✌🏾Quote of the week:
"Let’s cut to the chase: If you’re defending #Israel right now you’re an awful human being." ~ Tweet that Steven Salaita had his tenure track offer revoked for in 2014 “This is difficult to listen to but I'm trying to keep an open mind to learn about this point of view” ~ Private text message that a Columbia University Dean was suspended for in 2024
🤔 What I’m thinking about:
We keep being told to vote to "save democracy." But can democracy - at least democracy as we know it - really be saved?
The radical idea of democracy is inextricably interwoven with freedom of speech and expression. It's impossible for most Americans to imagine democracy without the ability to read and engage with whatever ideas we choose. Yet, this ideal faces new challenges in the technological age, where information can reach masses across the world in milliseconds, and bad actors can potentially exploit our “networked society.”
Information is now mostly exchanged via digital networks. From email to Facebook to YouTube to text messages to Substack, we are increasingly connected through digital platforms. This means that social, economic, and political activities are mainly organized using digital communication technology.
Remember when the internet was a radically free place to share information and ideas? The Arab Spring could never have happened without mobilizing via platforms like Twitter and Facebook. The same is true for Occupy Wall Street, which used viral social media very intentionally—some of us raised $250K overnight to pay off medical debt based on a single tweet. The viral hashtag #BlackLivesMatter birthed mass street protests, and the hijacked hashtag #MeToo took numerous men down simply by women going public about alleged offenses.
Unfortunately, it's easy to spread misinformation, and when it spreads, it can rapidly alter opinions on important issues. Sometimes disinformation is intentionally spread, such as the false propaganda about Hamas beheading babies. In other instances, disinformation is used to discredit important facts, like during the pandemic when officials denied the lab leak theory and deplatformed anyone spreading what they called "misinformation" - despite it being based on facts. We now know there were no babies beheaded by Hamas, and gain-of-function research was the likely cause of the pandemic - but it’s pretty hard to put the cat back in the bag.
With Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump we began to see the US government truly start to mobilize toward figuring out how they could restrict the free flow of ideas on social media. If you recall they claimed that the DNC emails released by Wikileaks were hacked by Russia for the purpose of electing Trump. Wikileaks has consistently denied this claim, while the intelligence community has supported it. The specter of Russian bots electing a President with authoritarian tendencies was used to push social media companies to monitor content in unprecedented ways.
The pandemic was the first time our government made public arguments for restrictions on free speech on social media platforms. We were told that the public needed protection from "misinformation." The pandemic was a major turning point for free speech, and years from now we may trace the end of freedom of dissent to this global crisis. It was the first time that we saw the government crack down on the spread of information digitally. It was the first time that they sought to convince the public that limiting knowledge acquired through social media platforms was not actually limiting free speech, because these were private companies that were not required to provide freedom of expression. They did this in spite of these platforms having become our public square.
The radical American stance on freedom of speech is what repressed people all over the world long for. But the hard part is standing for the ideal, when you don't like what's being said - and even if some ideas harm you, personally, or could harm the public. But without this ideal, all we are left with is power struggle. The winners will always be those who can control information through various forms of power.
Just this week Meta stated explicitly that they will restrict the use of the term "Zionist" by removing posts that use the term with the exception of posts using it in the context of Zionism as a social movement. Referring to Israelis as Zionists will result in post removal. A rare bipartisan majority in Congress already passed a bill that would make saying that Zionism is racism illegal.
The Republicans have been extraordinarily successful at controlling knowledge at traditional institutions, such as restricting African American studies and how slavery is taught in public schools. The Democrats have been extremely successful at restricting content on social media by pressuring platforms to limit or remove certain kinds of positions. Both “sides” are finding that restricting specific speech is essential to managing the populace.
Yet, the reality is that forms of political organization that rely on shared knowledge are unlikely to survive in the age of technology. There’s simply too much information for the human mind to sort through. Democracy as we have known it may not be a practical form of political organization any more. Authoritarianism will not come with the right or the left - we are seeing it come with both. So instead of voting for one side or the other to save democracy, perhaps, we should be thinking about what aspects of democratic society can be salvaged?
We need to ask how we can retain the greatest possible freedom within new forms of governance emerging in this new technological world.
