Last week we took a laughing-stock kinda look at the “controversy” of banning TikTok in the US, with a glimpse toward the wail that TikTok, a Chinese Big Corpo software psyops, represented some hallmark First Amendment right for the public.
It is not. There is nothing “free” about a corporate algorithm deciding who is heard where.
But worry not! If you’re concerned about your freedom of speech, or the lack thereof, in the gReAtEsT cOuNtRy On EaRtH, then oh boy do I have somewhere to point your infringed indignation! Just turn your ire over here!
That is what actual transgression of free speech looks like. When students – young people – those of us not yet encumbered with mortgages and compromised integrity – stand up against ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and colonialism, and in turn are censured by their academic institutions. Y’know, the kind of institutions that are SUPPOSED to be ramparts of higher cognition and moral upbringing, of truth and integrity, but instead prove to be cowardly cesspools of corporate dependency.
When universities threaten young people for expressing their democratic rights and political displeasure, THEN you have infringement upon your precious First Amendment privilege. When colleges send in the cavalry – quite fucking literally The Cavalry! – to disperse democratic congregations of protest, THEN your vaunted freedom of speech and expression and gathering is being threatened.
But no. Of course you don’t care about young people’s right to protest a morally corrupt government, not as much as you care about watching a never-ending stream of funny videos and cosmetic tutorials. But that’s not the real reason why you’re not as upset about the martial intervention against university protests as you are about losing your precious ha-ha brain-scramble. The real reason is that thousands and thousands of students all across your gLoRiOuS aMeRiCa don’t have a multi-million dollar ad department backing their message, so you don’t get those precious advertisements telling you what to think about the disruption of democratic discourse and protest. Because how could you ever make up your own mind if instructions weren’t given to you in neat one-minute bursts of custom engineered opinion. It’s not like you could do like these young people and take a stand against a wrong done by your civilization’s hand against another without clear commercial direction.
It says something about the institutions of higher learning in the US, when presidents and deans condemn and extra-judicially prosecute children for speaking up against injustice in an organized fashion. It makes it plain that those great palaces of learning have compromised moral authority for the benefit of political benefactors and corporate sponsors.
As it turns out, those rights of free speech are oh so sacred only for as long as you have nothing worthwhile to say.
/Sebastian Lindberg 30/5-2024
WastedWords 