The spectacle of forced confessions frequently seen on Chinese TV in the last few years is part of a wider trend in China: The Party-State is silencing alternative and dissident voices, with a new wave of censorship, intimidation, disappearances, arrests, and imprisonments. This current trend is not unique to China. Instead, sadly, it is part of a worldwide authoritarian turn. In many countries around the world, as in similar conjunctures of times past, authoritarians are taking power either by force, or, where elections exist, with a constituency of voters longing for a strongman.
Today's authoritarians share many things, especially their contempt for the truth, for freedom of expression, and for equality before the law, without which there can be no democracy. They congratulate each other on their purported efficiency in “telling it like it is,” and in “getting things done.” They seek to censor and to “guide” public opinion. Authoritarian China currently seems ahead of all others in monitoring, censoring, and managing public opinion, especially in the successful harnessing of a new digital universe of technologies to suppress dissent.
Today's authoritarians share many things, especially their contempt for the truth, for freedom of expression, and for equality before the law, without which there can be no democracy. They congratulate each other on their purported efficiency in “telling it like it is,” and in “getting things done.” They seek to censor and to “guide” public opinion. Authoritarian China currently seems ahead of all others in monitoring, censoring, and managing public opinion, especially in the successful harnessing of a new digital universe of technologies to suppress dissent.