Rather than voting to save democracy, we need to defend the radical ideal of free speech - both politically and culturally, as it is the cornerstone upon which genuine democratic engagement is built.
📺 What I’m watching…
Don’t miss this brilliant limited series on Netflix. Although the dubbing is wonky in places, I appreciated not needing to read subtitles and getting fully absorbed in this intense drama.
“What does justice look like for children who commit crimes in a society that’s failed to protect them? And who’s really to blame? The Nordic noir Deliver Me, directed by Anna Zackrisson (Snow Angels), explores how one community copes when an unspeakable tragedy caused by gang violence tears apart the lives of two teen best friends. Starring newcomers Olle Strand and Yasir Hassan, the series is based on a novel by Malin Persson Giolito.”
🎶 What I’m listening to…
If you’re not yet familiar with the work that British rapper and activist Lowkey is up to here’s his latest protest song entitled Genocide Joe.
📚 What I’m reading…
Exclusive: Israeli documents show expansive government effort to shape US discourse around Gaza war
“Haaretz and the New York Times recently revealed that Chikli’s ministry had tapped a public relations firm to secretly pressure American lawmakers. The firm used hundreds of fake accounts posting pro-Israel or anti-Muslim content on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and Instagram.”
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Raskin Brings Expertise on Right-Wing Extremism to Jan. 6 Inquiry
This is a very important article that explains the Democratic Party strategy. It sheds additional light on why they foreclosed Biden as the candidate prior to the debate.
“When you look at it historically, liberal and progressive parties generally don’t defeat authoritarian and fascist assaults on democracy by themselves,” Mr. Raskin said. “Where democracy survives, it’s because the center-right and the center-left come together to defend it.”
Bought by Zionism from CodePink:
“The violence and ongoing genocide in Palestine reveal a decades-long agenda by the Zionist lobby, which has strategically influenced U.S. politicians to disregard years of human rights abuses and war crimes in favor of unwavering support for Israel. Unmasking the machinations of the Zionist lobby is a crucial step towards the liberation of Palestine from within the belly of the beast.
Discover who has been swayed by their influence and join us in holding them accountable for their actions. Together, we can stand against this injustice!”
The Rise of October 7th Tourism
“Scholars have explored the ways in which visiting sites of atrocities, however disturbing, can also be “a means to affirm and reproduce particular identities,” in the words of Duncan Light, a professor of tourism studies. Visiting the 9/11 memorial—which drew 37 million people between its opening in 2011 and 2018—can bolster Americans’ sense of patriotism, even in the face of the long and deadly wars that followed; visiting the beaches of Normandy can inspire pride not only in the Allies’s World War II victory, but in the US-led world order it produced. Such pilgrimages to places of death and tragedy are known as “dark tourism.”
Why Big Tech’s control of social media cannot stop anti-colonial resistance
“Google and Apple’s move to stifle the resistance’s access to digital pathways in accordance with the dictates of Zionist colonization is a clear example of digital/settler-colonialism at work. But they can’t delete the broader ethical momentum upon which the resistance, using the most up to date tools, has seized upon so impeccably. For it is a momentum arising from the surety that, for all of the death and dispossession, the colonial Zionist state must fall, and Palestine must—and will—be free.”
I’m a believer in hearing all sides directly. It’s why I follow Resistance News Network on Telegram.
“The people in Gaza, they had one of two choices: Either to die because of siege and malnutrition and hunger and lacking of medicine and lacking of treatment abroad, or to die by a rocket. We have no other choice,” he said. “If we have to choose, why choose to be the good victims, the peaceful victims? If we have to die, we have to die in dignity. Standing, fighting, fighting back, and standing as dignified martyrs.”
~
🔔 Other links of interest:
CUNY encampment felony charges could set a dangerous precedent for Palestine organizing
Against Erasure & Greed: Jerusalem to Tulsa & Trail of Tears to Grenfell
She Made an Offer on a Condo. Then the Seller Learned She Was Black.
The philosophy of Hamas in the writings of Yahya Sinwar
Majority of Americans Living Paycheck To Paycheck Statistics 2024
Fantastic article! This first sentence in your 2nd paragraph begs repeating, "The radical idea of democracy is inextricably interwoven with freedom of speech and expression." Thank you for the insights and thoughtful analysis.