur-frasers-rogue-intelligence-programme/">his involvement</a> in the <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-12-06-the-principal-agent-network-pan-dossier-part-2-bugging-the-auditors-dumb-and-dumber/">Principal Agent Network</a>. This was a covert intelligence collection entity outside the State Security Agency. It has been controversial for over a decade after investigations pointed to the abuse of funds.</p>
<p>The second person is former deputy director-general of counter-intelligence <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-07-15-confessions-of-a-dangerous-mind-a-divinely-inspired-zuma-spy-thulani-dlomo/">Thulani Dlomo</a>. He was responsible for the <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/investigations/ssa-declassified-i-networks-which-looted-r15bn-from-spy-agency-still-in-place-as-investigations-collapse-20220221">Chief Directorate Special Operations</a>, a covert structure which the report says ran irregular projects and operations that could well have been unlawful.</p>
<p>The most significant of these was <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/investigations/ssa-declassified-illegal-operation-mayibuye-allegedly-siphoned-millions-from-ssa-to-jacob-zuma-20220226">Project Mayibuye</a>, a collection of operations designed to counter threats to state authority. In practice, they and others sought to shield Zuma from a growing chorus of criticism of his misrule.</p>
<p>The commission <a href="https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/202206/electronic-state-capture-commission-report-part-v-vol-i.pdf">found</a> that the project destabilised opposition parties and benefited the Zuma faction in the ruling African National Congress. </p>
<p>The third person is the former minister of state security, <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/live-norma-mngoma-david-mahlobo-to-testify-at-state-capture-inquiry-20210409">David Mahlobo</a>. The commission found that he became involved in <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-05-19-former-state-security-minister-david-mahlobo-distances-himself-from-apartheid-assassin-and-jacob-zuma-poisoning-projects/">operational matters</a> instead of confining himself to executive oversight. It also found that his handling of <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-03-09-cash-parcels-to-minister-spying-on-media-and-infiltration-of-anti-zuma-movement-highlighted-in-report-on-sa-spy-agency/">large amounts of cash</a>, ostensibly to fund operations, needed further investigation.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/state-capture-in-south-africa-how-the-rot-set-in-and-how-the-project-was-rumbled-176481">State capture in South Africa: how the rot set in and how the project was rumbled</a>
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<p>According to the commission, Mahlobo’s predecessor, <a href="https://www.pa.org.za/person/siyabonga-cyprian-cwele/">Siyabonga Cwele</a>, did the same by <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-11-26-how-zuma-and-state-security-minister-cwele-shut-down-2011-investigation-into-the-guptas/">stopping an investigation</a> into the Guptas and their influence on Zuma’s administration.</p>
<p>The commission concluded, based on overwhelming evidence, that Zuma and Cwele did not want the investigation to continue. Had it continued, it could have prevented at least some of the activities that led to the capture of the state by the Guptas and the loss of billions in public money through corruption.</p>
<h2>Recipe for abuse</h2>
<p>The commission also addressed some of the deeper factors that predisposed the <a href="https://nationalgovernment.co.za/units/view/42/state-security-agency-ssa">State Security Agency</a> to abuse.</p>
<p>One of these was the <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/merger-of-spy-agencies-led-to-cabinet-ministers-giving-ssa-operatives-illegal-instructions-20210915">amalgamation</a> of the domestic intelligence branch, the National Intelligence Agency, with the foreign branch, the South African Secret Service, into a new entity, the State Security Agency, in 2009.</p>
<p>The commission found that the amalgamation had disastrous consequences, as it allowed most of the abuses it examined to happen. The two entities were merged in terms of a presidential proclamation. Yet the constitution <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/SAConstitution-web-eng-11.pdf">requires</a> intelligence services to be established through legislation. This meant that until <a href="https://www.gov.za/documents/general-intelligence-laws-amendment-act-0">legislation</a> was introduced in 2013, the security agency operated without a <a href="https://pmg.org.za/tabled-committee-report/4715/">clear legal basis</a>.</p>
<p>It was highly centralised, allowing a super-director-general to control all activities. This made abuse easier for an appointee with corrupt intentions. The agency was also based on a state security <a href="https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201903/high-level-review-panel-state-security-agency.pdf">doctrine</a>, rather than a people-centred doctrine. This doctrinal shift prioritised the protection of the state from criticism, and the president more specifically, rather than the security of society. <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/merger-of-spy-agencies-led-to-cabinet-ministers-giving-ssa-operatives-illegal-instructions-20210915">Ministerial political overreach</a> into operational matters heightened the potential for abuse.</p>
<p>The commission also found that the <a href="https://www.parliament.gov.za/committee-details/169">Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence</a>, the <a href="https://www.oigi.gov.za/">Inspector General of Intelligence</a> and the <a href="https://www.agsa.co.za/">Auditor General</a> had failed to exercise proper oversight. This meant the external checks and balances on the State Security Agency were weak to non-existent.</p>
<h2>Weighing the Zondo report</h2>
<p>The struggle for more accountable intelligence has been strengthened through the Zondo report’s exposure of abuses. But many of the findings and recommendations are vague and general. The commission could have been more specific about upgrading the Inspector General’s independence, for instance. Likwewise the Auditor General’s capacity to audit the agency.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-state-capture-commission-nears-its-end-after-four-years-was-it-worth-it-182898">South Africa's state capture commission nears its end after four years. Was it worth it?</a>
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<p>The commission could also have made more of the evidence presented to it. And it could have been more categorical about when it thought criminality had occurred. At times, the report does little more than restate the recommendations of previous enquiries.</p>
<p>These include an <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-11-09-spooks-and-spies-the-pan-progamme-arthur-fraser-and-eight-years-of-investigations/">investigation</a> into the Principal Agent Network programme in 2009, providing prima facie evidence of criminality. </p>
<p>Another is the report of the 2018 <a href="https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201903/high-level-review-panel-state-security-agency.pdf">High Level Review Panel</a>, which showed that the agency had been politicised and repurposed to benefit Zuma. </p>
<p>An important gap in the Zondo report relates to the <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-07-01-civil-society-organisations-release-boast-report-demand-accountability-for-rogue-spying/">infiltration and surveillance of civil society</a>, and the agency’s broader threat to democracy.</p>
<p>Little is made of the fact that, according to a recently 2017 declassified <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/580662166/Boast-Report#download&from_embed">performance report</a>, the agency claimed to have infiltrated <a href="https://www.greenpeace.org/africa/en/">Greenpeace Africa</a>, the <a href="https://www.r2k.org.za/">Right2Know Campaign</a>, trade unions and other civil society organs.</p>
<p>The spies masqueraded as activists. They reported back to the agency on supporter strengths, main actors, ideology, support structures and agendas. The report’s author, a security agency member, <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/580662166/Boast-Report#download&from_embed">boasted</a> about these and other accomplishments, such as infiltrating the social media networks of the Western Cape <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1753-59132021000400006">#feesmustfall</a> student movement. </p>
<h2>Looking ahead</h2>
<p>In the preparations to investigate and prosecute wrongdoers responsible for the abuses by the State Security Agency, its infiltration of civil society must not be allowed to fall under the radar. It must receive as much attention as all the cases of grand corruption that are going to keep the <a href="https://www.npa.gov.za/">National Prosecuting Authority</a> busy. </p>
<p>Otherwise, the social forces that could potentially bring deeper and more meaningful changes to society may remain targets of state spying, as <a href="https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745337807/activists-and-the-surveillance-state/">has been the case elsewhere</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/186582/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane Duncan receives funding from the Open Society Foundation for South Africa and Luminate. She served on the 2018 High Level Review Panel on the State Security Agency. </span></em></p>The commission could have made more of the evidence and been more categorical about when it thought criminality had taken place.Jane Duncan, Professor, Department of Communication and Media, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1831222022-06-01T19:29:17Z2022-06-01T19:29:17ZWhat is Québec’s Bill 32 on academic freedom, and why does it matter?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465847/original/file-20220528-25-dltnuk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=44%2C116%2C5946%2C2550&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Quebec's bill may be seen as part of on-going 'culture wars,' and alongside Ontario and Québec conservative governments' grandstanding about 'free speech' on university campuses.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the wake of the controversy over the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-professor-uses-derogatory-word-1.6214139">suspension of a professor at the University of Ottawa for using the n-word in a 2020 lecture</a>, the Québec government hopes to pass Bill 32, <a href="http://m.assnat.qc.ca/en/travaux-parlementaires/projets-loi/projet-loi-32-42-2.html">a proposed act “respecting academic freedom in the university sector</a>.” </p>
<p>The bill was <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/academic-freedom-bill-tabled-1.6410128">tabled April 6</a> and is under committee review.</p>
<p>In addition to undermining the autonomy of universities and faculty, and creating myriad implementation problems, the bill blurs the important distinctions between free expression and academic freedom. Most troubling, it signals that politicians are turning academic freedom into a political weapon.</p>
<p>All Canadians should be concerned about the shift in the meaning and control of academic freedom this bill could usher in. </p>
<h2>What’s the bill calling for?</h2>
<p>Bill 32 aims to define and control the principle of academic freedom that is now under the jurisdiction of universities. The bill redefines university <a href="http://www.assnat.qc.ca/Media/Process.aspx?MediaId=ANQ.Vigie.Bll.DocumentGenerique_181435en&process=Default&token=ZyMoxNwUn8ikQ+TRKYwPCjWrKwg+vIv9rjij7p3xLGTZDmLVSmJLoqe/vG7/YWzz">academic freedom</a> as, “the right of every person to engage freely and without doctrinal, ideological or moral constraint in an activity through which the person contributes, in their field of activity, to carrying out the mission of an educational institution.” </p>
<p>As scholars whose combined work engages with the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108684804.005">politicization of language</a> and <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781442610163/multiculturalism-within-a-bilingual-framework/">language, race and belonging</a>, we share concerns with other anti-racist scholars that the bill prioritizes the right to speak without consideration for ethical ramifications. The bill would <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/johs.12120">overshadow issues of justice for racialized members of the academy</a>.</p>
<p>Currently, complex questions about <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-universities-not-safe-space-1.6285400">creating “safe spaces” or issuing “trigger warnings” in classrooms</a> are addressed within universities. Commentators argue that the bill <a href="https://www.universityaffairs.ca/news/news-article/university-community-reacts-to-quebecs-new-academic-freedom-bill">“spells the end of ‘trigger warnings’ and "safe spaces’ in the classroom</a>.”</p>
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<h2>Rejected by students, university teachers</h2>
<p>The bill has sparked significant controversy and ignited criticism from students and university teachers for its <a href="https://www.universityaffairs.ca/news/news-article/university-community-reacts-to-quebecs-new-academic-freedom-bill/">overreach into university autonomy</a>. </p>
<p>The bill’s Article 6 would give the minister of higher education the power <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/student-association-asks-quebec-to-scrap-bill-32-on-academic-freedom">to “order an educational institution to include, in its policy, any element indicated by the minister” or “have the necessary corrections made</a>.”</p>
<p>Québec student unions and <a href="https://www.caut.ca/node/11501">Canadian Association of University Teachers</a> have opposed the bill. The head of Concordia’s Black Student Union notes the bill would traumatize racialized students by reaching into university jurisdiction to permit derogatory language without concern for its effect, and calls it a “<a href="https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/quebec-s-academic-freedom-bill-a-slap-in-the-face-says-concordia-black-student-union-1.5850864">slap in the face</a>.” </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/academic-freedom-cant-be-separated-from-responsibility-175026">Academic freedom can't be separated from responsibility</a>
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<p>Given that the suspended professor did not work in Québec, one might wonder why the province has proposed the bill. In March 2021, when Danielle McCann, Québec’s minister of higher education, announced a committee to examine academic freedom, she said <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/quebec-announces-committee-to-examine-academic-freedom-censorship">recent events had convinced the government to take action</a>.</p>
<p>One might wonder how Premier François Legault’s <a href="https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/quebec-university-classrooms-are-not-safe-spaces-says-academic-freedom-committee-1.5706817">criticism of the suspension of a professor who did not work in Québec</a> has culminated in a bill that attempts to radically transform the definition and control of academic freedom. Perhaps the extent of this reaction reflects anxieties specific to Québec’s nationalist articulations of its identity.</p>
<h2>U.S. and Canadian contexts</h2>
<p>The bill imports American principles by blurring the distinction between academic freedom and free expression or free speech, similar to other Canadian conservative government manoeuvres, discussed below.</p>
<p>The Canadian and U.S. legal frameworks for academic freedom differ. One fundamental difference is that in Canada, Charter rights <a href="https://canliiconnects.org/en/summaries/31312">do not apply to universities</a>. By contrast, in the United States, the First Amendment, the source of equivalent rights, does apply to <a href="https://www.aclu.org/other/speech-campus">public universities</a>. </p>
<p>The U.S. Supreme Court decisions concerning First Amendment free speech rights have a <a href="https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/17/academic-freedom">long history</a> of including academic freedom. This connection is non-existent in Canada. </p>
<p>In Canada, academic freedom is <a href="https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/constitutional_forum/index.php/constitutional_forum/article/view/29398/21395">grounded in collective agreements</a> or memoranda of understanding negotiated between faculty associations and university administrations. It usually includes the autonomy of the university and its faculty from outside pressures including provincial and federal governments. </p>
<p>In the U.S., <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.t03.htm">the rate of unionization</a> at universities is far <a href="https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/constitutional_forum/index.php/constitutional_forum/article/view/29398">lower than in Canada</a>, making collective agreements less viable as the guarantee of academic freedom. </p>
<p>The Alberta Court ruled that the Charter right to free expression applies to campus anti-abortion <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.3138/9781487529314-015/pdf">protesters in Alberta</a> and that students at the University of Calgary were merely expressing themselves when they denigrated <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/johs.12120">their professor on Facebook</a>.
But no court has ruled that the Charter applies to universities’ classrooms or university teaching.</p>
<h2>To further confuse matters</h2>
<p>But Bill 32 focuses not on freedom of speech, but on academic freedom. The only other province to legislate on issues concerning academic freedom to our knowledge is Manitoba. </p>
<p>Manitoba’s <a href="https://web2.gov.mb.ca/laws/statutes/ccsm/a006-3e.php">Advanced Education Administration Act</a> merely states that the minister responsible for post-secondary education, “respects the appropriate autonomy of educational institutions and the recognized principles of academic freedom.” </p>
<p>But the goal and functioning of Bill 32 is to define and control the principle of academic freedom (now under universities’ jurisdiction). </p>
<p>The Québec government claims it can do better than universities in protecting this core principle of academic freedom. More substantially, this bill politicizes complex questions of how professors do their work at the university.</p>
<h2>Ignores right to criticize government</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.universityaffairs.ca/news/news-article/university-community-reacts-to-quebecs-new-academic-freedom-bill/">Commentators have criticized the bill</a> for omitting what is usually considered a fundamental dimension, that is, the right for academics to criticize their own universities as well as government.</p>
<p>University collective agreements are clear in granting academic freedom to faculty members based on them having fulfilled years of education to become experts in their fields. </p>
<p>But the bill ignores these standard definitions of academic freedom and presents it as if it is like the right to free expression: universal, applicable to everyone regardless of their qualifications. </p>
<p>As American historian Joan Wallach Scott argues about the American right-wing: by “<a href="https://www.amacad.org/news/free-speech-and-academic-freedom">collapsing the distinction between academic freedom and free speech, they deny the authority of knowledge and of the teacher who purveys it</a>.”</p>
<h2>Potential problems with scope</h2>
<p>Since the bill does not restrict itself to academics but speaks of “the right of every person … in their field of activity,” concrete problems for implementation are evident. </p>
<p>For example, if a professor gives a student a C in a course, could this be challenged as restricting the student’s academic freedom from “doctrinal” constraint? </p>
<p>Could not the offence of plagiarism be argued as a “moral” constraint and thus against a student’s academic freedom? </p>
<h2>Joins Ontario and Alberta ‘culture wars’</h2>
<p>The purpose of this bill seems comparable to the influential statement issued by the <a href="https://freeexpression.uchicago.edu/">University of Chicago</a>, known as the <a href="https://provost.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/documents/reports/FOECommitteeReport.pdf">Chicago Principles of Free Expression</a>. Those principles nowhere mention academic freedom. But, they were also <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/education/university-chicago-we-don-t-condone-safe-spaces-or-trigger-n637721">the grounds for the university to speak against “trigger warnings” and the notion of the university as a “safe space.”</a> </p>
<p>The Chicago Principles have been adopted by many American universities, although not without <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2018/12/11/what-chicago-principles-miss-when-it-comes-free-speech-and-academic-freedom-opinion">controversy</a>. </p>
<p>When <a href="https://www.thestar.com/calgary/2019/05/06/alberta-and-ontario-premiers-campus-free-speech-policies-a-dog-whistle-blow-for-the-right-expert.html">Alberta Premier Jason Kenney</a> and <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/develop-free-speech-policies-or-face-funding-cuts-ontario-tells-colleges-1.4074727?cache=lxaherxk%3FclipId%3D375756">Ontario Premier Doug Ford insisted</a> that universities in their respective provinces adopt freedom of speech policies, they referenced the Chicago Principles.</p>
<p>Québec’s bill may be seen as part of the on-going “culture wars,” along with Ford and Kenney’s grandstanding about free speech crises on university campuses.</p>
<p>As in those cases, maybe this is just political posturing <a href="https://edmontonjournal.com/opinion/columnists/opinion-ucp-promises-threaten-academic-freedom-of-speech">with little genuine concern</a> for the quality of university education. </p>
<p>In sum, even if this bill is revised or fails, its very proposal signals a move towards using academic freedom as a political weapon.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183122/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Ives is affiliated with the University of Winnipeg and is a representative-at-large to the council of the University of Winnipeg Faculty Association. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eve Haque has received funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada for an Insight Development Grant on 'Reconciling Academic Freedom and Equity in Canada'
</span></em></p>In addition to undermining universities’ and faculty members’ autonomy, the bill blurs distinctions between free expression and academic freedom, and turns academic freedom into a political weapon.Peter Ives, Professor, Political Science, University of WinnipegEve Haque, Professor, Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics, York University, CanadaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1797952022-04-19T12:19:33Z2022-04-19T12:19:33ZPranks and propaganda: Russian laws against ‘fake news’ target Ukrainians and the opposition, not pro-Putin pranksters<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458332/original/file-20220415-22-mhi8p7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=27%2C0%2C4521%2C3110&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Russian pranksters and anti-free speech advocates Vladimir "Vovan" Kuznetsov, left, and Alexei "Lexus" Stolyarov in Moscow in 2016.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/russian-pranksters-vladimir-vovan-kuznetsov-and-alexei-news-photo/516279026?adppopup=true">Yuri Kadobnovav/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When they launched their war on Ukraine in late February 2022, Russian authorities also <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/04/world/europe/russia-censorship-media-crackdown.html">unleashed an all-out assault</a> on dissent at home. Within weeks, the Kremlin blocked access to nearly all remaining critical media outlets as well as to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.</p>
<p>As part of the communication crackdown, the Russian parliament – the State Duma – passed draconian laws to limit speech relating to the Russian-Ukrainian war, laws that lawmakers deemed necessary to fight against fake news. In its first move, in early March, the legislature unanimously <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-introduce-jail-terms-spreading-fake-information-about-army-2022-03-04/">criminalized</a> “public dissemination of false information under the guise of truthful messages” about the Russian army. Sentences for violating the law extended up to 15 years in prison. </p>
