The Fears of a Weak State

Last week, the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, voted through a new law permitting the violation of press freedoms of any foreign media network which may pose a “threat to national security”. Warmonger, hatemonger, fascist, and condemned corrupt politician, Benjamin Netanyahu spared no time to declare the Qatari news network Al Jazeera as public enemy number one and “terror channel” for its on-site reporting of Israeli war crimes and unrestricted murder of both civilians and international aid workers in Gaza.

Because a tyrant can never be tolerant of opposition. And since Al Jazeera is just about the only international news media still operating within Gazan borders, even though the Israel Defence Force (IDF) has been targetting journalists and those journalists’ families since long before the war (see, for example, the murder of Shireen Abu Akleh).

Some may be outraged by this new law. Some may get defensive, like zionists are wont to get. And some may be surprised. But the eradication of press freedoms are not news, nor isolated to Israel. Report after report, from organisation after organisation, sing the same tune: The freedom of the press is dwindling, far and wide. From Russia to the US, from Israel to Iran, and even from the “liberal capital” of the world – the European Union – news networks are being diminished. For much the same arguments, no matter where you go. Whether it’s the US presidential office hunting down Assange for exposing US war crimes, Russia targetting dissenting voices, Turkey jailing anyone who disagrees with Erdogan, or the EU trying (and failing) to ban Russia Today and Sputnik news channels, they all argue the same thing: That they’re fighting a war against misinformation.

Naturally, it’s the reigning regime which defines what’s misinformation and not. Which is understandable. Every weak government since the dawn of history has made great efforts to gain a monopoly of the country’s propaganda, from Rome to Nazi Germany, and beyond.

So instead of just decrying Israel as another apartheid rogue state, let us take a look at the very explicable mechanics behind the erosion of press freedoms, the loss of transparency of government, and the diminishing of public access to reliable and fact-checked information:

Let’s begin our journey with an informed public. Such a population is knowledgable of the minutiae of governance, and the implications of foreign policy and relations. Such a public is difficult to control by ruling parties, and hold their government accountable. They are a demanding sort, holding their leaders accountable and responsible, and aren’t easily swayed by ideological red herrings.

But it is difficult to find people who are willing to lead such a public, for people capable of taking responsibility are prone to avoid it. Instead, cowards and opportunists fill the ranks, who absolutely do not want an informed and knowledgable public. How much easier for them would it not be if the public were malleable and easily herded toward whatever new shiny thing that was dangled in front of them.

So as the quality of the leadership inevitably falter, the will to erode the intellectual capacity of its public is conversely increased. And with enough desire to undermine, or at the very least cease the maintenance of, the informed nature of the public, the institutions of upholding that virtue are slowly picked apart. Schools decline, news networks are turned into partisan propaganda machines, and science is being debated by people who never understood the scientific method. And as a result, people are made ignorant.

And though an ignorant public is easier to be herded by its government, it turns out that they’re also easier to be manipulated by other governments.

And once facts and knowledge becomes increasingly subservient to emotion and belief, that control becomes a tug-of-war with other puppeteers. Some of those outside voices may even maintain a modicum of integrity and offer facts and knowledge to the undermined public, but they’re easily rationalized into the same corner as belligerent foreign interests.

And so “national security” replaces “accountability”, and press freedoms are curbed to maintain the slipping control of the failing regime.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

If a government had a public which could tell truth from lies, then misinformation, foreign or otherwise, would be no threat. But which capitalist government could maintain its power with such a public to begin with? And so, the eradication of a free press inevitably follows, not as a sign of foreign threats or a destabilized geopolitical landscape, but as the consequence of domestic corruption of both the public and the elite.

For it is a weak state which fears information.

/Sebastian Lindberg 9/4-2024