6 Nov 2024 | News and features, United States
Waking up to today’s news that Donald Trump has been re-elected as president of the USA is deeply troubling. Despite what he claims, Trump is no poster boy for free speech. We at Index have many grave concerns about what another four years under him could mean for the USA and the world.
The first of these concerns is media freedom. His record on this is worrying. During his last term as president, Trump constantly appeared on our website and in our magazine. David E. McCraw, the New York Times deputy general counsel, spoke to us about the physical violence journalists were facing in the USA as a result of Trump; the great-granddaughter of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, Nina Khrushcheva, wrote about his lashing out at various mainstream media with labels like “enemy of the people” and even said life in the Soviet Union was better in this regard:
“Once a Soviet citizen, I’ve been checking my surroundings. Am I living in cosmopolitan New York? Am I back in a homogeneous Moscow reading the Pravda headlines about the drummed-up victories of the communist state and the denunciations of the enemies who plot to take it down? In fact, when I was growing up in the 1970s, not even Pravda used such ominous language for Kremlin critics.”
Alas if Trump is to be taken at his word, his first four years in power were simply the dress rehearsal before the real show. Project 25, the Republican Party’s 900-page policy wish-list, includes plans to seize journalists’ emails and phones, while campaign-trail Trump frequently railed against the media, threatening to arrest those who disparage him and to strip television networks of their broadcast licenses. This might partly explain why Jeff Bezos crushed the Washington Post’s endorsement of Kamala Harris. Self-censorship is after all self-preservation.
This Sunday Trump said he wouldn’t have minded if journalists had been shot during his assassination attempt.
Such language incites. Reporters have spoken about feeling very unsafe at Trump rallies. Such language is also not limited to the media. His desire to throw people in jail extends to his detractors more broadly and is often personal. His campaign team claims his “firing squad” comment towards former US Republican lawmaker Liz Cheney has been taken out of context. Perhaps. Still there is no denying that he launched a vicious attack, solely because she was on Team Kamala.
This leads onto our broader concerns for freedom of expression in the USA. Minority voices will be further marginalised. So too will the voices of those who simply wish to criticise Trump or pull up his administration when it falls short. Even the best administrations fall short. Never mind ones staffed with conspiracists and liars. The implications are terrifying.
All the while Trump’s particular style of “noisy” leadership feels structurally built to erode USA democracy. In Umberto Eco’s essay Censorship and Silence, the Italian twentieth century scholar argued that too much information was an intentional tactic. Noise becomes an instrument of censorship and a tool of totalitarianism. It drowns out what we should be hearing. Trump likely knows this; his constant chatter is, many believe, done on purpose, the chaos it creates aimed at frustrating and distracting the public.
This does not just concern people in the USA. It concerns all of us, especially anyone living under dictatorships. Autocrats benefit from our distraction. Is it any surprise that, with our attention fixed on Israel-Palestine and indeed the USA, Saudi Arabia has carried out the highest number of executions this year since 1990 and that few have spoken about this?
Moving forward our fears deepen for those who live in totalitarian states and we fear too for people in Ukraine, the Baltics and in the Middle East given Trump’s allegiances in those regions.
Trump was voted in – but concerns have been raised about how fair the election was, starting with accusations once again of Russian meddling, the fact that one of Trump’s biggest supporters (Elon Musk) runs a highly influential social media platform and offered money to people voting in swing states, and stories of ballot boxes being set on fire. But in the grand scheme of elections, where countries like North Korea don’t hold any, it is undeniable that the USA’s 2024 ones were closer to free and fair.
That his election was democratic provides no solace, however. The world is not short on examples of autocrats who received a popular vote at the start. Victor Orban. Narendra Modi. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. A vote is only one function of a democratic system and it is all too often imperfect.
As newspaper columnists address what led to this moment we pledge to work tirelessly to hold Trump to account on free speech.
When Index was launched in the early 1970s our mission was always to look at censorship everywhere and to not assume that we in the so-called West will have freedoms tomorrow just because we have them today. In the decades since we have tirelessly reported on and promoted free expression. We’ve successfully campaigned to change laws, to free prisoners of conscience, to get people off death row. We will continue to work in this way and we will report on every violation to free speech that Donald Trump and those in his government make. We will do our best to ensure the right to free expression does not bear the brunt of his presidency.