<p>Later that month, Russian lawmakers <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/russians-who-spread-fake-news-about-officials-abroad-face-jail-interfax-2022-03-25/">expanded</a> the law’s application to include false information about the work of all officials serving abroad, including the National Guard troops, the Federal Security Service or any other state organs involved in the Ukrainian campaign.</p>
<p>The combination of the law’s intentional vagueness and severity is meant to stifle criticism of the Russian invasion. The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/11/russia-fake-news-law-misinformation/">“fake news” laws</a> swiftly <a href="https://www.niemanlab.org/2022/03/an-information-dark-age-russias-new-fake-news-law-has-outlawed-most-independent-journalism-there/">devastated</a> <a href="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/03/28/russias-novaya-gazeta-suspends-operations-after-kremlin-warnings-a77109">media organizations</a> that weren’t already controlled by the state. </p>
<p>The latest series of fake news laws isn’t the Kremlin’s first use of a tragedy to enhance its power. And the earlier instance didn’t need a war to trigger it – it was triggered by pranksters.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458336/original/file-20220415-16-rq7iab.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An image of a large bearded young man in a yellow shirt is used to illustrate a Moscow Times story whose headline is 'Russia Investigates Ukrainian Blogger for Spreading Fake News About 300 Deaths in Kemerovo Fire.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458336/original/file-20220415-16-rq7iab.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458336/original/file-20220415-16-rq7iab.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458336/original/file-20220415-16-rq7iab.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458336/original/file-20220415-16-rq7iab.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458336/original/file-20220415-16-rq7iab.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458336/original/file-20220415-16-rq7iab.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458336/original/file-20220415-16-rq7iab.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Ukrainian prankster Evgeniy Volnov made a prank phone call in 2018 that helped pave the way for adoption of repressive news laws in Russia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2018/03/28/russia-investigates-ukrainian-blogger-spreading-fake-news-about-300-deaths-kemerovo-fire-a60966">Screenshot, The Moscow Times website</a></span>
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<h2>Hoax sparks punitive law</h2>
<p>Russia <a href="https://www.loc.gov/law/foreign-news/article/russia-russian-president-signs-anti-fake-news-laws/">passed</a> its original fake news legislation in March 2019. The law established penalties for spreading “socially significant false information distributed under the guise of truthful messages.” </p>
<p>The law’s passage followed a Ukrainian prankster’s hoax that built on a real tragedy. <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43543109">On March 25, 2018, a fire</a> in a shopping mall in the Russian mining city of Kemerovo killed 60 people, most of them children. </p>
<p>Evgeniy Volnov, a Ukrainian <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBfw2HObgGk&t=700s">media provocateur who fancies</a> himself an information warrior against Russia, posed as an emergency services official to prank call the Kemerovo morgue. He told officials there to arrange for 300 incoming bodies. </p>
<p>Volnov then published his phone call, which sparked local residents’ anger at the authorities. Residents then wrongly suspected officials of hiding the real number of victims. In response, the <a href="https://interfax.com/newsroom/top-stories/24346/">Russian Investigative Committee – the main federal investigating authority in Russia – opened</a> a criminal case against Volnov for “inciting hatred or animosity” and <a href="https://sledcom.ru/news/item/1213375/?print=1?print=1">issued</a> a warrant for his arrest in absentia. </p>
<p>The Russian government promptly exploited Volnov’s prank to further curtail domestic freedoms. </p>
<p>In the days after the fire, state officials argued for the need to regulate fake news to safeguard Russian society from destabilization by disinformation. Citing Volnov’s prank, <a href="https://tass.ru/politika/5078947">Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, for example, suggested</a> that foreign governments could use fake news to instigate regime change in Russia. He singled out the Ukrainian government, in which he claimed “representatives of the CIA and the U.S. State Department work in the intelligence services.”</p>
<p>Russia’s most famous <a href="https://meduza.io/en/feature/2016/03/31/if-you-re-sliding-into-totalitarianism-you-might-as-well-do-it-glamorously">pranking duo</a>, Vladimir Kuznetsov – known as Vovan – and Alexey Stolyarov – known as Lexus – spearheaded the media campaign for fake news legislation. </p>
<p>Kuznetsov and Stolyarov’s <a href="https://rutube.ru/channel/23610070/videos/">pranks</a> target foreign high-profile cultural and political figures who oppose the Kremlin’s agenda. Russian media then <a href="https://aif.ru/politics/world/bomba_dlya_nacistov_kak_ministr_oborony_britanii_s_prankerami_govoril">widely</a> <a href="https://www.kp.ru/daily/27370/4562912/">cover</a> <a href="https://rg.ru/2022/03/25/na-videohostingah-opublikovan-prank-s-ministrom-vnutrennih-del-velikobritanii-patel.html">the pranks</a> to present them as evidence for the regime’s mythology of Russia as <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Fortress+Russia%3A+Conspiracy+Theories+in+the+Post+Soviet+World-p-9781509522651">a besieged fortress</a> fending off unending Western scheming against it.</p>
<h2>Pranking politics</h2>
<p>Pranks are mischievous practical jokes played on unsuspecting victims. A classic phone prank involves a caller posing as someone else, usually in front of an audience of co-conspirators, to dupe their targets into doing or saying something silly, revealing or both.</p>
<p>Political pranking is <a href="https://nyupress.org/9780814796290/pranksters/">traditionally thought</a> of as <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/anti-afd-activists-prank-populists-with-hoax-corporate-ads/a-46744218">benign foolery targeting</a> the powerful. My research into pranking politics shows that <a href="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2016/03/15/happy-to-be-a-weapon-russian-prank-callers-target-kremlin-opponents-a52163">sometimes pranksters bolster</a> the status quo instead. </p>
<p>Kuznetsov and Stolyarov were the <a href="https://www.piter.com/collection/spisok-bykova/product/vovan-i-leksus-po-kom-zvonit-telefon-2">founding figures</a> of Russia’s phone pranking scene in the 2000s. At the time, the community consisting of teenagers and college students mostly pranked the downtrodden and pop culture celebrities. The jokesters’ aim was to drive their target to angry stupor for the enjoyment of fellow pranksters. </p>
<p>In 2014, upon discovering their shared support for Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea, the veteran pranksters joined forces to dupe Ukrainian and Western elites. The pair pranked Ukrainian President <a href="https://rutube.ru/video/61c3a0eaecab3f7c1750a8277234ff96/">Petro Poroshenko</a>; <a href="https://rutube.ru/video/c88a956b17ef31cba880bfcd8b9ca0dd/">Filaret</a>, patriarch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church; Kyiv Mayor <a href="https://rutube.ru/video/e355ace7031294480a49b18ee192867f/">Vitali Klitschko</a>; and other Ukrainian leaders. Posing as friendly figures to entice their victims into informal chatter, Kuznetsov and Stolyarov broached a wide range of topics, including nationalism, Russian gas exports and homosexuality. </p>
<p>The pranksters’ goal was to provoke their targets into saying something that Russian media could then spin using <a href="https://www.e-ir.info/2015/04/28/dominant-narratives-in-russian-political-and-media-discourse-during-the-crisis/">the Kremlin’s characterization</a> of <a href="https://ibidem-verlag.de/pdf/00-fedor.pdf">post-2014 Ukraine</a> as an inept, fascist and morally corrupt Western puppet. In 2018, Ukrainian authorities <a href="https://society.fakty.ua/281374-skandalnym-rossijskim-prankeram-zapretili-vezd-v-ukrainu-eksklyuzivnyj-dokument">barred</a> Kuznetsov from entering the country.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458337/original/file-20220415-14-grnzy1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A balding light-haired man with a round head, wearing a white shirt, dark tie and black blazer, looking pensive." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458337/original/file-20220415-14-grnzy1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458337/original/file-20220415-14-grnzy1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458337/original/file-20220415-14-grnzy1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458337/original/file-20220415-14-grnzy1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458337/original/file-20220415-14-grnzy1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458337/original/file-20220415-14-grnzy1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458337/original/file-20220415-14-grnzy1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a number of repressive press laws during his tenure.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/russias-president-vladimir-putin-looks-on-during-talks-with-news-photo/1239931346?adppopup=true">Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The law of Vovan and Lexus</h2>
<p>Because of Kuznetsov’s and Stolyarov’s reputations as patriotic experts in fakery, they took on the role of <a href="https://ura.news/news/1052328807">promoting</a> the <a href="https://www.kp.ru/daily/26811/3847766/">fake news law initiative</a>. <a href="https://ria.ru/20180328/1517450554.html?in=t">Calling</a> Ukrainian prankster Volnov’s prank a “disgusting informational sabotage by Ukrainian nationalists,” the pair vowed to prevent “informational attacks from abroad” by proposing legal solutions in their capacity as members of the State Duma’s advisory Council on Information Society and Media Development. </p>
<p>In explaining the duo’s enthusiasm, <a href="https://www.kp.ru/daily/26811/3847766/">Stolyarov distinguished</a> between their socially “useful fakes,” which uncover hidden truths about domestic and world politics, and what they said were unlawful pranks like Volnov’s that only destabilize society. </p>
<p>The duo’s public support for fake news legislation was so vociferous that <a href="https://www.bfm.ru/news/381070">one critic referred</a> to the initiative as “the law of Vovan, Lexus, and Volodin.” After lobbying for the law in the media, however, the pranksters were sidelined from meaningful participation in its drafting.</p>
<p>Following monthslong parliamentary discussions and revisions, Vladimir Putin signed the fake news proposals into law in March 2019. The law set fines for spreading alleged disinformation ranging from US$450 to $22,900, depending on who was doing the spreading and its consequences – for example, whether it led to bodily harm or death. As critics had warned, <a href="https://meduza.io/en/feature/2019/04/29/how-does-russia-actually-enforce-its-ban-on-fake-news">the authorities applied</a> the law almost exclusively to opposition activists and organizations.</p>
<p>When the COVID-19 pandemic began in spring 2020, Russia <a href="https://ipi.media/new-fake-news-law-stifles-independent-reporting-in-russia-on-covid-19/">used the existing fake news framework to criminalize</a> what it said were coronavirus-related fakes in an effort to curb unwanted coverage of the public health emergency. The law carried a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.</p>
<h2>Pranksters non grata</h2>
<p>Since the renewal of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, Vovan and Lexus again put their pranking talents in the Kremlin’s service. In late March, the duo published pranks with the U.K. Home Secretary <a href="https://rutube.ru/video/a110abfc133cbdfa4b3772a1f7bb973d/">Priti Patel</a> and Secretary of State for Defense <a href="https://rutube.ru/video/2e3a2631dec32df3a3401f4be4187f8a/">Ben Wallace</a>. </p>
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<p>Posing as Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, the pranksters trolled the U.K. ministers with ridiculous questions surrounding the war. At one point, faux-Shmyhal asked Patel if the British were afraid that neo-Nazis would enter the U.K. among Ukrainian refugees, a reference to the Kremlin’s claim that the goal of its invasion of Ukraine is “denazification.” The startled official replied with an assurance of the Brits’ determination to help in the Ukrainian refugee crisis. </p>
<p>The leading Russian state information agency, RIA Novosti, twisted Patel’s response. The <a href="https://ria.ru/20220324/prank-1779936160.html">headline read</a>: “The U.K. Home Secretary shared with the pranksters her willingness to help neo-Nazis.” </p>
<p>After the U.K. government urged YouTube to block the videos as “Russian propaganda,” the <a href="https://uk.news.yahoo.com/youtube-removes-account-publishing-hoaxes-223136077.html">U.S.-based platform removed</a> the pranksters’ channel as part of its investigation into “influence operations linked to Russia.” </p>
<p>The pranking war rages on.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179795/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stanislav Budnitsky does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Political phone pranksters played a big part in the passage of draconian laws that strangle free expression in Russia.Stanislav Budnitsky, Postdoctoral Fellow, Russian and East European Institute, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1787582022-04-14T16:48:06Z2022-04-14T16:48:06ZIt’s the 40th anniversary of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but recent protests show a serious misunderstanding of what those mean<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453434/original/file-20220321-27-poiodt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1094%2C1224%2C6131%2C3596&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Protesters who think the government is restricting their 'right to freedom' misunderstand the way that rights require us to consider how our actions impact others.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nicole Osborne</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/it-s-the-40th-anniversary-of-the-charter-of-rights-and-freedoms--but-recent-protests-show-a-serious-misunderstanding-of-what-those-mean" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Recent protests, like the so-called “<a href="https://globalnews.ca/tag/trucker-convoy/">freedom convoy</a>,” have denounced government action in response to the COVID-19 pandemic by claiming that government mandates like mask and vaccine mandates <a href="https://www.therecord.com/opinion/community-editorial-board/2022/02/17/so-called-freedom-convoy-protesters-dont-understand-what-freedom-means.html">infringe on their rights and freedoms</a>.</p>
<p>But using the rights discourse in protests is not new.</p>
<p>Many slogans relating to rights and freedoms used by protestors are decontextualized from <a href="https://caul-cbua.pressbooks.pub/aep/chapter/rights-and-privileges/">the history and theory of rights and freedoms</a>, which unfortunately oversimplifies what rights and freedoms really are. As a PhD student in philosophy, with a strong background in ethics and rights theory, I argue that while rights and freedoms language is politically and socially powerful, most people don’t understand what they are, which ones they are entitled to and the morally binding duties they require of others. </p>
<p>As April 17, 2022, marks the <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/anniversaries-significance/2022.html">40th anniversary of the signing of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms</a>, it is important people learn what it means to have a right. </p>
<h2>The history of human rights</h2>
<p>After the Second World War, <a href="https://www.un.org/en/about-us/udhr/history-of-the-declaration">world leaders came together to develop the Universal Declaration of Human Rights</a> with the goal of preventing future human suffering and atrocities of war. </p>
<p>In the development of the declaration, <a href="https://www.un.org/en/about-us/udhr/history-of-the-declaration">various ethical theories</a> were used to articulate the kinds of rights that every person should be afforded. At the heart of this document is the right to human equality — “<a href="https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights">All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights</a>.”</p>
<p>The Universal Declaration informed the rights legislation in many countries — including the <a href="https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/rfc-dlc/ccrf-ccdl/index.html">Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms</a>. </p>
<p>And although formal human rights developments have helped governments and organizations understand what qualifies as basic human rights, the separation of rights from its <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights-human/">roots in ethical theory</a> has led to many misconceptions about rights and freedoms and, consequently, its misappropriation by protesters for their movements. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A document that says CANADIAN CHARTER OF RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS across the top." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453440/original/file-20220321-14810-ihvbl3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453440/original/file-20220321-14810-ihvbl3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453440/original/file-20220321-14810-ihvbl3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453440/original/file-20220321-14810-ihvbl3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453440/original/file-20220321-14810-ihvbl3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=631&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453440/original/file-20220321-14810-ihvbl3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=631&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453440/original/file-20220321-14810-ihvbl3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=631&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The official English version of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(CANADIAN PRESS/stf)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Limits to freedoms</h2>
<p>Recent protesters claim that <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/deena-hinshaw-court-cross-examination-calgary-alberta-1.6408154">COVID-19 mandates restrict their freedom</a> because the government is forcing them to act against their will. They assume that, because we live in a free society, anyone can act however they want. </p>
<p>But this claim assumes that someone’s freedom to act trumps everyone else’s.</p>
<p>Simply by being a member of a society, our rights and freedoms are limited. When someone’s actions have the potential to harm other people, as stated in <a href="https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/rfc-dlc/ccrf-ccdl/check/art1.html">Section 1 of the Charter</a>, those actions are prohibited or punished. </p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/rfc-dlc/ccrf-ccdl/check/art2b.html">freedom of expression is protected in Canada</a>, but this fundamental freedom is limited as soon as people’s speech and expression becomes hateful and harmful to specific groups or individuals. </p>
<p>When an action — like hate speech or refusing to follow COVID-19 mandates — is deemed harmful to others, the government can limit one person’s freedom to protect the rights and freedoms of others. </p>
<p>The government declared <a href="https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/covid.html">public health orders for COVID-19</a> because refusing to follow these recommendations puts others at risk of contracting the virus. </p>
<h2>Obligations to protect the rights of others</h2>
<p>In some protests, arguing that one has a claim to a certain right obscures how those rights may infringe on someone else’s. If we think that we have a right to something, we need to make sure that it seems plausible that <a href="https://caul-cbua.pressbooks.pub/aep/chapter/rights-and-privileges/"><em>everyone</em> has that right and that the right doesn’t impede the rights of others</a>. </p>
<p>This is further complicated by the question <em>who</em> is responsible for protecting these rights? Because, in short, <a href="https://ishr.ch/about-human-rights/who-protects-human-rights">the answer is all of us</a>. And this <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights-human/#GeneIdeaHumaRigh">universality makes it difficult to determine which rights someone can have</a> in the first place. </p>
<p>A key problem in rights theory is how <a href="https://broadviewpress.com/product/readings-in-health-care-ethics-second-edition/#tab-description">to balance the different kinds of rights we all hold</a> and how these rights require us to act towards others.</p>
<p>Often, protesters leave obligations out of the picture — including the obligations they have to other people. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man stands in front of a crowd holding a sign that says 'FREEDOM NOTHING ELSE'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453439/original/file-20220321-27-zl6svx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453439/original/file-20220321-27-zl6svx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453439/original/file-20220321-27-zl6svx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453439/original/file-20220321-27-zl6svx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453439/original/file-20220321-27-zl6svx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453439/original/file-20220321-27-zl6svx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453439/original/file-20220321-27-zl6svx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A convoy supporter holds a sign on Parliament Hill to in support of trucks lined up in protest of COVID-19 vaccine mandates and restrictions in Ottawa, Ont., on Feb. 12, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although the rights and freedoms discourse used in protest is impactful, the failure to discuss these nuances increases polarization on controversial issues. For example, one protest may focus on one or two rights and freedoms and the desire to protect those, while another stakes a claim to different rights and freedoms. </p>
<p>When both claim their rights and freedoms are being violated, it becomes difficult to evaluate which side’s rights are worth protecting. And when this happens we often align with the side that <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691175515/republic">most closely resembles our own beliefs</a>. </p>
<h2>Rights are not self-exceptional</h2>
<p>Instead of discussing who should be protecting people’s rights and freedoms and how they might conflict with the rights and freedoms of others, protest slogans end up perpetuating attitudes of <a href="https://caul-cbua.pressbooks.pub/aep/chapter/exceptionalism/">self-exceptionalism</a> and <a href="https://caul-cbua.pressbooks.pub/aep/chapter/selfishness-and-self-interest/">selfishness</a>.</p>
<p>Rights and freedoms were formally established under the assumption that <a href="https://www.sfu.ca/%7Eaheard/intro.html">everyone in society matters</a> and that as a society, we need to ensure necessary protections of everyone’s rights. The language used in protests oversimplifies what rights and freedoms are and <a href="https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1057%2F9780230523630.pdf">how everyone has moral obligations to protect the rights and freedoms of everyone in their community</a>. </p>
<p>On the <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/anniversaries-significance/2022.html">40th anniversary of the signing of the Charter</a>, it is important to reflect on the rights Canadians share and, more importantly, understand that these rights entail responsibilities to each other. </p>
