The West Versus the Rest and The Myth of Western Exceptionalism by Imad A. Moosa

Author:Imad A. Moosa
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9783031265600
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

He is right, and this is why he has always been in trouble for expressing his views fearlessly. What kind of freedom of speech is this when one cannot say that men and women are different? And what purpose does this oppression serve?

These days, you are expected to believe the official government narrative on current affairs or else. This is no different from the freedom of speech in the Iraq of Saddam Hussein where citizens had absolute freedom to express views that glorify the foresighted president and the father of the nation. You could be in trouble for expressing a view on the war in Ukraine that questions the official narrative, which is peddled by the mainstream media. You cannot exercise your human right to “seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media”, because Western governments, which allegedly believe in free speech and the right of individuals to seek any information through any media, have closed down RT studios in Washington, London and elsewhere. Even the privately owned social media have cracked down on views that do not agree with the official narrative. Free media have become a thing of the past. Thanks to the brave men and women like George Galloway, Max Blumenthal, Jimmy Dore, Abbey Martin, and Gonzalo Lira that we can still hear the other side of the story.

An attempt has been made by the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation to confiscate the freedom of speech of some high-profile American citizens by compiling a (black) list of politicians, academics, and activists who allegedly promote “Russian propaganda”. The list includes, among others, Senator Rand Paul and former member of the House of Representative, Tulsi Gabbard. The list also includes political scientist John Mearsheimer and journalist Glenn Greenwald. Military analyst Edward Luttwak was placed on the list for suggesting that referendums should be held in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions concerning their relation to Ukraine (Dean, 2022).

Even though the freedom of speech, expression, and opinion has become of a thing of the past, it is still claimed as a Western value that is practised in the West, but not in the Rest. Ivens (2022) quotes the leading civil rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson who once said that “Britain is not a land of free speech” but rather “it is a land of expensive speech”, meaning that money talks and that the haves can speak freely but the have-nots cannot for fear of defamation lawsuits. That was said in relation to the questions raised about the source of the wealth that the Russian oligarchs brought to London, which they obtained from a corrupt privatization programme overseen by a drunken and corrupt leader known as Boris Yeltsin (the darling of the West). Ivens points out that “few asked hard questions about the origins of the oligarchs’ wealth, and those who did were silenced by the U.K.’s archaic and expensive libel laws, which place the burden of proof on the defendant”.

Freedom of speech is incompatible with political correctness, which has been taken too far in the West.

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