(Self)Censorship

Do you feel like you can speak your mind freely? Are you worried that you have to hide your opinions? The answer should be respectively yes and no right? When we look to the US we can see that Americans LOVE to remind everyone how much freedom of speech and thought they have. Even in Europe, freedom of speech is seen as an implicit part of a “liberal democracy”. However, when we look at the data, this is very much not the case. According to a 2023 survey from the US, only 16% of Americans claim that they feel free to talk politics with everyone. Furthermore, half stated that they censor their beliefs among friends (1). But why does this happen? This is where the concept of self-censorship steps in.

What is Self-Censorship

Self-censorship, as the name suggests, can be described as an individual censoring their own speech even without a third party (a government, an organization, an individual…) mandating them to do so. This may seem quite normal at first as most people do not just blurt out their opinions at any time to anybody and there is nothing wrong with that. Due to the innate social nature of humans, we tend to pick what we should voice depending on a variety of reasons such as our culture, societal taboos, or just plain awkwardness. Self-censorship becomes a problem when this picking and choosing of what to say starts interfering with topics where there should be no censorship. For example, it would not be self-censorship to stop yourself from telling your five-year-old cousin that their crude drawings of the sun and flowers are “ugly” and “ derivative of Picasso’s later work”. However, it is self-censorship when you are scared to criticise a political leader's anti-democratic actions even though you live in a country that claims to grant citizens freedom of opinion.

Why does it happen

Self-censorship can happen due to a variety of reasons. It can be done because an individual wants to fit in or feel like they will be “ostracized” from the group if they speak their mind. It could also happen if the topic is seen as crude and indecent to openly talk about, leading individuals to omit certain details/keep their opinions to themselves. However, most importantly for this article, it could happen due to fear of reprisal from the government.

Why is it a threat to democracy

As I’ve said above, we decide on what is appropriate to say in a situation depending on societal rules. However, societal rules are not set in stone, they change and differentiate to the will of the society itself. Therefore, if we all got together tomorrow and decided that we have had enough of drawings of the sun and flowers and that it should be acceptable to call your five-year-old cousin a talentless hack, it would eventually be normalized. So when people start censoring themselves on issues such as anti-democratic actions, that also becomes normalized. This is very visible in countries with hybrid regimes. These hybrid regimes are in this “middle” ground where you might get punished for activities that are not really crimes but they are not places where any sort of criticism

results in the secret police sending you to a labor camp. The backslide from a free democracy to a hybrid regime is generally a gradual one and this gradual change affects  societies' rules of what is appropriate to say. For example, let's say there is a country where the president has slowly but surely started to punish their loudest critics. Now, these critics are getting punished for having strong opinions that you may think are going too far but they are not doing anything illegal per se. In any case, you aren’t gonna really call this out in a way that matters or actually protest for it, as you didn’t really agree with them after all. Maybe, it's even good for protecting civility in politics. After this first round of cleaning the house, the punishments start affecting more people. Maybe people who are just making jokes online or comedians in their stand-up acts. You would naturally think that this is going a bit far and that you should comment on this, however now you have a teeny bit of fear in your mind that maybe you’ll also be punished so you delete your tweet and retype it in a more vague manner to not offend anyone. As these punishments proceed, they get more and more normalized, getting accepted by society. After all, you can still use social media without needing a VPN and it's not like they are gonna arrest you of all people. But when you look back, you realize how much everything has actually changed, you realise that you never really express your opinion freely on any “dangerous” topics, like the unlawful arrest of an opposition candidate. The metaphorical noose is a lot tighter now and you have gotten used to the soreness.

The situation I described is not just an exercise in hypotheticals or a “what if” scenario. This is the reality of life for millions of people under such regimes. In states like Czechia, Hungary, and Poland increasing state control over media has resulted in governments being able to punish citizens for their comments (2). An even more extreme example can be seen in Turkey, where self-censorship has gotten to such a high level that it is common on social media to joke about how “Silivri is cold” (3)(Silivri, a.k.a Marmara Prison is a high-security, massive prison in the outskirts of Istanbul). The rise of auto-censorship in response to authoritarianism is a very real phenomenon and helps authoritarianism become more acceptable. As individuals, it is important for us to recognize auto-censorship and oppose it at every corner to stop the normalization of anti-democratic practices.

Kerem Kaya

1. Helmstetter, C. (2023). Poll: A majority of Americans embrace democracy, but most self-censor their political speech. APM Research Lab

2. Day, J. (2021, June 10). What is self-censorship? How does it kill media freedom? Civil Liberties Union for Europe https://www.liberties.eu/en/stories/self-censorship/43569

3. Kakışım, C. (2020, March 25) “İlgilenir Misiniz? @EmniyetGM” Birikim https://birikimdergisi.com/guncel/9991/ilgilenir-misiniz-emniyetgm