<p>Perhaps if misunderstandings about rights and freedoms were clarified, there would be a greater sense of unity. And if they matter as much as protesters believe, then we need to evaluate how the support for some rights and freedoms might infringe on the rights and freedoms of others.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178758/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clarisse Paron receives funding from the Nova Scotian government. </span></em></p>Our freedom is limited as soon as our speech and behaviour become harmful to other people.Clarisse Paron, PhD Student, Department of Philosophy, Dalhousie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1799212022-03-28T15:11:42Z2022-03-28T15:11:42ZSynik uses hip-hop to discuss Zimbabwe’s issues despite the censors<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454319/original/file-20220325-19-1774bf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Visual Narphilia courtesy Synik</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.” This is how British Somali poet <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-writing-life-of-a-young-prolific-poet-warsan-shire">Warsan Shire</a> begins her now famous poem called <a href="https://seekersguidance.org/articles/social-issues/home-warsan-shire/">Home</a>. These words resonate with the experiences of many Zimbabweans who have been forced to leave their country in search of better opportunities elsewhere. </p>
<p>The beginning of the 2000s saw the rapid economic and political decline of the country, largely due to the inopportune <a href="https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=5082&context=etd">land reform programme</a> instituted by the government of <a href="https://theconversation.com/robert-mugabe-as-divisive-in-death-as-he-was-in-life-108103">Robert Mugabe</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://hiphopafrican.com/2018/04/11/who-is-synik/">Synik</a> (<a href="https://www.instagram.com/synikzim/?hl=en">Gerald Mugwenhi</a>) is an award-winning Zimbabwean hip-hop artist currently based in Lisbon, Portugal. His first album <a href="https://3-mob.com/entertainment/synik-syn-city-album-review/">SynCity</a> details some of the challenges that force Zimbabweans to leave their homeland. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454322/original/file-20220325-21-1jttqpv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An album cover with a photo of a dreadlocked man in a brown coat from behind. In front of him a train passes." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454322/original/file-20220325-21-1jttqpv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454322/original/file-20220325-21-1jttqpv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454322/original/file-20220325-21-1jttqpv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454322/original/file-20220325-21-1jttqpv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454322/original/file-20220325-21-1jttqpv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454322/original/file-20220325-21-1jttqpv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454322/original/file-20220325-21-1jttqpv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Synik Records</span></span>
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<p>His latest album, <a href="https://www.greedysouth.co.zw/2022/03/new-album-travel-guide-for-broken-by.html">A Travel Guide for the Broken</a>, chronicles what it means to be Zimbabwean in a foreign country. Synik’s new album is a logical extension of his earlier themes. </p>
<p>I first began to explore the way music offers Zimbabweans a space to discuss social issues some years ago. I have argued in <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/18125980.2017.1322470">my research</a> that hip-hop artists like Synik offer a self-reflexive space to decry the diverse issues afflicting contemporary Zimbabwe. </p>
<p>In a country where the public sphere is heavily censored by the state, music proposes an alternative space to discuss what is happening.</p>
<h2>Censorship</h2>
<p>In Synik’s time numerous artists in Zimbabwe have had their work censored or banned. For example, visual artist Owen Maseko was arrested and his politically-charged <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-artists-have-preserved-the-memory-of-zimbabwes-1980s-massacres-143847">art exhibition</a> was banned. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-artists-have-preserved-the-memory-of-zimbabwes-1980s-massacres-143847">How artists have preserved the memory of Zimbabwe's 1980s massacres</a>
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</em>
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<p>Over the years numerous songs have been banned from the national airwaves for being critical of the government. This has included music by non-Zimbabweans. For example, South African group Freshlyground was <a href="https://www.wbur.org/radioboston/2011/06/27/freshlyground">banned</a> from performing in Zimbabwe. </p>
<p>Outspoken Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi Dangarembga explains in a <a href="https://codesria.org/IMG/pdf/Dangarembga_The_Popular_Arts-2.pdf">2008 lecture</a> that there “is practically no public sphere to speak of” in Zimbabwe:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Those who wish to parade peacefully for non-political issues … are refused permits … Those who do not comply with the refusal, and march or parade, are quickly broken up by the police.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Almost 15 years later, nothing has really changed. </p>
<h2>Difficult Zimbabwe</h2>
<p>Released in 2012, SynCity was Synik’s first album. The central theme is life in Harare – however, what happens in the capital city embodies what happens elsewhere in the country. For example, in the song Power Cut, he describes a party scene that is disrupted by an electricity outage, one of the daily struggles faced by Zimbabweans. These struggles, as he states in Marching As One, are man made.</p>
<p>In a more critical song, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/synikzim/videos/synik-greed/10153613199522083/">Greed</a>, Synik paints a grim picture of how greed is to blame for the various challenges bedevilling Zimbabwe. The first part of the song focuses on how a small ruling elite abuses its political power by amassing obscene wealth:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Steals from sanitation, from our homes and clinics</p>
<p>From our children’s education and the roads and bridges too</p>
<p>While they fly to foreign lands for their medical exams</p>
<p>Your folks are in the village dying without a plan</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Synik alludes to how those in positions of power steal from state coffers, so the basic infrastructure and healthcare needed by citizens is either non-existent or dilapidated. </p>
<p>This song ends on a didactic note as he proposes that “we got one world and its resources are limited, so we gotta check our greed if well all gonna live on it”. This is a recurring element in Synik’s songs. He calls for a change in the way people think and act.</p>
<h2>Diaspora blues</h2>
<p>On his <a href="https://synikzim.bandcamp.com/album/a-travel-guide-for-the-broken">new album</a>, Synik explains that although many problems cease when some move to foreign lands, they must deal with a set of new challenges there. </p>
<p>These include xenophobia, racism and racial profiling among many others. Dealing with them leads to a condition which Synik terms “diaspora blues”. In the song Underground he recounts some of these challenges:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Exploited daily, no unions rebuking the bosses</p>
<p>Who pay us half our wages to be boosting their profits</p>
<p>Working long shifts, modern enslavement in progress</p>
<p>Dependants back home is why we taking this nonsense</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He describes how foreigners are blamed for all the things that are wrong in the countries that they have adopted as home: “They are saying <em>kwerekweres</em> are the problem. They say we only there so we can rob them.”</p>
<p>While the diaspora offers economic possibilities, it remains an inhospitable place. In the song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIBAbupfXok">Rukuvhute</a> (the umbilical cord), Synik refers to how Zimbabweans in the diaspora have to deal with numerous hardships:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Plodding through the hardest of terrains</p>
<p>Conscious of the strain of being estranged from where you came</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Music as critique and alternative archive</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454323/original/file-20220325-23-1gbcdh1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man stand with his hands in his jacket pockets, in a grey hoodie with dreadlocks; he looks deadpan into camera." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454323/original/file-20220325-23-1gbcdh1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454323/original/file-20220325-23-1gbcdh1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454323/original/file-20220325-23-1gbcdh1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454323/original/file-20220325-23-1gbcdh1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454323/original/file-20220325-23-1gbcdh1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454323/original/file-20220325-23-1gbcdh1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454323/original/file-20220325-23-1gbcdh1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Visual Narphilia courtesy Synik</span></span>
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<p>Although the diaspora is inhospitable, it offers security for musicians such as Synik to openly critique the government back home. Academic Isidore Okpewho <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3821157.pdf">explains</a> how migration can offer a productive space of “asking the kinds of questions that lay the foundations for a morally responsible order of existence in the future”.</p>
<p>The music of artists such as Synik is important for its analysis of contemporary Zimbabwean culture and society. Against a background of a stifled and censored public sphere, music presents an alternative public arena. </p>
<p>Through music, Synik and other musicians create a space in which topical political issues can be discussed. The creation of “other” spaces of free speech is important in making known things which the state would rather stifle and obfuscate. Synik’s music is transformed into a tool of documentation that creates an archive of narratives and discourses that are ordinarily sidelined from the public sphere.</p>
<p>The critique offered by this alternative space is central in enabling us to challenge the role of politics and politicians in shaping not just our lives but, importantly, individual and national identity and consciousness.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179921/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gibson Ncube does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Synik’s new album continues to shape identity and consciousness in a country with limited freedom of speech.Gibson Ncube, Lecturer, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1750382022-01-16T10:18:42Z2022-01-16T10:18:42ZWhy Novak Djokovic lost his fight to stay in Australia – and why it sets a concerning precedent<p>Many sports stars are, rightly or wrongly, held up as role models. In the case of Novak Djokovic, we have a set of powerful factors at play. </p>
<p>On one side is a tennis superstar who is unvaccinated and has raised concerns about receiving the vaccination. On the other side is a government which believes Djokovic’s presence in Australia will have a serious negative effect on public health orders and future vaccination levels. </p>
<p>Today, the full Federal Court, in a unanimous judgement, dismissed Djokovic’s application to overturn the cancellation of his visa. It is not surprising he lost his case. Although the evidence used by the immigration minister to cancel the visa was not overwhelmingly strong, the breadth of his powers under the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.au/Series/C1958A00062">Migration Act</a> made it very difficult to successfully challenge his findings.</p>
<p>But the legal issues raised by this case do not end here. What are the broader implications of the government’s approach in future cases involving high-profile “anti-vaxxers” or people who may be seen as a risk to Australia’s social order? </p>
<p>Although the government may be very happy about this result, I would question whether this is a workable precedent to set for other sportspeople, or indeed anyone, who may be seen as posing a risk to the public interest of Australia.</p>
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<h2>What the government claimed</h2>
<p>The immigration minister has the power to cancel a visa if he or she is satisfied a person’s presence in Australia <em>might</em> be a risk to the health, safety or good order of Australia and the cancellation is in the public interest. </p>
<p>The use of the word “might” is important – the minister does not need to show Djokovic <em>would</em> pose a risk, only that he <em>may</em> do so.</p>
<p>When cancelling Djokovic’s visa on Friday, <a href="https://www.fedcourt.gov.au/services/access-to-files-and-transcripts/online-files/djokovic/filed-documents/Sealed-Affidavit-Bannister-1512022.pdf">Immigration Minister Alex Hawke</a> reasoned the tennis player’s conduct and stance against vaccination may encourage others to emulate him by reason of his high profile and status. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/novak-djokovic-has-long-divided-opinion-now-his-legacy-will-be-complicated-even-further-174531">Novak Djokovic has long divided opinion. Now, his legacy will be complicated even further</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>There were two issues with the ministerial statement which were discussed at some length in the full Federal Court:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Hawke did not seek the views of Djokovic on his present attitude to vaccinations. Instead, the minister cited material that made clear Djokovic has publicly expressed antivaccination sentiment. This included a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-59897918">BBC article</a>, which Djokovic’s lawyers argued was not sufficient to make a judgement about his vaccination views. </p></li>
<li><p>Hawke explicitly referred to the effect Djokovic’s presence would have on public health and social order. What the minister did not consider, however, was the other side of this argument. That is, Djokovic’s deportation might lead to an increase in anti-vax sentiment and/or civil unrest. </p></li>
</ol>
<h2>What Djokovic claimed</h2>
<p>Djokovic’s lawyers made some very compelling <a href="https://www.fedcourt.gov.au/services/access-to-files-and-transcripts/online-files/djokovic/filed-documents/sealed-Applicants-revised-Submissions-1512022.pdf">arguments</a> about Hawke’s reasoning. Put simply, the lawyers said the minister had two choices: </p>
<ol>
<li><p>to cancel the visa and deport Djokovic </p></li>
<li><p>not cancel it and let him stay. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>They argued it was irrational for Hawke to only question the effect Djokovic’s presence would have on anti-vax sentiment in Australia and not the effect his deportation would have.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-one-man-with-god-like-powers-decides-if-novak-djokovic-can-stay-or-go-174773">Why one man with 'god-like' powers decides if Novak Djokovic can stay or go</a>
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<p>Djokovic’s lawyers also argued the minister’s findings lacked sufficient evidence to support the contention that his presence in Australia might pose a risk to the health or good order of the Australian community and the contention Djokovic had a “well-known stance on vaccination”. </p>
<p>Djokovic’s lawyers conceded Djokovic had previously said he was opposed to vaccinations. However, they pointed out in the BBC article he </p>
<blockquote>
<p>later clarified his position by adding that he was ‘no expert’ and would keep an ‘open mind’ but wanted to have ‘an option to choose what’s best for my body’. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is important to note this qualifying passage was not extracted by Hawke in his statement - a point Djokovic’s lawyers made in the hearing.</p>
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<img alt="Supporters of Novak Djokovic hold Serbian flags." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/440956/original/file-20220116-28-11x9wet.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/440956/original/file-20220116-28-11x9wet.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440956/original/file-20220116-28-11x9wet.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440956/original/file-20220116-28-11x9wet.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440956/original/file-20220116-28-11x9wet.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440956/original/file-20220116-28-11x9wet.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440956/original/file-20220116-28-11x9wet.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Supporters of Novak Djokovic hold Serbian flags outside the Federal Court building in Melbourne.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tom Moldoveanu/AP</span></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Why Djokovic’s case failed</h2>
<p>In response, the government argued it was reasonable to conclude Djokovic is opposed to vaccination based on his previous public statements and the fact he is known to be unvaccinated. </p>
<p>The government also said Hawke was not only concerned with Djokovic’s current views on vaccination, but the <em>public perception</em> of his views.</p>
<p>Further, the government said Hawke did not have to show Djokovic’s presence <em>has</em> fostered anti-vaccination sentiment or necessarily <em>will</em> foster it. All he needed to show was his presence in Australia <em>may</em> foster anti-vax sentiment – a relatively low threshold to reach.</p>
<p>Presumably, this is why Djokovic’s case failed. Although there were questions about the evidence used by Hawke, the Migration Act powers are very broad and it is difficult to challenge them based on unlawfulness.</p>
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<h2>Implications for the future</h2>
<p>While the Federal Court’s decision may be viewed as legally justified given the breadth of the cancellation powers in the Migration Act, some thought must be given to the future implications of these powers and what this means for the ability of the government to cancel other people’s visas.</p>
<p>The basis of Hawke’s findings seemed to be it was enough to show Djokovic is an iconic sports star who is perceived as being anti-vaccination and therefore may foster anti-vax sentiment in Australia.</p>
<p>I have a number of concerns with this.</p>
<p>First, it is unfair if the perception or actions of others can determine someone’s eligibility to remain in a country. A person may wrongly be viewed as having a particular belief and still be subject to a visa cancellation.</p>
<p>Second, the minister relied on Djokovic’s claimed status as a “role model” and his capacity as a high-profile sportsperson to apparently influence society. What if a sportsperson is unvaccinated, but not high-profile?</p>
<p>Third, and this is the most concerning point, if we extend this logic to other people, it could justify the cancellation of any individual who is seen as a “role model” and who may be perceived as causing social unrest or protests. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://twitter.com/Kate_Seear/status/1482568831264768009?s=20">legal commentators such as Kate Seear pointed out</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>This kind of logic - that athletes are role models and role models can influence society […] could be extended to other athletes wanting to come here in the future, including those with diverse political views, such as supporters of Black Lives Matter and defunding police.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Lastly, the idea a person can have their visa cancelled because their views might affect the health, safety or good order of the Australian community raises issues for freedom of expression. </p>
<p>A wide cancellation power allows the government to stop international visitors who may have an important message to tell Australians. That would pose significant concerns for political debate in Australia.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175038/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maria O'Sullivan previously received funding from the Commonwealth Attorney-General's Department to undertake research on automated decision-making. She also serves on the Human Rights Legal Advice Panel for the Queensland Parliament.</span></em></p>The ruling could justify the future visa cancellation of any individual who is seen as a ‘role model’ and who may be perceived as causing social unrest.Maria O'Sullivan, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, and Deputy Director, Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1698112021-11-07T13:11:14Z2021-11-07T13:11:14ZAs a global infrastructure giant, Facebook must uphold human rights<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429967/original/file-20211103-23-e238vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C26%2C6000%2C3961&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Seen on the screen of a device in Sausalito, Calif., Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announces the company's new corporate name, Meta, during a virtual event.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> (AP Photo/Eric Risberg) </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Facebook — <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/28/tech/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-keynote-announcements/index.html">its new corporate name is Meta</a> — has always wanted to get to know you. Its public goal has ostensibly been to connect people. It’s been wildly successful in doing so by building out what can only be called everyday infrastructure around the world. </p>
<p>There are <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/947869/facebook-product-mau/">3.5 billion people</a> worldwide using Facebook’s suite of products, which includes Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. As the infrastructure provider, Facebook knows a lot about who its users are, and what they do.</p>
<p>Recently, the company has announced a US$10 billion investment in the “metaverse” — an immersive version of the internet that can only increase Facebook’s hold on citizens via the data it collects about us.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430036/original/file-20211103-23-13jvm2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman with blonde hair speaks into a microphone with one arm raised." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430036/original/file-20211103-23-13jvm2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430036/original/file-20211103-23-13jvm2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430036/original/file-20211103-23-13jvm2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430036/original/file-20211103-23-13jvm2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430036/original/file-20211103-23-13jvm2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430036/original/file-20211103-23-13jvm2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430036/original/file-20211103-23-13jvm2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former Facebook employee Frances Haugen speaks during a Senate hearing in Washington, D.C.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This announcement comes at a time when everyone wants to do something about Facebook. Recent reporting on corporate ethics, fuelled by whistle-blower Frances Haugen’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-s-senate-testimony/8d324185-d725-4d99-9160-9ce9e13f58a3/">document dump and testimony in the United States Senate</a> — along with a <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-caused-the-unprecedented-facebook-outage-the-few-clues-point-to-a-problem-from-within-169249">six-hour blackout</a> of its services worldwide in October — demonstrate both the scale of Facebook’s reach and the consequences of letting the status quo persist. </p>
<p>But before we fix anything, we need to consider the logic behind determining what ought to be fixed.</p>
<h2>A human rights focus</h2>
<p>In order to effectively regulate data-intensive, privately held global infrastructure like Facebook, we need to prioritize human rights concerns. Upholding human rights can act as the underlying logic for any regulatory framework, and in doing do, provide it with an established, universal ethical heft.</p>
<p>Focusing on human rights means prioritizing the <a href="https://www.open.edu/openlearn/ocw/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=68382&section=2">basic values</a> embodied in the United Nations’ <a href="https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights">Universal Declaration of Human Rights</a>: protecting human dignity, ensuring autonomy and equality and “brotherhood” (or, in 2020s parlance, community).
