Abstract
As big economic forces like China and Russia shift global dynamics,
Two developments have already begun to transform political affairs and are likely to continue to do so over the coming years. The first is the rise of the so-called emerging economies or BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), as well as a series of middle-tier countries such as Indonesia and Nigeria.
The second is the rise of the internet. Because it is still thought of as an American invention and is in many respects still dominated by US companies, the internet is often seen as a means of transmitting American or, more broadly, western values. At issue is whether the BRICS – despite their citizens’ increasing use of the internet – has the potential to challenge these values.
In one scenario, US hegemony will gradually fade while the BRICS will increasingly take up the slack; the US will remain first among equals, but progressively unable to exert its authority. In another scenario, the BRICS will be increasingly subverted by the internet. The educated middle classes, which are bound to expand in both numbers and influence in the BRICS, will become progressively attracted to the liberating openness and freedom offered by the internet.
In 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton argued that ‘information has never been so free’. In a speech at Washington DC’s ‘Newseum’, she said, ‘there are more ways to spread more ideas to more people than at any moment in history’. ‘And even in authoritarian countries, information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable.’ This potential, according to optimists, was demonstrated by the role of social networking sites during the Arab Spring. It might be noted that things have not yet turned out as optimists hoped in the Arab world, but these are countries suffering from weak economies and divided societies. In countries that have reached a higher stage of development and can meet basic economic needs, might not optimism be more justified?
Gravitating towards censorship?
Current trends are not encouraging. China’s primary focus, most observers agree, is ensuring the continuation of the status quo, even if that means supporting or sustaining other autocracies. It has, for example, supported the dictatorial regimes of North Korea and Burma; it has regularly hindered or blocked UN attempts to pressure dictatorships in Iran, Zimbabwe and Libya; and it has invested heavily in the most oppressive states in Africa in an effort to secure the oil and mineral resources on which its economy relies, most notably in Sudan. Its support has prolonged violence in Darfur and Zimbabwe, extending Mugabe’s own political reign. Russia under Putin is similarly autocratic and becoming increasingly intolerant of dissent. It has used its control of oil and gas supplies to manipulate the political landscape in Ukraine and it has become a largely negative force in the UN, blocking Security Council Resolutions over Syria and Libya. Domestically, it has sought to crush civic activism, jailing members of the punk rock collective Pussy Riot and passing laws enabling the government to block websites.
Indeed, even those more democratic countries amongst the BRICS – Brazil, India and South Africa – are hard pressed to stand by their core values lest they lose authority in the regional context. India is conscious of multiple threats in its neighbourhood. Brazil has tentatively sought to induce reform in South America, but without making real headway. South Africa, for all its democratic values, risks becoming a one-party state by default. This creates the danger of corruption and authoritarianism, as Christi van der Westhuizen argued in the March 2013 issue of Index on Censorship.
In this sense, there are grounds for real anxiety that the multipolar world coming into view has already begun to tilt towards the principle of censorship rather than that of free speech. Might the internet be the tool that supports resistance to these authoritarian tendencies? Unfortunately, the internet can be as much a force for promoting closed societies and strengthening authoritarian regimes as it can be for promoting openness and democracy. As the revolutions in Egypt, Libya and Yemen began to take hold, for example, China – so concerned that these examples might be emulated at home – blocked search requests for key words such as ‘Egypt’, ‘Cairo’ and ‘Arab Spring’. North Korea has built a ring of steel around the internet that blocks all material not sanctioned by the regime. During the Egyptian Revolution, President Hosni Mubarak ordered the internet to be shut down in order to prevent dissidents organising protests over Facebook. Iran threatens violence against those who spread dissent on the internet and, like others, blocks numerous websites.
Not only can authoritarian regimes employ the somewhat crude tool of blocking URLs, they can also turn the information flows of the internet to their own advantage. They can gather data on potential dissidents while simultaneously encouraging the apolitical or disinterested into other harmless avenues of the internet. This is Russia’s policy. Rather than seeking to remove websites, they seek to distract netizens from engaging with politically dangerous material by channelling users into high-quality entertainment websites such as Russia.ru (which, it is worth mentioning, is owned by Gazprom).
Tools of control
China has tried to combine these two aspects of internet control. From July 2009, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced that all computers sold in China would be required to pre-install Green Dam, a piece of software that claimed to prevent access to online pornography and to collect data about which websites users visit. In reality, Green Dam was equipped to filter political and religious content. Happily, the program did not work in practice and after only a couple of months the requirement was retracted. Nevertheless, the attempt can be seen as the first step in seeking a self-censoring internet.
Perhaps the greatest fear, as Evgeny Morozov has argued in his book The Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate the World, is that the tools developed for targeting online advertising by collecting information about individuals’ interests could be reworked for the purpose of censorship. As well as recommending specific links which, based on an individual’s search and purchase history, are likely to appeal to the consumer, the system could also be used to provide considerable data about the online behaviour of dissidents and enable a form of customised censorship, targeted at the specific tendencies of the dissident user.
Some of the rising powers that will be increasingly influential in the new multipolar world, therefore, are seeking new ways to control information and to smother free speech, just as they pursue economic growth with little regard for the values and ideologies of those with whom they engage. Does that mean we should give up on the idea of the internet as a truly democratic and democratising force that can open authoritarian regimes and make them accountable? Optimists can retort that there is undoubtedly a thirst for knowledge and distrust for autocracy. Savvy Chinese users of the web can employ a number of devices, including overseas proxies, for gaining access to the information they seek. The sheer volume of sites and activity can overwhelm official snoopers and control mechanisms. While governments concentrate on efforts to deal with high-level political dissent, they risk popular outrage when they seek to hide evidence of official corruption and incompetence – and a drip-feed of scandalous disclosures can undermine their authority.
A struggle is underway between the internet as a liberator and as a repressor, between its ability to provide citizens with more information about their governments and opportunities for debate on the one hand, and to provide governments with more information about their citizens, allowing them to identify, target and silence (virtually or physically) opposition on the other. It is not possible to rely on the internet to act as a spur to an open society on its own. It provides a new medium in which the age-old struggle between liberalism and authoritarianism can be continued.