With a paradoxically destructive optimism, satirists, from the age of the Roman poet Juvenal and since, have been driven by an almost childlike conviction that the world can and should do better. And the satirists of today, apostates as they are from the modern religion of political correctness – an orthodoxy that (despite professing to be both) is neither moral nor intellectual – need set their sights no further than their own milieu for the necessary targets.
A little over a year ago, at the close of the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, I presented the Defining the Norm Awards, an Oscars-styled lampooning of stand-up comedy banality and the predatory entertainment industry which fuels it. My intent was to unveil a satirical blueprint of how the mundane is cynically transferred from open mic to telly screen. And of all the sacred cows I have sought to slaughter in my twenty-year career as a satirist – from modern psychiatry to Islam – the current state of Western comedy was by far the most fanatically defended, if only by its practitioners.
What resulted was a tidal wave of social media whinging, suspicions cast upon my mental well-being, and a blacklisting that continues to this day from live bookers all the way up to the BBC comedy department. (“We can’t use Will Franken,” is the word from staff insiders on those rare occasions when my name is put forward for a project. “Remember, he’s the guy that did those awards.”) One thing, however, that was not in evidence in the wake of my mockery was anything resembling a satirical counter-response from the comedy collective. A point, I felt, had been painfully proven.
Because the disquieting truth in our present age is that those least qualified to understand, let alone appreciate, satire are too often comedians themselves. And to attack those who make false pretence to satire is to simultaneously attack a multitude of unquestioned shibboleths – be it lazy reliance on identity politics, Donald Trump’s presumed unfitness to be president, or even the sanctimonious mourning over Britain’s exit from the European Union.
Yet leaving aside, for example, the sheer repetitiveness and predictability of Nigel Farage and Donald Trump putdowns, what makes such political targets ultimately ineffective as contemporary satirical fodder is simply this: Farage and Trump are funnier than most comedians. Both figures, after all, managed to accomplish, in quick succession, major acts of geopolitical subversion against the status quo. Once in the not-too-distant past, this would have been the objective of comedy.
Though such an observation remains anathema to current entertainment establishment, such is the short-sightedness of effective satirists that rarely do they think ahead in terms of people-pleasing career advancement. Rather, he or she is compelled by an attribute especially repulsive to today’s current crop of entertainers: morality.
For amidst all the speculation amongst comedians as to why I decided to hold those in my field up to ridicule, the simple – and therefore baffling – truth was that I ridiculed them because I believed they needed to be ridiculed. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Battle of Ideas 2017″ use_theme_fonts=”yes” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.battleofideas.org.uk%2F|||”][vc_separator color=”black”][vc_column_text]A weekend of thought-provoking public debate taking place on 28 and 29 October at the Barbican Centre. Join the main debates or satellite events.[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_column_text]Political activism and protest today
Recent years have seen something of a revitalisation of political protests and marches, but just what is protest historically and today?
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_column_text]Can satire survive the era of fake news? Will the ‘fake news’ era irreparably damage the satirist’s ability to effect any kind of societal change?[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_column_text]Censorship and identity: Free speech for you but not for me?
Is identity politics the new tool of censorship and, if so, how should we respond?[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Six journalists — three in jail and three on bail — are facing lengthy jail terms in an indictment focusing on leaked emails from Berat Albayrak, Turkey’s energy minister and president Erdogan’s son-in-law. The first hearing in their case will be held on 24 October at Istanbul Çaglayan Courthouse.
Dawn raids were conducted on 25 December 2016 following an investigation into Albayrak’s leaked emails. Tunca Öğreten, a former editor of Diken, an opposition news portal in Turkey, Ömer Çelik, the news editor of the pro-Kurdish Dicle News Agency and Mahir Kanaat, an employee of BirGun, a left-wing opposition newspaper, were sent to prison without charges after 24 days in custody while Derya Okatan, Eray Sargın and Metin Yoksu were released on bail.
