The United States has always touted itself as the paragon of freedom of expression globally. The superpower has used this virtue to judge other countries\u2019 democratic credentials, and even going ahead to enforce the enactment of certain statutes to make these countries adhere to this tenet.<\/p>\n
But the reality in the US is different. According to a communique released by China\u2019s Ministry of Foreign Affairs mid-March, freedom of Speech in the US is not worthy of the name. The communique states that the US violates freedom of speech at home, and accuses the country of manipulating this freedom in foreign countries.<\/p>\n
The communique says the US has long purported its\u2002freedom of speech\u2002and\u2002pursued double standards, covering up domestic political manipulation and social injustice with empty political slogans and hypocritical moral mask of so-called \u201cfreedom of speech\u201d.\u2002At home, political fights trample on free speech, press interference threatens free speech, and social media violates free speech.<\/p>\n
In the\u2002international arena, the US\u2002is daydreaming about continuing to speak\u2002for all, obstructing the democratisation of international relations with hegemonic practices, destroying international public opinion environment with smear\u2002campaigns, and deluding the\u2002international community with self-glorified images and high-sounding\u2002rhetoric.<\/p>\n
Freedom of speech in\u2002the US has fallen in recent years. In a 2022 national poll conducted by The New York Times\u2002and Siena College, 66 percent of participants\u2002say\u2002they do\u2002not believe that Americans enjoy free speech. Eight percent\u2002also say Americans don\u2019t have any freedom of speech. In recent years, due to political polarization and political violence, people have become more cautious or even reticent when talking about political topics, fearing attacks and reprisals. 46 percent said that American society is far less free to talk about politics\u2002compared with a decade ago.<\/p>\n
The US government manipulates epidemic information and suppresses truth-telling voices. Helen Zhu, a female doctor of Chinese descent who warned about the epidemic in the United States and reported the test results, was given a gag order by the administration.\u2002Captain Crozier, who told the truth about the epidemic on the aircraft carrier USS Roosevelt, was sacked. Some officials\u2002in the State Department and Defense Department,\u2002who dared\u2002to speak the truth,\u2002have all been laid off.\u2002Fauci, an infectious disease expert known as the US\u2002\u201danti-epidemic captain,\u201d has \u201cdisappeared\u201d many times.<\/p>\n
Freedom of speech\u2002in the US\u2002has\u2002a problem of\u2002racial discrimination. The perception of free\u2002speech among white groups is significantly stronger than black groups where freedom of speech is more restricted. Tracing\u2002back the\u2002US\u2002history, freedom of speech has never been fully and equally applied to the black community, and\u2002state governments\u2002have\u2002used discretion to suppress\u2002rights of the black community\u2002for a long time. The black community is often treated differently when it comes to free speech.<\/p>\n
The US government also restricts\u2002the coverage of news events by media. In 2021, a number of journalists were harassed or harmed by police while reporting on popular protests against the police killings of George Floyd and Dawn Wright. According to the US Freedom of the Press Tracker, there were 128 incidents of press freedom violations across the US in 2022, including 40 attacks on journalists and 15 arrests or prosecutions.\u2002In 2023, at least 12 journalists in the United States were arrested or charged, and several were criminally convicted for normal news reporting.<\/p>\n
Social media and the interest groups it represented block free speech. The New York Post\u2002reported on March 30, 2023, that Twitter removed nearly 5,000 tweets about \u201ctransgender protests\u201d outside the US Supreme Court, citing \u201cincitement to violence.\u201d As more and more users expressed doubts about deleting tweets, Twitter changed its excuse, saying the deletion was due to the system\u2019s automated identification and deletion process without considering the specific content of the tweet. More shockingly, Twitter instead suspended The Washington Post\u2019s Twitter account after it reported massive deletion of tweets on its Twitter account. The New\u2002York Post\u2002commented Twitter\u2019s move to ban The Washington Post\u2002is \u201cseriously inconsistent with its declared free speech.\u201d<\/p>\n
American media has one-sided interpretation of news events and malicious coverage of China-related news. The US media interpreted the withdrawal of American universities from the World University and Professional Rankings as a righteous act against the tyranny of American higher education, but interpreted the withdrawal of some Chinese universities from the world rankings as China\u2019s \u201cclosed-door\u2002policy\u201d in the field of science.\u2002Some US politicians and media denounced the US people\u2019s siege of the Capitol over the presidential election as riots. The street violence in Hong Kong, China, however,\u2002has been glorified as \u201cthe pursuit of democracy and freedom\u201d and \u201cthe beautiful sight.\u201d<\/p>\n
American social networking sites spread a large number of false information to hinder the Democratic Republic of Congo\u2002government\u2019s efforts to fight the Ebola epidemic. In 2018, following another Ebola outbreak in the DRC, social media such as Twitter and Facebook spread suspicions saying that the outbreak did not exist\u2002and questioning the government\u2019s rhetoric about its response to the disease, which caused\u2002severe disruption to the local fight against the Ebola epidemic. A 2019 study in the medical journal The Lancet\u2002noted that false information had led a quarter of locals to believe Ebola did not exist and a third to believe the virus was only used to destabilise the region.<\/p>\n
The post Separating the wheat and the chaff in America\u2019s freedom of speech<\/a> first appeared on KBC<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The United States has always touted itself as the paragon of freedom of expression globally. The superpower has used this virtue to judge other countries\u2019 democratic credentials, and even going ahead to enforce the enactment of certain statutes to make these countries adhere to this tenet. But the reality in the US is different. According […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17414\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}