It means understanding that these rights are <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/issues/pages/whatarehumanrights.aspx">indivisible and interdependent</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430066/original/file-20211103-19-vb9poh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A cell phone user thumbs through the privacy settings on a Facebook account" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430066/original/file-20211103-19-vb9poh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430066/original/file-20211103-19-vb9poh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430066/original/file-20211103-19-vb9poh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430066/original/file-20211103-19-vb9poh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430066/original/file-20211103-19-vb9poh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430066/original/file-20211103-19-vb9poh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430066/original/file-20211103-19-vb9poh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Facebook has changed our lives by morphing into a global infrastructure platform.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick</span></span>
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<p>The benefits and harms of social media affect human beings — the subjects for whom human rights are intended. Facebook, and other companies like it, have changed our lives by becoming global infrastructure, affecting how, when and if we engage with others. Through this process, our lives have become “datafied.”</p>
<p>We need to think more purposefully about how to embed human rights in our digital policies as we increasingly live and find meaning within online environments and contexts. As the UN’s <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/documents/publications/guidingprinciplesbusinesshr_en.pdf">Guiding Principles</a> on Business and Human Rights affirm, states have a duty to protect human rights. Businesses, however, also have the responsibility to respect human rights.</p>
<h2>A global communications giant</h2>
<p>The focus on calls for reform to date, including Haugen’s explosive Senate testimony, has been centred around content on the social network Facebook built and is best known for. But Facebook is much more than that. </p>
<p>The blackout showed that Facebook is an essential piece of global communications infrastructure. The corporation formerly known as Facebook, and its properties Instagram and WhatsApp, facilitates <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/05/facebook-outage-highlights-global-over-reliance-on-its-services">small business and informal economies</a> around the world. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/05/facebook-outage-highlights-global-over-reliance-on-its-services">It provides login</a> <a href="https://www.marketplace.org/2018/10/04/heres-how-see-what-you-log-facebook/">credentials</a> to <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/business/why-you-shouldnt-use-facebook-to-log-in-to-other-sites-and-apps/">thousands of other apps</a>. </p>
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<img alt="A woman with long hair in a crowd of other women takes a photo with her phone." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430062/original/file-20211103-23-36ba4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430062/original/file-20211103-23-36ba4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430062/original/file-20211103-23-36ba4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430062/original/file-20211103-23-36ba4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430062/original/file-20211103-23-36ba4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430062/original/file-20211103-23-36ba4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430062/original/file-20211103-23-36ba4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A small business owner attends a Facebook event in March 2018 in St. Louis, Mo., aimed at helping small businesses and job seekers gain additional digital skills.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Sarah Conard/AP Images for Facebook)</span></span>
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<p>Some developing countries in Africa even rely on Facebook <a href="https://globalmedia.mit.edu/2020/04/21/the-rise-and-fall-and-rise-again-of-facebooks-free-basics-civil-and-the-challenge-of-resistance-to-corporate-connectivity-projects/">as a portal</a> to the internet <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55929654">for significant</a> portions of <a href="https://social.techcrunch.com/2018/04/25/internet-org-100-million/">their populations</a>. </p>
<p>And in the very near future, Meta intends to bring another <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-renews-ambitions-connect-world/">billion people online</a> through various internet infrastructure projects.</p>
<p>So how do we regulate a tech giant like Facebook to ensure human rights are upheld? Many cases for regulation have focused on the right of freedom of expression, because that’s how most of us consciously experience it. However, a focus on content moderation is <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebook-content-moderator-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona">a losing game</a> at best. </p>
<h2>Human rights tied to freedom of expression</h2>
<p>I’ve written previously about how Facebook has stepped into the void on adjudicating freedom of expression on its network through the <a href="https://oversightboard.com/">Facebook Oversight Board</a>.</p>
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<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/facebook-is-stepping-in-where-governments-wont-on-free-expression-156189">Facebook is stepping in where governments won't on free expression</a>
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<p>But freedom of expression is not independent of other rights. The Oversight Board’s <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/empirical-look-facebook-oversight-board">own docket</a> shows that deciding on cases involving freedom of expression does not happen in a vacuum. Other rights — such as the right to non-discrimination, the right to security of the person and the right to life — need to be considered.</p>
<p>Various proposals for how to regulate Facebook and social media are already out there, advocating for <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-we-have-the-regulatory-tools-we-need-to-fix-facebook/">transparency and accountability</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/06/opinion/facebook-whistleblower-section-230.html">changes to U.S. regulations</a> that currently provide immunity to social media platforms and creating “<a href="https://venturebeat.com/2021/02/06/from-the-election-lie-to-gamestop-how-to-stop-social-media-algorithms-from-hurting-us/">toxicity taxes</a>” in order to tackle the dilemma of content moderation. </p>
<p>The Canadian government now <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-feds-have-chance-to-protect-canadians-from-digital-platform-harms/">has a chance to fix</a> problematic legislation it had previously proposed to curb social media content, which has the potential to erode <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/opinion-online-harms-proposed-legislation-threatens-human-rights-1.6198800">other human rights</a> in the process. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/planned-social-media-regulations-set-a-dangerous-precedent-155844">Planned social media regulations set a dangerous precedent</a>
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<p>Meanwhile, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and many states are following the trust-busting strategy, an approach that is <a href="https://apnews.com/article/technology-business-facebook-inc-federal-trade-commission-district-of-columbia-4533fd62e9dea3c7c858f46ac4bc7026">currently stalled</a> in the courts.</p>
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<h2>Global assent</h2>
<p>Part of the problem is that people around the world continue searching for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-019-0088-2">ethical frameworks</a> to manage the relationship between technology and society when we already have a successful model readily available to us: international human rights. It’s one one of the few global, ethical frameworks in existence that has overwhelming assent.</p>
<p>The other part of the problem is that we have mostly <a href="https://ssrn.com/abstract=3700267">assumed that rights in the analog world should apply online</a>. This means that territorial states are places of relevance and and enforcement. But Facebook’s infrastructure is global — it’s not a state. UN Special Rappoteurs are pointing out how the analogue and digital don’t always align in terms of <a href="https://undocs.org/A/HRC/37/62">privacy</a> and <a href="https://undocs.org/A/HRC/47/25">expression</a>, but this is just the beginning.</p>
<p>Anything that happens in the online world has a global impact, as we’ve seen with the European Union’s <a href="https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/04/24/the-eu-wants-to-become-the-worlds-super-regulator-in-ai">General Data Protection Regulation</a>. It’s clear that the impetus for protecting human rights is critical, no matter who is potentially violating them. But how to go about designing human rights protections in the name of autonomy, dignity, equality and community is not currently being contemplated when it comes to our digital spaces.</p>
<p>We must acknowledge the global and everyday reach of Facebook’s infrastructure. We need to understand how Facebook, and other tech companies like it, are dramatically shaping our experiences in ways that are both visible and invisible. </p>
<p>Understanding Facebook as a form of public infrastructure simply means acknowledging that it provides us with something essential: services that enable other services and activities, services we cannot get in the same way elsewhere. </p>
<p>Some have suggested that we <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/facebook-authoritarian-hostile-foreign-power/620168/">treat Facebook as a hostile country</a> to properly contain it. This seems unnecessary. Facebook is an example of a new type of global infrastructure that needs to protect and respect human rights.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169811/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research is supported by the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society at the University of Toronto.</span></em></p>In order to effectively regulate data-intensive, privately held global infrastructure like Facebook, human rights needs to be a primary focal point.Wendy H. Wong, Professor of Political Science and Canada Research Chair in Global Governance and Civil Society, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1638082021-07-14T06:26:17Z2021-07-14T06:26:17ZA better way to regulate online hate speech: require social media companies to bear a duty of care to users<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411184/original/file-20210714-28-fpj9l2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=68%2C68%2C5468%2C3376&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Hate speech is proliferating online and governments, regulators and social media companies are struggling to keep pace with their efforts to combat it.</p>
<p>Just this week, the racist abuse of Black English football players on Facebook and Twitter has <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/12/facebook-twitter-under-fire-after-england-players-face-racial-abuse.html">brought the issue</a> to the forefront and shown how slow and ineffective the tech companies have been in trying to control it and the urgent need for stronger laws.</p>
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<h2>Australia’s piecemeal approach</h2>
<p>In Australia, the regulation of these kinds of harmful online practices is still in its infancy. </p>
<p>In February, a digital industry body drafted an <a href="https://digi.org.au/disinformation-code/">Australian code of conduct on disinformation and misinformation</a>, which most of the large tech companies have adopted. </p>
<p>However, this self-regulatory approach has been criticised by <a href="https://au.reset.tech/news/big-tech-s-australian-code-of-practice-on-disinformation-is-both-pointless-and-shameless/">community organisations</a> for being voluntary and opt-in. Some have argued the code sets its <a href="http://www.aman.net.au/?page_id=653">threshold</a> too high by requiring an “imminent and serious” threat of one of the identified harms occurring. This could render it ineffectual.</p>
<p>The Australian Communications and Media Authority has been <a href="https://www.acma.gov.au/australian-voluntary-codes-practice-online-disinformation">tasked</a> with reporting on the efficacy of the code, which is due soon.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/6-actions-australias-government-can-take-right-now-to-target-online-racism-118401">6 actions Australia's government can take right now to target online racism</a>
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<p>Australia also has the “<a href="https://www.esafety.gov.au/about-us/safety-by-design">Safety by Design</a>” framework, developed by the eSafety commissioner. This is another voluntary code of practice which encourages technology companies to mitigate risk in the way they design their products. </p>
<p>In late June, the federal parliament also enacted a new <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r6680">Online Safety Act</a>. This legislation was developed in the aftermath of the live-streamed Christchurch massacre. It regulates some relevant types of harm, such as the cyber bullying of children and livestream broadcasts that could promote or incite extreme violence. </p>
<p>The Act creates a complaints-based system for removing harmful material, and in some cases the eSafety commissioner has the power to block sites. It also has a wide remit in terms of its coverage of a variety of online services. Yet, it only tackles a few specific types of harm, not the full spectrum of harmful speech.</p>
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<p>There is also an <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/Intelligence_and_Security/ExtremistMovements">inquiry</a> into extremist movements and radicalisation currently under way by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS). It is tasked with considering steps the federal government could take to disrupt and deter hate speech, terrorism and extremism online, as well as the role of social media and the internet in allowing extremists to organise. </p>
<p>The inquiry was due to present its report to the home affairs minister in April, and it is now overdue.</p>
<h2>A far deeper problem</h2>
<p>These moves are a step in the right direction, but they still attempt to tackle each specific type of hate speech as a discrete problem.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.asio.gov.au/publications/speeches-and-statements/director-general-annual-threat-assessment-0.html">ASIO</a> has recently pointed to the problem of hateful echo chambers online. And <a href="https://zenodo.org/record/4071472#.YOOyixMzZmp">Australian researchers</a> have highlighted how right-wing extremists routinely dehumanise Muslims, Jews and immigrants as a way of coalescing support behind radical worldviews and socialise people towards violent responses. </p>
<p>On mainstream platforms, this is achieved through a relentless diet of distorted news that supports conspiracy theories and the “othering” of marginalised communities.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/facebooks-failure-to-pay-attention-to-non-english-languages-is-allowing-hate-speech-to-flourish-163723">Facebook's failure to pay attention to non-English languages is allowing hate speech to flourish</a>
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<p>We know existing laws to tackle these types of hate speech and misinformation are inadequate. </p>
<p>For example, we have civil laws against discrimination and hate speech, but they rely on victims to bring legal action themselves. Members of targeted communities can be deeply fearful of the repercussions of pursuing legal action and it can result in an enormous personal cost. </p>
<h2>What other countries are doing</h2>
<p>Governments around the world are struggling with this problem, too. In New Zealand, for instance, there has been <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-inciting-violence-should-not-be-the-only-threshold-for-defining-hate-speech-in-new-zealand-164153">considerable debate</a> over hate speech law reform, particularly whether there must be a clear link to violence before hate speech regulation can be justified.</p>
<p>Germany has enacted <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/06/30/germany-fine-facebook-youtube-50m-fail-delete-hate-speech/">one of the toughest laws</a> against online hate speech, imposing fines of up to €50 million for social media companies that fail to delete “evidently unlawful” content. Civil rights advocates, however, argue that it <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-hate-speech-netzdg-facebook-youtube-google-twitter-free-speech/">encroaches on freedom of expression</a>.</p>
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<p>France, too, passed a law last year that would have required online platforms to take down hateful content flagged by users within 24 hours, but a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/world/europe/france-internet-hate-speech-regulation.html">court struck down this provision</a> on the ground that it infringed on freedom of expression in a way that was not necessary, suitable, and proportionate. </p>
<h2>A potential new model in the UK</h2>
<p>There is another, more comprehensive approach in the United Kingdom that could provide a path forward. </p>
<p>The Carnegie Trust has developed a proposal to introduce a <a href="https://www.carnegieuktrust.org.uk/project/harm-reduction-in-social-media/">statutory duty of care</a> in response to online harms. Similar to how we require the builders of roads, buildings or bridges to exercise a duty of care to the people using them, the idea is that social media companies should be required to address the harms their platforms can cause users.</p>
<p>The UK government incorporated this idea into its <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/draft-online-safety-bill">Online Safety Bill</a>, which was just released in May for public discussion. Trumpeted as a “new framework to tackle harmful content online”, the mammoth legislation (which runs to 145 pages) is framed around duties of care. </p>
<p>There are still some concerns. The Carnegie Trust itself <a href="https://www.carnegieuktrust.org.uk/blog/the-draft-online-safety-bill-carnegie-uk-trust-initial-analysis/">has critiqued</a> a number of aspects of the bill. And the powers given to the culture secretary are of <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-concerns-over-internet-free-speech-tech-regulation-power-grab/">particular concern</a> to free speech advocates.</p>
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<p>Despite these concerns, there is much to be said for the overall approach being pursued. First, the legislation sits within the existing framework of negligence law, in which businesses owe a duty of care, or responsibility, to the general public who use the facilities they create and enable.</p>
<p>Second, it places the burden of responsibility on the social media companies to protect people from the harm that could be caused by their products. This is a better approach than the government penalising social media companies after the fact for hosting illegal or harmful content (such as happens under the German law), or requiring an eSafety commissioner to do the heavy lifting on regulation.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/will-the-governments-online-safety-laws-for-social-media-come-at-the-cost-of-free-speech-152352">Will the government’s online safety laws for social media come at the cost of free speech?</a>
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<p>Most importantly, this approach allows for broad coverage of existing — and emerging — types of online harm in a rapidly changing environment. For example, online speech that constitutes a threat to the democratic process would fall under the new law.</p>
<p>While the detail of the UK bill will no doubt be debated in coming months, it presents an opportunity to effectively tackle a problem that many agree is growing in scale and volume, yet is simultaneously very difficult to address. A statutory duty of care may be just what is needed.</p>
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<p><em>Rita Jabri Markwell, an advisor to the Australian Muslim Advocacy Network (AMAN), contributed to this article. The civil society organisation has been monitoring online hatred and engaging directly with Facebook, Twitter and the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/163808/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katharine Gelber has received funding from the Australian Research Council, and from Facebook for the research underpinning this report. </span></em></p>Australia’s piecemeal approach to regulating hate speech online isn’t working. The UK has introduced a possible better way forward.Katharine Gelber, Professor of Politics and Public Policy, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1629612021-06-24T14:46:37Z2021-06-24T14:46:37ZPunitive laws are failing to curb misinformation in Africa. Time for a rethink<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407682/original/file-20210622-20-seczce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Many laws passed in recent times are not aimed at correcting false information, but punishing its publication.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Harish Tyagi</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Misinformation, best understood as false or misleading information whether or not it was intended to mislead, <a href="https://www.icfj.org/news/short-guide-history-fake-news-and-disinformation-new-icfj-learning-module">has long been recognised as a problem worldwide</a>. Together with disinformation, which is spread deliberately to misinform or mislead, it constitutes a key part of the <a href="https://rm.coe.int/information-disorder-toward-an-interdisciplinary-framework-for-researc/168076277c">information disorder</a> distorting public debate around the world.</p>
<p>Concern about the effects of misinformation on individuals and society has grown globally since 2016, when it was seen by many commentators as driving the political upheavals of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy">Brexit in the UK</a> and <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/11/donald-trump-won-because-of-facebook.html">the election of Donald Trump</a> in the US.</p>
<p>In Africa, interest in the subject grew in particular after news emerged of disinformation campaigns run by <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-pr-giant-bell-pottinger-made-itself-look-bad-83529">Bell Pottinger</a>, the British PR firm, on behalf of the Gupta family that stirred up racial tensions in South Africa in 2016 as a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/04/business/bell-pottinger-guptas-zuma-south-africa.html">counter-narrative</a> to the growing public anger at the family’s central role in grand corruption and state capture.</p>
<p>In Nigeria, concern about disinformation rose after news emerged of the role that disinformation orchestrated by the UK political consultancy Cambridge Analytica played <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/21/cambridge-analyticas-ruthless-bid-to-sway-the-vote-in-nigeria">in its 2015 election</a>. Similarly in <a href="https://qz.com/africa/1233084/channel-4-news-films-cambridge-analytica-execs-saying-they-staged-kenya-uhuru-kenyatta-elections/">Kenya</a>, when the firm supported the campaign of President Uhuru Kenyatta in elections two years later. </p>
<p>With concern <a href="https://www.afrobarometer.org/blogs/african-governments-are-cracking-down-news-media-their-citizens-might-be-okay">rising among politicians and the public</a>, governments around the world have since 2016 passed a flurry of <a href="https://theconversation.com/governments-are-making-fake-news-a-crime-but-it-could-stifle-free-speech-117654">laws and regulations</a>
penalising the publication or broadcast of what is deemed to be “false information.” </p>
<p>In our <a href="https://www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk/site/books/m/10.16997/book53/">study</a> we examined the changes made to laws and regulations relating to the publication of “false information” in 11 sub-Saharan countries between 2016 and 2020. We also looked at how they correlate with misinformation, to understand the role they may play in reducing harm caused by misinformation. </p>
<p>We found that while these laws have a chilling effect on political and media debate, they do not reduce misinformation harm. This matters as the laws curtail public debate, yet fail to curb the harmful effects of misinformation. </p>
<h2>‘False information’ laws</h2>
<p>We first identified laws and regulations relating to “false information” in a sample of 11 countries laws – large and small, Anglophone and Francophone – from across sub-Saharan Africa. The countries studied between 2016 and 2020 were Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda. </p>
<p>We then compared the terms of the laws passed with what is known about the types, drivers and effects of misinformation. This was based on studying 1,200 claims identified as false by one or more of 14 fact-checking organisations in Africa. Finally, we assessed the effects of the laws’ enforcement.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk/site/chapters/m/10.16997/book53.b/">In our research report</a>, we found that in the 11 countries studied, the number of laws against “false information” almost doubled from 17 to 31 from 2016 to 2020.</p>
<p>The problem we identified is that these laws <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/05/east-africa-now-is-the-time-to-stand-up-for-media-freedom-1/">restrict freedom of speech</a>. And they don’t reduce the actual – or potential harm – that misinformation causes. </p>
<p>This tells us that the punitive approach does not appear to work. </p>
<p>By contrast, an approach favouring better access to accurate information and correction of false information may do so.</p>
<p>Describing the “chilling effect” that <a href="https://rsf.org/en/news/uganda-suspends-39-journalists-covering-politicians-arrest">the laws have had on public debate in Uganda</a>, an analyst in Uganda told us </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Self-censorship has increased in the recent past due to the state’s continued arbitrary application of the law.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Punitive approach</h2>
<p>First, we found, the majority of laws related to “false information” took a punitive approach. They were not seeking to correct the false information or facilitate improved access to accurate information. Their aim was to punish publication with fines and <a href="https://rsf.org/fr/actualites/burkina-faso-lamendement-du-code-penal-doit-etre-declare-inconstitutionnel-2">terms in prison of up to 10 years</a>. </p>
