THE PROBLEM
Brits are rightly indignant when democracy is subverted to silence voices: especially when it happens abroad. In spite of the breakdown of boundaries in cyber-space, “elsewhere” is still generally where the UK acknowledges the existence of dissidents, as a readable signal that a state has become less democratic and cannot tolerate disagreement.
While police and all agencies struggle with the global cyber harassment tsunami, trying to adapt to new, often extreme polarities of privacy and exposure, and their effects, reactionary forces greedily exploit new possibilities for deceit and crime.
All emerging information about the extent of unhealthy interdependence of “authority” establishment and “cultural” establishment points to a terrifying exponential subversion of democracy by the powerful, creating a class of accidental dissidents along the way.
Agencies are struggling, even with definitions, so how do you make sense of the chaos, to evaluate with any certainty what actions or inactions by the state point to an actual loss of “press” freedom as opposed to “just” blogger’s paranoia?
In a world of covert-ops and hate-crime, how do you know if you’re just radically unpopular or if you’ve accidentally become a dissident?
Here are ten red lights: if authority buys into these, you may be paranoid, but your lack of press freedom is far from imaginary.
10 SIGNS YOU’VE BECOME AN ACCIDENTAL DISSIDENT
1.. False uncertainty about what constitutes publication
If authority applies arbitrary different standards to bloggers or journalists, giving Mickey Mouse reasons for it, it’s likely that you’ll be penalised for saying the wrong thing, a sign of interference with press freedom.
2. ¡STOP! Defamation
A new form of an old form of abuse that we’ve called ¡STOP! Defamation. Provoking defamation is published, and no right of reply is either offered or taken. By this method it is possible to both provoke and defame targets and they can do nothing about it.
3. Smearing
Plain old mental health smearing with a modern twist. When combined with ¡STOP! Defamation it’s a powerful combination because when the humiliating provocation produces the desired distressed reaction it can be used to fuel the smear and so on in an endless circle.
4. Fit-ups
It’s a no brainer that things like cutting up sentences to put words into somebody’s mouth a pretty obvious sign that your press freedom is being interfered with.
5. Stasi tactics – gas lighting, portraying genuine productive activism as a desperate need to be seen as special. Whistleblowers are all used to these, a sure sign your freedom of expression is being degraded.
6. Being special. Finding that laws, legal principle and legal process have been specially changed just for you.
7. Making ordinary things extraordinary when you do them. For example claiming that writing an “Open Letter” about gate-keeping is somehow unusual when it’s actually quite a common occurrence.
8. Statements against scientific enquiry. For example arbitrary statements of the impossibility of certain types of abuse that are quite well documented.
8 Gobbledegook, distortion and muddle – prejudice amplification.
Promoting contradictory gobbledegook e.g. punishment for excessive publication at the same time as claiming “lipservice “to publishing. It’s self evident that Press freedoms cannot be upheld by authorities holding that publications both do and do not exist at the same time!
Doublespeak such as for example that publication weeks after an event was “immediate”.
9.Word Salad
Making absurd claims about the meanings of words that contradict the dictionary.
Eg. claiming writing one article is “prolific”
10. Misreporting Human Rights Issues.
THE GOLD STANDARD
These are just some of the ways press freedom can be interfered with on the internet. If you’ve experienced any of these you’re very likely not just paranoid, although they are techniques designed to induce paranoia.
Having experienced all of them myself, I have come out the same way as I went in: with Orwell. It’s obvious that facts and opinion clearly separated and offering right of reply is the gold standard of publishing what the establishment wishes to remain hidden.
For a tiny independent that is really perhaps really just a mommy blog, we’ve certainly had more than our fair share of press freedom issues to contend with and on this world press freedom day 2016 we can claim to have put both South Wales and London on the map.
Your very good health! 🙂
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censorship, dissidents, evidence tampering, Human Rights, press freedom, world press freedom day 2016
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