Category: Aryaan Misra

The tweet that broke the camel’s back

ARYAAN S. MISRA
STAFF WRITER

“I do not celebrate or feel pride in our having to ban @realDonaldTrump from Twitter” – Jack Dorsey

This was taken from a Twitter thread (ironically enough) tweeted by the cofounder of Twitter regarding their decision to remove President Trump from Twitter. That is a lot of ‘Twitter’ for one sentence, but I can’t help myself. It is as though Twitter is to discourse what Cajun seasoning is to a potato salad— the ingredient that enlivens an otherwise “meh” undertaking. Especially, since most discourse takes place on it.

Twitter: It’s What’s Happening (company slogan). Seemingly, it’s what’s always happening. It is this omnipresent, and arguably omnipotent, nature of Twitter that made the social media giant’s decision to remove the incumbent Commander in Chief of the world’s most powerful military from its platform international headlines.

What started with a platform which permits 280 characters rippled through corporations across the board— Facebook, Amazon and Snapchat— leaving many astonished that the billionaire President had Snap in the first place. But it wasn’t just social media companies. Visa, AT&T and Marriot all suspended their ties with Mr. Trump.

In light of this domino effect, many wondered if Trump just got #cancelled. Well, on Nov 4 President Trump was cancelled, democratically. The events of last month however, ranging from the Capitol riot to the rampant deplatforming of Trump, weren’t remotely democratic.

In Twitter’s defense, the company took several steps to warn @realDonaldTrump that his account was in jeopardy since his actions were directly in violation with the ‘terms of conditions’ he had voluntarily accepted. Twitter first disabled the ‘retweet’ feature on his tweets, then deleted specific tweets, then temporarily suspended his account (after which he continued tweeting from other accounts). His last tweet which called the rioters “lovely people” broke the camel’s back, and Twitter finally banned him.

But what about Amazon? Is the despicable insurrection attempt sufficient grounds for former POTUS to not receive 1-day Prime delivery?

While legislators debate the legal nuance of ‘incite’, they can do virtually nothing about Trump’s voice being sequestered. The Constitution protects private organizations from falling within the purview of the First Amendment. While Twitter and other companies didn’t do anything illegal, legal acts can be immoral.

I wager that free speech is as much an American value as it is a protected right, and it is the responsibility of American corporations to preserve that value. American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) stood against the decisions of tech giants saying, “President Trump can turn his press team or Fox News to communicate with the public, but others – like many Black, Brown and LGTBQ activists who have been censored by social media companies – will not have that luxury.”

“The key distinction between deplatforming Trump and traditional forms of censorship is that instead of the state restricting speech (such would be the case in China for example) restrictions on free speech are guided by media conglomerates,” says Luke Losie (’23). To allow corporations to wield such power is to set a daunting precedent, one which will be far more unjust for minority voices. Just because Mr. Trump is an unlikeable character, we rejoice that the online public sphere has become a saner place. But if Twitter existed in the Reichstag, Nazis would too have rejoiced at the suspension of Otto von Habsburg’s (Prince of Austria and an ardent anti-fascist) Twitter account.

“Partly it’s a monopoly problem,” said William Gorton, Associate Professor of Political Science. He adds, “Twitter, Facebook, and Amazon simply have too much market power. Perhaps Congress could look into regulating social media outlets via anti-trust legislation.” Regulating social media companies might be the key, and in fact anti-trust cases and allegations of monopoly marketing have been brought to the courts, but it will be a long time before Congress can reorganize the structure of such companies.

Nobody ever imagined 280 characters typed by the person with nuclear codes would determine foreign policy. Nobody ever imagined social media to become the dominant form of public discourse for every faction of the political spectrum. Twitter has more authoritarian leaders tweeting every hour, should they

be banned too? We are trudging through a new swamp, one that cannot be drained by banning @realDonaldTrump.

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Belarus – the last European Dictatorship

ARYAAN MISRA
STAFF WRITER

100,000 people on the streets, 12,000 arrested, 450 injured, and 50 missing.

These seemingly plain numbers carry on their shoulders the largest protest that Belarus has ever seen. A small landlocked country in Eastern Europe, Belarus emerged an independent state in 1991 after the Soviet Union collapsed. The country first held elections in 1994 which saw Alexander Lukashenko rise to power. Almost 25 years later, in 2020, the sixth Presidential elections were held, and Lukashenko won, again, for the sixth time. Belarusians took to the streets fearing five more years of the same leader that a majority of young Belarusians view as tyrannical. The protests were instigated when the election results gave Lukashenko an 80% majority of votes, which the opposition as well as some poll workers declared to be fraudulent.

Last week marked the 50th day of these protests, with protestors amassing support instead of diminishing in numbers. Belarusians between the ages of 18-40 seek change in a country fettered between unemployment and inflation. The real frustration of the protestors however doesn’t stem from economic issues, which are very real, but from the dictatorial style of governance adopted by the Lukashenko administration. Early 2020 saw the rise of a popular political commentator and blogger Sergei Tikhanovsky. His internet streams against President Lukashenko gained mass popularity, and he was seen by many as an alternative; an alternative with a real chance of victory. The popular will however was quashed before it bloomed into democratic participation as the present administration arrested Sergei under charges of treason.

This did not stop the movement, which was absorbed by Sergei’s wife, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, an English school teacher. The unprecedented presidential candidate rose to popularity, contrary to what most pundits speculated, including Lukashenko who claimed that a woman isn’t capable of the Office. Belarusians thought otherwise, and soon Svetlana became the face of the opposition movement—‘Stop the Coakroach’— alluding to the current President.

But popular support and democratic participation can go only so far while operating in a corrupt and dictatorial system. There is a reason Western scholars and journalists argue that Belarus is Europe’s last dictatorship, and this was exemplified once the results were out. Svetlana Tikhanovskaya was forced to seek political asylum in Lithuania as she faced threats from the current administration.

In the aftermath of the results several other female leaders disappeared from Minsk, capital of Belarus. One of them was Maria Kolesnikova. She was kidnapped by masked assailants and dragged into a van that drove up to the Ukraine border. There, she was forced to exile in Ukraine so as to limit her political influence. Political suppression isn’t new in this country, and this fact is driving the largest protests in the history of independent Belarus.

From BLM protests in US, to pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, this year has been characterized by mass protests engulfing nations. But the impact of each protest has varied, and to understand this better we approached Dr. Hulme, professor of political science at Alma College. “The repression of post-election protests in Belarus continues a longstanding pattern of authoritarian rule in the country”, said Dr. Hulme. We also asked him about the future of the protests, and whether the international community can help. “While the international community, including the European Union and the United Nations, have urged authorities to refrain from violence, such key figures as China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin have expressed support for the government and opposition to any external interference in the internal affairs of Belarus, making meaningful change unlikely in the foreseeable future.”

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