By Barry Rubin
I have just been informed that my PJ article, “Egypt: As Grim Islamists March Toward Power, The Naïve Dance in Tahrir Square” has been barred on sites used by officials of a European government–hint, they speak English there and it is the birthplace of modern democracy and free speech–on the grounds that this article is “hate speech.”
What this means is that if you work for any institution that is part of this government–including the Foreign or Defense ministries–you cannot read this PJ Media column on your computer if it is part of that server.
My reader asks sarcastically if complaining about this action would constitute a “thought crime” on his part.
Update: A reliable reader reports the same thing happened on a business computer in the United States where the sheriff is apparently something called DansGuardian.
This is the first time ever that one of my articles has been so flagged. But it brings out an important point: A computer program that picks out “key words” can accuse you of a crime and block your free speech. If I had to guess at the phrase it would be my reference (that’s a guess) to “Muslim [space inserted to avoid censorship] riots” in France several years ago. But they were riots by Muslims and that is not only factually correct but necessary for making an important point.
Apparently, this system has done the same thing to articles by other people before though I don’t know the details.
So there are three problems here:
–Free speech is now conditional on someone’s judgment of your viewpoint. This also has a chilling effect since the reader might say, “I’m not the kind of person who wants to see hate speech!” or frightened, “What if my employer sees that I’m viewing such material? I might be fired or not promoted!”
–That judge isn’t even a human being but a computer program that makes arbitrary selections out of context. Would the phrases “Christian riot,” “Hindu riot,” “Jewish riot,” “Caucasian riot,” etc., trigger an accusation of hate speech? Who decides? Where is this information available to the public? Perhaps we might be told what we are and aren’t allowed to say now so we can save time by censoring ourselves.
–As far as I can see, all of the intimidation and censorship are in one direction. It’s like in Lebanon where all these moderate politicians, judges, and journalists were attacked and assassinated while not a single supporter of Hizballah or Syrian-Iranian client was hit.
I’ve spoken at universities where people were practically trembling and the meeting was made pretty secret. My invitation to give a purely academic lecture at a state university in the United States that regularly features radical Islamists was barred by the department on flimsy grounds. I’ve had one noted university publisher change its mind on a book project because a board member objected to having an Israeli write about Arab politics and by another university publisher at the last minute–in violation of its own rules–for purely political reasons.
And that’s nothing compared to what other people have suffered including less of employment, attacks by demonstrators, banning from social media, being on the continual receiving end of “hate mail,” and so on.
Yet virtually nothing like this ever happens to those “on the other side.” On the contrary, they are given every possible advantage and benefit despite the low quality of their work (ridiculously politicized and unproven theses; blatant classroom bias) and at times their inability to meet the rules (academic promotion without an impressive publications’ record, for example).
I cannot even figure out who I am supposedly telling people to “hate” in this article. Is it “hate speech” to argue anything other than that the Muslim Brotherhood is a moderate pro-democratic group?
Are the messages of Hamas, Hizballah, Hizb al-Tahrir, the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaida, and the Taliban, groups that explicitly and deliberately call for genocide, ever blocked as “hate speech?” I’ve never heard of that happening.
Well, Western democracies have finally accepted censorship based on the clever lie that they are only protecting people from racism and those who want to incite violence and murder. The door that this action has opened has now made possible what liberals and democrats have warned against for more than a century–even though people claiming to be liberals and democrats are responsible for this–giving authorities the power to block and ban political views that they don’t like.
It’s proper to defend the rights of those who are being provocative in some way. But we have gone far beyond that: the censorship of straight political analysis that conflicts with the “official line” and that’s a line determined by a software program. A lawyer points out that employers have a right to stop their workers from using official computers to play games or engage in personal activities. But blocking non-relevant sites is quite different from accusing people of crimes, censoring speech, having an official governmental standard of impermissible phrases, and blocking people from reading material that is relevant for their work.
Note: You can see that I have left in phrases like “Jewish riot” and “Christian riot” while altering the phrase “Muslim [Hi! Isn't the weather beautiful today?] riot.” So let’s see if this article gets censored. Do let me know.
Barry, this confirms that we live in a most dangerous time. But don’t stop. It’s particularly critical now that your analysis (and all informed analysis) reaches the readers in the West. You’re doing a great job. Please keep going.
I agree that the article in question, taken in isolation, certainly doesn’t rise to the level of hate speech.
