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By Isaac Stone Fish February 27, 2022Several years ago, a University of Michigan PhD student who had spent years living and researching in China, attended a U.S.-based event commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. But she was worried about speaking at the event. She knew that if she criticized Chinese soldiers gunning down unarmed protesters, students could report her to the Chinese authorities, which could jeopardize her research, her access to interview subjects, and even her entire academic career. Even though it bothered her to do so, she kept quiet.A few years later, the student, who asked to remain anonymous, found herself keeping quiet again, on what seemed like a much more trivial matter. In September 2017, she opened Facebook and learned that Chinese customs agents had banned the import of certain soft European cheeses, like Brie and Gorgonzola. The customs agents blamed too much bacteria, but because Chinese companies could legally make the same cheese, European trad

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The Censorship Circus - The Wire

To say she is one of the main protagonists, Svetlana Reingold has been absent from the media storm that erupted over David Reebs Jerusalem painting featuring in the opening exhibition of the expanded and revamped Museum of Israeli Art, Ramat Gan.

To recap: the wording that appears on Reebs 1997 painting Jerusalem of Gold Jerusalem of Shit, alongside a depiction of ultra-Orthodox Jews at the Western Wall, infuriated Ramat Gan Mayor Carmel Shama-Hacohen. He claimed it was racist and antisemitic, and then, following a Facebook poll he conducted among city residents, ordered that the artwork be removed.

In protest, the other artists represented in the exhibition demanded that their own works be removed. When negotiations between the sides failed, the entire exhibition was canceled. In effect, the museum is now shuttered or, as the mayor prefers to say, operating at low intensity.

Reingold was both chief curator of the renovated museum and curator of the crisis-inducing exhibition. And when negotiations between management and the artists broke down, she decided to resign as well.

Until now, she has avoided speaking to the media. But now her resignation has gone into effect, she is opening up about this and previous furors like, for instance, the one that erupted while she was chief curator of the Haifa Museum of Art when a work entitled McJesus, by the Finnish artist Jani Leinonen, was removed in 2019. That work featured an image of a crucified Ronald McDonald. Then, too, the person who ordered the removal of the work was the citys mayor, Einat Kalisch-Rotem.

As soon as I saw the referendum being conducted by the mayor among his Facebook followers, I realized this was not going to end well, recounts Reingold about the latest scandal. It was two days after the opening of the museum, but I never imagined it might end with the entire exhibition being taken down.

It was hard for me to read the posts he put up on Facebook, whose message, in one form or another, was that artists should be grateful to get a place to exhibit in, and they should behave nicely and not insult anyone. I was thinking that this was something I wouldnt be able to work with.

When did you make the final decision to resign?

Once I was informed that theyd be taking down David Reebs work [in January]. Often in such situations, a demand is made from the outside or from social media to resign. For the most part, Ive never considered these sorts of demands because loss of employment is a sort of social death. What are you planning to do now?

Im gathering up my energies for the next challenges that await me. But if I can be candid, I dont have huge expectations about the future that lies ahead.

What do you think will happen to the Ramat Gan museum?

The people at the museum should be thinking of taking corrective action to ensure the independence and freedom of expression of the curators and artists. This crisis should be used to reorganize. Its a crisis that is relevant to all of the museums and municipal galleries in Israel: How can we ensure that this doesnt happen again in some other space?

And how can we make sure of that?

In Britain, for instance, when it comes to governance of art institutions, the arms length principle is in effect where even art that is financially supported by the government never actually serves the government. The decision-makers over art subsidies must always be the same arms length removed as the museum staffers, in order not to repeat the mistakes that Shama-Hacohen made.

Did you ever imagine that the exhibition might provoke this kind of clash? It did include several controversial works.

I didnt think it would happen, though I was wary of such a possibility. But I told myself I couldnt be fearful anymore. By its nature, art tends to hold up mirrors to society, encroaching and asking uncomfortable questions. The beauty of Reebs work is that it challenges the entire discourse on the limits of what is permitted.

So why was it displayed in a storeroom?

I displayed it in such a way that it was, on the one hand, part of the museums collection, and on the other revealed to the viewer. Also, I was interested in provoking debate on the issue of what is found in the central space and what is found behind the curtains and, yes, also to call attention to the fact that theres a political and bureaucratic establishment out there too.

