Evgeny Morozov writes about how he thinks the techno-philes are far too sanguine in their characterization of Twitter as a weapon against totalitarianism:
The problem with this view is that it rests on a false premise. That premise is the conflation of political freedom with the freedom from obstruction of the satisfaction of appetite. In no way does the availability of the internet, television, McDonald's, porn and prostitutes preclude a police state. In fact, they make the hold of a police state more difficult to find and much more difficult to break. Against the machine of Communism, the West could promise a car in every driveway and a chicken in every pot. But what if citizens under Communism had access to cars and chickens, and those in power guaranteed that access? With an unlimited supply of bread and circuses, it is difficult to rouse the people to slough off tyrants.
You may think I'm overreaching with this thought experiment. You may say that it is impossible for a regime that is authoritarian to provide prosperity to its citizens. Yet we observe that the authoritarian countries of Asia are becoming far more prosperous, and under the Obama and Bush administrations, our prosperous country has become far more authoritarian. Nor am I the first to posit such a thing. Poulos and Deneen have done essentially the same thing here and here, respectively. Essentially, governments consolidate power not with force, but with prosperity and pleasure. Brave New World has supplanted Nineteen Eighty-Four as the future of civilization.
I don't pretend to know exactly where the West is headed, but if liberalism's future rests on the revolutionary potential of Facebook and Twitter, my bet is with the authoritarians.
Techno-utopianism is usually rooted in rigid and obsolete views about the relationship between authoritarianism and information. Most techno-utopians interpret the fact that authoritarian governments resort to censorship as a sign of their weakness. Hence, whenever authoritarian governments cede control over information, they are believed to become weaker. Thus, every time Chinese bloggers use proxy servers to access banned content, they are slowly eroding the Great Firewall of China. And where the firewalls fall, dictators soon follow.The eruption of enthusiasm for social networking sites during the riots in Tehran sounds like a libertarian version of Bush-Blair neoconservatism--that people all around the world living under authoritarian regimes are just waiting for their chance to breathe free. That everyone in the world, deep down, just wants to be...exactly like us. Besides throwing cold water on the Tweeter Twits' motherboard, Morozov goes on to make an insightful point:
This view is fatally flawed, as it understates the sophistication and flexibility of modern authoritarian states and overstates the democratic aspirations of their citizens. Western leaders have an unhealthy tendency to imagine politics in authoritarian states as being more hyperactive and participatory than the politics in their own countries. They implicitly view all Chinese, Russians and Iranians as hard-core news junkies and seasoned political dissidents. Authoritarian states are thus seen to be one step away from full-blown revolution – and waiting for the West to nudge them, whether via the Voice of America, BBC World, or judicious retweets.
...this [techno-phile view] is an anachronistic view of the world. Modern authoritarian states have eagerly (but selectively) embraced globalisation to provide their citizens with at least a modicum of self-actualisation without ever abandoning their authoritarianism. Their young people travel the world, learn English, use Skype and poke each other on Facebook - all while competing for comfortable jobs with state-owned companies. We are entering the age of "accommodating authoritarianism" - and the internet has played a crucial (though hardly the only) role in providing many of the accommodations.The deeper point here is that Westerners have become confused about what it means to be an "authoritarian" state and a "free" state. We assume that being "free" means being able to watch whatever TV shows we want, being able to eat whatever food we want, being able to have sex with whomever we want, etc. This flows from our conception of human beings as ultimately mobile bundles of desire, and thus, the actualization of our humanity (perfect "freedom") lies in the satisfaction of our appetites. An "authoritarian" state is assumed to be a state that restricts our access to those satisfactions, and a "free" one is one that works to satisfy as many varieties of desire as possible. Therefore, any break in these restrictions is assumed to be a movement towards "freedom" and any bolstering of them is assumed to be a movement away from "freedom." Social networking sites and the internet allow for a greater variety of appetite satisfactions, therefore social networking sites and the internet will spread freedom and undo authoritarianism.
The reason why the Chinese can download Weeds or Mad Men from peer-to-peer networks is not because the Chinese government can no longer police the web. It's because watching Weeds and Mad Men is what young people living under contemporary authoritarians are supposed to do. These societies no longer operate in the world of cultural scarcity; it's hard to nudge them towards dissent with the promise of blue jeans or prohibited vinyl records. For every Chinese blogger that the techno-utopians expect to fight their government via Twitter, there are a hundred others who feel content with the status quo.
In one respect, then, authoritarian states and modern democracies are very much alike: both have embraced hedonism as their main and only political ideology. The recent outburst of techno-utopianism in the West may thus be just another futile attempt to imagine a world where the purest ideal of Athenian democracy, uncorrupted by special interests and popular culture, is not only possible but could actually be facilitated by its more corrupt, frivolous, and somewhat culpable western sibling. This, of course, is an illusion. Citizens of modern authoritarian states face a choice between hedonism with stable prosperity (their status quo) and hedonism with unstable prosperity - the hedonism that may follow a tumultuous transition to democracy. Stability wins, with or without Twitter.
The problem with this view is that it rests on a false premise. That premise is the conflation of political freedom with the freedom from obstruction of the satisfaction of appetite. In no way does the availability of the internet, television, McDonald's, porn and prostitutes preclude a police state. In fact, they make the hold of a police state more difficult to find and much more difficult to break. Against the machine of Communism, the West could promise a car in every driveway and a chicken in every pot. But what if citizens under Communism had access to cars and chickens, and those in power guaranteed that access? With an unlimited supply of bread and circuses, it is difficult to rouse the people to slough off tyrants.
You may think I'm overreaching with this thought experiment. You may say that it is impossible for a regime that is authoritarian to provide prosperity to its citizens. Yet we observe that the authoritarian countries of Asia are becoming far more prosperous, and under the Obama and Bush administrations, our prosperous country has become far more authoritarian. Nor am I the first to posit such a thing. Poulos and Deneen have done essentially the same thing here and here, respectively. Essentially, governments consolidate power not with force, but with prosperity and pleasure. Brave New World has supplanted Nineteen Eighty-Four as the future of civilization.
I don't pretend to know exactly where the West is headed, but if liberalism's future rests on the revolutionary potential of Facebook and Twitter, my bet is with the authoritarians.
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