Why It’s So Scary to Write about Politics on the Internet

The written word has the power to not only heal us, to reconnect us with our innermost selves, but also to instill fear and hatred just as much as love and devotion, often two sides of the same coin. Its political potential can be explosive, with the ability to stir proponents and adversaries alike into action. With this in mind, history’s centuries-long tug-of-war between widespread literacy and public censorship should come as little surprise.

Even the first book to ever be mass produced, The Bible, ultimately served a political goal during the Protestant Revolution, as Martin Luther encouraged his followers to read Scripture themselves in protest against the Catholic Church. (Perhaps we should all do the same with classic works of political philosophy).

Given my love of both language and politics in my own life, journalism naturally felt like the right choice. I won’t hide my disappointment, however, upon finding out that the media landscape passed down to my generation — at least in the United States — was fragmented and forced. Every report felt rehearsed, with a top-down approach that was squashed or stretched to fit into a preexisting world view. Extra points for shock factor. 

History’s centuries-long tug-of-war between widespread literacy and public censorship should come as little surprise.

Perhaps journalism has always been this way, but you can’t blame a teenager who grew up reading Mark Twain and other political satirists from dreaming of a better world. Whenever I stepped out of the written world — slow, meditative — and into the real one, I saw soundbites and fast-moving talking heads that would slowly become screaming ones. I saw a father who, convinced that the world was against him, watched Fox News every day, every evening another scapegoat for one of life’s problems.

Silencing Voices in Politics

Over the past decade, the Internet has given birth to — or should I say, rather, thrown a spotlight on — a growing body of men who have been stewing in their rage for decades, at last united by the anonymity and protection that private corners of the Internet provide. One only has to look at the rise of “male influencers” in what is known as the “manosphere” for evidence of such.

Granted, many of these men find themselves in a world that no longer “needs” them. As women have increasingly been able to provide for their own material needs, due in part to access to higher education, many men lack the opportunity to fulfill the breadwinner or provider role that they have been conditioned for. Is it any coincidence that the “trad wife” has recently recaptured the public’s attention? 

Women and their perceived rejection of “toxic masculinity” become convenient scapegoats for wider socio-economic changes.

Similarly, as wealth inequality rises, many middle and working-class men are forced to compete with one another over access to dwindling economic resources such as stable, high-paying jobs, especially in traditionally masculine sectors such as manufacturing. In this context, women and their perceived rejection of “toxic masculinity” become convenient scapegoats for wider socio-economic changes, leading in part to the rise in online misogyny reported online. 

Expressing feminist viewpoints in this context does indeed come with a risk, especially for women in politics, who consistently report being the target of hate speech. Such tactics are part of a larger historical trend to outright exclude or at the very least dissuade women from entering politics, which has been and still remains a “man’s game”. From The Democratic Republic of the Congo to Afghanistan, it should once again come as little surprise that when despots rise to power in regime change around the world, female voices, along with other minority groups, are often the first to be suppressed.

Indeed, democratic backsliding around the world, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic, puts freedom of expression more generally at ever-greater risk. According to the 2024 Global Expression Report published by the freedom of speech advocacy group Article 19, only about a quarter of the world’s population, mostly in Western democracies, live in “open” societies. Even still, many of these countries, including the United States, have witnessed a considerable downgrading in their level of freedom of expression since the beginning of the century.

When despots rise to power in regime change around the world, female voices are often the first to be suppressed.

This rings even more true when we consider the ongoing decline of local news, as well as the “monopolization” of media outlets through the consolidation efforts of a handful of established families and corporations, especially within the English-speaking world. Not only has this limited the scope of healthy public debate, but it has led to a lack of transparency in media finance, making it all the more difficult to hold news owners accountable. (I’ll just take a moment here to bring into question the ongoing usefulness of privately-owned news outlets. Media cooperatives, for example, which are owned by their workers and financially supported by their readers, offer a more viable alternative to keeping independent journalism alive.)

In any case, what is clear is that the ownership of news by big business makes it more and more difficult to dismount — or at the very least speak out against — many of the policies that media-owning corporations support. That means that many of the critiques I make here on Politicized — against neoliberal economic thinking, the decay of the welfare state and the stagnation of worker pay and overall rights — feels riskier and riskier, especially as an independent researcher and writer without the protection of a news outlet or other collective organization (alas another hurdle for the freelancer).

Many Western democracies have witnessed a considerable downgrading in their level of freedom of expression since the beginning of the century.

But as I stop to think about it, that, dear reader, is exactly the point. Our current backdrop of individualism, media-owning big business and Internet spaces that scapegoat the “other” — whoever that may be depending on the issue du jour — is designed to make us feel isolated and afraid to speak out about politics.

Speaking Out Anyways

When I still dreamed about working for The New York Times from my teenage bedroom, I began to mirror the thoughts and feelings of my Dad in order not to be on the receiving end of his anger. Backlash indeed has a face and I saw it every day of my life for years. 

I naturally became a very angry person too, which, much like him, I used as a shield against life’s tribulations. It carried me through more than 6 years of studies in political science and economics, which I might not have survived had I not been fueled by a burning desire to prove him wrong. But my rage began to quite literally eat away at me from the inside, eventually making me physically ill. When I finally removed the shield I had worn all those years, I finally understood that underneath anger there is nothing but fear: a fear of being vulnerable, of losing face.

The backlash that one risks both for speaking out can often be so dissuasive that censorship laws are not even needed. The threat of verbal abuse or, in most cases, more violent forms of retaliation are enough to give rise to a kind of self-censorship. While more and more spaces on the Internet do pose a threat, pushing many to withdraw into silence, there are also just as many if not more that have allowed for positive means of expression, bonding many over a shared pursuit of justice.

It is not this wickedness that should be feared, but those who recognize it and choose to stay silent.

The world indeed seems to have been robbed of its light in the past few months (and in particular, the past few days). Again, perhaps it has always been this way, but the accessibility of the Internet has made it ever easier to tap out of our everyday reality and into a projected one, one that can feel hopeless at times. But as I force myself to log off the online world for the day, I offer some words of wisdom to my younger self in search of some lucidity.

There have been many moments throughout history in which society — and indeed humanity — appeared to be on the brink of collapse (and maybe, sooner or later, collapse is indeed inevitable). From war to enslavement to genocide, the immoral acts of which human beings are capable have long been documented. It is not this wickedness that should be feared, but those who recognize it and choose to stay silent. We should not despair when greed or power show their true face, they always will; despair when there are no longer those willing to speak out against it.

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