We know we need to make the case for free speech even stronger too. It is simply not good enough that the loudest voices talking about free speech are the very voices that want to dismantle it.
Today is a day of despair. It is also a day for collective action, for those of us who genuinely care about free speech to come together to protect and promote it. Please join us.
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6 Sep 2024 | Asia and Pacific, China, Hong Kong, News and features, Newsletters
It is September and the kids are back at school. Many will likely be excited for the year ahead but perhaps not Hong Kong students. They’re returning to a new lesson: Xi Jinping Thought. As announced this week, the curriculum has been updated in secondary schools to include teachings from China’s leader. The new module aims to instil “patriotic education”.
I pity these kids, I really do. Firstly because unlike Mao, who many saw as a great wordsmith (a tyrant yes but a tyrant who could write lyrically and coin a zinger, “revolution is not a dinner party” being one classic example), Xi’s words are flat. The Economist declared his Thought “woolly: a hodgepodge of Dengist and Maoist terminology combined with mostly vague ideas on topics ranging from the environment (making China “beautiful”) to building a “world-class” army.” The academic Kevin Carrico studied his Thought through a distance-learning course and wrote that it was impoverished. “It comes across as a cash-rich North Korea,” he said. I’ve never got very far. Sentences like “The fundamental reason why some of our comrades have weak ideals and faltering beliefs is that their views lack a firm grounding in historical materialism” contain too many words and too little meaning.
But beyond criticising the content is a much bigger issue. As one Hongkonger said in response to the announcement, it’s “brainwashing”. That it is. And more than that. It’s another way to strip Hong Kong of its unique identity. The curriculum is aimed at “cultivating students’ sense of nationhood, affection for our country and sense of national identity” and by identity that means one dictated through the narrow lens of the Chinese Communist Party from Beijing.
Since it was introduced formally in China in 2017, Xi Jinping Thought has become a mainstay of academic life throughout the country for all levels of students. In our forthcoming Autumn magazine, which looks at how scientists are being attacked worldwide, Chinese novelist Murong Xuecun lays bare some of the absurdities of this:
“Every scientist needs to study Xi’s speeches and thoughts. Their Western counterparts may not be able to empathise with this but imagine a group of physicists or astronomy professors sitting in a conference room at MIT or Harvard, studying Donald Trump’s or Joe Biden’s speeches, and then considering how much it would help in their research.”
Xi Jinping Thought should be relegated to the history books not promoted to textbooks. But classrooms have always been central to Beijing’s ambitions in Hong Kong, which partly explains why many of the protest leaders were students. In 2010, for example, then Hong Kong chief executive Donald Tsang announced plans to change primary education so that its messages were more in line with the CCP (one teaching manual called the CCP an “advanced, selfless and united ruling group”). These plans were shelved due to widespread protests, protests which themselves were later removed or reworded in textbooks. More recently, in 2022 history textbooks were rewritten to downplay the city’s colonial past. Today they’re taking the textbook meddling one step further.
Here’s a kicker: interference in textbooks by Beijing is happening in the UK too. The Telegraph reported this week that British GCSE books were edited to remove references to Taiwan after complaints from Chinese officials. The AQA GCSE Chinese textbook deleted references to “the Republic of China” (Taiwan) from subsequent editions. The first edition of the GCSE textbook said: “Yangmingshan National Park is the third national park of the Republic of China, and the park is located in the northern part of Taipei City.” Later editions: “Yangmingshan National Park is a very famous national park.”
The UK is not Hong Kong and the CCP cares a lot less about what British textbooks contain. And yet they still clearly care. There’s a long road to be taken before a few words removed from a Mandarin-teaching title turns into Xi Jinping Thought on the UK syllabus and it’s encouraging that Lord Alton raised the issue in Parliament this week. We must not journey further down this road and not just because his Thought is deathly dull.
