Title: “Land of the Free?” Censorship IndexThe Summer Issues explore the fundamental freedoms enshrined in the US Constitution, the freedom to religion, speech, press, protest and petition, are being dismantled by the current Trump administration.
In addition to cutting funding for research institutions, national broadcasters and USAID, index Editor Sarah Dawood highlights the Trump administration’s increasingly powerful response to criticism, including refusing and canceling visas, the deployment of National Guard to police protests, and the threat to universities that are deemed ideologically unfriendly.
The frontline library
Book bans in US schools and public libraries are increasingly targeting cultures of independent thinking and tolerance, Katy Dancedown writes. While three states, Utah, South Carolina and Tennessee, are actively enforcing their authority to ban books, in Texas, the new bill gives school boards the authority to oversee book selection.
The ban is often the result of well-organized campaigns by right-wing advocacy groups opposed to the history of gender identity and racial justice in schools and education. As Dancey-Downs writes, this is more than reducing the library catalog. It’s about controlling your ideas. ”
The trend that Penn America’s Sabrina Vita describes as “clearly non-American” is escalating beyond schools and public libraries. The US Navy has removed the book “Dei” from the US Naval Academy Library, but the National Park Service has removed all references to “transgender” from the website of the most important LGBTQ rights memorial in the country.
However, some states have taken steps to oppose such censorship, adopting laws that prohibit the ban on books and prevent governments from removing books politically. Meanwhile, Penn America will work with publishers, authors and families to take legal action against book bans in school libraries in Tennessee and Florida.
Erdogan’s book leaves
In Turkey, the country’s struggled scholars, artists and independent media fear that the increasingly authoritarian US has less room to pilot.
Recept Tayyip Erdoğan came to power in 2016, and his administration “begins to launch a culture war with those who are considered limits and deviants,” explains Kaya Genç, independent journalists and scholars, publications, activists and NGOs rely heavily on international funding and support. The closure of USAID and other US funds means that “the ability of civil society institutions and independent media to maintain some form of independence is currently under threat.”
According to Genç, Trump’s attack on academic freedom is inspired by Erdogan. He cites the incident at Boazici University in Istanbul. His government-appointed president sparked massive protests by firing liberal scholars and banning their LGBTQ+ society. “As Erdogan and Trump borrow from each other’s playbooks on multiple fronts, he writes, “students, academics, journalists, and citizens willing to express their views may be facing the ominous outlook of a tweaked, unified, globally accepted dictatorship in the near future.”
Abandoning East Asia
The Trump administration’s closure of US-funded international media has shut down international media such as Voice of America and Radio Free Asia (RFA), affecting freedom of speech and access to information in East Asia, reports Rebecca L. Root. Outlets like these “a lifeline and offer a window into what’s happening at home and abroad amidst wars, hunger, disasters, conflicts.”
The RFA first aired in 1996 and aired in nine languages in China, Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and North Korea. Without it, citizens of these countries write that they lack an alternative to censored local media and propaganda. The RFA has now been required to cut off contracts for most regional reporters who worked underground in authoritarian countries such as Cambodia and Myanmar, and is currently barely protected.
Many RFA-based Asian employees are in a precarious position as their visas are subject to employment status. Returning home can take a serious risk in light of the abuse of power that has helped many of them to expose. The RFA filed a lawsuit against the government, but legal proceedings could be dragged down. Unless other funders are found, East Asian citizens will remain within the scope of information.
Lessons of resistance
Can the Soviet opposition experience guide American political activists in the fight against oppression and censorship? Martin Bright quotes the historian Benjamin Nathan. Pulitzer-Winning Account I believe that the Soviet anti-establishment movements have seen a growing similarity between the oppressive political situation in the United States and the situation facing Soviet regime opponents.
Soviet rebels such as Russian mathematician and poet Alexander Etheinin Bolpin – the man once described by fellow Vladimir Bukovsky as “pathologically honest” could be a source of inspiration for liberal activists in the US. Esenin Volpin called the Soviet government and explained that it was not a classic revolutionary radicalism, but that it was a ignorance of the constitution of its people.
As Nathan argues, in a situation where “the courts and the press are at the forefront,” radical civil submission may be more effective than traditional protests. After all, from George Washington to Alexei Navalny, in his mind, it is in his “a fundamental refusal to accept institutional implications.”
Review by Alastair Gill
Source: Eurozine – www.eurozine.com
