[Salon] Freedom Is In Retreat At Home and Abroad

FREEDOM IS IN RETREAT AT HOME AND ABROAD
                                      BY
                       ALLAN C. BROWNFELD
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When the Cold War ended and Communism was defeated, decades after Nazism had been eliminated, there was a widespread feeling that the world was entering a new era in which freedom and democracy would grow and finally prevail. The world we live in today shows us that, quite to the contrary, freedom seems to be in retreat.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in mid-April, described what he called a continued “recession” in basic rights and the rule of law over the past year as he unveiled the U.S. government’s annual assessment of human rights in the world.

He said that, “Governments are growing more brazen, reaching across borders to threaten and attack critics.” He cited an alleged effort by Iran’s government to abduct an Iranian American journalist, efforts by the Assad regime to threaten Syrians cooperating with German steps to try former regime officials, and Belarus’s diversion of a commercial flight to seize a journalist.

The report noted that the jailing of political opponents had become more common in 2021, with more than a million political prisoners detained in more than 65 countries. These include the imprisonment of peaceful protestors in Cuba; activists and advocates in Russia and Egypt, including Russian opposition leader Alexia Navalny and Egyptian human rights lawyer Mohammed al-Bacar, and opposition presidential candidates in Benin.

The report cited abuses by both allies and rivals, including forced disappearances in Saudi Arabia and what it characterized as ongoing acts of genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghur Muslims in China.   It also cited reprisals by Afghanistan authorities against members of the former government and steps to limit freedoms of women and girls, as well as abuses by all parties in the conflict in Ethiopia, including government troops from Eritrea.

Secretary Blinken noted that, “In few places have the human consequences of this decline been as stark as they are in the Russian government’s brutal war in Ukraine,” pointing to atrocities revealed by the recent withdrawal of Russian forces from some parts of the country. “We see what this receding tide is leaving in its wake —-the bodies, hands bound, left on streets ; the theaters, train stations, apartment buildings reduced to rubble with civilians inside.”

In Russia, long before the invasion of Ukraine, freedom was in retreat, in his talk after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in December, the editor of the Russian investigative newspaper Novak Gazeta, Dmitry Muratov declared that, “Journalism in Russia is going through a dark valley.” He said more than 100 journalists , media outlets, human rights defenders and nongovernmental organizations have been branded “foreign agents.” Many journalists lost their jobs and fled the country.

Now, Novaya Gazeta has suspended publication, threatened by the government for failing to label a group as a “foreign agent” and because of a new law that makes it a crime with penalties up to 15 years in prison to “discredit” the armed forces——including use of the words “war,” “invasion” or “attack” to describe President Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine. A day after the invasion, Novaya Gazeta expressed outrage with a front page banner headline: “Russia.Bombs. Ukraine.” The paper continued to report, including from a correspondent in Ukraine, until it could no longer do so.

For a brief period after the fall of Communism, a free press flourished in Russia. Those days are now over. Ekho Moskvy, a bastion of open discussion on radio and online, has been silenced and closed. TV Dozhd, founded in 2010, has suspended operations, and some of its journalists have fled. The popular news website Znak.com has also closed. Free speech is now dead in Russia, as it was under Communism, Vera Bashmakova, the editor of a popular science magazine, was detained when she arrived at preschool to pick up her daughter with a “No to war!” sign in her car window. She was charged with “discrediting the army.”

Even a country close to the U.S., and the recipient of massive U.S. foreign assistance, Israel, has been engaged in a more than 50-year illegal occupation of Palestinian territory. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Israeli group B’Tselem has accused Israel of practicing “apartheid” when it comes to Palestinians.

In our own country, democracy and freedom are also being challenged, although not by the government. On January 6, the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol by those who wanted to overthrow the results of a free and fair election——no evidence that any court found credible indicated a fraudulent result——was unprecedented. In much closer elections, such as that between George W. bush and Al Gore, Gore graciously conceded defeat. Yet, even now, in 2022, there are those who claim that our current president is illegitimate. Vice President Mike Pence resisted efforts to have him reject the electoral results. How ironic that when he was invited to speak at the University of Virginia, the editor of that school’s newspaper, The Cavalier Daily, led a campaign to prevent his talk. A strange attack on free speech at a great university founded by Thomas Jefferson. In the end, Pence spoke without incident.

But at many universities, many speakers with unpopular views of some kind have been shouted down—-the so-called “hecklers’ veto.” Discussing this growing threat to free speech, Erwin Chemerinsky , Dean of Berkeley Law School,and Howard Gillman, chancellor of the University of California at Irvine, note that, “Freedom of speech does not include a right to shout down others so they cannot be heard…It is profoundly disturbing that some students assert a right to determine what messages are acceptable on a campus and try to deprive others within the community of their right to invite or listen to speakers of their choice. If such a ‘heckler’s veto’ is allowed, the only speech that occurs will be that which no one cares enough about to shout down.”

In the view of Chemerinsky and Gillman, “College campuses should be a place where all ideas and views can be expressed. A primary goal of higher education is to empower students to critically analyze ideas across a broad spectrum of disciplines. The strengths and weaknesses of ideas are determined not by conformity to any pre-existing   orthodoxy, but through the process of rational argument and evidence-based reasoning. This is how better ideas gain more legitimacy and worse ideas are exposed and rebutted….Colleges and universities must be clear and emphatic that attempting to shut down such events will not be tolerated and those engaging in it face disciplinary action.”

It was always my hope that our society would see freedom expand rather than contract. This seemed to be happening. I lived in the South during the years of segregation. Slowly, we saw it come to an end. When I was in law school, I wrote a law review article about Virginia’s law against racial intermarriage. It seemed strange to me that Democrats in Virginia and elsewhere in the South said they believed in freedom but welcomed laws limiting freedom—-with regard to marriage, schools, restaurants and virtually every aspect of society. Finally in the case of Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court declared laws against interracial marriage unconstitutional.

Later, during the Vietnam War, I worked in the U.S. Senate. I participated in many debates about the war on college campuses around the country. I don’t remember any debate in which students in the audience tried to shout down the speakers. Often, the speakers would go out for a drink and continue the discussion. These were issues of life and death, but the discussions I remember were always civil. Now, many people cannot tolerate to listen to an opinion with which they disagree, even on questions far less serious than war or peace.

My hope is that we will start moving forward again. I remember difficult times, such as in 1968 when Martin Luther King was killed and our cities exploded. Tanks and soldiers patrolled Capitol Hill. Yet, we moved beyond that. Race relations improved and we elected a black president twice. What is unprecedented is how our political life has declined. Democrats and Republicans did not view themselves as “enemies” in the years I worked in Congress. They were busy forming coalitions on a variety of subjects. Together, Republicans and Democrats won the Cold War. Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neil worked together, and socialized. American politics and government worked. Now it doesn’t. Hopefully, it will work once again.

The hopes we all had for the advance of freedom and democracy after the end of the Cold War certainly seem in tatters at the present time. But things don’t continue to move in a single direction. It’s hard to believe that Vladimir Putin represents the future. Republicans and Democrats should join together to make certain that freedom and democracy will resume its march into the future. Our political leaders should be able to disagree on the issues before the country—-whether regarding health care, the environment, education or a host of other questions—-without condemning those on the other side as “traitors,” or even “pedophiles,” as some are now doing. Democracy will not endure without civility, and this is in increasingly short supply at the present time. People used to stop and think before they spoke. Now, in an age of Twitter and social media, people often do not. Democracy is increasingly threatened as a result. I used to think that my generation was going to leave America better than we found it. Now, sadly, I am not sure that this will be the case.