RedHack, a group of Marxist hackers, admitted responsibility for the cyber attack in September 2017 and added a number of Turkish journalists to a private Twitter direct messaging group without anyone’s consent. Once the minister’s emails were made public, journalists then reported about the leak, filtering the information based on the public’s right to know.
“State secrets” on a personal email account
Based on the contents of the emails, Tunca Ogreten reported about Albayrak’s alleged executive role in an oil transportation company called PowerTrans (which still operates in the Kurdish Region of Iraq).
Long before the leaks, a suspected link between Albayrak and PowerTrans had already made the news after the Turkish government granted a special status to the company – an allegation officials strongly denied.
After three journalists – Celik, Kanaat and Ogreten – spent seven months in pretrial detention, without knowing what they have been charged with, prosecution finally filed an indictment in July, claiming that the information in Albayrak’s personal (Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo) email accounts could be considered as “state secrets depending on circumstances”.
The prosecution also accused all journalists of manipulating contents of the emails, without explaining how, and alleged that they tried “creating a negative perception for the failure of [Turkey’s] national energy policy”.
Ogreten appealed against claims about his alleged links with DHKP-C, an extreme leftist armed group, listed as a terror organisation in Turkey, however, the prosecutor dismissed his rejections and insisted on his guilt by association, arguing that RedHack was connected to DHKP-C, therefore, so was he.
Adding to the obscurity of charges, Ogreten is also accused of committing crimes on behalf of FETÖ/PDY, the pro-Islamic network led by US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen that Ankara recently named as a terror organisation.
The only evidence the prosecutor sets forth for this allegation is Ogreten’s previous work experience in Taraf, a pro-Gulen newspaper, where many of today’s popular pro-government columnists have also written for.
Taraf newspaper was among dozens of media outlets that the Turkish government shut down in statutory decrees, based on their alleged links with terror groups, including the Gulen organization, or FETO, that Ankara claims masterminded last year’s coup attempt.
Daily BirGün’s employee accused being a member of FETO
The indictment includes no reference about BirGün’s coverage of the RedHack leaks but makes a note that Mahir Kanaat, one of its employees, followed RedHack’s accounts on Twitter.
In an apparent ideological contradiction, Kanaat is also accused of being a member of the pro-Islamic FETO movement, based on two Word documents found on his mobile.
Both documents are copies of the official police investigation records about the 2013 graft probe that entangled several cabinet ministers and President Erdogan’s close relatives. The government accuses FETO-linked police having triggered the probe and prosecutors often present documents regarding the probe found in devices as a proof of suspects’ organizational links.
In Kanaat’s case, they pointed at the date on both documents, saying it showed a time before the probes were made public, leading to an accusation that the journalist had an early access to FETO-linked police documents through his organisational connections.
What is dismissed here, however, is that Word documents always come with an unchangeable creation date that keeps reappearing even if one downloaded them today. Therefore, an early access is a baseless accusation, used only to frame the journalist.
Furthermore, the prosecutor also turned a blind eye on BirGun’s highly consistent and critical coverage of Fethullah Gulen, the leader of FETO.
A mishmash of accusations
Omer Celik, the Diyarbakir bureau chief and editor of the pro-KurdishDicle News Agency, is another journalist accused of spreading “propaganda of a terrorist organization” through his tweets.
His work relationship with DIHA, one of the outlets that were shut down by the government in a statutory decree for their alleged terror links, is the only evidence presented in the indictment.
Three other journalists, Okatan, Sargin and Yoksu who were released on bail, are also accused of spreading “propaganda for a terrorist organisation”.
Okatan and Sargin, two news editors, are accused of ‘guilt by association as tweets in question were sent on company accounts, not private accounts. Majority of the tweets that are quoted in relation to charges set against Yoksu are news updates.
The indictment that centres around the RedHack leaks of Berat Albayrak’s emails includes journalists who did not even report about the leak.
In a cocktail of accusations, all journalists are presented in alleged links with various terror organisations, in a wide range of ideologies from pro-Islamist FETO to Marxist-Leninist MLKP.
