LAST WEEK, the Global Times printed an article called “Top accounting firms urged to fire pro-riot staff.”
The article discussed Chinese efforts to pressure certain firms to ‘fire employees found to have the wrong stance on the current Hong Kong situation.’ Interestingly, a significant portion of these efforts came from private netizens, not government personnel.
Now, for those of you not paying attention, this is how crackdowns on political speech works in the age of the internet. They don’t involve batons or tear gas but social pressure, financial pressure, lawfare and the modern day version of gossip. Show up in a bad rally or voice contentious opinions, and you’re not likely to go to jail – no, that would be fascistic (and fascism is baaaad) – but instead, you will get piled on by an e-mob or hounded out of the job by your own HR department.
This is how modern speech suppression works. The system no longer uses the mailed fist of the state. Instead, itt now uses more subtle tools, particularly those which conceal the real power structure. It uses corporations, private groups, paid shills, NGO’s and even entire online communities to manipulate what is said online.
The state can still swing down the baton of state hard power, of course, but tear gas and death squads are obsolete in this day and age. Today, it’s much easier and more politically viable to quietly control the electronic public space and pressure corporations to control their staff and consumers, while stirring up an online mob on social media.
These tactics exist everywhere, and not just in so-called totalitarian countries. Governments use these tools because they are easy to use and offer minimal risks. They’re not perfect, of course, and like most weapons they have their limits, but contemporary models of online censorship and monitoring are more effective at suppressing dissent.
We see these measures already being implemented all over the world in the form of social credit scores in China, online de-platforming in the US, algorithm manipulation by large tech giants and the subtle use of soft power whenever organized dissent pops up. The methods are more subtle compared to riot suppression, but the goals remain the same: Control Over Public Discourse.
He who controls discourse controls the mind, and in the age of the social media and internet the mind (and by extension, political discourse) is no longer on the streets but in the internet, where it has taken on a more fluid and hyper-real character. (jdr456@gmail.com/PN)