Get the hell out of here, Jew!

Reingold immigrated to Israel in 1990 from the city of Novgorod, near Saint Petersburg. I was among the first immigrants to arrive on a direct flight from the Soviet Union to Israel, she recalls of immigrating alone at age 16, being joined by her parents a few months later. In the Soviet Union, her father served as the city engineer and her mother was an economist. In Israel, her father worked in a factory and her mother as a house cleaner.

In Russia, I was the only Jew in my class, she says. With the breakup of the Soviet Union, a rising wave of antisemitism began. People shouting things like Get the hell out of here, Jew! and Go! Fly to Israel became a matter of routine.

She completed high school at the Ort High School in Maalot, and then began studying art and history at the University of Haifa. I completed my bachelors and masters degrees there, and am now in the middle of my doctorate.

What do you have to say to the mayor, who believed that Reebs work is antisemitic and racist?

As a person who has experienced antisemitism firsthand, I think the antisemitism discourse is not relevant here in Israel. Here, it is the Jewish people in a position of sovereign power that represses and discriminates, not the opposite. The great thing about Reebs work has to do with the fact that hes telling us that in the Jewish state, of all places, by virtue of its religion and its national identity, it is our fate to play the role of the repressor. Before I immigrated to Israel, I truly believed I was coming to Israel to be part of the Jewish culture, which is something I couldnt do in the Soviet Union. It hurts me every time anew to see that in Israel, the wave of Russian immigration of which I am a part is nothing more than a plaything in the hands of political interests.

Do you not think that Reebs work is insulting?

In my opinion, its meant to insult the politicians but absolutely not religious Jews. It critiques the political discourse that cynically uses patriotic slogans and empties the holy symbols of all content. The Western Wall, Jerusalem of Gold and the worshipping Jew are all oft-used terms from the mouths of politicians, who use them to justify every military operation conducted in Israel.

In this context, she says that Reebs work reminds her of the huge banners that used to be hung in the streets of the Soviet Union.

On these posters, there would always be figures of the great men of the Soviet nation: Marx, Engels and Lenin. But someone would always add some curse in Russian. It was a minor addition that ridiculed the idyllic Soviet world. The Russian scholar Mikhail Bakhtin spoke about the carnivalesque world, which is the polar opposite of the official political, consensual world. In this world, laughter and parody represent the ruling ideology: the significance of the carnival is the crossing of familiar lines. The same is true for David Reeb, who placed the language of the street right in front of the idyllic world the politicians are selling to us.

What did you think when you saw social media posts that were opposed to Reebs painting for instance, what was written by rapper and right-wing activist The Shadow?

The main contention was that this artwork triggers an illegitimate discourse. Yet the comments against it that were initiated by the far right and which bordered on violent persecution were seen as being quite legitimate. The Shadow wrote several posts on his Facebook page, which led to thousands of harsh responses personally directed toward me. Truly a dizzying rate of loathing and hostility.

Boycotted by 200 artists

Reingold says art played a big part in her life growing up in the Soviet Union, with frequent visits to the Hermitage Museum with her mother. Following her university studies, she began working at various museums in Haifa. It was 1996, a turbulent period in Israel following the Rabin assassination, and numerous artists were reacting to what was going on. Following a series of minor positions in local museums, in 2011 she became curator of the Man-Katz Museum, and two years later also the Hermann Struck Museum.

Early in her career, she says, she faced the question of whether it was okay to present contemporary art at the Man-Katz Museum. In the 2012 exhibition The Desire for Paris, in addition to artists from the School of Paris I showed three contemporary Israeli artists: David Adika, Yossi Breger and Joseph Dadoune. It provoked some inquiries from management.

Over the years, several curators all female left their jobs at the northern citys museums. Things came to a head in 2015 when the curator of the Haifa Museum of Art, Leah Abir, was dismissed and the Israeli art world decided to boycott Haifas museums. Some 200 artists and curators signed a petition.

Reingold was appointed as acting curator and subsequently became Abirs permanent successor. She was criticized at the time for collaborating with the establishment. However, more artists gradually broke the boycott and she went on to curate several large group shows. These included AnonymX: The End of the Privacy Era, Feminist Sculpture in Israel and Fake News Fake Truth.