Finally, on the note of back to school a reminder of the many girls of Afghanistan who are not starting school at all. Last year we gave the Index campaigning award to Matiullah Wesa, who together with his brother founded Pen Path, a remarkable organisation dedicated to improving girls’ education in Afghanistan. For over a decade, Wesa has travelled the country with his mobile library, distributing books to children and working to establish schools in conflict-riven areas. Today he meets with Taliban leaders to call for schools to be reopened for girls. Wesa is a frequent target of the Taliban and has been imprisoned. He dreams of a time when he can retire this work because access to education – a universal right – is respected and promoted in Afghanistan. Today that dream has never felt further away.
All of the above reinforces a line we often say at Index: freedoms are hard won and easily lost. So students: cherish learning, enjoy debate and never take the ability to enquire more, to read widely and to speak freely for granted.
10 May 2024 | Bahrain, Belarus, Brazil, Canada, China, Ecuador, Eritrea, Hong Kong, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Magazine Contents, Mexico, North Korea, Palestine, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Volume 53.01 Spring 2024
Contents
22 Mar 2024 | News and features, North Korea, Opinion, Romania, Russia, Ruth's blog, Rwanda
By international comparison, Putin’s ‘win’ in the recent elections in Russia was practically marginal.
Forget the ruthless despots of yesteryear; Putin’s victory could put him in the running for the title of “Worst Dictator Ever” securing as he did, just 87% of the vote and struggling to convince a whole 13% of Russia’s population that he deserves their vote.
Putin’s efforts to reach the dizzying heights of previous autocratic excellence is not without precedent.
Nicolae Ceaușescu, the Romanian maestro of self-delusion, once claimed a staggering 98.8% approval rating from voters who seemingly found his continued leadership irresistible.
And, of course, the multiple successes of Saddam Hussein, who, not content with anything less than perfection, treated himself to not one, but two elections where he waltzed away with a cool 99% of the vote, leaving the remaining 1% presumably too busy planning their escape routes to bother casting a ballot.
Even by recent standards, Putin’s election efforts fall into the ‘must try harder’ category. Take Paul Kagame – head of state in the unquestionably safe state of Rwanda – secured an impressive 98.8% of the vote in 2017. By coincidence, his two challengers were deemed not to have met the nomination threshold by the Rwandan Electoral Commission.
And even by Russian standards, Putin is an under-achiever. The absolutely above board and beyond reproach referendum in 2014 that took place in Crimea saw the Ukranian peninsula experience a collective outbreak of Russiophilia, with a jaw-dropping 96.77% of voters deciding that annexation was their number one wish.
But of course, when it comes to precarious polls, poor Putin is but an enthusiastic amateur of electoral absurdity when compared to North Korea’s Kim Jong Un whose 2019 flawless victory saw him win 100% of the vote. Imagine that, Putin. A leader so popular that no-one felt the need to vote against you.
So, at Index on Censorship, we offer our commiserations to Putin on an election which will inevitably cause him to struggle to look his fellow dictators in the eye. But he should take heart, for in the grand tapestry of dictatorial hubris, he may have fallen short of the coveted triple-digit approval rating, but he’s certainly earned his place in the hall of shame. Bravo!
But in all seriousness, dictators yearn for legitimacy but equally cannot resist inflating their egos with absurd election results. Putin’s 87% victory is merely the latest in a long line of autocrats entangled in their own delusions. For them, the allure of unchecked power is intoxicating, and the illusion of overwhelming support is irresistible. So they manipulate, coerce, and fabricate, all in the name of bolstering their image and maintaining their iron grip on power.
Yet, in their desperate pursuit of approval, they only reveal the hollow emptiness of their rule and the farcical nature of their so-called “elections.”
In the grand theatre of autocracy, where dictators vie for the title of “Most Absurd Electoral Farce,” Vladimir Putin may have inadvertently claimed the crown as the reigning champion of underachievement.
His inability to secure a unanimous victory serves as a glaring reminder of the limitations of his power and the resilience of those who dare to defy his iron grip.
While we chuckle at his inflated ego and his desperate grasp for legitimacy, let us not forget the sobering reality faced by millions of Russians who lack the freedom to express dissent without fear of reprisal.
We can poke fun at Putin’s absurdity but we must also reaffirm our commitment to democracy and freedom of expression, values that remain elusive for too many in Putin’s Russia.
And we stand with the 13%.
