Censorship is something we’re used to seeing in China, but we should be shocked when we see signs of it in our own backyard.
As authoritarian rule in China reaches new heights with the Chinese Communist Party’s implementation of a social credit system, the United States should do everything in its power to resist following the same path.
China’s social credit system, designed to track every Chinese citizen’s social and economic behavior, is the CCP’s attempt at total control over its citizens’ lives. While the United States might not have an official social credit system, the radical left – through cancel culture and censorship of ideas – has created something that’s eerily similar.
Totalitarians of the past kept their lists of dissidents in paper files, but the CCP keeps records on all citizens digitized, complete with facial recognition, biometric material and intensive data tracking.
More than threats of physical force or imprisonment, China’s social credit system uses social shaming and ostracization to ensure total control of citizens. Anything from jaywalking, traffic violations, smoking in a non-smoking area, missing a payment or disturbing neighbors is used to determine one’s social credit score.
“Bad” behavior lowers a person’s score and can make it difficult for them to buy, sell, travel, get loans or send their children to college. “Very bad” behavior, such as political dissent, can get someone and their family members blacklisted, making it difficult for them to function in society.
China’s social credit system is about power and conformity. It’s an attempt to shape citizens into the CCP’s ideal subject: don’t ask questions, disobey or think for yourself.
It’s easy to look at China’s repressive regime and think that it could never happen here. Yet after hearing demands from the far left to silence conservative voices, and after watching big tech and big business band together to deplatform conservatives, I’m beginning to think America could be like a frog boiling slowly in a pot.
What are the signs that the U.S. has its own social credit system? What else do you call it when a Democrat senator demands Republicans be put on a no-fly-list for how they voted, or when an editor is forced to resign for allowing a Republican to publish an opinion piece in the editorial section of his newspaper?
The push by the left to censor viewpoints that do not conform with liberal orthodoxy is dangerous and antithetical to the freedom of speech and free exchange of ideas our country holds dear.
Big tech has increased its censorship of those they disagree with as well. Before the election, Twitter suppressed the New York Post’s story on Hunter Biden, YouTube removed two videos from a Senate hearing about COVID treatments, and in another instance, Google blocked ads from a legal group against court packing. Then Amazon, Apple and Google exercised their monopoly power to deplatform Parler, the biggest conservative alternative to Twitter.
And this is just the beginning of the left’s activity to silence dissent.
A PBS lawyer was caught on camera calling for reeducation camps for the kids of conservatives, and numerous political pundits have called for cable companies to deplatform Fox News.
The push by the left to censor viewpoints that do not conform with liberal orthodoxy is dangerous and antithetical to the freedom of speech and free exchange of ideas our country holds dear.
Regulating the thoughts of citizens is something that has, until recently, been left for repressive regimes that want subjects, not citizens. Cancel culture in the U.S. might not be as far advanced as China’s social credit system, but it has a similar aim – ensuring conformity to one ideology. Unlike moderate liberals of earlier days, today’s woke radical leftists won’t be satisfied until there is one party rule in America and every dissenting voice is silenced.
China has married economic and social standing with the political approval of the CCP. In its own way, cancel culture is doing the same thing in our country today.
Demanding total submission to one orthodox view is not freedom, nor is conformity true unity. Intolerance of opposing ideas will only lead to resentment, not agreement.
Threatening to crush a person’s career, demonetize them or ostracize them from the public square might scare people into silence, but it will not convince them. It’s time to stand up for freedom – we have no time to waste.
Rep. Mark Green is an ER physician and combat veteran who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was part of the mission to capture Saddam Hussein, and he interviewed Saddam Hussein for six hours on the night of his capture. He serves on the House Homeland Security and Oversight Committees.