<p>Second, one third of the laws studied – from the <a href="https://rsf.org/fr/benin">Code du Numérique (2018) in Benin</a> to the <a href="https://www.nta.ng/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/1494416213-NBC-Code-6TH-EDITION.pdf">Broadcasting Code of Conduct in Nigeria (2016)</a> – require no evidence that the allegedly false information caused or risked any form of harm, for its publication to be declared an offence. Six other laws punished “crimes” not recognised under the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/ccpr.aspx">Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ Article 19 on Freedom of Expression</a>. An example is the “annoyance” of ministers. </p>
<p>Together, more than half the laws are thus not related to reducing harm as recognised by international law.</p>
<p>Third, we found that how law courts should determine what information is “false”, or what constitutes “harm”, is in general not defined. Decisions are, therefore, arbitrary and open to political abuse. </p>
<p>Our study found the majority of those punished under these laws are opposition politicians or journalists. Not one was a government official or a politician from the ruling party. This does not correlate with what we know of misinformation and the role of some politicians in contributing to the problem.</p>
<p>Fourth, we found the laws take effect on a tiny scale compared to the cases of misinformation in circulation. The <a href="https://www.disinformationtracker.org/">Disinformation Tracker</a> project, set up in 2020 to study the implementation of laws on misinformation and disinformation, found that just 12 “law enforcement actions” were taken in three months in the 11 countries. Only one quarter of these actions had an “objectively legitimate aim”. </p>
<p>This pales in comparison to the hundreds of cases of misinformation tackled by the growing number of <a href="https://africacheck.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/2021-05/041521_Africa%20Facts%20network_case%20study_v9%20%281%29.pdf">fact-checking organisations in Africa</a>, and the millions of <a href="https://unherd.com/2021/02/how-facebook-won-the-internet/">content moderation decisions made worldwide</a> by tech platforms daily, many of which made to counter misinformation.</p>
<p>Where laws or regulations are used to prevent the continuing spread of genuinely harmful misinformation, as in cases we examined in <a href="https://www.pmldaily.com/news/2018/03/ucc-switches-off-23-radio-stations-over-airing-witchcraft-content.html">Uganda</a> and <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2020-04-07-steven-birch-appears-in-court-over-fake-news-video-on-covid-19-tests/">South Africa</a>, it’s plausible they may directly reduce harm.</p>
<p>But, our study suggests these cases are the exception, not the rule.</p>
<h2>What works against misinformation</h2>
<p>Our study shows that the punitive legislative approach is not working, and suggests alternative approaches can be more effective. </p>
<p>This includes efforts seen across the continent to improve <a href="https://www.africafex.org/access-to-information/22-african-countries-that-have-passed-access-to-information-laws">access to accurate information</a>. Examples include setting up an independent watchdog of the quality of official statistics, <a href="https://www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/">as exists in the UK</a>, and an independent body to ensure public access to that data, <a href="https://www.informationcommissioners.org/south-africa">as in South Africa</a>. </p>
<p>This is essential to counter misinformation. </p>
<p>It can be seen in the <a href="https://www.macra.org.mw/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/COMMUNICATIONS-ACT-2016.pdf">“right of reply”</a> written into legislation in Malawi, that obliges broadcasters to air “counter-versions” from “entities affected by an assertion of fact” if the “fact” can be shown to be false.</p>
<p>It can also be seen in a <a href="https://lequotidien.sn/conseil-pour-lobservation-des-regles-dethique-et-de-deontologie-mamadou-thior-porte-a-la-tete-du-cored/">new and improved press code in Senegal</a>. Introduced in 2017, it requires all news operations to observe a code of professional ethics. This includes a focus on verification, with work overseen by an independent regulatory body. </p>
<p>Another approach is enabling the growth of independent fact-checking organisations seen across the continent in recent years. These alternative approaches can reduce the harm that misinformation causes, without reducing free speech. </p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/assane-diagne-445576111/?originalSubdomain=sn">Assane Diagne</a>, director of Reporters Without Borders for West Africa and lecturer at the L’Ecole Supérieure de Journalisme, des Métiers de l’Internet et de la Communication in Dakar, Senegal, was part of the research team.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162961/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Funding used to support the research was provided by the Facebook Journalism Project, the Google News Initiative and Luminate. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alan Finlay and Anya Schiffrin do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The majority of those punished under the laws to combat false information are opposition politicians or journalists.Peter Cunliffe-Jones, Visiting Researcher & Co-Director Chevening African Media Freedom Fellowship, University of WestminsterAlan Finlay, Lecturer: Journalism and Media Studies, University of the WitwatersrandAnya Schiffrin, Director, Technology, Media, and Communications specialization, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1613182021-06-01T14:02:31Z2021-06-01T14:02:31ZShould we be forced to see more Canadian content on TikTok and YouTube?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402960/original/file-20210526-13-1ag1tp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C8%2C2991%2C1985&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">How would you feel seeing more Canadian content on your 'for you page'? </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Unsplash/Olivier Bergeron)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Imagine scrolling through your newsfeed or visiting YouTube and suddenly seeing a lot more Canadian content than you did before — content you weren’t used to seeing or even wanting to see.</p>
<p>Canada’s law-makers are debating a bill that could make this happen.</p>
<p>Much of the controversy about <a href="https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/pl/charter-charte/c10.html">Bill C-10</a> thus far has been about its potential to bring user-generated content on sites like Instagram and YouTube under the regulatory thumb of the <a href="https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/home-accueil.htm">Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)</a>.</p>
<p>But the bill poses a more serious threat on another front.</p>
<p>It will enable the CRTC to force platforms like YouTube and TikTok to make Canadian content more “discoverable” by promoting it over other content.</p>
<p>Some <a href="https://www.internetsociety.org/open-letters/open-letter-to-government-of-canada/">fear this could skew search results</a>, the content we stream and what comes across on our feeds, jeopardizing the open and global nature of the internet.</p>
<p>The government says it’s constitutional. I join other <a href="https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2021/05/failing-analysis-why-the-department-of-justice-updated-charter-statement-doesnt-address-bill-c-10s-free-speech-risks/">lawyers and law scholars</a> in saying that’s wrong — the change would violate both our right to freedom of expression and the right of a site like YouTube itself.</p>
<h2>How does a YouTube search amount to free speech?</h2>
<p><a href="https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/ohlj/vol56/iss2/1/">Courts in Canada</a> and <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2246486">around the world</a> have long held that search index results can be forms of expression that can engage the right to free speech.</p>
<p>Large platforms like YouTube and TikTok show us content based in part on our consumption patterns. In this way, the platforms converse with us. </p>
<p>YouTube asks me: “What sort of stuff are you interested in?” — and I respond by clicking on certain thumbnails and not others, forming a pattern. YouTube’s curated response constitutes an implied statement: “if you like tech reviews, check this out as well…” </p>
<p>The conversation on some platforms can often get stale, like Google’s notorious <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/309214/the-filter-bubble-by-eli-pariser/">filter bubble</a> or Spotify and the <a href="https://www.straight.com/music/1260256/spotifys-new-update-annoys-subscribers-and-demonstrates-curated-playlists-are-future">blandness of so many similar recommendations</a>. Or, as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube-politics-radical.html">some have noted</a>, it can lead, on a site like YouTube, down rabbit holes of more extreme or fringe content.</p>
<p>Yet, for most people, most of the time, the curation that big platforms offer is a service that until now, we have been free to enjoy. And to work well, YouTube and other sites have to be free to show content from anywhere in the world.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Social media logos like TikTok, Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr are in a collage with a judges gavel on top" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402962/original/file-20210526-21-1m59k2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402962/original/file-20210526-21-1m59k2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402962/original/file-20210526-21-1m59k2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402962/original/file-20210526-21-1m59k2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402962/original/file-20210526-21-1m59k2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402962/original/file-20210526-21-1m59k2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402962/original/file-20210526-21-1m59k2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Courts will make the final decision, on how much Canadian content we will see online.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Bill C-10’s needless interruption</h2>
<p>Bill C-10 would disrupt this conversation by forcing YouTube, TikTok and other sites to show me not more of what I like — wherever on the web it might come from — but more of what I like that <em>happens to be Canadian</em>.</p>
<p>This would be a serious intrusion on our conversation. It would affect not only sites like YouTube’s freedom of expression, but also mine.</p>
<p>Canadian courts have <a href="https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/1835/index.do">held that the constitutional right to free speech</a> includes not only the freedom to say something but also the freedom to hear it.</p>
<h2>Is CanCon not doing well enough online?</h2>
<p>Thirty years ago, when the Broadcast Act was last amended, the government may have been justified in <em>forcing</em> Canadian content on creators and audiences alike. There was a real fear that without propping up our own content, we would be overwhelmed by Hollywood and content coming out of the United States.</p>
<p>But in the age of the internet, digital diets are more diverse, and Canadian creators are just fine without Ottawa’s help. <a href="https://audiencelab.fcad.ryerson.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/YouTube-Full-Report-FINAL_V7_May21.pdf">A recent study</a> from Ryerson University found some 40,000 Canadians earn income from YouTube, with many earning a living from it as leading creators.</p>
<p>Some <a href="https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2021/05/14/heritage-minister-should-carry-through-with-ambitious-agenda-to-tame-big-tech.html">argue that Indigenous and French-Canadian creators still need protection and support</a> from Ottawa, and that in their case, the need is pressing enough to justify these limits.</p>
<p>Courts will make the final decision, and much depends on how the CRTC chooses to exercise its new powers. But it’s hard to see how the two goals can be reconciled: favouring Canadian content and preserving the open and global nature of the web.</p>
<p>The government should abandon its nationalistic content promotion plans as bad policy that is likely unconstitutional. And I say this for reasons that have nothing to do with the fact that YouTube’s single most popular <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/unboxtherapy">tech reviewer</a> happens to be Canadian.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161318/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Diab does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Powers in Bill C-10 will force YouTube and TikTok to make CanCon more discoverable, skewing our searches and streams — but it’s unconstitutional.Robert Diab, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, Thompson Rivers UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1560522021-05-13T14:58:20Z2021-05-13T14:58:20ZWomen stand-up comedians in Zimbabwe talk about sex - and the patriarchy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398654/original/file-20210504-22-1li34q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Zimbabwean stand-up comedian Munya Guramatunhu.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy Tirivashe/Munyaradzi Guramatunhu</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2019, Zimbabwean comedy made <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-49433387">international news</a> when comedian Samantha Kureya, known on stage as Gonyeti, <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2019-12-04-00-you-are-too-young-to-mock-the-government-zimbabwean-comedian-relives-her-abduction/">was abducted and tortured</a> by masked gunmen. </p>
<p>She is one of many comedians in Zimbabwe who have faced violent <a href="https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/comedians-standing-up-to-repression-in-zimbabwe/2149424">repercussions</a> for their comedy. Interviewing 23 stand-up comedians in Zimbabwe in 2018 and 2019, I was <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13600826.2020.1828295?casa_token=LWvzKqY4ACAAAAAA%3Au60TJ9s5wVDkRiRGrw9GYKIY7duYZJwpIr4A1Gnwy1KpxZaloSJmAQJeUsgCqgWmO0w0xBMVRVdbMGg">made aware</a> of how several comedians had been intimidated, harassed or arrested because they joked about the “wrong” political party, policy or decision. </p>
<p>Samm Farai Monro, aka <a href="https://twitter.com/comradefatsooo?lang=en">Comrade Fatso</a>, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0306422015591457">points out</a> how artists in the nation joke:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You have freedom of expression but not freedom after expression.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This highlights the potency of Zimbabwean comedy. After all, as I <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13600826.2020.1828295?casa_token=LWvzKqY4ACAAAAAA%3Au60TJ9s5wVDkRiRGrw9GYKIY7duYZJwpIr4A1Gnwy1KpxZaloSJmAQJeUsgCqgWmO0w0xBMVRVdbMGg">argued</a> recently, stand-up comedy has become one of the few spaces in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/fantasy-that-mnangagwa-would-fix-zimbabwe-now-fully-exposed-110197">repressive</a> Zimbabwean environment where people speak out in front of a crowd. The possibilities that emerge from this are evident when female comedians resist patriarchal power relations through stand-up. </p>
<h2>Being a female stand-up in Zimbabwe</h2>
<p>In Zimbabwe the public sphere is regulated through gender norms that tend to delegitimise female actors when they try to <a href="https://theconversation.com/eternal-mothers-whores-or-witches-being-a-woman-in-politics-in-zimbabwe-142195">make a claim</a> at political power. </p>
<p>Zimbabwean academic Gibson Ncube highlights this in a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10130950.2020.1749523?casa_token=w8efWbqzy5UAAAAA%3ANANl4zIWhDhDsIbrnBQYUyVH83KZPc3Nc2lAKRNKBLzQkwJush1u78-fHdU-kgyUIB4Y8wxOksS5xRE">paper</a> that points out that female politicians have often been described either negatively as “whores” or “witches” when attempting to claim power, or postively as “mothers” when taking a more submissive role. This kind of reproduction of sexism through language in the Zimbabwean public space can also be seen in stand-up comedy.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/P_emiD52vwg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Zimbabwe’s Munya Guramatunhu live in Kenya.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During my research, where I interviewed comedians, observed shows and talked to audiences, I identified only six active female stand-ups in Zimbabwe – highlighting that sexism affects women’s decision to engage in the art. </p>
<p>One female comedian explained that audiences will not become as attached to women stand-ups because they expect them to eventually settle down, get married, have children and stop performing. Another Zimbabwean stand-up, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/munya959/?hl=en">Munyaradzi Guramatunhu</a>, put it eloquently in a recent <a href="https://www.thestandard.co.zw/2021/03/07/guramatunhu-drives-emancipation-through-jokes/">interview</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I do not think that the reason we are not in the industry in great numbers is because we lack the confidence. It is because we do not get afforded the same grace to just be viewed as humans as the men are.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This sexism also affects the choices Munya – as she is known on stage – makes about her performance before a show. Talking with me in 2018, she pointed out the added scrutiny that female stand-up comedians face, while their male counterparts can wear a suit or be casually dressed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If you’re in heels everybody is judging how you are walking, if you are in heels and a skirt everybody is like, ‘Ohh and then we could see up her skirt, and she was dressed so appallingly.’ And then if you are dressed too casually: ‘No wonder she is a stand-up comedian, she doesn’t take herself seriously’ … Like it’s, just, a lot – because now this is also one of the few times you are on stage as yourself.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet my research shows that once on stage, the women who do choose to perform stand-up in Zimbabwe feel empowered to speak out in ways that can interrupt and resist sexism.</p>
<h2>Empowered to talk about sex</h2>
<p>Both male and female stand-up comedians highlighted that they felt empowered to say things on stage that they normally wouldn’t. <a href="https://www.instagram.com/magi_bustoptvzw/?hl=en">Sharon Chideu</a>, aka Magi, captures this empowerment in sex-talk. She <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13600826.2020.1828295?casa_token=LWvzKqY4ACAAAAAA%3Au60TJ9s5wVDkRiRGrw9GYKIY7duYZJwpIr4A1Gnwy1KpxZaloSJmAQJeUsgCqgWmO0w0xBMVRVdbMGg">told me</a> how women are silenced in daily life: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Okay, traditionally, culturally … you are just there to make babies, you are just there to be a wife, and you don’t enjoy sex … And one-night stands, don’t cheat. That’s for guys.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Later in our interview she describes how these power relations are blurred on stage:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When you (are) talking about how (you) had sex, and you can sense the reaction, like: ‘Wow, she is talking about that?’ … ‘What!? She is going there?’ and then they laugh.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While the stand-up comedy stage is not unaffected by gender norms, the power relations during a set favour the comedian. They have more power to choose what will be talked about and what the interaction will look like. Do they ask the audience questions? Do they respond to hecklers; if so, how? Above all, through the use of the microphone, they are able to overpower any one single audience member’s voice without shouting. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/W_HxKjtR-4o?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Zimbabwe’s Gonyeti live in Harare.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Feeling a sense of empowerment onstage, female stand-up comedians are emboldened to address topics, such as sex, that society might normally deem inappropriate. Emboldened female stand-up comedians sit uncomfortably within a Zimbabwean society which often casts women as submissive.</p>
<h2>How to disrupt the patriarchy</h2>
<p>One of Chideu’s 2018 sets illustrates how empowered female comedians can resist patriarchal power relations. She draws on common conceptions of how women should or should not act in Zimbabwean society, neatly reframing them.</p>
<p>For example, Chideu jokes that her child was “ugly” at birth because it looked just like her mother-in-law, quickly adding that the child has grown to become cute. This joke plays with the idea that women should be nurturing and caring by showing, even if only for a moment, an instance where Chideu is not that. She is not always one thing, or another; she is a person who can be more.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/eternal-mothers-whores-or-witches-being-a-woman-in-politics-in-zimbabwe-142195">Eternal mothers, whores or witches: being a woman in politics in Zimbabwe</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Taking charge of her sexuality, Chideu jokes about the difficulties of being a single mother and also wanting to have sex. She explains to the audience that she is looking for a casual relationship, what she calls a “situationship”. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400016/original/file-20210511-13-1695s5y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Against a yellow backdrop, a woman with long hair and wearing agree coat holds a microphone, her other hand held up with fingers splayed." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400016/original/file-20210511-13-1695s5y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400016/original/file-20210511-13-1695s5y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400016/original/file-20210511-13-1695s5y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400016/original/file-20210511-13-1695s5y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400016/original/file-20210511-13-1695s5y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400016/original/file-20210511-13-1695s5y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400016/original/file-20210511-13-1695s5y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sharon Chideu aka Magi.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy Sharon Chideu</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On stage Chideu puts on display a version of her own life: she is a mother, an artist, sometimes caring, sometimes not, someone with sexual needs and desires who acts upon them because she wants to, not because she is forced to. </p>
<p>Emboldened, she unsettles narrative attempts to suppress her agency by affording herself, in Munya Guramatunhu’s words, “the same grace to just be viewed as humans as the men are”.</p>
<h2>Stand-up comedy and female emancipation</h2>
<p>Through stand-up comedy, women in Zimbabwe can resist patriarchal power relations. Although there are still far fewer female stand-ups in the country, the field keeps on growing and female comedians keep gaining more recognition. </p>
<p>Indeed, Kureya – who was abducted and tortured and who has performed both skit and stand-up comedy – was the first woman to be <a href="https://deeply.thenewhumanitarian.org/womensadvancement/articles/2017/09/18/in-zimbabwe-female-comics-are-succeeding-in-a-male-dominated-field">nominated</a> for an Outstanding Comedian award at the Zimbabwean National Arts Merit Award in 2017. She was <a href="https://www.facebook.com/namaszim/photos/pcb.1982451655342516/1982450705342611">nominated again</a> in 2018 and followed, in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i79AJZfWHPY">2019</a>, by another female comedian, Chideu. </p>
<p>To better understand women’s emancipation in countries like Zimbabwe, it’s useful to look beyond the so-called “serious” practices of institutional politics – to that which is often deemed “unserious”: live stand-up comedy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/156052/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This work was supported by a studentship and fieldwork bursary from the School of Social Sciences at the University of Manchester.</span></em></p>Despite the challenges of being a female comedian, the women who do choose to perform feel emboldened to speak out in ways that can resist sexism.Amanda Källstig, Doctoral researcher, University of ManchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1603492021-05-05T21:08:00Z2021-05-05T21:08:00ZWhy Facebook created its own ‘supreme court’ for judging content – 6 questions answered<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399024/original/file-20210505-19-gg5zpf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=94%2C110%2C5184%2C3403&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Facebook's new Oversight Board affirmed the social media network's ban on Donald Trump.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/FacebookOversightPanel/eb4ce13be55d4a0b82cb1607f0a2d5f0/photo?Query=Facebook%20oversight%20board&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=14&currentItemNo=5">AP Photo/Jeff Chiu</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Facebook’s quasi-independent Oversight Board on May 5, 2021, <a href="https://www.oversightboard.com/news/226612455899839-oversight-board-upholds-former-president-trump-s-suspension-finds-facebook-failed-to-impose-proper-penalty/">upheld the company’s suspension of former President Donald Trump</a> from the platform and Instagram. The decision came four months after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/05/03/facebook-trump-decision-faq">banned Trump “indefinitely” for his role</a> in inciting the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. The board chastised Facebook for failing to either set an end date for the suspension or permanently ban Trump and gave the social media company six months to resolve the matter.</em> </p>
<p><em>What is this Oversight Board that made one of the most politically perilous decisions Facebook has ever faced? Why did the company create it, and is it a good idea? We asked <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=loPMxzAAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Siri Terjesen</a>, an expert on corporate governance, to answer these and several other questions.</em> </p>
<h2>1. What is the Facebook Oversight Board?</h2>
<p>The Oversight Board was set up to give users an independent third party to whom they can appeal Facebook moderation decisions, as well as to help set the policies that govern these decisions. The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/05/03/facebook-trump-decision-faq/">idea was first proposed</a> by Zuckerberg in 2018 after a discussion with Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman, and the board began work in October 2020, funded by a US$130 million trust provided by Facebook to cover the initial six years of operating expenses.</p>
