The West has denied censorship too long Views

On February 14, US Vice President JD Vance caused a movement At the Munich Security Conference, when he decided to accuse America's European allies of practicing censorship. The outraged Europeans pulled away, pointing to the records of the Vance chief, President Donald Trump, in the attack and erosion of democracy in the United States.

For many of us, supporters of freedom of expression outside the West, this exchange was quite fun. For so long, the West has been making us freedom and criticized us that we have not been able to achieve them.

Last month, we celebrated 10 years of the brutal attack on the French Satirical Satirical Magazine service, Charlie Hebdo and the following March of Western political and economic leaders in Paris in support of cartoonists, journalism and “right to insult”, calling on The world to be able to “Take a joke and laugh at yourself.” Freedom of expression is the highest value of Western civilization, they told us.

It is quite ironic to see a decade later, the political and economic elites of the same Western countries trade censorship accusations, while in the background they are actively working to suppress or distort freedom of expression.

In the meantime, the majority in Western societies remain persistent in denial that this happens at a systemic level and are convinced that only this party or that party is an exception to the democratic rule. They still believe that censorship and repression are and have always been global problems in the south.

Living in the West for nearly a decade, I got used to the reactions with my eyes wide open when I mention my profession. “Sudanese political cartoonist? This must be dangerous, “they say, as if freedom of expression is an extremely Western ideal. And yes, being a cartoonist in some parts of the global south can be dangerous and the consequences of crossing red lines can be brutal. Western media like to point out this and to be concerned.

For example, in 2015, when the cartoonist Atten Fargadani was sentenced to years in prison in Iran for depicting parliamentarians such as animals, her story immediately made titles. Tehran was widely condemned for failing to “take a joke”.

There was also a lot of Western solidarity with Ali Farzat, a prominent Syrian cartoonist who was abducted and his hands were broken in 2011 to prepare a cartoon of Syrian President Bashar al -Assad. A few years later, the news of the death of cartoonist Akram Raslan under the torture in the prisons of Al-Assad also caused a pouring of empathy.

But the Western voices of support and condemnation are greater when it comes to “more friendly regimes”. Egyptian cartoonist Ashraf Omar has been arrested for six months, with almost no attention in the west. And of course, as far as Palestinian artists are concerned, there is a tendency to have complete silence. In October killed an Israeli bomb Mahassen al-Khateeb at Jabalia Camp in Gaza; Her latest illustration was to Shaban Al-Dalu, burning alive in the courtyard of Al-Aksa Hospital. There was no Western condemnation of her death or the murder of Israel to more than 200 Palestinian journalists in Gaza.

As the famous Palestinian American intellectual Edward reminds us, the West loves to imagine the East (and other places in the world) in ways that satisfy his own civilizational ego.

“How can a person talk about” Western civilization “today, except to a large extent ideological fiction, which implies some separated superiority for a handful of values ​​and ideas, none of which does not matter much beyond the history of conquest, immigration, and mixing to the nations, which gave the Western nations their current mixed identities? “He writes in his famous orientalism of the book.

In fact, censorship in the West is no less real than in the global south; It's just more enjoyable. It is true that the cartoonists of the global south must navigate clear red lines – lines that we know and learn to work around or leave behind.

But what I am struggling to make my Western peers to understand is that the West also has red lines. They just find them difficult to see. As the Sudanese saying goes, “The camel does not see the curve of its neck.”

However, there are some red lines in the West that are quite clear; They just don't call it that. For example, in 2019, a syndicated animated film published by The New York Times depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a dog leading blind Trump was quickly removed after being stuck as anti -Semite. In the coming months, the newspaper decided to stop publishing political cartoons.

In 2023, veteran cartoonist Steve Bell was fired From The Guardian, also for drawing an animated film from Netanyahu, which is said to be anti -Semitic; The newspaper did not cancel its decision even after the Israeli Caricature Association convicted His shooting.

There are other red lines, finely concealed as “corporate interests”, “editorial standards” or “public sentiment”.

In 2018, Israeli Cartoonist Avi Katz Was Informed by the Jerusalem Report, For Which He Had Been Frelancing Since Nessset Depicted AS Pigs. The official statement of the magazine attributes the decision of “editorial considerations”.

Just recently, on January 4th, Ann Telens, a long -term cartoonist for The Washington Post, announced his decision to leave his job after one of his cartoons, which criticized POST owner Jeff Bezos and his fellow Bros technologies for their Trump broadcast rejected. She wrote in a short article published on Substack that this was the first time her animated movie was not accepted “because of the point of view inherent in the cartoon comment.”

These are just a few examples that illustrate the red lines of Western societies. It is true that the consequences for bolding to cross the red line with your pen are not a prison or death, as may be elsewhere, but in the end the result is the same: the cartoonists are muted.

What we see today is likely to get worse, as billionaires buy more media and publication platforms, where they have to decide who is published on the basis of their economic interests and political feasibility. The freedom to express itself, not to be disagreement and to be responsible for power is no longer celebrated by the Western elites; It is managed.

Currently, the weight of censorship and violent repression in the West is worn by the Palestinians and their allies. Propalist protesters were brutally beaten, arrested and accused of criminal or even terrorist crimes in Western countries. One would be naive to believe that such vicious oppression and violation of the “Western values” of the freedom of the assembly and the freedom of expression will stop at the propalistin movement.

For the cartoonists like me from the global south, freedom of expression is not just an elevated ideal – this is a daily struggle that we have sacrificed for. My hope is that my peers in the West and their audience will stop accepting this freedom for granted and to realize the forced suppression, which begins to encourage their heads in their societies.

It is time to end the delusion and the denial and take action.

The anger expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazee's editorial position.