The indictment also accuses all six journalists of “intercepting and disrupting information systems, and destroying or altering data” without providing any explanation as to what or how exactly they have intercepted or altered the data.
A separate case for Deniz Yücel
Although Deniz Yucel, the Turkey correspondent of Germany’s Die Welt, was issued an arrest warrant as part of the investigation looking into the RedHack leak, he was posed no questions about RedHack.
Yucel has been kept in solitary confinement for nearly a year, without any official charges. His reports about the Kurdish conflict were presented as the reason for his arrest in February.
The first hearing is on 24 October
Despite all apparent contradictions in the indictment, Mahir Kanaat, Omer Celik and Tunca Ogreten have been in jail for 296as of 16 October 2017.
Six journalists, including those that were released on bail, will stand in court for the first time after almost a year.
There are more than 170 journalists in Turkish jails now. No matter how many cases that makes, we need your uninterrupted support in defending all. These hearings, as frequent as they are, should never be treated as commonplace.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1508492681714-5a9b25c8-f249-8″ taxonomies=”55″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship welcomes the call by Minister Jo Johnson for freedom of expression to be better protected in universities. However, we would remind the minister universities already have a statutory duty under the 1986 Education Act to protect freedom of speech for university members, employees and visiting speakers.
While we applaud Johnson’s renewed commitment to ensure universities protect free expression we question whether it is possible to do so and also comply with other duties imposed on universities by the government, such as monitoring students under the Prevent anti-terror programme.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Don’t lose your voice. Stay informed.” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_separator color=”black”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship is a nonprofit that campaigns for and defends free expression worldwide. We publish work by censored writers and artists, promote debate, and monitor threats to free speech. We believe that everyone should be free to express themselves without fear of harm or persecution – no matter what their views.
Join our mailing list (or follow us on Twitter or Facebook) and we’ll send you our weekly newsletter about our activities defending free speech. We won’t share your personal information with anyone outside Index.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][gravityform id=”20″ title=”false” description=”false” ajax=”false”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_separator color=”black”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”12″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1508403305697-89d061d7-f665-0″ taxonomies=”8843″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_video link=”https://vimeo.com/25048883″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship CEO Jodie Ginsberg delivered Art and authoritarianism: a keynote speech to the Integrity 20 conference at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia on Thursday 19 October 2017.
Good afternoon and thank you to Griffith University for inviting me to speak on this important topic of art and authoritarianism. The video you have just seen was created more than 30 years ago for the organisation I run, Index on Censorship, a global non-profit that publishes work by and about censored writers and artists and campaigns on their behalf.
It is work that was begun during the Cold War, at a time when Soviet dissidents were unable to publish work challenging the communist regime, when books like George Orwell’s 1984 were banned, and works like Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot outlawed. It was a time when the magazine that Index still produces 45 years later had to be smuggled into eastern Europe, where clandestine literature was swapped for goods unobtainable in the communist east — including bananas.
These days we don’t send people out armed with bananas in exchange for banned texts, but the fact that Index is still in business more than 25 years after the end of the Cold War is a sad reflection that censorship remains alive and well across the world.
If anything, we are seeing its rise: democratic spaces are shrinking and authoritarianism creeping back in places where we thought we had seen its end.
This afternoon’s talk will give a brief overview — that I hope will give a provide a context for our subsequent discussion — of the ways in which authoritarian regimes seek to stifle the arts, or use arts for their own ends, and the ways in which artists fight back.
But first I want to reflect on why the arts are important? Often in public discourse, the arts are considered an ‘add on’, a ‘frippery’, nice to have — but non essential to our basic existence. But I would contend that artistic expression is what defines us as human beings. That the ability to make music, to sing, to dance, to paint, to write, to talk — is fundamental to our humanity. And it is therefore fundamental that we protect it.