There was an accusation that your exhibitions recycle subjects, both in Haifa and Ramat Gan.

In exhibitions that I have curated, I have not been afraid to repeat subjects that have been discussed in the past. To say, for instance, about feminism that the subject has already been exhausted is ridiculous. After all, gender discrimination still exists at all levels of life. In an exhibition I curated at the Haifa Museum of Art, I engaged in feminism in the transnational era, when numerous women are moving from East to West and developing a fluid identity in order to survive.

There has always been political meddling in Haifa. In 2006, then-Mayor Yona Yahav demanded that Dov Or-Ners reproduction of a painting of flowers supposedly done by Hitler when he was an aspiring young artist be removed.

During the time I was curator, from 2015 on, I did not feel any intervention. Once we made a decision on the subject of an exhibition, there was no meddling.

The peak of political interference came in early 2019, shortly after Kalisch-Rotem was elected Haifas mayor. A protest arose among local Christian Arabs against the work McJesus, which was part of the Sacred Goods exhibition curated by Shaked Shamir.

Reingold relates that when Shamir told her, as chief curator, about the Leinonen work, it was obvious it was liable to spark criticism, but I reached the conclusion that I had no right to censor the exhibition. That work was ultimately taken down, but it was the opposite to what happened at the Ramat Gan museum. In Haifa, an audience of Christians argued that their beliefs were harmed; in Ramat Gan, it was the mayor who gave the instruction to take down the work and that is a case of political censorship, pure and simple. In contrast to [Shama-Hacohen], Kalisch-Rotem tried to find a compromise with the leaders of the Christian community, and only when one could not be found was it decided to remove the work.

There have been acts of censorship before, both at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and the Israel Museum. Why is it more prevalent at municipal museums?

We live in a country where religion is not separated from the state. But censorship can happen everywhere. Even Modiglianis art that was shown in France triggered outrage due to the nudity, and the police came in and dismantled the exhibition. That would not seem logical nowadays, but every work of art has explosive potential. There are countless examples.

In 1962, the exhibition New Reality was mounted in Moscow. [Soviet leader Nikita] Khrushchev visited it; he was enraged when he discovered the extent to which the rules of socialist realism had been violated and he hauled the artists over the coals. And still, all of the works were left on the walls and Khrushchev even paid another visit to the exhibition a while later, spoke with the artists and asked that they explain to him the meaning of the works.

The ethics panel will get back to you

During the Ramat Gan crisis in January, there was actually a moment of optimism when Culture Minister Chili Tropper appointed the chairman of Israels museums council, Yigal Ben Shalom, to mediate between the artists and Shama-Hacohen. Also trying to resolve the problem were Ramat Gan museum chairman and deputy mayor Roi Barzilai, and Reingold herself. She proposed a compromise in which Reebs work be put back up and that a divider be erected so that anyone arriving on the floor on which the work was situated would not be exposed to it immediately.

That did not satisfy Shama-Hacohen, who demanded that the work be hidden in an internal space within the storage room and that it only be accessible to the public on Saturdays.

What did you think of the mayors proposal?

That it was unacceptable. David Reeb thought so too, and that is what the other artists thought. I did agree to a compromise suggested by the artists. That was my obligation as curator of the museum and the exhibition.

The person who did not appreciate Reingolds involvement was Barzilai. In a letter to her, he claimed she had led the artists into a dead end, even though there was an outline for a compromise. In light of your intervention, the attempt to find a compromise which would have made it possible to keep the exhibition open and even to see the work by David Reeb failed. I made it clear to you that you mustnt intervene in the negotiations, but nevertheless you chose to disregard my instructions, time after time.

Conversely, Ben Shalom says there a consensus on the technical aspects of the display was never reached at any point.

An initial outline was agreed by the mayor and artists that anyone who did not want to see the picture would not see it, he says. But there was no decision regarding the method. Once everyone weighed in with his or her proposal, the negotiations failed.

Reingold, he says, was not present during the negotiations but only at consultations, where she expressed an unequivocal position in support of the artists.

Ben Shalom has recently formed an ethics committee that seeks to set clear boundaries for the board of directors, as well as better define the role played by curators. My opinion is unequivocal: curators are the ones who make the decisions, not the body that owns the museum, he says.

