A mockery of ‘freedom of expression’

There are some who are unhappy that voters in India have twice voted in Narendra Modi as Prime Minister by giving the party he leads a majority in the Lok Sabha. Not a surprise then that from 2014 onwards, shrill and shriller tones and terms have been used to claim that India is no longer a democracy but a fascist state. Given that social media has overtaken mainstream media in reach and significance, it is instructive to note how many voices there are that appear online from within India that bemoan the country’s “descent into dictatorship”. And yet, the verdict of some is that there is no freedom of expression in India. Take Reporters Without Borders (RWB), which has reported that the index of press freedom in India shows the country slipping from 150 to the 161st position out of the 180 countries surveyed. Even Afghanistan and Pakistan, in their reckoning, have more freedom of the press than India does. The RWB has not concealed its bias towards that part of the world where it is situated, the Atlanticist countries. Ireland, Denmark and Norway had the “highest degree of press freedom” in the world. Check the media in these three champions of freedom of expression to find out the uniformity with which they echoed the NATO narrative on the Ukraine conflict. Someday, there needs to be an accounting of the jobs lost, the promotions denied, of those who in 2022 had the courage and the common sense to warn that the way NATO was acting during the Russia-Ukraine war that began on 24 February 2022 was going to result in grave damage, including to fundamental western interests. How many of the handful of critics of NATO’s policy in Ukraine who were in Ireland, Denmark and Norway were given a platform to express their views without getting silenced? Why were they de-platformed from “neutral” online platforms for their contrarian views?
Sadly, such a herd mentality has become a commonplace. In 2003, it was almost impossible to locate any commentator in the United States who warned (in the way this columnist did) that winning the conventional war against Saddam Hussein would be a cakewalk, but that it was hell which would follow. Not least for the Iraqi people. Has there been any effort in the three countries certified as having the freest press in the world to find out what happened to the gold and currency assets of Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi? Or to find out what happened to the properties of associates and family of the two dictators that were scattered across western cities? Perish the thought, for digging into such matters would not be conforming to what a “free” press is expected to do, which is to avoid inconvenient questions such as the siphoning off of oil from Libya, and Iraq. Or to show any interest in the sabotage of Nord Stream II? And after all this, there is bewilderment within the RWB that their table of rankings is increasingly being regarded with derision. And not just those indices dealing with the media. In 2008, there was no inkling from the top rating agencies of the meltdown that was soon to occur. Nor was any warning given of a situation this year when bank after bank was melting down, especially in the US. There are handbags that cost several thousand times what others do, not on the basis of quality but purely on the basis of a label. The Ukraine war and the mass hysteria that it unleashed in the Atlanticist world has had the effect of turning away from that group of countries, even those states that were long linked to it, such as Saudi Arabia. In China there are “freedom” indices where the rankings rise the more a media outlet agrees with the CCP view. So also in Russia, where the stance taken by the Kremlin is concerned. Judging by the uniformity with which the narrative of the Russia-Ukraine war has been said, it seems that the more a media outlet or a country marches in lockstep behind the West in matters of policy, the freer it is. In other words, the more tied to a particular view one is, the more one is certified as “free” by those promoting that view.
MDN