However you brought up the notion of whether this had been happening for years. In this sense, I would say that your body of work occupies the same intellectual space as black culture websites like The Root and TheGrio and so many others and which I regard as hate speech-lite.
Although you cite many facts too often they are unsourced or with unfinished context. You use reason and logic but seem immune to any reason or logic that refutes your general view of Arabs and Muslims which seems to be one of marked disdain.
While I share your concern with Islam I feel you are in danger of, as Phillipe Roger writes in “The American Enemy: The History of French Anti-Americanism”, “As Satre could have put it, in France, anti-Americanism’s existence always preceded any essence of America.” It seems your negative view of Arabs puts the cart before the horse and you simply cherry pick facts and events to support your already formed views.
In this sense, all the rhetoric seems to be an irrelevant smokescreen for the already formed views like at The Root, etc. – namely, white people bad, black people good. In your case Jews good, Muslims bad. You have a lot of ammunition on your side, most of it in my view, but not all the ammunition. When one is absolutely right all the time, credibility flies out the window and one arrives to the realm of possible hate speech. In this sense I would say that such considerations as Palestinian Arabs portrayed as invented people and disagreement with Israel constituting anti-Semitism are extremely ill-advised and hurt your cause more than help it.
The reason it hurts it is because if someone can successfully challenge those views using reason and logic it goes without saying that those on both sides of the issue wouldn’t change their minds one bit, both still clinging to the high ground. But one must be vulnerable to logic and reason in order to effectively use it.
Since, as I say, I share many of your views of Islam, I realize the fine line being trod and how difficult it is to try and remain impartial. In the end however, I feel you have failed to do so as well as you could.
No one is totally bad and it is important to not stereotype Muslims while at the same time not ignoring the very real and present medieval influences and intolerance that suffuses the Islamic world in its stricter adherents who sadly too often have undue influence due to violence and the threat of violence. It is totally accurate to say that the presence of only a couple million Muslims in America has totally shut down any idea of using them as fodder for comedy and satire which is a great tradition in America.
These are only my opinions and I hope you will accept them in the spirit in which they are meant which is one of peace. Believe me I understand the concept of appeasement and Hitler and of letting bullies have their way but this “useful idiots” and “self-hating Jew” thing has been carried way too far in the broader dialogue.
In the end, being we’re all adults here, I think we fail to admit the extent to which we have simply chosen sides and then come up with reasons to discredit the other side as an after thought. Those who disagree are doing so as well and unless you want to fight for another 60 years and believe Muslims are eternally hopeless I would re-think matters. The Germans and Japanese cultures went insane but have come around almost 180 degrees in a few decades.
Today this is represented in the Middle East by some Shia in southern Iraq and such groups as Hizbollah and Hamas who are not freedom fighters but virtual Nazis. They must be isolated and discredited and if necessary destroyed.
So yes I would keep my powder dry, very dry.
I am not discounting the idea that a man knows his audience and that without a side being chosen and a choir, taking a fair play approach can gain little attention.
You totally misrepresent Rubin’s views. And you also produce more “hate speech” than Rubin when you say you have “concern with Islam” while Rubin talks about Islamism, not Islam in general, and even wrote an article arguing with readers who think there are no moderate Muslims. He also wrote a lot about the heroic struggle of Arab liberals.
Disagreements with or criticism of Israel aren’t anti-Semitism, but libels and lies, by omission or by commission, often stem from irrational hatred or have some purpose. Inventing things that never happened or failing to report things that did happen, disinforming and misrepresenting reality, always in the same direction, aren’t criticism, but propaganda. For instance, saying or implying that absorbing thousands of rockets is nothing but a mere nusance (and therefore doesn’t justify a military response to prevent such attacks), or failing to report most of the rocket attacks all together, isn’t criticism, but misrepresentation of reality for propaganda purposes. Claiming there was a great massacre, extraordinary in scope and brutality, and even a genocide, where no massacre took place is not criticising Israel, it’s a blood libel. Why do they do that is a matter for speculation. But that they do that isn’t a matter of speculation, but of fact. All journalists, being human, have their biases, but it’s a matter of degree. Talking about genocide where there wasn’t even a small-scale massacre is well beyond a simple bias. And of course, a public disinformed like that for decades develops its own bias, hatred and knee-jerk reactions. It shouldn’t be a wonder that some Jews suspect antisemitism is at play. We’ve seen this kind of things before.