The Knesset Education, Culture and Sports Committee has also debated the future of the museums, at the behest of lawmakers Emilie Moatti (Labor) and Mossi Raz (Meretz).

Israel needs to create a mechanism that will protect art from political interference, Reingold concludes. She calls for a law or regulations that would establish the nature of the mediation between the political establishment and the art establishments, and between the management committee and the artistic management staff, in such a way that would protect freedom of expression and provide guidelines for dealing with any harm done to it. Otherwise, there will be no end to this.

Finally, as someone who immigrated to Israel from Russia, whats your opinion on what is happening now in Ukraine?

I think theres a long tradition in Russia of coping with all sorts of dictators coping with and opposition to. It makes me very happy that the people in Russia are going out to protest at demonstrations against Putin and the invasion of Ukraine, and I very much hope the current events will finally remove him from power.

Do you think Israel should get involved?

I think the most urgent thing right now is for Israel to provide Ukraine with an Iron Dome [anti-missile] system. I also very much hope that if there is a need for it, Israel will take in refugees. That is to say, all of the refugees whether theyre Jewish or not.

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She survived antisemitism in the USSR. She might not survive this Israeli censorship affair - Haaretz

Goldstones most recent book is "On Account of Race: The Supreme Court, White Supremacy, and the Ravaging of African American Voting Rights."

Education has always been a battleground in the culture war, but the fight over what can or should be taught in schools has escalated to the point where, as in Virginia, it can determine who is elected to high public office.

Conservatives, like new Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, are convinced the only way to keep the country strong is to restrict education to positive or patriotic views of the United States, while those who consider themselves woke want to stress the nations inequalities and injustices, both past and present. In addition, conservative parents are insisting on protecting children from material they consider too sexual, too violent or otherwise distasteful, a category that has had broad application.

The two sides have quite different strategies. Those on the left seek to require teachers to assign certain books, many of which are already available in school libraries, and increase emphasis on curriculum topics already touched on in class sessions. Conservatives, on the other hand, are focused on banning subject matter they deem offensive and purging both school libraries and reading lists of books they consider inappropriate.

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As such, it is the right that is the more aggressive. Conservatives in more than 30 states have sought to pass laws or issue directives threatening fines, dismissal or even incarceration for educators who defy their edicts. Youngkins Virginia has even set up a tip line, encouraging citizens to inform on teachers or school officials who are behaving objectionably, much as Texas has attempted to reward those who inform on abortion providers.

Most of the criticism of this proposed censorship has been on moral or political grounds, likening the conservative movement to Stalins Russia or Hitlers Germany. Conservatives counter by insisting radical liberals are trying to impose decadent and destructive mores on schoolchildren too young to appreciate evil. As has become inevitable in contemporary America, the terms freedom, democracy, and liberty have been tossed about casually by both sides, neither of which has any intent to extend those principles to their opponents. Ironically, one of the most active groups trying to restrict what children can read or learn calls itself Moms for Liberty, although, unsurprisingly, their members have limited the right to liberty to those who think the way they do.

While philosophical questions should certainly be part of the debate, there are other facets of the current crusade that need to be addressed. One obvious consequence of banning just about anything is that it virtually ensures that more and more people will choose to try to experience it. Soon after the McMinn County, Tenn., school board voted to remove Art Spiegelmans more than three decades old graphic Holocaust novel Maus from the eighth-grade curriculum, it shot to the very top of the Amazon bestseller list. In addition, bookstores and others opposed to the rule offered free copies of Maus to any parent who requested one. As a result, Spiegelman will make more money from his book than he has in years and should consider sending McMinn County officials a thank you note. Other books in conservatives crosshairs, such as Toni Morrisons Beloved and Harper Lees To Kill a Mockingbird, are experiencing similar revivals.

While forbidden fruit is an indication of the futility of trying to forbid dissemination of controversial ideas in anything but a police state, it does not address the most important reason to be wary of censorship. Restricting teaching to acceptable material leads to an intellectual homogeneity that works to the detriment of critical thought. One of the key skills parents should want schoolchildren to acquire is the ability to sift through competing points of view and decide for themselves which have validity and where they believe there are flaws. Learning to weigh alternatives is vital not just in studying history or examining social issues but is fundamental to success in business, science, technology, intelligence work and indeed virtually any avenue of human endeavor.

