The dangers of un-freedom

When you ban anything which deviates from ‘acceptable’ narratives, you empower the bigots by shielding their worldview

"The issue involved here is quite a simple one: is every opinion, however unpopular — however foolish, even — entitled to a hearing? Put it in that form and nearly any English intellectual will feel that he ought to say ‘Yes’. But give it a concrete shape, and ask, ‘How about an attack on Stalin? Is that entitled to a hearing?’, and the answer more often than not will be ‘No’. In that case, the current orthodoxy happens to be challenged and so the principle of free speech lapses.” This was George Orwell lamenting the British press for its pro-Russian slant and its policies of censorship during the pallid years of the Second World War.

The Second World War may have ended long ago, but the war for free speech still rages. We need look no further: Pakistan, on this front, is generous in its deliverances. But how can the press be free in a country ranked fourth-most dangerous in the world for journalists. A country so uncomfortable with dissent that reporters, activists, governors, ministers, writers, academics — none’s been spared the wrecking ball of intolerance. The latest casualty is Khurram Zaki — a brave activist whose crime was his vocal opposition to Pakistan’s militant and extremist groups. His murderers? Here’s a hint: the Church of Mormonism had nothing to do with it.

Let this sink in for a moment. Khurram Zaki lost his life for speaking out against organised murderers. In any normal country, this kind of activism would be wholly unnecessary because this is a battle the state – with its monopoly over violence – should be fighting. And if indeed the state is fighting this battle as it claims, how then was Zaki killed by the same organised murderers he was agitating against? How were they able to get to him? This doesn’t sound like a state with monopoly over violence, this seems more like a free market of violence.

But here’s a more fundamental issue: in the 21st century. Activists in most countries are agitating over climate change, carbon emissions, wealth distribution and so on. Because in the 21st century, it seems bizarre you’d even have to convince anyone that killing in the name of religion, sect or ideology is wrong. It really is a red flag for a society when common sense becomes a cause worth agitating over — on pain of death at that. This points to a deeper malaise: when you censor speech/ideas, shrink the space for debate, ban anything which deviates from ‘acceptable’ narratives no longer tenable, you empower the bigots by shielding their worldview. Society, with no middle ground to tread on, is then pulled apart in opposite directions — simmering with bubbles of discontent as it approaches boiling point.

People who learn from history understand that freedom of expression is essential to a society’s development. It is convenient to rattle on about the merits of democracy, but absent its concomitant attributes (‘democratic values’) — free speech/expression amongst the strongest — we’re ultimately left with a democratic system only in name. The founding fathers of America understood this: the First Amendment to the US Constitution stands testament.

A lesson Pakistan has been slow to learn. This is not to discount that of late impressive strides have indeed been made towards greater freedom of expression. News channels and talk shows are refreshingly open in their criticism of the ruling establishment. Newspaper editorials run scathing commentaries on sordid developments warranting strong condemnation. But we know this is only part of the story; because we are all too aware of the no-go areas in our national discourse. Painstakingly, in spools of euphemisms, we approach these territories, recognising that a slip here, a folly there, could swiftly collapse the road ahead of us to an unexpected terminus.

It is in this backdrop that movies challenging state-sponsored narratives are frequently banned — Maalik and Amongst the Believers are recent examples. Even novels — works of fiction — deemed offensive to peoples’ sacred attachments have been banned both in the past and present. For a country desperate to repair its image by demonstrating tolerance for diversity in thought/opinion, that’s a terrible strategy. Does it work though, this witch-hunt approach? History offers lessons, none ending well for the crusher of dissent. Men like Kim Jong-il, Stalin, Pol Pot and Hitler are not remembered as great emissaries of reason. Rather, we remember them as great disruptions in man’s moral development across time. Besides a kindred itch for mass murder, what did these gents all have in common? Their fear and disdain for dissent. And fear is a dangerous animal, once unleashed it can disfigure the most stable of minds. Fear is also frequently irrational, it makes man paranoid. Saddam Hussain and Stalin spared not even their family members on the slightest whiff of suspicion.

It gets worse when entire state apparatuses become paranoid, sniffing and culling dissent as if guarding the greatest secret in the cosmos. The secret often turns out to be a bizarre narrative that runs like the plotline of a terrible novel; shoddy beginnings, patchy segues, obscure references, and a whole lot of fluff in between. But unlike novels, state narratives are offered up as truths. It is these mutilated truths that service the tyrant’s call to war; that dismantle the very portals of critical thinking crucial to a society’s moral and mental development. It is, therefore, not the vigilantes who take the law into their own hands who should concern us most. Like risks implicit in any noble endeavour we can ignore them. It’s the formal structures of the state that are the true Grim Reapers of free speech/expression.

Just imagine a world where men like Frederick Douglas and Martin Luther King Jr were robbed of their right to free speech? What would it look like? We can be assured it wouldn’t have Barack Obama giving funny speeches at White House convention dinners. But while America of yore is proof of free speech at its best, the America of today is a confirmation of its decline. The outcome, in the scary person of Donald Trump stares us in the face. Because were it not for an ascendant culture of ‘trigger-sensitive’ political correctness that’s swallowed American discourse of late, there wouldn’t be any Trump-shaped holes of discontent in the mainstream American consciousness. Feelings of disaffection are, after all, the dog-whistle of the sniffing demagogue. For too long, middle class Americans feared the immigrants were taking their jobs, but the issue always got relegated behind a firewall of political correctness. Well, Trump is here now to build walls — he “makes the best walls” — to keep em’ out.  The lesson? Wringing the neck of free speech is the curtain-raiser to the extremist’s entry.

Pakistan should take heed. Because we also know dissent suppressed too long makes people reckless. At some point down the continuum, the tyrant and the suppressed meet, and we can no longer tell one from the other. It was Orwell again who said, “These people don’t see that if you encourage totalitarian methods, the time may come when they will be used against you instead of for you.”

Published in The Express Tribune, May 14^th, 2016.

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