Group items tagged

Regimes face an unpalatable choice between allowing bread prices to soar or maintaining increasingly expensive subsidies (or, in the case of Lebanon’s mind-numbing disaster, where the Port explosion wiped out a signifcant part of its grain reserves) just run out completely). Regimes obsessed primarily with guaranteeing their own survival in power obsess over the risk of bread riots, the eruptions of mass anger which have frequently been triggered in the region’s modern history - most famously, perhaps, in Egypt (1977) and Jordan (1989) - by increases in the price of bread. Citizens want to be able to feed their families, and expect their governments to make that possible.

Bread, as Martinez demonstrates, isn’t just the staple of the Jordanian diet, and the bread subsidy which keeps it affordable isn’t just a budget item. Martinez centers bread as a key point of contact between Jordanian citizens and the state

that ritual in a sense contributing to sense of Jordanian national identity, the synchronized common experience

The MENA online ecosystem is not a good place for freedoms or civil debate right now, to say the least. The Digital Authoritarianism collection I edited last year makes for grim reading. Many MENA states have set in place legal frameworks criminalizing online dissent (and a lot more than just dissent). The pervasive use of Israeli-designed digital surveillance tools has turbocharged the ability of autocratic regimes to spy on their citizens (or on anyone else). Online discourse is plagued by armies of bots and trolls. And the suppression of Palestinian activist content shows how social media platforms have proven an uneven playing field when it comes to content moderation. Apocalyptic takes on what Musk might do really do need to grapple with how terrible things already are.

Musk explained his approach to free speech in a recent tweet: “By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law.” That may sound good to some people in an American context, I suppose. But in the MENA, it would play directly into the hands of authoritarian regimes which have spent years constructing elaborate legal and normative frameworks to criminalize online dissent. Those laws don’t just ban violent hate speech, but range from political dissent, criticism of royal family members or the military, human rights monitoring, even dancing on TikTok. Following these cybercrime laws as a guide to content moderation would entail censoring a wide range of legitimate political speech - the opposite, presumably, of what an avowed free speech advocate would want to see.

If new Twitter policies drawn from the right wing understanding of the American online arena were applied consistently in the MENA context, it could potentially ease the suppression of Palestinian voices. I mean, that wouldn’t be the intention and it probably wouldn’t, but it’s worth thinking about.