But how can we expect students to learn to weigh alternatives when conclusions have been decided for them in advance? And how can we expect adults to master these skills when we have not exposed them to similar problems as children, indeed have forbidden them from tackling them? We may succeed in creating a nation of zealots, which extremists on both sides seem to favor, but we will not create a nation of critical thinkers when critical thinking is an absolute requirement in an era of almost unparalleled technological and sociological change.

While nativists would fiercely deny that American exceptionalism is on the wane, it is all too clear that foreign competition is becoming more intense. Nations such as China may have political and economic systems most Americans deplore and regularly employ tactics that most Americans consider dishonest, but the threat they pose to Americas preeminent place in world affairs is real. The best way to counter these attacks and keep pace, perhaps even survive, is with a constant stream of effective, educated thinkers. For the moment, the United States university system remains the best in the world but in this area as well, other countries are closing the gap and the easiest way to allow our universities to deteriorate is by not supplying them with superior students from American high schools.

We are already on that road. Critical thinking is often sneered at by a large number of Americans, many of them parents, who expose themselves to nothing but facile, convenient commentary by self-serving ideologues such as Tucker Carlson or Rachel Maddow. How else, for example, to explain why Americans would refuse to be vaccinated against a dread disease that will eventually kill more than 1 million of their countrymen because they have been told vaccination is part of a devious plot by their political opponents?

In the end, if Americans genuinely wish to maintain this nations traditions of innovation, superior problem solving and economic opportunity, they will have to learn to accept that limiting learning to ideas they agree with is not the way to do it.

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The price of censorship - The Fulcrum

Donald Trump's new social media platform, Truth Social, has already been plagued with signup issues and a long waitlist barring most people from even using the service.

But, perhaps that's the price users must pay for a truly "free speech" platform, right?

Well, just one day into this very soft-launch of Truth Social and even its "free speech" branding is perhaps, unsurprisingly falling apart.

Web developer Matt Ortega signed up for the Truth Social service and soon discovered an email from Truth Social telling him that his account had been banned.Ortega confirmed the authenticity of the email and ban in a private message to Mashable.

Furthermore, Ortega had never posted a single thing to Truth Social as his account was one of the many still on the waitlist to join. Ortega was banned simply because of the username he used to sign up for the platform: @DevinNunesCow.

If that username sounds familiar, it's because @DevinNunesCow is similar to the name of a Twitter parody account, @DevinCow, that gained notoriety when its creator was sued by then-Republican Rep. Devin Nunes for pretending to be a cow owned by the Congressman. Nunes claimed the account, among others, were defamatory.

The account was created in reference to a report from Esquire detailing how the former Congressman from California has ownership in a family dairy farm based in Iowa, which he had kept secret.

If you're wondering what Nunes is up to now, he left Congress to become the CEO of Truth Social's parent company, Trump Media & Technology Group.

"Your account @DevinNunesCow has been banned," reads the subject of the Truth Social email received by Ortega. "After careful review, we have decided to delete your account permanently due to Truth Social community guideline violations."

So, to be clear, a user was banned from Trump's new "free speech" social media platform for registering a username that Truth Social's CEO does not like.

Interestingly, Truth Social has specific rules limiting speech on the platform when it involves Trump and others who own the platform. When Truth Social was first announced last year, the site's terms of services explicitly prohibited "disparage, tarnish, or otherwise harm, in our opinion, us and/or the Site."

And Ortega's not the only one who has already experienced the limits of Truth Social's "free speech," albeit under very different circumstances.

Right-wing personality Stew Peters is claiming he was censored on Truth Social, too. Unlike Ortega, Peters already has an account set up on Trump's platform and is already posting content. According to Peters, his post calling for the execution of those responsible for the COVID-19 vaccine, was labeled as "sensitive content" by Truth Social, requiring users to go through an extra step to view the content in the post.

The vaccines that are available in the U.S. were developed under the Trump administration, and is something Trump continues to tout as a success.

"I'm ALREADY being censored on Truth Social," wrote Peters on the chat service Telegram. "Free Speech isn't free."

