February 14. American Vice President JD Vance caused mixing At a safety conference in Munich, when he decided to accuse US European allies of practicing censorship. The outraged Europeans replied, pointing to the path of the Vance boss, President Donald Trump, attacking and eroding democracy in the United States.
To many of us, the advocates of freedom of expression outside the West, this exchange was quite fun. For so long, the West taught us about freedom and criticized us that we cannot achieve them.
Last month, we marked 10 years since the brutal attack on the office of a French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo and the following March of Western political and economic leaders in Paris in support of caricatists, journalism and “right to insult”, persuading the world to “joke and laugh at” yourself”. Freedom of expression is the greatest value of Western civilization, we were told.
It is quite ironic to see a decade later, the political and economic elites of the same Western countries trade accusations for censorship, while in the background they are actively working on suppressing or distorting freedom of expression.
In the meantime, most Western societies remain stubborn in denial that this is happening at a systemic level and is convinced that only this party or that party is an exception to democratic rule. They still seem to believe that censorship and repression have always been global problems in the south.
Living in the West for almost a decade, I grew up to the reactions of wide eyes when I mention my profession. “Sudanese political cartoonist must be dangerous,” they say, as if freedom of expression is exclusively Western ideal. And yes, being a cartoonist in some parts of the global south can be dangerous, and the consequences of transitioning red lines can be brutal. Western media likes to highlight it and show concern.
For example, in 2015, when the cartoonist Athena Farghadani was sentenced to years in Iran prison for portraying parliamentarians as an animal, her story immediately made titles. Tehran was widely convicted of “joking”.
There were also a lot of Western solidarity with Ali Farzate, a distinguished Syrian cartoonist, who was abducted, and his hands were broken in 2011 because of the cartoon Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. A few years later, the news of the death of Akram’s cartoonist Raslan under the torture in Al-Assad prisons also caused empathy spills.
But the western voices of support and condemnation are calmer when it comes to “friendly regimes”. Egyptian cartoonist Ashraf Omar has been arrested for six months, and barely anyone in the West paid attention. And of course, when it comes to Palestinian artists, it tends to complete silence. The Israeli bomb was killed in October Mahassen al-khateeb at the Jabalia camp in Gaza; Her latest illustration was that Shaban Al-Galou was burned in the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Hospital. There was no western condemnation of her death or the murder of Israel with more than 200 Palestinian journalists in Gaza.
As reminds us of the reputable Palestinian American intellectual Edward, West likes to imagine the East (and other places in the world) in ways that satisfy our own civilization ego.
“How can he speak of ‘Western civilization’ today, except to largely an ideological fiction, which includes a kind of separate superiority for several values and ideas, of which no more meanings beyond the history of conquest, immigration, travel, and mixing peoples who are Western nations gave their current mixed identity? “, He wrote in his famous book by Orientalism.
Indeed, censorship in the west is no less real than in the global south; It’s simply tastier. It is true that caricators in the global south must move with clear red lines – lines we know and learn to work around or leave behind.
But what I fight to understand their western peers is that the West also has red lines. It’s just hard to see them. How the Sudanese proverb goes: “The camel cannot see the door curve.”
However, there are some red lines in the West that are quite clear; They just don’t call it. For example, in 2019, a trade unicing cartoon published by the New York Times, which portrayed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a dog led by a blind Trump, was quickly demolished after he was strayed as anti -Semitic. In the coming months, newspapers have decided to completely stop posting political cartoons.
In 2023. He was a cartoonist veteran Steve Bell released From the guard to draw the Netanyahu cartoon, which is said to be anti -Semitic; The newspaper did not turn their decision even after the Israeli cartoon association convicted his cracking.
There are other red lines finely disguised in “corporate interests”, “editorial standards” or “public feeling”.
In 2018, Israeli cartoonist Avi Katz informed the Jerusalem report, for which he had been freelancing since 1990, that he would no longer be published because of the cartoon, which he published on the social media of the extreme right -wing members of Knesset shown as a pig. The official statement of the magazine attributed the decision to “editorial considerations”.
More recently, January 4, Ann Telnes, a long-lasting cartoonist for the Washington Post, announced her decision to leave the job after one of her cartoon films, who criticized the owner’s owner, Jeff Bezos and his colleagues Tech Bros, for their surrender Trump, she was rejected. She wrote in a brief article posted on Skuscack that this was the first time that the cartoon was not accepted “because of the view of a characteristic of a cartoon comment.”
These are just a few examples that illustrate the red lines of Western societies. True, the consequences for the dare to cross the red line with a pencil are not a prison or death, as can be in other places, but ultimately the result is the same: caricators are silenced.
What we see today will probably only worse because billionaires buy more media outlets and platforms for publication where they will decide who will be published on the basis of their economic interests and political expeditions. Western elites no longer celebrate freedom of expression, disagreement and reduction of the authority of responsibility; is managed.
Currently, the number of censorship and violent repression in the West is carried by the Palestinians and their allies. Pro-Palestinian protesters were brutally beaten, arrested and accused of criminal or even terrorist acts in Western countries. It would be naive to believe that such a malicious oppression and violation of prominent “Western values” of freedom of gathering and freedom of speech would be stopped in the Pro-Palestinian movement.
For caricators like me from a global south, freedom of expression is not just a sublime ideal – this is a daily struggle for which we have sacrificed a lot. I hope that my peers in the west and their audience will stop taking this freedom for granted and become aware of the violent suppression of starting and heads in their societies.
It is time to end the misconception and denial and take action.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeere.