The fact that artistic expression plays such a powerful and important role in our existence is perhaps best seen in the seemingly disproportionate amount of time authoritarian regimes spend targeting it. If the spoken or written word, if performance, if the image were not important, if they did not have power, then dictators wouldn’t spend half so much time worrying about them.
Indeed, artists are often the canaries in the mine, a leading barometer of freedom in a country: poorly funded, rarely unionised, but with the ability to powerfully capture uncomfortable truths, artists are easy to target.
In a classic authoritarian regime, artists are most easily targeted by banning works or types of works and by arresting those groups and individuals who step out of line.
Ultimately, censorship doesn’t work. And that’s because of the very nature of artistic expression itself: that the more ways the censors try to find to shut down the ideas, the beliefs they don’t like, the more artists find creative ways to express those same ideas.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Moroccan musician Mouad Belaghouat, known as El Haqed, was arrested in 2011 and spent two years in prison for criticising the king. A former winner of the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award for arts, El Haqed’s work highlights corruption and widespread poverty in the country.
Frequently, though, authoritarian regimes censor those artists who fall out of favour not through a direct link to their work but by indirect means. Arresting them, for example, on another pretext such as financial irregularities.
Think of Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei, arrested in 2011 while officials investigated allegations of “economic crimes”. Ai Wei Wei was then hit with a demand for nearly $2 million in alleged unpaid taxes and fines.
Three years later Ai Wei Wei’s work ‘Sunflower Seeds” was cut from an exhibition in honoring the 15th anniversary of the Chinese Contemporary Art Award of which he was a founding, three-time jurist. Museum also workers erased Ai’s name from the list of the award’s past winners and jury members. Erasure: censorship in action.
Explicit censorship like this continues to exist in many countries, with many still operating censorship boards to assess films, books and plays for cutting or banning. In Lebanon, for example, a censorship bureau still exists to which playwrights and others must submit works for approval before they can be shown. In 2013, writer Lucien Bourjeily decided to try to play the censors at their own game and submitted a play called ‘Will it Pass or Not’ that aimed to highlight the arbitrary nature of decisions taken by the bureau. Unsurprisingly, the play was banned. The censorship board’s General Mounir Akiki appeared on television to explain the ban, presenting evidence from four so-called “critics” who insisted the play had no artistic merit and therefore would not be passed. Index published an extract from the play a few months later.
At the time, Bourjeily wrote about the challenges of writing when “the censorship law in Lebanon is so vague and elusive”. Much successful censorship by authoritarian regimes relies not so much on what is explicitly banned but rather on an uncertainty as to what is permitted and what not. In such an environment, self-censorship thrives.
It is just such an environment that artists identify in contemporary Russia where laws — including those on obscenity and offence to religious feeling — are applied erratically, and where funding might be stopped — apparently arbitrarily — if an organisation fails to step in line with a current emphasis on family and religious values.
In this unpredictable environment, artists must think twice before braving the system. If you don’t know where the lines are, how do you know when you have crossed them? In this case, artists might choose to do nothing at all rather than breach an unstated limit.
The 2013 Russian law criminalising acts offending religious believers reflects a broader creep globally in which artists are punished by governments – or by non-state actors including the likes of ISIS – for offence. Bangladesh has seen a series of fatal attacks against writers, publishers and bloggers, many of whom have been targeted for their atheist views.
A failure by the government to get justice for these killings – or even publicly condemn them – is encouraging a state of impunity that encourages further attacks.
In fact, the Bangladesh government has actually placed the onus on writers to avoid writing anything “objectionable” about religion. Writers have been charged under a wide-ranging law used to prosecute anyone who publishes anything on or offline that hurts “religious sentiment” or prejudices the “image of the state.” Last year, during the country’s largest book fair writer Shamsuzzoha Manik was arrested for publishing a book called Islam Bitorko (Debate on Islam).
