In the region of the world that claims it has free speech a great many people appear to be tying their own tongues in knots.
A wide range of subjects and issues are now bordered by rules consisting of cancel culture barriers. Infringe on these and those doing so soon find out there are limits to a freedom they were told was inalienable.
These dogmas that are to be obeyed on sufferance of censure and loss of livelihood have varying degrees of sense to them. Naturally there are few circumstances in which voicing an admonition to kill is appropriate... yet for the U.S. military there is an obvious exception.
To use hate speech is also prohibited and with good cause, to maintain good order within society where prejudice doesn’t raise its ugly head by promoting division. Yet certain government officials are allowed a special dispensation when talking of nations not within the U.S. orbit of control.
To display racism is another case in point and the USA has one of the world’s worst records along with the previous white regime in South Africa. Yet the wars the USA has waged against other nations in recent years have all been against weaker nations with colored populations.
On the flip side there is the notion claimed in the western world of the free press and media. But just how “free” is it when certain narratives are clearly fixed in aspic and ruled to be incontrovertible? The best example is the New York Times’ output on the subject of Russia. How many balanced articles appear? How many journalists believe anything approaching a balanced article on Russia will be accepted by the editorial staff and published. The figure I am certain is zero.
How truly “free” can the ‘free press and media’ in the West be when the resultant journalistic product follows obviously strict guidelines on what can be said on such subjects as Vladimir Putin, Russia, China, Ukraine, Venezuela and others individuals and nations that the USA is seeking to depose, subvert, overthrow, destabilize and bring about regime change within?
The rules governing the etiquette of the cancel culture are quite loose in favor of prohibition. For some the slightest wavering from an agreed narrative is cause for cancellation. During the last four years and continuing to great extent still, anyone not adhering to certain motifs regarding Russia was fair game to be slandered, socially ostracized and denied access to a right of reply in mainstream media. The case of Professor Emeritus on Russia, Stephen F. Cohen is a case in point.
Unless you vocally salute the right narrative on Russia you are looked on as suspect at least and considered by many either a ‘Useful Idiot’, one of ‘Putin’s Puppets’ or a ‘Russian Agent’ and possibly a traitor to your country.
A similar standard of intolerance is shown to those who object to the evidence-free accusations against the Chinese Communist Party regarding the Wahhabi-influenced, previously terror-attack-inclined Uyghur minority. If you wish not to accept at face value accusations of genocide based merely on the word of activists you will immediately be called a ‘genocide denier’.
This was seen also in the attitude to ‘The White Helmets’ in Syria, the group formed by a former British intelligence officer and funded to the tune of $millions by western governments and their NGOs. To even suggest that they were not an even-handed, truly humanitarian entity was tantamount to a treasonable offense. To point out that they were an obvious CIA/MI6 construct would get you immediately framed as an ‘Assad Apologist’.
This is the portrait of freedom of speech in the western world that belies the oft stated noble principles on which it claims it stands resolute.
You can say what you want then be attacked for it, shamed for it, sacked for it, excluded for it and branded a near traitor for it. That is how free you are in the western world. If that is the definition by which freedom is gauged then I leave it to the reader to place their own estimate on exactly how free that “freedom” truly is.
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