“The Germans and Japanese cultures went insane but have come around almost 180 degrees in a few decades.”
Indeed, and when they went insane it caused the deaths and enslavement of tens of millions of people – in WWII, in genocides (Jews and Roma), in forced labor camps, in the murder of gay and disabled people, in the murder and imprisonment of political oppenents under the Nazi, Fascist and Communist regimes. If Barry Rubin had lived back then and warned in strong terms about the grim prospects of the Nazis and Fascists coming to power would that constitute racist anti-German and anti-Italisn hate speech, or would he be correct about those parties and about the general atmosphere in Europe back then? Rubin warns about the rise to power of Islamist parties. Of course, if you think the Muslim Brotherhood is a moderate, peaceful, democratic movement, and you think Rubin is just making up their radical tendency, then you might suspect it stems from irrational hatred. But if the MB is indeed a radical, anti-liberal movement then he’s correct to warn about them. And it’s a fact that the majority if Egyptian Muslims have elected the MB and the Salafists, and that the liberals there are weak. Perhaps things will change some decades from now, hopefully they will come around almost 180 degrees like Europe did. But we’re talking about what’s happening now, not what will hopefully happen in the future. And for now there aren’t many good news coming from the Middle East.
In fact Mr. Ruben is not solely talking about what is happening now but indulges in prediction just as frequently and frequently unsourced, such as writing the MB has made a deal with the army which charge is an important crux to his extrapolations which follow.
I don’t think you should comment about such affairs. You yourself on one day now say a “concern with Islam” constitutes hate speech which is totally in keeping with you view that mere “disagreements” stem from “irrational hatred” and then go on to condemn Islam in far stronger terms than I have done while bewilderingly argue I should then indulge in even stronger hate speech by being more critical of Islam?
You missed the point about what I wrote and then threw in a bunch of straw man arguments that have nothing to do with anything I said.
Now you misrepresent what I said as well.
1. I didn’t say your expressing concerns with Islam constitutes hate speech, but “hate speech”. By the same standards Rubin’s article is deemed “hate speech” for being concerned with Islamism, which is a political theocratic movement within Islam, your concern with Islam as a whole consitutes a greater degree of “hate speech”. I never said those standards were my own standards, which is why I used quotes around “hate speech”.
2. I didn’t condemn Islam anywhere in the comment where you say I did. I spoke of the Muslim Brotherhood and the current state of affairs in the Middle East, where the liberals are a weak minority in most countries, and Islamist movements enjoy a wide support. Islamism isn’t the same as Islam – it’s a theocratic political movement. There are interpretations of Islam that don’t support an Islamic theocracy, and there are Muslims who want a liberal society. Condemning Islamism can be equated with condemning fascism, and condemning the supporters of Islamist parties can be equated with condemning the supporters of fascist parties. The fact is that at this time Islamist parties enjoy large following in the Middle East, like in the past fascist parties enjoyed large following in certain places in Europe. Saying either of these doesn’t make me a racist, a hater of Euros or Arabs, or even anti-Islam as a whole. The Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists aren’t synonymous with Islam.
3. Likewise I didn’t say you should be more critical of Islam. I didn’t discuss Islam anywhere in this comment, and I rarely discuss Islam in general. I spoke of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafists and the current state of affairs in the Middle East. These aren’t synonymous with Islam.
4. I never said that, to quote you, “mere “disagreements” stem from “irrational hatred””. I mentioned some examples of a trend in the coverage of the Middle East, a trend that consistently lies – emphasis on lie – against one party in a conflict and in favor of the other party. Claiming there was a great massacre, and even genocide, where there was no massacre isn’t a disagreement or criticism, it’s simply a lie. When lies abound the motivation for it can’t be a simple rational discourse, disagreement or criticism. Criticism should be of something real. If someone makes up a story about something I didn’t do and then “criticizes” me for doing this thing I didn’t do, it’s not criticism or disagreement and it certainly isn’t rational. This is why today some people suspect it stems from antisemitism – not because of mere criticism of Israel or disagreement with its policies, but because of the large amounts of lies, ommissions and misrepresentation of reality in the public discourse, which is the result mainly of misinformation in the mass media.
First they came for Michael Savage… (Pastor Martin Niemoller)
Michael Savage: Banned in Britain
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/may/06/world/fg-britain-list6
“First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.”
