Opinion | Banning of RT and Sputnik silences alternative voices in bizarre celebration of media censorship

By J.B.Browne

Tears for Fears played their era-defining "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" on the night Russia invaded Ukraine on February 14, 2022.

Released in March 1985 toward the end of the first Cold War, the song's gigantic melody and timely geopolitical message made it a classic that still bears relevance today. Well, at least enough cultural cache for a poignant statement on Colbert's show.

Yet little known is that due to its political themes, the BBC — long enjoying an international reputation of championing freedom of expression — banned the song from being broadcast during the first Gulf War between August 2, 1990 – February 28, 1991.

Isn't media censorship the most perception-based hypocritical thing?

Last month European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced the EU's holier-than-thou intention to ban RT and Sputnik News, accusing them and the Kremlin of spreading 'harmful disinformation.'

In her speech, she described RT and Sputnik as part of "the Kremlin's media machine," in a statement that seemed to bolster the EU's free speech "democratic values." All EU member states allegedly respect these values so much that media outlets countering pro-NATO viewpoints are simply not tolerated. Fun fact: Von der Leyen's behind closed doors nomination is an insult to the very neoliberal policies the EU likes to define itself.

Nevertheless, as Google Europe moved to block YouTube channels associated with RT and Sputnik across Europe amid Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, the right to free speech as democracy's 'golden gift' to the world seemed only to celebrate stifling others' voices.

Free speech has long been considered one of the core merits of Western-style democracy, not just in the US, where the First Amendment says it guarantees it, but throughout the Western world. But when it comes to the collective West, when US-Western media interests are at stake, the lens of narrative control is swift to silence those with alternative perspectives.

The sacred paradigm of media existing as an independent entity in "free" Western Liberal Democracies is riddled with flagrant double standards. Western governments claim they live in free societies with no media censorship. Yet, the US tech elite is increasingly committed to authoritarian acts of technofeudalism whereby independent outlets are being shadowbanned or outright vanished for countering corporate media angles.

Russia retaliated by blocking access to the BBC, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and others — all government-funded news outlets that foment and disseminate Western government policy perspectives, i.e., propaganda, much like the accusations against RT and Sputnik with the Kremlin.

But let us not forget that Russia blocked western media AFTER the West blocked Russian media. Hilarious then that the collective West had the un-self-awareness to call these actions an 'attack on independent media.' In reality, all are owned by large private corporations or run directly by corresponding Western governments. These corporations are entirely under the thumb of the state that they are based, so nobody can seriously applaud Twitter or Facebook for curtailing accounts with less than 20K followers who have found an audience without the US government instructing them to do so.

In a world that has lost its head and all reason, facts and evidence give way to emotions and hysteria. From shutting down RT and Sputnik to closing down random social media accounts with counter-narrative voices, the US-led "free world" is hurtling itself towards neo-fascism akin to McCarthyism 2.0.

The real reasons have nothing to do with Russian propaganda. The US Director of National Intelligence report in 2007 clearly states that RT America specifically gave voice to third-party candidates, anti-imperialists, and anti-capitalists — journalists and reporters who couldn't discuss these issues anywhere else in the media landscape.

The move is part of a war against the entire alternative media universe whose pre-approved algorithms have hit counter voices hardest. If you take away the right to alternative perspectives, discussions will cease, and understanding and diplomacy will be annihilated. We're already in a 1984 dystopia where being canceled for having the 'wrong' opinion is the norm.

Since no information relating to a Russian viewpoint is allowed anymore, let's end on two forwarning quotes, one steeped in reality and one in fantasy — neither any less valid than the other given current events.

"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear."

— Harry S. Truman, Special Message to the Congress on the Internal Security of the United States, August 8, 1950

"When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar; you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say."

— George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings, November 16, 1998

As he would refer himself, J.B. Browne is a half "foreign devil" living with anxiety relieved by purchase. HK-born Writer/Musician/Tinkerer.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.

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