Title : WHAT URSELA LINDSEY GETS WRONG ABOUT NETFLIX
link : WHAT URSELA LINDSEY GETS WRONG ABOUT NETFLIX
WHAT URSELA LINDSEY GETS WRONG ABOUT NETFLIX
Netflix Chose a New Market Over Free Speech. That Sets a Disturbing Precedent.
By: Ursela Lindsey
New York Times
14 January 2018
RABAT, Morocco — International media companies and platforms would have us all consume the same movies, television shows and music, streamed across the globe. Unfortunately, censorship is becoming globalized alongside culture.
In response to a request by Saudi authorities, Netflix recently removed an episode of the stand-up comedy show “Patriot Act,” featuring Hasan Minhaj. The Saudi government accused Mr. Minhaj’s show of violating the kingdom’s vague and broad cybercrime law forbidding the “production, preparation, transmission or storage of material impinging on public order, religious values, public morals and privacy online.”
In the offending episode, Mr. Minhaj eviscerated Prince Mohammed bin Salman, holding him responsible for the murder of the columnist Jamal Khashoggi and the Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen. He also mocked the crown prince’s recent efforts to cast himself as a modernizer and a reformer.
By making the episode unavailable in Saudi Arabia, Netflix became complicit in the pervasive censorship that artists, entertainers, journalists and regular citizens have long had to deal with in the Middle East.
That censorship has only worsened in recent years. Freedom of speech is under assault worldwide, as authoritarian governments shrink the space for dissent and further criminalize various forms of expression.
Arab countries are not unique in having laws that criminalize offenses to heads of state, to national institutions such as the army and to national and religious values. Entertainers and creators whose words rub the authorities the wrong way can be accused of vague crimes like tarnishing the country’s reputation, offending public morals, inciting unrest or shaking the foundations of national security.
Stand-up is a relatively new entertainment form in Arab countries. But the region has a long tradition of humor in theater, film, political cartoons and the constantly evolving repertoire of jokes told on the streets of Cairo, Beirut and Algiers.
The years following the Arab Spring were marked by an outpouring of creativity, dissent and wit. So many people were making fun of the ruling class that they couldn’t be silenced or punished. Social media played a huge role in spreading these barbs and takedowns.
In Egypt, where I lived during the Arab Spring, the comedian Bassem Youssef — who modeled himself on Jon Stewart — became a phenomenal success, making fun of government officials, hypocritical media figures and bigots. He mocked the bumbling Islamist president Mohammed Morsi relentlessly, and was both taken to court and lionized for it.
The freedom that Mr. Bassem and others like him enjoyed was short lived. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were threatened by the popular uprisings of 2011 and bankrolled a counterrevolution, squashing protests in Bahrain and encouraging the Egyptian military to depose Mr. Morsi and take power. The authoritarian regimes that came to power determined to roll back the demands of the Arab Spring proceeded to ensure that what they saw as disrespectful speech was curtailed and policed.
After President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi took over in 2013, Mr. Youssef was harassed and threatened; his show was shut down and he soon left the country. Last February, the Egyptian pop singer Sherine Abdel Wahab, who joked onstage about the waters of the Nile being polluted, was sentenced to six months in prison for spreading false news.
In the Saudi context, Mr. Minhaj is just the latest voice the authorities have tried to silence. They have remorselessly targeted artists and critics. Last spring, the Saudi police kidnapped Fahad Albutairi, a Saudi actor, from Jordan and returned him forcibly to the kingdom. Mr. Albutairi, who had a popular YouTube comedy channel, may have been targeted for his online monologues or for being married to Loujain al-Hathloul, a prominent feminist activist.
NOTE: First of all. Ms. Lindsey's laudatory remarks about the Arab Spring hides the fact that they were uniformly unsuccessful except in Tunisia (marginally) and resulted in a backlash of increased repression and in the case of Syria, deadly warfare. She does mention the failures but doesn't come to grips with the notion that social media driven populist revolutions are in no way guaranteed. We all celebrated the Arab Spring revolts as did President Obama but the cold reality is that they failed.
As far as Netflix pulling an episode of a comedy program in the face of Saudi objections, well that's who Saudi Arabia is! While our closest Middle East ally next to Israel, the U.S. government makes enormous "accommodations" to the Kingdom and its legion of repressive laws in order to sell it arms and keep the nation on "our side." Such is the state of international diplomacy and the guarding of U.S. "interests" in the Middle East. Are private companies supposed to challenge or contravene repressive laws when our government does not?
But while Ms. Lindsey highlights Netflix, Google has bowed to China and modified its search engine features there in the face of government objections and Facebook has kowtowed to the government of India in order to remain in business there. While we may decry the limitations imposed on American enterprises by international governments, they are simply a fact of doing business in the worldwide marketplace. Local laws, no matter how odious to us by American standards, are still laws and if you want to do business in Saudi Arabia or China or India you'd better toe the line. Censorship in this case, as abhorrent as we might think it from our viewpoint, is simply a matter of doing business and this is what America is all about compromises and accommodations notwithstanding.
While it may be refreshing to bash Netflix for bowing to censorship pressure from a foreign country, it is a disingenuous lack of regard for reality. We here in America have an outsized notion of Free Speech that is not shared by our closest world wide ally, Great Britain.
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