<p><a href="https://oversightboard.com">According to the board</a>, it “was created to help Facebook answer some of the most difficult questions around freedom of expression online: what to take down, what to leave up, and why.” The Oversight Board has final decision-making authority, even above the board of directors, and its decisions are binding on Facebook. </p>
<p>The Oversight Board has <a href="https://www.oversightboard.com/meet-the-board/">20 members</a> from around the world and a diverse variety of disciplines and backgrounds, such as journalism, human rights and law, as well as different political perspectives. It even includes a former prime minister. The goal is to eventually expand the board to 40 members in total. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="former President Donald Trump raises his right arm as his hand forms a fist during a speech, with a row of US flags behind him" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399043/original/file-20210505-17-f0ioku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399043/original/file-20210505-17-f0ioku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399043/original/file-20210505-17-f0ioku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399043/original/file-20210505-17-f0ioku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399043/original/file-20210505-17-f0ioku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399043/original/file-20210505-17-f0ioku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399043/original/file-20210505-17-f0ioku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In a statement, Trump called the Oversight Board decision a ‘total disgrace.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/FacebookTrumpExplainer/789bc4439a9f4f9d8c736ff17901e404/photo?Query=facebook&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=9368&currentItemNo=1">AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>2. What other decisions has it made?</h2>
<p>So far, <a href="https://oversightboard.com/decision/">the board has reviewed 10 Facebook decisions</a>, including the one involving Trump. The decisions involved a variety of types of content, such as posts that were removed because they were deemed <a href="https://oversightboard.com/decision/FB-S6NRTDAJ/">racist</a>, <a href="https://oversightboard.com/decision/IG-7THR3SI1/">indecent</a> or <a href="https://oversightboard.com/decision/FB-R9K87402/">intended to incite violence</a>. It overturned Facebook’s ruling in six of the cases and upheld it in three of them. In the 10th case, the user deleted the post that Facebook had removed, which ended the board’s review. </p>
<p>In cases where the board overruled Facebook, the posts that had been removed were reinstated. And the board sometimes urged the company to clarify or revise its guidelines.</p>
<p>Given that Facebook is expected to take <a href="https://reason.com/volokh/2021/02/17/the-facebook-oversight-board/">20 to 30 billion enforcement actions</a> in 2021 alone, it’s unlikely the Oversight Board will be able to handle more than a handful of the most high-profile cases, like that of Trump. It’s one of the reasons the Oversight Board is dubbed “<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/inside-the-making-of-facebooks-supreme-court">Facebook’s Supreme Court</a>.”</p>
<h2>3. Is it a model other social media companies are likely to follow?</h2>
<p>As a platform company, Facebook is unique.</p>
<p>It’s a social media giant that must monitor a global operation that <a href="https://investor.fb.com/financials/?section=annualreports">generates over $86 billion in revenue</a>, <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/273563/number-of-facebook-employees">employs 58,600 people</a> and serves <a href="https://www.oberlo.com/blog/facebook-statistics">more than 2.8 billion active monthly users</a> – more than a third of the world’s population – as well as millions of advertisers. Very few companies operate in a space that involves user content moderation, and none at this scale. Other platform companies have considerably less content, and usually only in one language, whereas Facebook is available in <a href="https://investor.fb.com/financials/?section=annualreports">100 languages</a>. </p>
<p>Given Facebook’s shareholder-elected corporate board of directors includes just 10 people, each of whom has their own demanding day job, it is not surprising to me that Zuckerberg decided to set up an outside panel to develop decisions about speech and online safety. </p>
<p>It’s unlikely, however, that other companies will ever have a similar type of board. The Oversight Board has been extremely resource intensive. It <a href="https://oversightboard.com">took over two years to establish</a> through a series of 22 roundtable meetings with participants in 88 countries, six in-depth workshops, 250 one-on-one discussions and 1,200 submissions – not to mention its high cost of $130 million, which is meant to last six years.</p>
<h2>4. Was it a good idea, from a corporate governance standpoint?</h2>
<p>A growing body of research <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.5465/19416520.2016.1120957">questions whether directors on corporate boards can fulfill their oversight responsibilities</a> on their own, due to the sheer amount of information that must be obtained, processed and shared. </p>
<p>While I think we will see more corporate boards outsource some decisions and processes to external panels – as a small board cannot be expected to have the requisite knowledge and skills on all topics – few corporations are likely to follow Facebook’s lead and grant an outside body the power to make unilateral decisions. </p>
<p>Since only the board of directors is beholden to a company’s shareholders, board directors ultimately need to take the final responsibility for corporate decisions. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg looks to his right during a hearing on Capitol Hill in 2019" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399044/original/file-20210505-23-1ajwvt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399044/original/file-20210505-23-1ajwvt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399044/original/file-20210505-23-1ajwvt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399044/original/file-20210505-23-1ajwvt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399044/original/file-20210505-23-1ajwvt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399044/original/file-20210505-23-1ajwvt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399044/original/file-20210505-23-1ajwvt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Zuckerberg may still face political blowback because of the Oversight Board’s decision.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/FacebookOversightPanel/acf2cd51a2fc4dcfab8cff7ab466f749/photo?Query=Facebook%20oversight%20board&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=14&currentItemNo=13">AP Photo/Andrew Harnik</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>5. Does the Oversight Board shield Facebook from political or legal fallout?</h2>
<p>While it’s likely that some at Facebook hoped shifting its thorniest decisions would insulate the company, executives and corporate board members from political or legal problems, as the Trump decision shows, it won’t actually do that. </p>
<p>Certainly the decision to utilize an outside oversight body might be interpreted as political, as all 10 Facebook board directors <a href="https://investor.fb.com/leadership-and-governance/?section=board">live and work</a> predominantly in the United States and might be hesitant to vote to make decisions like restricting the freedom of expression of a former president who <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2021-04-27/president-trump-losing-support-from-republicans-poll-finds">still commands support among many Americans</a> – and <a href="https://www.cfr.org/blog/2020-election-numbers">won 47% of the popular vote</a> in the last election. </p>
<p>But whether Facebook makes the decision itself or outsources to an independent board, Facebook will still face the consequences if the decision to uphold the Trump ban alienates Americans or people around the world who feel it is an attack on their freedom of expression. </p>
<p>People may leave Facebook for other platforms such as <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/09/parler-jumps-to-no-1-on-app-store-after-facebook-and-twitter-bans/">Parler</a>, <a href="https://reason.com/2018/10/29/ready-to-get-off-facebook-reason-reviews/">Gab</a> and <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/7/22218989/signal-new-signups-whatsapp-facebook-privacy-controversy-elon-musk">Signal</a>, as <a href="https://fortune.com/2021/01/11/mewe-gab-rumble-growth-parler-trump-bans-social-media-violence/">many have already done</a> since the initial Trump ban in January – and knowing an outside body made the decision won’t stop them. </p>
<p>And a poor “political” decision <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-decision-on-trump-looms-facebook-preps-its-advertisers-11620151529">could drive away some advertisers</a> and make it harder to hire and retain employees, regardless of who made it.</p>
<h2>6. How are other social media companies handling these issues differently?</h2>
<p>Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey made an internal decision to <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/twitter-permanently-bans-president-donald-trump-n1253588">permanently suspended Trump</a> from his company’s platform on Jan. 8, 2021. While Dorsey acknowledged that the decision <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey-defends-trump-ban-but-admits-his-companys-power-sets-a-dangerous-precedent">set a “dangerous precedent</a>,” Twitter, like other social media companies, doesn’t have an appeals process for that kind of decision. </p>
<p>Some newer companies, such as <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2021/01/20/mewe-social-network-gains-members-touts-privacy-over-facebook/4228797001/">MeWe</a> and <a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/youtube-rival-rumble-growth-ceo">Rumble</a>, offer more lax content moderation in order to allow greater freedom of expression for users.</p>
<p><a href="https://gab.com/">Gab</a> describes itself as “A social network that champions free speech, individual liberty and the free flow of information online. All are welcome.” <a href="https://legal.parler.com/documents/guidelines.pdf">Parler’s content guidelines</a> are even more basic and keeps content moderation to an “absolute minimum. We prefer to leave decisions about what is seen and who is heard to each individual.” </p>
<p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/gab-reports-growth-in-the-midst-of-twitter-bans-2021-1">Gab</a> and <a href="https://qz.com/1982895/parler-needs-apple-so-much-its-actually-moderating-more-content/,">Parler</a> are presently banned from the app stores of both Apple and Google due to a lack of content moderation.</p>
<p>[<em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/160349/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Siri Terjesen has received research and review funding from U.S., Norwegian, and Swedish governments, as well as several private foundations.</span></em></p>The social media giant’s third-party review panel upheld Facebook’s ban on Donald Trump. A corporate governance expert explains why Facebook created the Oversight Board.Siri Terjesen, Phil Smith Professor of Entrepreneurship & Associate Dean, Research & External Relations, Florida Atlantic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1562812021-03-03T13:26:11Z2021-03-03T13:26:11ZWhy repressive Saudi Arabia remains a US ally<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387331/original/file-20210302-13-2trpe7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=43%2C75%2C4125%2C3131&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A demonstrator dressed as Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman with blood on his hands protests outside the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 8, 2018.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com.mx/detail/fotografia-de-noticias/demonstrator-dressed-as-saudi-arabian-crown-fotografia-de-noticias/1048899574?adppopup=true">Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman “approved an operation … to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” according to a scathing <a href="https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/the-report-on-jamal-khashoggi-killing/ddc9578e0994f690/full.pdf">new report</a> from the Biden administration. Yet President Joe Biden says the U.S. will not sanction the Saudi government, calculating that any direct punishment <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/26/us/politics/biden-mbs-khashoggi.html">could risk Saudi Arabia’s cooperation</a> in confronting Iran and in counterterrorism efforts.</p>
<p>Like his predecessors, Biden is <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/03/02/biden-middle-east-china-pivot-clinton-obama/">grappling with the reality</a> that Saudi Arabia is needed to achieve certain U.S. objectives in the Middle East.</p>
<p>This is a change from Biden’s criticism of Saudi Arabia on the campaign trail. He said his administration would turn this repressive kingdom – a longtime U.S. ally – into a global “<a href="https://apnews.com/article/biden-retreats-saudi-arabia-sanctions-khashoggi-killing-d91d31edece5db07112d1c2d4dd3be33">pariah</a>.”</p>
<p>The Khashoggi affair highlights a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001AOUBMM/">persistent oddity in American foreign policy</a>, one <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09592296.2015.1034570">I observed</a> in many years working at the State Department and Department of Defense: selective morality in dealing with repressive regimes.</p>
<h2>A panoply of dictators</h2>
<p>The Trump administration was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/14/us/politics/trump-saudi-arabia-arms-deal.html">reluctant</a> to confront Saudi Arabia over the killing of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist who lived in Virginia. Beyond <a href="https://www.apnews.com/9c79116125c740d084eaf3576d8958a8">revoking the visas</a> of some Saudi officials implicated in Khashoggi’s death, Trump did nothing to punish the kingdom for Khashoggi’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/21/world/middleeast/erdogan-khashoggi-turkey-saudi-arabia.html">torture, assassination and dismemberment</a>. </p>
<p>Trump and other White House officials reminded critics that Saudi Arabia buys <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-saudi-security/obama-administration-arms-sales-offers-to-saudi-top-115-billion-report-idUSKCN11D2JQ">billions of dollars in weapons</a> from the U.S. and is a crucial partner in the American pressure campaign on Iran. Biden has taken a slightly tougher line, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/02/26/us/report-jamal-khashoggi-killing.html?searchResultPosition=18">approving the release</a> of the intelligence report that blames bin Salman for Khashoggi’s murder and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-saudi-khashoggi-sanctions/u-s-imposes-sanctions-visa-bans-on-saudis-for-journalist-khashoggis-killing-idUSKBN2AQ2QI">sanctioning 76 lower-level Saudi officials</a>.</p>
<p>Saudi Arabia isn’t the only nation to get a free pass from the U.S. for its terrible misdeeds. The U.S. has for decades <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007FI40QU/">maintained close ties</a> with some of the world’s worst human rights abusers. Ever since the United States emerged from the Cold War as the world’s dominant military and economic power, consecutive American presidents have seen financial and geopolitical benefit in overlooking the bad deeds of brutal regimes. </p>
<p>Before the Islamic revolution in 1979, Iran was a close U.S. ally. Shah Reza Pahlavi <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/22/world/middleeast/years-of-torture-in-iran-comes-to-light.html">ruled harshly</a>, using his <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1979/12/13/savak-jails-stark-reminder-of-shahs-rule/b2b37be2-356a-43e2-ba68-dd474e9023b0/?utm_term=.b82257b17760">secret police</a> to torture and murder political dissidents. </p>
<p>But the shah was also a secular, anti-communist leader in a Muslim-dominated region. President Nixon <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249664268_The_Persian_Gulf_British_Withdrawal_and_Western_Security">hoped</a> that Iran would be the “Western policeman in the Persian Gulf.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241639/original/file-20181022-105767-1n8n2y2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241639/original/file-20181022-105767-1n8n2y2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241639/original/file-20181022-105767-1n8n2y2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241639/original/file-20181022-105767-1n8n2y2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241639/original/file-20181022-105767-1n8n2y2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241639/original/file-20181022-105767-1n8n2y2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241639/original/file-20181022-105767-1n8n2y2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nixon hosted Iranian Shah Reza Pavlavi at the White House in 1969.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-Associated-Press-Domestic-News-Dist-of-/a6784660844b49a69c5fc2b4e34e53df/211/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After the shah’s overthrow, the Reagan administration in the 1980s became <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/dec/31/iraq.politics">friendly with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein</a>. The U.S. supported him with intelligence during Iraq’s war with Iran and looked the other way at his use of chemical weapons.</p>
<p>And before Syria’s intense <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-war-in-syria-may-be-ending-but-is-likely-to-bring-a-fresh-wave-of-suffering-104635">bloody civil war</a> – which has killed an estimated 400,000 people and featured grisly <a href="https://theconversation.com/syria-chemical-weapons-and-the-limits-of-international-law-95045">chemical weapon attacks</a> by the government – its authoritarian regime enjoyed relatively friendly relations with the U.S. </p>
<p>Syria has been on the State Department’s list of <a href="https://www.state.gov/j/ct/list/c14151.htm">state sponsors of terrorism</a> since 1979. But presidents Nixon, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton all visited President Bashar al-Assad’s father, who ruled from 1971 until his death in 2000. </p>
<h2>Why Saudi Arabia matters</h2>
<p>Before the alleged assassination of Khashoggi by Saudi operatives, the 35-year-old crown prince was cultivating a reputation as a moderate reformer.</p>
<p>Salman has made newsworthy changes in the conservative Arab kingdom, allowing women <a href="https://qz.com/1313101/saudi-arabias-women-are-finally-allowed-to-drive-a-car-on-their-own/">to drive</a>, combating corruption and <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/saudi-crown-prince-talks-to-60-minutes/">curtailing some powers</a> of the religious police. </p>
<p>Still, Saudi Arabia remains one of the world’s most authoritarian regimes. </p>
<p>Though women may now obtain a passport without the permission of a male guardian, they <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2020/country-chapters/saudi-arabia#49dda6">still need a guardian’s approval</a> to get married, leave prison or obtain certain medical procedures. And they must have the consent of a male guardian to enroll in college or look for a job. </p>
<p>The Saudi government also routinely arrests people without judicial review, according to <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2018/country-chapters/saudi-arabia">Human Rights Watch</a>. Citizens can be killed for nonviolent crimes, often in public. Between January and mid-November 2019, 81 people <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2020/country-chapters/saudi-arabia#49dda6">were executed</a> for drug-related crimes.</p>
<p>Saudi Arabia ranks just above North Korea on political rights, civil liberties and other measures of freedom, according to the democracy watchdog <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores">Freedom House</a>. The same report ranks both Iran and China ahead of the Saudis.</p>
<p>But its wealth, strategic Middle East location and petroleum exports keep the Saudis as a vital U.S. ally. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obamas-visit-to-ally-saudi-arabia-shadowed-by-tensions-with-the-kingdom/2016/04/20/a0a987e0-06eb-11e6-a12f-ea5aed7958dc_story.html?utm_term=.ec236b5e369b">President Obama visited Saudi Arabia more</a> than any other American president – four times in eight years – to discuss everything from Iran to oil production.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241641/original/file-20181022-105751-1n9jelr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241641/original/file-20181022-105751-1n9jelr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241641/original/file-20181022-105751-1n9jelr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241641/original/file-20181022-105751-1n9jelr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241641/original/file-20181022-105751-1n9jelr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=611&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241641/original/file-20181022-105751-1n9jelr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=611&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241641/original/file-20181022-105751-1n9jelr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=611&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Obama administration had a close relationship with Saudi Arabia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Saudi-Arabia-US-Obama/9dd3372647cc49c393cc2eee197e3589/60/0">AP Photo/Hassan Ammar</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>American realpolitik</h2>
<p>This kind of foreign policy – one based on practical, self-interested principles rather than moral or ideological concerns – is called “realpolitik.” </p>
<p>Henry Kissinger, secretary of state under Nixon, was <a href="https://thediplomat.com/2013/09/the-realpolitik-of-the-american-people/">a master of realpolitik</a>, which drove that administration to normalize its relationship with China. Diplomatic relations between the two countries had ended in 1949 when Chinese communist revolutionaries took power. </p>
<p>Then, as now, China was incredibly repressive. Only 16 countries – including Saudi Arabia – <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world-2018-table-country-scores">are less free than China</a>, according to Freedom House. Iran, a country the U.S. wants Saudis to help in keeping in check, ranks ahead of China.</p>
<p>But China is also the world’s most populous nation and a nuclear power. Nixon, a fervent anti-communist, sought to exploit a growing rift between China and the Soviet Union. </p>
<p>Today Washington retains the important, if occasionally rocky, relationship Kissinger forged with Beijing, despite its ongoing <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-45474279">persecution of Muslim minority groups</a>.</p>
<p>American realpolitik applies to Latin America, too. After the Cuban Revolution of 1959, the U.S. regularly backed Central and South American <a href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/u-s-support-for-brutal-central-american-dictators-led-to-todays-border-crisis/">military dictators</a> who tortured and killed citizens to “defend” the Americas from communism. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241672/original/file-20181022-105748-1ogzdak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241672/original/file-20181022-105748-1ogzdak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=350&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241672/original/file-20181022-105748-1ogzdak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=350&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241672/original/file-20181022-105748-1ogzdak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=350&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241672/original/file-20181022-105748-1ogzdak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241672/original/file-20181022-105748-1ogzdak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241672/original/file-20181022-105748-1ogzdak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The U.S. supported Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 military coup in Chile, which overthrew Socialist President Salvador Allende and ushered in a murderous regime.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Chile-Coup-Anniversary/1ffc40b46e52475eae3debfa3defb895/26/0">AP Photo/Enrique Aracena, File)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>US not ‘so innocent’</h2>
<p>U.S. presidents tend to underplay their relationships with repressive regimes, lauding lofty “American values” instead. </p>
<p>That’s the language former President Barack Obama used in 2018 to <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/9/7/17832024/obama-speech-trump-illinois-transcript">criticize Trump’s embrace of Russia’s authoritarian president</a>, Vladimir Putin, citing America’s “commitment to certain values and principles like the rule of law and human rights and democracy.”</p>
<p>But Trump defended his relationship with Russia, tacitly invoking American realpolitik. “You think our country’s <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/04/politics/donald-trump-vladimir-putin/index.html">so innocent</a>?” he asked on Fox News. </p>
<p>As Trump alluded to, the U.S. has maintained close ties to numerous regimes, and still does, whose values and policies conflict with America’s constitutional guarantees of democracy, freedom of speech, the right to due process and many others. </p>
<p>It has for decades. </p>
<p>Saudi Arabia’s crown prince had a dissident journalist killed. American realpolitik explains why the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/20/us/politics/trump-saudi-khashoggi-midterms.html">tight U.S.-Saudi relationship</a> will likely <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/26/mohammed-bin-salman-is-guilty-murder-biden-should-not-give-him-pass/?arc404=true">continue anyway</a>.</p>
<p><em>This story is an updated version of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/saudi-arabia-is-a-repressive-regime-and-so-are-a-lot-of-us-allies-105106">article</a> originally published Oct. 22, 2018.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/156281/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeffrey Fields receives funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the MacArthur Foundation. </span></em></p>Saudi’s crown prince approved the killing and dismemberment of a Washington Post columnist in 2018, the Biden administration says. So how can the US still see the Saudis as good partners?Jeffrey Fields, Associate Professor of the Practice of International Relations, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1548652021-02-14T09:13:19Z2021-02-14T09:13:19ZTop court ruling on South Africa’s spy law is a victory for privacy, but loopholes remain<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383750/original/file-20210211-19-1cid7h5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa’s Constitutional Court has <a href="https://www.concourt.org.za/index.php/judgement/383-amabhungane-centre-for-investigative-journalism-npc-and-another-v-minister-of-justice-and-correctional-services-and-others-minister-of-police-v-amabhungane-centre-for-investigative-journalism-npc-and-others-cct278-19-cct279-19">declared</a> the law which governs the communication surveillance activities of the country’s intelligence community unconstitutional. </p>