While the action taken against Peters' post may seem fair, this is the very kind of platform behavior Trump's supporters are seeking to escape when they start using Truth Social. Trump's most diehard fans may soon be in for a rude awakening when they find out Truth Social's "free speech" rules are likely no different from the Big Tech companies they seek to replace, like Twitter.

In fact, in some ways, Truth Social is going to be even more restrictive on speech. (A ban on "excessive use of capital letters?" REALLY?)

UPDATE: Feb. 22, 2022, 8:00 p.m. EST According to new information provided by Matt Ortega, the exact match username @DevinCow, was blocked from being registered on Truth Social, which is why he registered @DevinNunesCow.In addition, the post has been updated to make it clear that the handle for the infamous Twitter account is @DevinCow. Ortega is not associated with that Twitter account.

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Truth Social is already censoring content and banning user who made fun of Trump Media CEO - Mashable

As the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics comes to a close, human rights activists, politicians, and scholars of authoritarian influence find themselves faced with lingering questions. Was the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) successful in leveraging the Games to burnish its image and discourse power on the global stage? Did a series of diplomatic boycotts prompted by Chinese authorities human rights abuses make a difference? After a successfully executed Games, will China be further emboldened to extend its surveillance and censorship regime beyond its borders? To help bring potential answers to these questions into context, were featuring some of the most relevant reporting and analysis published by news outlets and research institutions throughout the duration of the Olympic Games.

The Winter Olympics were held, again, in an authoritarian state, raising questions for human rights groups and many American corporations. PBS NewsHours Nick Schifrin reported on what advocates said about Chinas exploitation of the Games, as it tried to project the carefully crafted image its leader wants the world to see.

The Chinese government has a history of forcing people to make all sorts of propaganda videos and covering up what they have been doing to the people. Jewher Ilham, Uyghur Activist

Fourteen years after China first hosted the Olympics, an event often described as a pivotal moment for the countrys political trajectory, Beijing hosted the Games again. This time, they occurred during a surging pandemic, a new wave of lockdowns, multiple diplomatic boycotts, and international alarm at the disappearance of one of the countrys top athletes. ChinaFile asked leading China experts, including NED senior program officer Akram Keram, what the Beijing Games meant this year and to what extent they marked a significant juncture in Chinas relations with the world.

As Beijings abuses deepen and as Xi Jinping seeks to assert the Chinese governments power and influence beyond the countrys borders, some governments have demonstrated that they recognize the Chinese Communist Party as an ambitious force aspiring to remake the world in a manner more friendly to itselfand less friendly to human rights and democracy. Maya Wang, Human Rights Watch

Why boycott the Beijing Olympics? What could boycotts look like? Would China retaliate? Lindsay Maizland considered these questions ahead of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics as human rights groups and some politicians in Western nations pressured countries to boycott the Games over the CCPs human rights abuses.

Boycotts have impacts in a variety of ways that are almost always indirect, almost always over a relatively extended period of time, and sometimes counterproductive. David Black, Dalhousie University

Over the course of a 12-month period, countries such as China, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, all of whom have been criticized for human rights violations, will use prestigious sports events to polish their public image on an international stage. While sportswashing has long been a popular tactic, 2022 is a particularly concerning year because both the Olympic Games in China and the World Cup in Qatarthe two most-watched sporting events in the worldare being hosted in countries with markedly oppressive regimes.

This strategy has proven to be remarkably effective in overhauling these states public images and legitimizing their regimes. Karim Zidan, the Guardian

China analyst Sarah Cook identified five types of potential restrictions before, during, and after the Olympic Games: surveillance of athletes and journalists, reprisals for political speech and independent reporting, rapid censorship of scandals, stonewalling foreign journalists, and repercussions after the closing ceremony.

Chinas leaders might feel compelled to quickly suppress any number of unfavorable news stories, such as revelations that Olympic attire was produced with Uyghur forced labor, athlete complaints about an Olympic venue, or unsportsmanlike conduct by a favored Chinese athlete. Sarah Cook, Freedom House

Bonus: Beijings expanding efforts to shape global narratives go beyond simply telling Chinas story. Sarah Cook documented how the CCP leverages propaganda, censorship, and influence over key nodes in the information flow to shape media content around the world, and how nongovernmental actors are countering this influence while protecting democratic institutions. Read the International Forum for Democratic Studies report in English or Spanish.