This banning-speech action seems to say much more about the country doing the banning than it does about the content of a particular artile by Mr Rubin.
To me, the disturbing thing to be examined in detail is who, exactly, put the pressure on who, exactly, inside that particular European government, and what, exactly, that pressure consisted of…easier said than done, granted…..we may never know….but it in itself would be nicely revealing.
So, I say, “Don’t stop, Mr Rubin!”.
I am opposed to the restriction of expression on the grounds that it is “hate speech” except in the very extreme case of the direct and explicit encouragement to commit violent or destructive acts. I am very much more afraid of the censorship of free speech.
While reading other comments in this thread, I came across what I nominate as the greatest single-sentence historical obfuscation of all time:
“The Germans and Japanese cultures went insane but have come around almost 180 degrees in a few decades.”
There was this historical event called World War II that happened in between. I believe “went insane” is a euphemism for becoming militarily aggressive, and plunging the world into war. Persuading them to “come around” required complete military and political subjugation, at a cost of tens of millions of lives, and much of the world in ruins.
The statement might even be banned by vigilant hate-speech monitors; after all, without WWII, there is no Holocaust.
Pretty hard to obfuscate an event as big as WW II. By “insane” I meant coming around to believe in racial principles and backing those up with naked conquest and murder.
Everyone knows what it took to end that so why mention it like I hoped it was hidden? Since we know the war it took to make them come around it was not that I was talking about but the subjugation of the mentality that started the war. In a few short years Germany and Japan had put the hatred behind them and looked to the future, something the Palestinian Arabs cannot do.
If my comment was the “greatest single-sentence historical obfuscation of all time” you must have started reading yesterday.
So it’s France?
Seriously now, has your reader said what software product the filter is? The ministries probably have a third party product. From what little information there is here, it might be Kaspersky. Here’s an example of their block message:
http://forum.kaspersky.com/lofiversion/index.php/t109442.html
You would need more information to be sure, though. Once you find out what software it is, you can start looking into whether it was blocked by a person in the government or at that company. If it was someone at the software company, ask them to unblock it. If they refuse, get them into an email exchange where they look rude and obnoxious while you remain polite, and send it to all the tech blogs. If the block was added by a government employee, it may be worth considering that certain countries in Europe have notoriously strong libel laws.
Charles Johnson of the blog littlegreenfootballs will unleash his attack dogs against any commentator should they be so foolish as to quote you in a comment, that is, if he doesn’t ban them outright.
As Tom Lehrer said: “I hate anyone who does not love his fellow man!” Those who want to ban what they call “hate speech,” hate those who disagree with them. I hate censors!
A pedantic point. Which everyone here knows. The abridgement of free speech isn’t a failure of democracy. Its a failure of something more important. If it happened in the United States, we would call it a failure of the constitutional republic some very brave men gave to us. A violation That rare little principal that there are some few things no one has a right to take from another man no matter how well intentioned.
Now if you said democracy cannot survive without that concept. I guess I don’t know. I would say it doesn’t matter. We have no business installing sham democracies – if that is what we are doing.
You are probably right in guessing that it is the result of some computer algorithm. I worked in a public service office in Australia. We were allowed to surf the net for un-work-related sites in our free time, but there was some program which prevented access to “inappropriate” sites. Mostly, I think, it was intended to disallow pornography, but also included some “hate” sites. However, the algorithm was erratic. Sometimes a particular site would have access denied; at other times it could be accessed. Once the whole of Geocites was off limits. Many of the assessible sites were just as “bad” as the access-denied sites, and many of the denied sites were perfectly reasonable by any definition.
It is quite likely that you are the innocent victim of an erratic algorithm.
I wouldn’t jump to conclusions: such filtering programs aren’t exact and often ban sites as “pornography” or “hate” without them being so.
Call it what it is: SHARIA. In Europe (see Geert Wilders, Elizabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff) and in Canada (see Ezra Levant), people are being hauled before kangaroo commissions and kangaroo courts and convicted of “offending” Muslims. That is all it takes, because Muslims and their Leftist abettors are the ones who take these lethal “hate speech” laws and exploit them to silence critics.
Hillary Clinton is also working hard to curry favor with our Muslim enemy, and through the Organization of Islamic Countries and the UN, she has promised to “stop Islamophobia” – which is code for squelching the rights and free speech of anyone who criticizes Islam, offends Muslim sensibilities, or speaks honestly about their heinous practices or their barbaric, murderous, and thieving founder Muhammad.
Of course the cartoons or “Motoons” happened a couple years ago, and in addition to dozens of deaths across the globe due to “Muslim outrage”, many of the cartoonists still live in fear, one has even had an attempt on his life by axe wielding Muslim enemies.
There are many other examples of what just happened to Barry Rubin. Join the club. Even authors here at PJM will ban commenters if they are too vociferous in their criticism of Islam and Muslims, or those who shill for Muslims.
Well, one wonders what is meant by “vociferous” since calls for pre-emptive nuke strikes to take out the Middle East are rather common. There was an instance where a Totten follower referred to Muslims as “pigs” and “savages” and reposted wondering why he had not been called out. This is aside from other comments portraying Egyptians as “groveling” and “cowards” that I called out but no one else did. To the contrary, I had opposition.
Contrast that with depicting as anti-Semitic people who even disagree with Israeli policies. The bar is at once very high and very low and the double standard enormous.
Totten? Totten? I made no mention of the brittle egotist and Islamophile Michael J. Totten…
This happens in Israel too. I used to work for the largest HMO, Clalit Health Services. Apart from the fact that we were supposed to use IE6 (in 2010-11!), a server censorbot was there, understandably, to block anything that could hog bandwidth, such as video streaming, internet radio, and the Israel Meteorological Service website as well! Apart from that, many sites were blocked for “pornography”, “weapons”, and “hate speech”. Included in the latter, was most of the even vaguely pro-Israel blogosphere. Stormfront and Rense.com were NOT deemed sufficiently hateful! Go figure!
BR: “I have just been informed that my PJ article, “Egypt: As Grim Islamists March Toward Power, The Naïve Dance in Tahrir Square” has been barred on sites used by officials of a European government–hint, they speak English there and it is the birthplace of modern democracy and free speech–on the grounds that this article is ‘hate speech.’”
Islam contains a legal/political system called Sharia Law. Islamic Sharia Law is totalitarian law. Totalitarian legal systems, including Islamic Sharia, are based on superior rights for an elite few at the top (the Islamist ruling class) and inferior rights for the masses at the bottom – especially the great mass of women and the great mass of non-Muslims at the bottom. Superior rights for a few at the expense of others is the definition of tyranny. Tyranny is evil. Hatred of evil is good.
“Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.” Thomas Jefferson
“The fear of the Lord is to hate evil.” Proverbs
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I am not surprised that freedom of expression is the first freedom to be erased in Europe.
When European governments gave up their sovereignty to Brussels by joining the EU it was only a matter of time before they surrendered their independence on other matters as well.
America is heading in this direction as well, and if Obama and his stooges get four more years much of the Bill of Rights will be erased.
I am not surprised but still shocked by such developments. Much is being filtered so the truth and authentic views cannot get to the mass public. Unfortunately the daily diet of news for many is actually propaganda to direct the thinking and actions of society for vested interests of the leadership’s motives.
I can relate to your article and it’s very scary what people are turning into. A while ago I was playing a video game and being the proud Jewish American that I am, I wanted to make my game icon the Israeli flag. As if that wasn’t enough to attract the attention of every Jew hater, there was another player on an American server that had the flag of Hizballah as his icon. I reported him to the administrator of the server and told them that it was a terrorist flag and I only did it to bring it to their attention. What they did with that information was entirely up to them, after about an hour and a half of virtually everyone yelling at me and telling me that I was harassing this other player and that his flag was a legitimate icon, I finally decided to go on the Department of Defense website to find a link that clearly stated that Hizballah was a terrorist organization and it still took them about 30 minutes to eventually tell the player to change the icon or get banned. He refused to change it and was banned, I am sure that he’s still around and they probably let him back in, but even though this relatively minor incident would be brushed off by many, it was something that frightened me and now after reading this I am even more worried and concerned about the direction that not only America is going in, but also the world in general. These times are seeming to be more and more like pre-1939 time’s with the rise of antisemitism all over the world. Sometimes I almost feel like the goyim are a few short steps away from making it a crime to have strong pro-Jewish or pro-Israel views at all. It’s not the increase in anti-semitism that scares me, it’s the decrease in combating it that really worries me.