<p>The case was based on evidence that the state spied on investigative journalist <a href="https://www.privacyinternational.org/case-study/4253/being-target-sam-sole">Sam Sole</a>, of <a href="https://amabhungane.org/">amaBhungane</a> Centre for Investigative Journalism, while he was communicating with a source in the <a href="https://www.npa.gov.za/">National Prosecuting Authority</a>.</p>
<p>The judgment is a huge advance for privacy and freedom of expression. It means that rogue spies will be less able to manipulate the process to spy on journalists, lawyers, activists and others purely because they are critical of the state. When they ask a judge for permission to conduct surveillance, they will have to be much more careful about justifying the request. </p>
<p>But the judgment still leaves some loopholes in the surveillance law. The spy agencies could use these to continue their <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2017-04-20-surveillance-silent-killer-of-journalism-and-democracy-1/">abuses</a>. The loopholes include lax controls on the use of archived metadata and intelligence sharing.</p>
<h2>The judgment</h2>
<p>The surveillance law forbids anyone from intercepting communications except under the narrow circumstances it sets out. One of these is that a select group of state agencies must apply for an “interception direction” (or warrant) to conduct surveillance. The country’s spy agencies are the <a href="https://nationalgovernment.co.za/units/view/42/state-security-agency-ssa">State Security Agency</a>, <a href="https://sadf.sentinelprojects.com/mf/mihistory.html">military intelligence</a> and <a href="https://www.saps.gov.za/about/stratframework/annual_report/2008_2009/7_prg4_crime_intelligence.pdf">police crime intelligence division</a>.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the apex court cited five reasons why the communications interception law is unconstitutional in that it violates privacy:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>It fails to notify people who were surveilled of that fact afterwards. </p></li>
<li><p>The appointment process for the judge designated to grant permission for surveillance is not protected from interference by the executive.</p></li>
<li><p>The application process for interception warrants is inherently one sided and lacks safeguards to prevent abuse.</p></li>
<li><p>The law does not provide adequate safeguards for the management of intercepted data.</p></li>
<li><p>It fails to recognise that lawyers and journalists have a professional duty to retain the confidentiality of their sources and communications.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The court also found that bulk interceptions conducted by the State Security Agency’s signals intelligence agency, the <a href="http://www.ssa.gov.za/AboutUs.aspx">National Communication Centre</a>, in Pretoria, are unconstitutional. The reason is that there is no law that establishes the centre. Bulk interception involves the interception of communication signals on a large scale, and where no reasonable suspicion of criminality exists.</p>
<p>The court has suspended its finding for three years, to give parliament time to fix the problems in the law. But it remains to be seen what becomes of the communications centre. </p>
<p>It is meant to intercept foreign communication signals only. But, in its founding papers for the High Court case, the State Security Agency <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/sh/w6y420sbgll850r/AAB5UjwFb8Bb0auwmAvHWmW3a/High%20Court?dl=0&preview=170719_spies+answering+affidavit.pdf&subfolder_nav_tracking=1">admitted</a> that it had no way of distinguishing between foreign and local signals.</p>
<p>Importantly, the State Security Agency was warned that the centre was operating unlawfully. A <a href="https://www.gov.uk/research-for-development-outputs/intelligence-in-a-constitutional-democracy-final-report-to-the-minister-for-intelligence-services-the-hon-mr-ronnie-kasrils-mp">Ministerial Commission of Enquiry</a> into abuses of the then <a href="https://www.gov.za/taxonomy/term/889">National Intelligence Agency</a> pointed this out in 2008.</p>
<p>It is a stunning dereliction of duty by the spy agency’s leadership that the situation has persisted for over a decade. They should either shut the centre down permanently or introduce a law to regularise its existence. </p>
<h2>Loopholes</h2>
<p>One consequence of the Constitutional Court ruling may be that spy agencies will rely even more heavily than before on archived metadata. This is data about communications (not the content of those communications) which is stored by the phone companies. Agencies could use the more relaxed procedure set out in Section 205 of the <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/acts/1977-051.pdf">Criminal Procedures Act</a>. This loophole was <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/sh/w6y420sbgll850r/AAB5UjwFb8Bb0auwmAvHWmW3a/High%20Court?dl=0&preview=180712_right2know+and+privacy+international+application+for+admission+as+amici+curiae.pdf&subfolder_nav_tracking=1">pointed out</a> by the <a href="https://www.r2k.org.za/">Right2Know Campaign</a> and <a href="https://privacyinternational.org/">Privacy International</a>, which <a href="https://privacyinternational.org/legal-action/amabhungane-and-sole-case-south-africa">intervened</a> in the amaBhungane case. But the issue did not find its way into the judgment, and may be the subject of another legal challenge in future. </p>
<p>In terms of the Criminal Procedures Act, the intelligence agencies merely need to prove that the metadata is relevant to a case to obtain a warrant. This hardly provides any privacy protections for the people under surveillance.</p>
<p>Unlike conversations, which may be difficult to make sense of, metadata yields huge quantities of rich information about a person’s movements, acquaintances and interests. It can give a minute-by-minute account of a person’s activities. </p>
<p>If the number of applications for interception warrants using the surveillance law, relative to the number of Section 205 applications, are anything to go by, then the agencies <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2018-05-20-your-cellphone-records-and-the-law-the-legal-loophole-that-lets-state-spying-run-rampant/">make much more use</a> of communication metadata than communication content. The judgment is likely to see this trend intensify.</p>
<p>This <a href="https://www.mediaanddemocracy.com/uploads/1/6/5/7/16577624/cops_and_call_records_web_masterset_26_march.pdf">loophole</a> should be corrected. One way to do this is to make the judge empowered to permit surveillance responsible for all archived metadata requests. Another solution is to make the higher standards in the surveillance law also apply to metadata requests.</p>
<h2>Circumvention</h2>
<p>The judgment could also see more surveillance being driven underground. Given the outright criminality that has <a href="https://www.statecapture.org.za/site/hearings/date/2021/1/25">been exposed</a> in the spy agencies recently, it is realistic to expect that rogue spies will attempt unlawful surveillance.</p>
<p>Private security surveillance may also become more commonplace.</p>
<p>The intelligence agencies may also be tempted to use intelligence sharing agreements to circumvent the prohibition on signals intelligence surveillance. The law does not prevent the <a href="https://www.dcaf.ch/sites/default/files/publications/documents/MIICA_book-FINAL.pdf">outsourcing</a> of activities that would be illegal in South Africa.</p>
<p>Some of the major surveillance agencies - such as the US National Security Agency and the UK Government Communications Headquarters - <a href="https://www.dcaf.ch/sites/default/files/publications/documents/MIICA_book-FINAL.pdf">collude</a> with foreign spy agencies to target South Africans from outside the country. </p>
<p>This practice was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/01/nsa-paid-gchq-spying-edward-snowden">exposed</a> by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2019/sep/13/edward-snowden-interview-whistleblowing-russia-ai-permanent-record">Edward Snowden</a>. So serious has the problem become that it has been <a href="https://privacyinternational.org/sites/default/files/2018-04/Secret%20Global%20Surveillance%20Networks%20report%20web%20%28200%29_0.pdf">condemned</a> by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.</p>
<h2>Deeper rot</h2>
<p>The Constitutional Court judgment is a huge victory, not only for journalists and lawyers who stand to benefit directly and immediately, but for broader society.</p>
<p>But it is only the start of the cleanup of state spying on people’s communications. The rot goes much deeper than the six areas of unconstitutionality identified by the court. The judgment must be used to dig all the rot out once and for all.</p>
<p>Further tightening up of law is one way of doing this. But, unless there is a proper review of the loopholes in all intelligence policies and laws, the rot is likely to persist.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154865/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane Duncan receives funding from the Open Society Foundation for South Africa and Luminate. </span></em></p>The Constitutional Court judgment is a huge victory, not only for journalists and lawyers who stand to benefit directly and immediately, but for broader society.Jane Duncan, Professor, Department of Journalism, Film and Television, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1520732020-12-17T13:26:32Z2020-12-17T13:26:32ZCuba cracks down on artists who demanded creative freedoms after ‘unprecedented’ government negotiations<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375498/original/file-20201216-21-1fnrqil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=27%2C202%2C3072%2C1554&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A group of young intellectuals and artists demonstrates at the doors of the Ministry of Culture during a protest in Havana on Nov. 27. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/group-of-young-intellectuals-and-artists-demonstrate-at-the-news-photo/1229825681?adppopup=true">Yamil Lage/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/inusual-protesta-de-artistas-en-cuba-el-gobierno-acepta-negociaciones-para-luego-suspenderlas-151638">Leer en español</a>.</em></p>
<p>Cuban artists and intellectuals want more rights – and, in an unusual show of dissent, they demanded the government sit down with them to negotiate.</p>
<p>At 10:45 a.m. on Nov. 27, about 300 people <a href="https://oncubanews.com/opinion/columnas/la-vida-de-nosotros/la-cuba-de-anoche/">gathered outside the Ministry of Culture in Havana</a> to demand freedom of expression, an end to police harassment and the right to make art that Cuba’s communist government disagrees with. They organized the meetup on WhatsApp, a globally ubiquitous smartphone app used in Cuba only since 2018, with the arrival of <a href="https://www.rfi.fr/es/americas/20181206-llega-internet-los-telefonos-moviles-en-cuba">mobile internet</a>.</p>
<p>“I believe we were all convinced that we had to do something, and do it publicly and categorically,” the filmmaker Raúl Pardo, who helped organize the protest, said via Facebook message. “Each one of us sent messages to various people, we created a WhatsApp [chat], convened [the group] and explained what we were going to do.”</p>
<p>After hours of waiting, shouting and clapping, 30 of the artists managed to speak with Vice Minister of Culture Fernando Rojas. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375530/original/file-20201216-19-1q9q8uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Woman in black wearing a facemask speaks, surrounded by a crowd" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375530/original/file-20201216-19-1q9q8uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375530/original/file-20201216-19-1q9q8uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375530/original/file-20201216-19-1q9q8uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375530/original/file-20201216-19-1q9q8uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375530/original/file-20201216-19-1q9q8uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375530/original/file-20201216-19-1q9q8uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375530/original/file-20201216-19-1q9q8uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cuban artist Tania Bruguera, center, reads discussion points after the Nov. 27 meeting with the vice minister of culture.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/cuban-installation-and-performance-artist-tania-bruguera-news-photo/1229826871?adppopup=true">Yamll Lage/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The negotiations would end soon after they began, followed by a major crackdown on dissent. But the <a href="https://fb.watch/2i1ETVOI3J/">size, duration and public nature of the artists’ opposition</a>, which continues today, are unprecedented – a sign of how resistance in Cuba has grown and changed in recent years.</p>
<h2>Opposition then and now</h2>
<p>Since the beginning of Fidel Castro’s <a href="http://en.escambray.cu/2018/cuba-commemorates-proclamation-of-socialist-character-of-the-revolution/">Cuban Revolution</a>, opposition on the island has basically had one strategy – <a href="https://vimeo.com/139089136">confrontation</a> – and one goal – ending the political system he founded. </p>
<p>Many Cuban dissidents have been quietly financed by <a href="http://cubamoneyproject.com/cuba-projects-2001-to-2018/">the United States government</a>, which <a href="https://www.amnestyusa.org/pdfs/amr250072009spa.pdf">promotes regime change in Cuba</a>, and are warmly received in Washington by Cuban American politicians like <a href="https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2013/9/senator-rubio-colleagues-meet-cuban-democracy-activist-ant-nez">Sen. Marco Rubio</a> and <a href="https://www.sun-sentinel.com/sfl-diaz-balart-immigration-cuba-121910-story.html">Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart</a>. </p>
<p>This relationship with the United States has undermined the legitimacy of the Cuban opposition, not only with the Cuban government but also with the Cuban people. Polling shows Cubans <a href="https://cri.fiu.edu/research/cuba-poll/2020-fiu-cuba-poll.pdf">reject U.S. involvement in their internal affairs</a>, including the six-decade-old Cuban economic embargo.</p>
<p>The Nov. 27 protests were homegrown – a result of <a href="https://www.ide.go.jp/library/Japanese/Publish/Download/Report/2009/pdf/2009_408_ch2.pdf">Cuba’s recent economic liberalization</a> and changing social dynamics, not American interference. </p>
<p>In 2009, Fidel Castro’s brother <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20180412-raul-castros-reforms-cuba-work-progress">Raúl Castro</a> passed a series of economic reforms that, among other changes, made it possible for people to run small businesses. Galleries and theaters opened in homes and other private spaces across Cuba, enabling artists to create and show their work <a href="https://www.ipscuba.net/cultura/decreto-genera-inquietudes-sobre-arte-independiente-en-cuba/">outside of state-run channels</a>. </p>
<p>Dissident artists took advantage of this newfound freedom to advance their political demands, leading the government in 2018 to publish a <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/es/latest/news/2018/08/cuba-new-administrations-decree-349-is-a-dystopian-prospect-for-cubas-artists/">decree seeking to regulate independent artistic production</a> and limit where artists can perform.</p>
<h2>A different dissent</h2>
<p>Rather than remain silent about repression, as they have on so many other occasions, Cuban artists have taken to the streets.</p>
<p>The Nov. 27 protest at the Ministry of Culture came in response to a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw_cB69zGxM">Nov. 26 government raid</a> on the home of Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, leader of the San Isidro Movement, an artist collective that opposes the 2018 decree. Alcántara had been on a <a href="https://www.dw.com/es/movimiento-san-isidro-por-qu%C3%A9-hacer-huelga-de-hambre-en-la-habana/a-55726989">hunger strike</a> to protest the detention of Cuban rapper Denis Solís for <a href="https://www.facebook.com/100017269035041/videos/790464094872551/">“insulting” a police officer</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Man in a skimpy pink-feather outfit with a headress and cape" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375527/original/file-20201216-19-1ucck99.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375527/original/file-20201216-19-1ucck99.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375527/original/file-20201216-19-1ucck99.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375527/original/file-20201216-19-1ucck99.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375527/original/file-20201216-19-1ucck99.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375527/original/file-20201216-19-1ucck99.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375527/original/file-20201216-19-1ucck99.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Otero Alcántara as ‘Miss Biennial of Havana,’ 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BVQTq7JBV5v/?igshid=2zcdj42c8ojo">Courtesy of Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Both <a href="https://www.facebook.com/100017269035041/videos/790464094872551/">Solís</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/oteroyalcantara/videos/1653356691495707">Alcántara</a> are vocal critics of the Cuban government, which they call a “dictatorship.” </p>
<p>Such language has led to accusations that the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/82409693514/videos/3265988550178986">San Isidro Movement is a U.S.-funded operation</a>. On Dec. 11, a news program on state television ran a video of a San Isidro Movement member <a href="https://www.facebook.com/82409693514/videos/1505924806281250">calling for a U.S. military intervention in Cuba</a>. </p>
<p>On Nov. 24, just before the artist protests, the U.S. State Department released <a href="http://cubamoneyproject.com/2020/12/04/grants/">US$1 million dedicated to increasing civil, political and religious rights in Cuba</a>. It is unclear whether U.S.-financed groups are funneling money to the San Isidro Movement, according to the <a href="http://cubamoneyproject.com/2020/12/09/democracy-2/">Cuba Money Project</a>, which reports on American programs and projects related to Cuba. </p>
<p>In any case, while the raid on San Isidro sparked the Nov. 27 protest, only a few members of the movement were present in the crowd that gathered outside the Ministry of Culture. These protesters had <a href="https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=108578367767622&id=107312641227528">broadly artistic, rather than explicitly political, demands</a> and sought to work with – not against – the government to achieve them.</p>
<p>For “a group of contrary artists … to sit and talk with an institution that has never wanted to recognize their existence. That is a historic and unique act,” <a href="https://oncubanews.com/gente/juan-pin-vilar-debemos-reconocer-la-existencia-de-los-artistas-y-espacios-independientes/">one participant</a> told OnCuba News on Dec. 8.</p>
<h2>Broken dialogue</h2>
<p>If the events of Nov. 27 were novel, the government’s response was familiar. </p>
<p>On Nov. 28, after he met with the protesting artists, Vice Minister Rojas <a href="https://www.facebook.com/82409693514/videos/364295371339156">was interviewed for a TV special on a Cuban state-run channel</a>. In it, he recounted the events of the protest day and reiterated the Ministry of Culture’s willingness to continue the “dialogue” in a second meeting. </p>
<p>The remainder of the program, however, cast the San Isidro Movement in a negative light, calling its members “mercenaries” in an apparent effort to discredit the street protest. No protesters were invited to talk on the show. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375500/original/file-20201216-19-17pcotm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two men hold la banner reaading 'Fuerza! San Isidro'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375500/original/file-20201216-19-17pcotm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375500/original/file-20201216-19-17pcotm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375500/original/file-20201216-19-17pcotm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375500/original/file-20201216-19-17pcotm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375500/original/file-20201216-19-17pcotm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375500/original/file-20201216-19-17pcotm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375500/original/file-20201216-19-17pcotm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cubans living in Spain show their support for the San Isidro Movement and the jailed rapper Denis Solís.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/cubans-living-in-spain-demonstrate-in-support-of-the-san-news-photo/1229790709?adppopup=true">STR/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A week later, on Dec. 4, the Cuban Ministry of Culture announced that the dialogue with protesters had been “<a href="https://www.ministeriodecultura.gob.cu/es/actualidad/noticias/nota-del-ministerio-de-cultura-rompen-el-dialogo-quienes-pidieron-dialogo">ended by the people who asked for it</a>.” The post blamed the protesters for putting unreasonable conditions on a second meeting, including the presence of Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, and of independent media. </p>
<p>For journalist Jorge Fernandez, however, the “<a href="https://www.facebook.com/jorge.fernandezera.5/posts/1777228029095194">dialogue was already dynamited</a>” by the TV hit job.</p>
<h2>Beyond San Isidro</h2>
<p>Since negotiations ended, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/carlosmanuel.alvarezrodriguez/posts/2155337227930999">house arrests and arbitrary detentions</a> of Cuban artists have both increased.</p>
<p>But so have demands for change. </p>
<p>A document published on Nov. 28 and <a href="https://eltoque.com/articulacion-plebeya-a-proposito-de-los-sucesos-en-el-ministerio-de-cultura/">signed by more than 500 intellectuals, artists, filmmakers and others</a> reiterates the protesters’ original request – no more police harassment – and adds to the list of demands nothing less than political pluralism and the rule of law. </p>
<p>Such reforms, they say, are necessary for “the conservation of national sovereignty, independence and the integrity of the fatherland” – language seemingly chosen to demonstrate that their dissent has nothing to do with the United States. It’s opposition by and for the Cuban people.</p>
<p>The Cuban government continues to accuse anyone who sides with the dissenting artists of being “<a href="https://lapupilainsomne.wordpress.com/2020/12/05/articulacion-popular-y-socialista-por-bufa-subversiva/">paid by U.S. agencies</a>.” </p>
<p>“Since the beginning, the revolution has been the object of foreign interference,” <a href="https://jcguanche.wordpress.com/2020/12/07/que-esta-pasando-en-cuba-en-estos-momentos/#more-2935">says the filmmaker Ernesto Daranas</a>. “But putting every criticism in that same bucket is now isolating [Cuba’s government] from reality.”</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152073/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>María Isabel Alfonso is affiliated with Cuban Americans for Engagement (CAFE).</span></em></p>Talks with the government ended with accusations that the dissenting artists were ‘paid by North American agencies’ – an age-old way to discredit dissent in Cuba. But these protests are homegrown.María Isabel Alfonso, Professor of Spanish, St. Joseph's College of New YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1510882020-11-30T03:13:32Z2020-11-30T03:13:32ZKylie Moore-Gilbert is one of hundreds of victims of state attacks on academic freedom<p>Australian academic Kylie-Moore Gilbert is finally free and back home. The Melbourne university academic was unjustly deprived of her liberties for 804 days for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was arbitrarily imprisoned on <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-55077744">cooked-up espionage charges</a> while visiting Iran for a conference.</p>
<p>While we are celebrating Moore-Gilbert’s freedom here in Australia, let us not forget we are living in a world where a disturbing pattern of rising and often violent attacks on higher education communities, both academics and students, is taking shape. A harsh fact remains: nobody will face justice for unjustly imprisoning and traumatising Moore-Gilbert. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/kylie-moore-gilbert-has-been-released-but-will-a-prisoner-swap-with-australia-encourage-more-hostage-taking-by-iran-150942">Kylie Moore-Gilbert has been released. But will a prisoner swap with Australia encourage more hostage-taking by Iran?</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Academic freedom is under attack</h2>
<p>The recently released Free to Think 2020 <a href="https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Scholars-at-Risk-Free-to-Think-2020.pdf">report</a> of a New York University-based advocacy group for defending academic freedom, Scholars at Risk, shines a light on these attacks on higher education institutions. It reports:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>State authorities around the world used detentions, prosecutions, and other coercive legal measures to punish and restrict hundreds of scholars’ and students’ research, teaching, and extramural expression and associations. These actions were frequently carried out under laws or on grounds ostensibly related to national security, terrorism, sedition, and defamation. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In just one year (September 1 2019 to August 31 2020), Scholars at Risk documented 341 attacks arising from 259 verified incidents in 58 countries. It reports 124 higher education community members (both students and scholars) were killed, faced violent bodily harm or were forcefully disappeared. Another 96 were imprisoned.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/371847/original/file-20201129-18-97xevb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Chart showing reported attacks on higher education institutions worldwide" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/371847/original/file-20201129-18-97xevb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/371847/original/file-20201129-18-97xevb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371847/original/file-20201129-18-97xevb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371847/original/file-20201129-18-97xevb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371847/original/file-20201129-18-97xevb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=664&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371847/original/file-20201129-18-97xevb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=664&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371847/original/file-20201129-18-97xevb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=664&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