It is not just insulting religious sentiment that is increasingly problematic in the Muslim world. In countries like Poland, which is also experiencing its own form of creeping authoritarianism in common with many of its neighbours, the Catholic church is resuming an old role as censor in chief. State prosecutors there this year investigated the producers of a play that examines the relationship between the Polish Catholic church and the state, and castigates authorities for failing to respond to allegations of child abuse. In the play’s most notorious scene, an actor simulates oral sex on a plastic statue of the late Polish pope John Paul II, as a sign reads: “Defender of paedophiles”.
What starts as censorship of the arts quickly bleeds into other areas, like education.
In Bangladesh for example, the law I described earlier has been invoked against those who have questioned facts about the 1971 war.
Rewriting history is something authoritarian regimes are rather good at.
Earlier this year index published a story by award-winning author Jonathan Tel about an actor in a time travel TV show who gets stuck in 19th century Beijing after the government axes the genre. It’s a fictional take on true life: in 2011 the Chinese-government did ban all time-travel themed television.
The genre had become extremely popular and therefore hard to control, generating multiple narratives about the past. That posed a challenge for a Chinese Communist Party who only want a singular narrative, the one they control, that China was a country of corrupt feudal overlords and emperors until saved by the party in 1949.
When the ban came into place the administration said it was because the genre ‘disrespects history’.
This impulse to control the narrative is what drives propaganda. Traditionally, authoritarian regimes have found propaganda easiest to achieve simply by shutting down media outlets to limit the flows of information to a limited number of channels controlled by the government: a single newspaper, a government-controlled broadcaster and so on. With art, this is more challenging, and so the art produced by governments for propaganda often finds its expression in a cult of personality linked to a dictator — think of the Stalin statues that mushroomed during his time in office. In North Korea, the government commissions large scale art works depicting the people at work.
Art as defender — and threat to — the national image is inextricably linked, especially in modern regimes, with threats to national security. We see this clearly in countries like Turkey, a democracy that has rapidly slid back into authoritarianism over the past 18 months without passing ‘Go’. Authors, performers, artists have all found themselves at the sharp end of President Erdogan’s ire, and accused of terrorism simply for offering a critique of his government. Erdogan, in common with many dictators, appears to hate more than anything being laughed at and so cartoonists and satirists have found themselves targeted. Cartoonist Musa Kart was imprisoned for nearly 10 months and faces nearly 30 years in jail for his satirical cartoons of the President and his government. In Malaysia, cartoonist Zunar faces up to 43 years in jail for his cartoons lampooning the prime minister and his wife.
I talked at the start about a resurgence of authoritarianism. In conclusion, I want to talk about a feature of censorship that I think is remarkable and which, perhaps, dictators might like to reflect on. That, ultimately, censorship doesn’t work. And that’s because of the very nature of artistic expression itself: that the more ways the censors try to find to shut down the ideas, the beliefs they don’t like, the more artists find creative ways to express those same ideas. Burkina Faso artist Smockey, an outspoken critic of the government whose studios have been firebombed twice because of his work, continues to make music and describes it as the duty of the artists to resist. Yemeni graffiti artist Murad Subay paints public murals that highlight the atrocities being inflicted on his people – and encourages others, ordinary citizens, to join him. Others are more covert: the musicians who meet underground, or the filmmakers who use allegory and metaphor to flout literalist censors.
And perhaps that should give us cause for optimism — at the very least, optimism about the human spirit and its ability to challenge the greatest tyrants through the pen or the paintbrush. To quote Harry Lime in the wonderful film The Third Man: “Don’t be so gloomy. After all it’s not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Don’t lose your voice. Stay informed.” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_separator color=”black”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship is a nonprofit that campaigns for and defends free expression worldwide. We publish work by censored writers and artists, promote debate, and monitor threats to free speech. We believe that everyone should be free to express themselves without fear of harm or persecution – no matter what their views.
Join our mailing list (or follow us on Twitter or Facebook) and we’ll send you our weekly newsletter about our activities defending free speech. We won’t share your personal information with anyone outside Index.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][gravityform id=”20″ title=”false” description=”false” ajax=”false”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row]
