Dear FO° Reader,
When I was 19 years old, I found myself in a chilly hostel kitchen at 2 AM in St. Petersburg, Russia. Moments earlier, I had fled my dorm room after discovering a traveler’s worst nightmare on the off-white sheets: bedbugs. Seeking refuge, I ended up amongst a group of Russian university students. They were similar to their Spanish counterparts in their habit of staying up to the early morning hours.
The inky black night pressed up against the windows as my new friends poured me a cup of bitter tea. As the minutes ticked slowly by, our conversation drifted from pop culture (and their demands to know my opinion of Kanye West) to history and politics. I cracked a lighthearted joke, something about Putin’s puppets… And then the room went dead silent, each pair of eyes turning toward me. A blonde girl to my right leaned in close and solemnly whispered, “You can’t say that here. You don’t know who is listening.”
My smile dissolved as my surprise turned to confusion, then to uncomfortable realization. This was the first time in my life I had experienced such a blatant act of silencing, especially one rooted in government control rather than personal intolerance. The wonderland of diverse conversation and debate I have enjoyed throughout my life, from the family dinner table to specialized university courses, was a precious privilege that had never before been taken from me. Its absence was visceral.
I walked away with three realizations that day. One, Kanye West has a surprisingly large fanbase in Russia. Two, patterns of silencing are not unique to authoritarian leaning pseudo-democracies (a realization that grew slowly but surely in the years following). Three, Americans need a massive wake-up call.
Russia holds lessons for us Americans
Many in the United States have absorbed the narrative that Russia is an authoritarian regime, its media a propaganda machine controlled by a dictator and his cronies. Accounts of the ruthless elimination of anyone who dares speak out against Vladimir Putin’s government contribute to the image we have of Russia being an enemy of free speech. One such example is the death of Alexei Navalny, for which many blame Putin himself.
There are certainly elements of truth in these arguments that should not be ignored. Critical analysis and skepticism are important aspects of all democracies. However, it is all too easy to point fingers at government-led censorship while overlooking silencing tactics that have been thriving in our very own country. These practices are perhaps even more dangerous as they are often hidden in the status quo and reinforced through our own subconscious behavior.
Take an experience I had while attending university, two years after the incident in Russia. In one class, my small student group was tasked with understanding and defining antisemitism, drawing from our own research and insight to create a modern working definition. As we were brainstorming, I raised my hand and suggested we consider claims of Israel being an apartheid state as part of our research. Although the teacher was meant to take on the role of facilitator in this course, he paused for a moment, gave me a skeptical look, and said, “I don’t think we should use that word.” He then briskly redirected the conversation.
A red warning light went off in my brain. I sat quietly for the rest of class, slightly embarrassed and uncomfortable, but in a way I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It took me a few days to remember why the feeling felt so familiar. When I finally connected it to what I had felt that cold night in the hostel kitchen, dozens of other life experiences rose to my attention, each one sharing a common theme of silencing.
What concerns me most about this recognition of silencing in my own university, my own country, is not the fact that it exists. It is naive to believe that any nation has perfectly mastered freedom of speech — after all, politics is a word game, and democracies are no exception. What worries me most is that it took me a full 21 years of life to realize that silencing is alive and well in the US. Not only that, but it is in fact on the rise.
Where government bodies are not controlling media and discourse, the public itself is carrying out the task. Whether through close-mindedness in interpersonal relationships, attitudes contributing to polarization or participation in cancel culture, many Americans have unconsciously adopted patterns of silencing to a worrying degree. This eradicates safe, collaborative spaces in the public sphere and is a serious threat to democracy.
The world is a complicated place. Add in power politics, religious divides, cultural clashes, climate change, human rights crises — the list goes on — and ignorance truly does feel like bliss. Unfortunately, ignorance is simply something we cannot afford in today’s world. It is imperative that we become aware of these silencing techniques, both in places where it is expected, like Russia, and places where it is often overlooked, like the US.
Only by becoming conscious of these habits can we combat them, creating spaces where diversity of thought is welcomed and an individual’s right to express their beliefs is respected. Fair Observer is one such space, and it is their commitment to these values that makes me proud to be a part of the community.
Let us unlearn our patterns of silencing, and by doing so save our relationships, our communities and our countries.
Sincerely,
Emma Johnson
Assistant Editor
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