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<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Scholars-at-Risk-Free-to-Think-2020.pdf">Free to Think 2020/Scholars at Risk</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Freedom to Think reports covering the past four years (September 1 2016 to August 31 2020) worldwide show 395 higher education community members were killed, faced violent bodily harm or forcefully disappeared. During this period, 393 were sent to jail and 260 were prosecuted for rightfully exercising their academic freedom.</p>
<p>These are just the confirmed figures. Many such cases go unreported or undocumented.</p>
<p>In the past year, the Free to Think report notes that scholars and students in Spain, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Egypt, Russia and Zimbabwe were arrested and/or imprisoned in connection with explicitly academic work, as well as nonviolent expression and activism. </p>
<p>In Hungary, the Central European University was <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/12/04/central-european-university-forced-out-hungary-moving-vienna">forced out of the country</a> altogether. In Turkey, Istanbul Sehir University was <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/turkey-erdogan-davutoglu-istanbul-sehir-university">shut down</a>. And in Romania and Poland calls to cut funding for gender studies and “LGBT ideology” have received strong political backing.</p>
<p>This is the nature of a time when freedom is in retreat. According to a 2019 <a href="https://rsf.org/en/news/only-nine-percent-humankind-lives-country-where-press-freedom-good">report</a> by Reporters Without Borders, 76% of the world’s people live in places where the press is not free. </p>
<p>Acknowledging this pattern, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/australian-academic-traded-for-thai-bomb-plots-prisoners-20201126-p56i52.html">said</a> after Moore-Gilbert’s release:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[W]e live in an uncertain world and we live in a world where there are regimes that don’t act in relation to people’s liberties and rights and with the freedoms that we enjoy here in Australia and that is just a sad reality of the world which we live in. And Australia has to deal in that world […].</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Australia has a role to play</h2>
<p>So should Australia be worried about this world where attacks on higher education institutions are on the rise? The simple answer is yes. And Australia should be a strong and active international defender of academic freedom. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-australian-government-needs-to-step-up-its-fight-to-free-kylie-moore-gilbert-from-prison-in-iran-130591">The Australian government needs to step up its fight to free Kylie Moore-Gilbert from prison in Iran</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The government should spell out its commitment to academic freedom in its foreign policy, research grants, development assistance and travel advice. Australia is a global force; it invests millions of dollars in providing development assistance to many countries where academic freedom is under threat. </p>
<p>Our country has opportunities to directly influence key actors in these countries. Australia offers training, short courses and scholarships to foreign bureaucrats, military professionals, pro-regime academics and security forces of non-democratic countries. Despite their Australian training and experience of our free, law-abiding and democratic society, many of these actors actively suppress academic freedom in their home countries. </p>
<p>Similarly, Australian academics and their research are not isolated from these issues. They study many of these problematic countries, visit them for fieldwork, form cross-country research collaborations and exchange knowledge. Their work contributes to Australian understanding and helps shape foreign policy. </p>
<p>In the wake of the release of Kylie Moore-Gilbert, I hope the Australian higher education community will remain passionate about academic freedom abroad and engage in more research and discussion of the global decline in academic freedom. The pursuit of truth and expansion of knowledge are not confined within geographic boundaries. These issues affect us all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151088/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mubashar Hasan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Academic freedom is under assault around the world. Academics and students are being killed, injured, detained and disappeared in a pattern of disturbing increases in state repression.Mubashar Hasan, Adjunct Research Fellow, Humanitarian and Development Research Initiative, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1491972020-11-02T16:09:54Z2020-11-02T16:09:54ZThe Chatterley Trial 60 years on: a court case that secured free expression in 1960s Britain<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366952/original/file-20201102-15-f5hnn6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C4%2C1022%2C732&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Judge's copy: the copy of the novel belonging to the judge in the case was acquired by Bristol University in 2019.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">By courtesy of the University of Bristol Library Special Collections DM2936, photograph by Jamie Carstairs.</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The paperback copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover pictured above is of great cultural significance. Leafing through the pages one discovers hidden gems: pencil markings, underlinings, marginal annotations. Accompanying the book are sheets of headed stationery from the Old Bailey, containing handwritten notes relating to the novel along with a clumsily hand-stitched fabric bag – apparently made not to protect the book but rather the person carrying it by obscuring its title.</p>
<p>It’s the “judge’s copy” of the book, used by Mr Justice Lawrence Byrne who presided over the 1960 Lady Chatterley trial in which DH Lawrence’s famous novel was at the centre of a test of Britain’s new censorship law. </p>
<p>The University of Bristol’s acquisition of the so-called “judge’s copy” in 2019 was an important moment and, having assisted in making the case for its new home to be in the <a href="https://www.bristol.ac.uk/law/news/2019/lady-chatterleys-lover-aquired.html">university’s special collections</a>, examining it for the first time was thrilling. Now, on the <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2020/october/d-h-lawrence-lady-chatterleys-lover-trial.html">60th anniversary</a> of the trial it is timely to consider this intriguing volume. But first a reminder of the case with which it was connected.</p>
<p>In August 1960, by pre-arrangement, the police were handed copies of the unexpurgated Lady Chatterley by its publisher. Following this, Penguin Books Limited was charged with publishing an obscene article under the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Eliz2/7-8/66/contents/enacted">Obscene Publications Act 1959</a>. </p>
<p>The 1959 act aimed both to strengthen the law concerning pornography and to protect literature. It created the publishing offence (the handing over constituted publication) and provided that material was “obscene” if its effect, taken as a whole, was such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who were likely to read, see or hear it. </p>
<p>But a public good defence meant a conviction would not result if it were proved that publication was justified “in the interests of science, literature, art or learning, or of other objects of general concern”. The Lady Chatterley trial was a test of the act; in particular, would the defence protect creative works?</p>
<p>In the courtroom, while the defence did not accept the book was obscene, their focus was on its literary merit. A line up of 35 witnesses (women and men) were called on behalf of publisher Penguin to speak in favour of the book, including authors, academics, clergy, a 21-year-old English graduate and a headmaster. The prosecution played a minor role, calling only one witness and sometimes putting no questions to those who appeared for the defence. In the end, after three hours of deliberation, the jury of three women and nine men returned a unanimous verdict. Penguin was acquitted.</p>
<h2>Judge’s copy</h2>
<p>Which brings us back to Lady Chatterley and, in particular, the book in the fabric bag. Copies of the unexpurgated novel were circulating before 1960, meaning some of those involved in the case had long been familiar with it – the first defence witness had read it in about 1940. The police had acquired a marked-up proof copy of the Penguin book before the publisher’s handover.</p>
<p>The lawyers had taken great pains to study the 1960 text in preparing for the trial. Defence files show that Penguin’s solicitors undertook an analysis not entirely dissimilar to that on show in the “judge’s copy” with its accompanying notes. As prosecutor <a href="https://spartacus-educational.com/Mervyn_Griffith-Jones.htm">Mervyn Griffith-Jones</a> demonstrated in his opening to the jury, where he observed that the words “fuck” or “fucking” occurred at least 30 times within the novel’s pages, so too had the Crown.</p>
<p>The jury were given copies in court, just before the trial began. At the end of the first day, the judge adjourned the case, directing them to read the book but forbidding them from taking it home. After a gap of several days the proceedings resumed and the trial continued for a <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1960/11/19/the-lady-at-the-old-bailey">further five days</a>.</p>
<p>Reports tell how copies of the novel were handed round the court during the trial, to the jury, witnesses and to the judge, with the players occasionally leafing through the pages in search of a particular passage. The judge, however, was given a copy of the book at the same time as the jury first received it, on day one of the trial, before proceedings got underway. </p>
<h2>Lady Byrne</h2>
<p>It seems that at some point Byrne shared the novel with his wife, as we are told that most of the markings in the book and all of the separate notes are in <a href="https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/items_export_deferral/Expert%27s%20statement_Chatterley.pdf">Lady Dorothy Byrne’s hand</a>, with a few annotations apparently made by her husband. Accounts suggest she worked on the text before the trial (or perhaps during the jury’s reading days), with her husband adding notes during proceedings as she sat next to him. Lady Byrne is <a href="https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/items_export_deferral/Expert%27s%20statement_Chatterley.pdf">also credited with making the bag</a>.</p>
<p>This all suggests that the couple worked together, with Lady Byrne taking the leading role. Moreover, they did so despite Griffith-Jones’s <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/10/newsid_2965000/2965194.stm">question to the jury</a> on day one of the trial: “Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?” </p>
<p>How then did the “judge’s copy” journey to Bristol? The Byrne family auctioned it in 1993. It came up for sale again in 2018, selling to a private individual in the US. In an attempt to keep it in the UK, the book was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/13/judges-copy-of-lady-chatterleys-lover-temporarily-barred-from-leaving-uk">placed under temporary export deferral</a> and expressions of interest were sought. At Bristol we put together a case to acquire the book and fundraising efforts began, with contributions coming from organisations and individuals.</p>
<p>As a result, the “judge’s copy”, notes and bag now reside alongside the Penguin Archive and <a href="http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2019/september/lady-chatterley-.html">trial papers of Michael Rubinstein</a>, Penguin’s solicitor. Given <a href="https://specialcollections.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/2020/10/30/sixty-years-since-lady-c-the-lady-chatterleys-lover-trial-and-the-penguin-book-archive/">its history</a>, however, I wonder if we might begin to reconsider how we refer to this Lady Chatterley. Because of her work, the judge’s wife seems to deserve credit; it is not only the “judge’s copy” it is also very much “Lady Byrne’s copy”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149197/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lois Bibbings is a member of both Bristol Radical History Group and Bristol's Remembering the Real World War 1.</span></em></p>The obscenity trial was a landmark decision that provided a “public good” defence for serious literature.Lois Bibbings, Professor of Law, Gender and History , University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1480702020-10-20T19:40:32Z2020-10-20T19:40:32ZBeheading in France could bolster president’s claim that Islam is in ‘crisis’ – but so is French secularism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364353/original/file-20201019-21-1qrz6hv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=69%2C0%2C5749%2C3882&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An homage to Samuel Paty, a teacher murdered after showing caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, Oct. 18, 2020. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-gathered-in-place-de-la-republique-in-paris-france-news-photo/1229165233?adppopup=true">Adnan Farzat/NurPhoto via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A French high school teacher who had shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad to his class <a href="https://www.liberation.fr/france/2020/10/16/terrorisme-un-enseignant-decapite-dans-les-yvelines_1802673">was beheaded on Oct. 16 by an 18-year-old Muslim refugee</a> in what <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54579403">France’s President Emmanuel Macron characterized as an “Islamist terrorist attack.”</a></p>
<p>The killing is the latest high-profile attack by a Muslim extremist in France, coming after the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-paris-50736">2015 massacre at Charlie Hebdo magazine</a> and the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36801671">2016 truck attack</a> in Nice. It also occurred two weeks after Macron gave <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/10/2/macron-announces-new-plan-to-regulate-islam-in-france">a controversial speech defining Islam</a> as “<a href="https://www.elysee.fr/emmanuel-macron/2020/10/02/la-republique-en-actes-discours-du-president-de-la-republique-sur-le-theme-de-la-lutte-contre-les-separatismes">a religion that is in crisis today all over the world</a>.”</p>
<p>France, which colonized many Muslim-majority territories in Africa and the Levant in the 19th and 20th centuries, such as Algeria and Mali, has Western Europe’s largest Muslim minority – <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/11/29/5-facts-about-the-muslim-population-in-europe/">6 million people, or 9% of its population</a>. </p>
<p>Macron’s Oct. 2 speech outlined a legislative proposal to fight “Islamist separatism.” If passed in Parliament, it would essentially ban home-schooling of all children aged 3 and up and prevent foreign-trained imams from leading French mosques. The goal, said the president, is “<a href="https://www.elysee.fr/front/pdf/elysee-module-16114-fr.pdf">to build an Islam in France that can be compatible with the Enlightenment</a>.” </p>
<p>Macron’s analysis concludes, simply, that Islam is somehow at odds with modern Western society. But my <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/sociology/sociology-religion/secularism-and-state-policies-toward-religion-united-states-france-and-turkey?format=PB">research on state secularism and religion</a> shows that the reality is much more complicated.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364504/original/file-20201020-19-1kpdj6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Macron speaks at a lectern with the French and EU flags behind him" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364504/original/file-20201020-19-1kpdj6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364504/original/file-20201020-19-1kpdj6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364504/original/file-20201020-19-1kpdj6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364504/original/file-20201020-19-1kpdj6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364504/original/file-20201020-19-1kpdj6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364504/original/file-20201020-19-1kpdj6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364504/original/file-20201020-19-1kpdj6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">French President Emmanuel Macron.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/french-president-emmanuel-macron-delivers-a-speech-during-a-news-photo/1201691009?adppopup=true">Sebastien Bozon/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>French versus American secularism</h2>
<p>French secularism, which is embraced by both the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/comparative-politics/alien-citizens-state-and-religious-minorities-turkey-and-france?format=HB&isbn=9781108476942">progressive left and the Islamophobic right</a>, goes well beyond the American democratic concept of <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1970/89">separating religion and state</a>. Called “laïcité,” it essentially excludes religious symbols from public institutions. France has <a href="https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/posts/the-weaponization-of-laicite">banned Muslim women’s headscarves in schools and outlawed religious face coverings everywhere</a>. There are no such bans in the United States.</p>
<p>While both America and France have ongoing debates about “Islamic fundamentalism” and “Muslim terrorists” and <a href="http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20100830,00.html">views that can be defined as Islamophobic</a> have some popular support, American democracy generally provides better opportunities for <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-future-of-religious-freedom-9780199930913?lang=en&cc=us#">the integration of various religious groups</a>. </p>
<p>In France, <a href="http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/connaissance/constitution.asp">the Constitution</a> defines the state only as secular, without delineating the boundaries of that secularism. In the United States, <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment">the First Amendment</a> restricts the secular state’s engagement with religion, saying the government can neither establish a religion nor prohibit a religion’s free exercise. </p>
<p>It would be difficult for the U.S. to announce, as Macron did, a state-sponsored project to “<a href="https://uk.ambafrance.org/France-to-restore-the-Republic-to-fight-Islamist-separatism">forge a type of Enlightenment Islam</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364501/original/file-20201020-21-1nfbrgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Pupils in headscarves sit at desks" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364501/original/file-20201020-21-1nfbrgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364501/original/file-20201020-21-1nfbrgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364501/original/file-20201020-21-1nfbrgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364501/original/file-20201020-21-1nfbrgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364501/original/file-20201020-21-1nfbrgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364501/original/file-20201020-21-1nfbrgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364501/original/file-20201020-21-1nfbrgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In France, Muslim girls may wear headscarves in Islamic private schools like the Alif school in Toulouse, but not in public schools.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/veiled-pupils-attend-a-lesson-in-a-classroom-on-may-11-2011-news-photo/114395069?adppopup=true">Eric Cabanis/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Indeed, 11 years before Macron voiced his provocative view, U.S. President Barack Obama gave a <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-cairo-university-6-04-09">famous speech on Islam</a> in Egypt in 2009, attempting to reset the relationship between America and the Muslim world.</p>
<p>Emphasizing Muslims’ contributions to American society, Obama said, “It is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practicing religion as they see fit – for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear.”</p>
<p>Obama’s speech reflected an idealized American melting pot, a place where hyphenated identities like <a href="https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199930890.001.0001/acprof-9780199930890-chapter-11">Muslim-American</a> are common. </p>
<p>French secularism sees no hyphenated identities – only French or Not French.</p>
<h2>Islam and the secular state</h2>
<p>Some in France also see this rigid secularism as unequal to the challenges of <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/sociology/sociology-religion/secularism-religion-and-multicultural-citizenship?format=HB&isbn=9780521873604">multiculturalism</a> and <a href="http://grease.eui.eu/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2019/10/France-country-report.pdf">migration</a>. The eminent scholar <a href="https://www.seuil.com/ouvrage/laicites-sans-frontieres-jean-bauberot/9782020996167">Jean Bauberot</a>, for example, defends a more “pluralistic secularism” – one that tolerates certain religious symbols in public institutions. </p>
<p>France has in fact made many exceptions for Catholics. The government provides substantial public funding to <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691144214/the-emancipation-of-europes-muslims">private Catholic schools</a>, which educate about a quarter of all K-12 students, and six of 11 official holidays in France are <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_holidays_in_France">Catholic holidays</a>. </p>
<p>Too often, laïcité translates into an unwillingness to accommodate the religiously based demands of Muslims. </p>
<p>In 2015, a Muslim advocacy organization sued a municipal authority in France’s Burgundy region for refusing to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/13/pork-school-dinners-france-secularism-children-religious-intolerance">offer an alternative to pork</a> in public school cafeterias. The court compelled the town to reverse its policy, but not because it <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/28/non-pork-meals-must-be-available-for-school-lunch-rules-french-court">violated religious freedom</a>. The court found the menu <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2017/08/28/chalon-sur-saone-la-justice-annule-la-fin-des-menus-sans-porc-dans-les-cantines_5177551_3224.html">violated the children’s rights</a>.</p>
<p>France’s founding commitment to equality under the law likewise forestalls meaningful social debate on <a href="http://tupress.temple.edu/book/1122">racial discrimination</a>; its census does not even collect information on race. Although France’s biggest minority is mostly composed of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/02/world/europe/macron-radical-islam-france.html">nonwhite Muslim immigrants from its former colonies in Africa and their descendents</a>, Macron’s speech referenced only in passing to French colonialism.</p>
<p>[<em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=experts">Expertise in your inbox. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter and get expert takes on today’s news, every day.</a></em>]</p>
<h2>Blasphemy</h2>
<p>That said, I find some truth in Macron’s speech. But the “crisis” facing Islam lies in the historical and political failings of the Muslim world, not in the religion itself.</p>
<p>As my 2019 book, “<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/comparative-politics/islam-authoritarianism-and-underdevelopment-global-and-historical-comparison?format=PB&isbn=9781108409476">Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment</a>,” documents, many Muslim countries like Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia have long-lasting authoritarian regimes and chronic underdevelopment. In <a href="https://theconversation.com/execution-for-a-facebook-post-why-blasphemy-is-a-capital-offense-in-some-muslim-countries-129685">32 of the world’s 49 Muslim-majority countries</a>, blasphemy laws punish people who speak sacrilegiously about sacred things; in six countries, blasphemy is a capital offense. </p>
<p>These laws, which block freedom of expression, are more rooted in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/execution-for-a-facebook-post-why-blasphemy-is-a-capital-offense-in-some-muslim-countries-129685">interests of the conservative clergy and authoritarian rulers</a> than in the Islamic faith, my research shows. They actually contradict several Quranic verses that urge Muslims not to coerce or retaliate against people of other faiths. </p>
<p>Still, in Western countries where Muslims are a minority, extremists occasionally take it upon themselves to punish those who, in their view, mock the Prophet Muhammad. That has <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300124729/cartoons-shook-world">caused global controversies</a> over <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-theres-opposition-to-images-of-muhammad-36402">cartoons and movies</a>. At times, in France and beyond, it has led to an unacceptable outcome: murder.</p>
<p>Such killings, whether perpetrated by the state or by individuals, are tragedies. But to frame them as a purely religious problem ignores the socioeconomic and political origins of Islamic blasphemy laws, and the anti-democratic cultural consequences of authoritarianism in many Muslim countries. </p>
<p>It also overlooks the difficult reality that social alienation is an underlying factor in the <a href="https://behavioralpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/BSP_vol1is2_-Lyons-Padilla.pdf">radicalization of some young Muslims in the West</a>.</p>
<h2>Multiple secularisms, multiple Islams</h2>
<p>Macron’s speech made some gestures toward greater inclusion. </p>
<p>“I want France to become a country where we can teach the thoughts of Averreos and Ibn Khaldun,” he said, referencing two eminent Muslim thinkers of the 12th and 14th centuries, and envisioned “<a href="https://www.elysee.fr/emmanuel-macron/2020/10/02/la-republique-en-actes-discours-du-president-de-la-republique-sur-le-theme-de-la-lutte-contre-les-separatismes">a country that excels in the study of Muslim civilizations</a>.” </p>
<p>That plural in “civilizations” is meaningful. It acknowledges that Islam is not monolithic. Neither is French secularism. Both are complex systems with varied interpretations. </p>
<p>In truth, Macron doesn’t need to “build an Islam in France that can be compatible with the Enlightenment,” because that already exists. Whether French secularism can adapt to Islam is another question.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148070/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ahmet T. Kuru does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Macron wants to ‘build an Islam in France that can be compatible with the Enlightenment.’ But that goal assumes France is compatible with Islam, says a Muslim scholar of religion and politics.Ahmet T. Kuru, Professor of Political Science, San Diego State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.