Automated pro-China accounts flooded Twitter with spam-like tweets using #GenocideGames. The hashtag had initially been used by activists and Western lawmakers to raise awareness about human rights violations in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Researchers said the tactic, known as hashtag flooding, was used to dilute the hashtags power to galvanize criticism of the Winter Olympics host nation.

The Chinese propaganda apparatus has been very focused on defending their image regarding the treatment of the Uyghur, while also promoting the Olympics. This hashtag is at the nexus of those two things. Darren Linvill, Clemson University

During a wide-ranging Twitter Spaces conversation hosted by Politico ahead of the Opening Ceremony, a panel of experts weighed in on Beijings unprecedented, closed loop covid mitigation system, international concern over Chinas human rights record, threats to the safety and data privacy of competing athletes, and the perceived deaf ear of the International Olympic Committee and the Games corporate sponsors to these concerns.

The idea that the Games are apolitical is laughable. And yet that same justification is used to silence athletes [and] put in place rule 50.2 of the Olympic Charter, which says that any political demonstration on the field of play or on the podium will be punished by the International Olympic Committee. [This] is used to facilitate the use . . . of athletes as pawns because if athletes cant speak up, theyre easier to use in whatever way you find advantageous. Noah Hoffman, Global Athlete

Bonus: For China, a Uyghur lighting the Olympic cauldron was a feel-good moment of ethnic unity. But to human rights activists and Western critics, it looked like Beijing was using an athlete (who later avoided foreign media) in a calculated, provocative fashion to whitewash its suppression of Uyghurs in the region of Xinjiang. Read more in the New York Times.

The extraordinary foreign commercial relationships that open societies have forged with authoritarian countries have enabled new channels for authoritarian control to limit expression in democratic societies. Facing pressure from China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other authoritarian regimes that leverage both political and economic incentives to induce censorship, private sector firms (including some sponsors of the Olympic Games) have walked back statements, altered their content, or altogether avoided topics that could be considered politically sensitive.

For foreign companies facing the prospects of official reprimand, legal troubles, consumer backlash, and financial risk, compliance with authoritarian censorship demands can sometimes outweigh the reputational benefits of enabling free speech and generating products that facilitate creative expression. Rachelle Faust, International Forum for Democratic Studies

There are many overlapping parts of Chinas security state, from media censorship and monitoring of online discussion to surveillance and control of dissident figures. China also employs methods of voice and image analysis developed by technology firms and a massive network of low-level volunteer informants on the lookout for suspicious or criminal activity. How much of Chinas surveillance apparatus would be targeted at Olympic athletes was hard to know. But the countrys intensifying domestic controls, brazen arrests of foreign nationals, and harassment of activists and journalists gave Western governments reason for concern.

The national security prism is now inescapable, especially for the lengthening list of groupsUyghurs, Tibetans, rights lawyers, feminists and foreign journalists, to name a fewconsidered inherently a danger to party control. Christian Shepherd, Washington Post

Bonus: China isnt just upgrading its domestic surveillance state; its exporting the technologies it uses to monitor its populace and control society at home. Samantha Hoffman describes how the PRC leverages emerging technologies and an active role in international standards-setting bodies to undercut democracies stability and legitimacy while expanding its own influence. Read the International Forum for Democratic Studies report in English and Spanish.

MY2022 () is a multi-purpose app required to be installed by all attendees to the 2022 Olympic Games, including audience members, members of the press, and athletes. An analysis of the app conducted by the Citizen Lab found security deficits that potentially violated not only Googles Unwanted Software Policy and Apples App Store guidelines, but also Chinas own laws and national standards pertaining to privacy protection. MY2022 also included features allowing users to report politically sensitive content and a censorship keyword list that, while inactive at the time of the analysis, targeted a variety of political topics such as Xinjiang and Tibet.

The knee-jerk reactions against Chinese apps and suspicions of their censorship and surveillance capacities are to a large extent warranted as there exists extensive documentation of security flaws, privacy violations, and information controls on apps operated in China and internationally-facing apps developed by Chinese companies. Jeffrey Knockel, Citizen Lab

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Censorship, Surveillance, and Human Rights: 10 Ways These Trends Intersect with the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics - NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY -...