Political Correctness: Censorship’s Sneaky Cousin
What Kim Kardashian, Nike and the Dalai Lama’s bowing to political correctness says about censorship in the Information Age.
Yesterday, I spoke with my dad who lives in Singapore. I live in Hong Kong, where local protestors had recently broken into and vandalized the legislative council building to show their displeasure at the Hong Kong government’s pro-China stance. A fortnight before, I had written a story about why Hongkongers aren’t happy with China’s influence, which was published in Medium’s GEN on June 20. Within two weeks, 1.7 thousand readers had viewed the article, including my dad who found it through my Facebook post. He did not approve of the content, and told me that I shouldn’t share my opinions so openly. He warned me to be careful less I incite the wrath of China officials who might dispatch operatives to Hong Kong to kidnap me, take me to China, and “punish” me for speaking negatively about the Chinese government. Of course this is a highly unlikely scenario. I knew my dad was just being paranoid, and also that this was his way of showing his concern for me with a little humor. I rolled my eyes as I listened to him nag, but coming from Singapore — a nation that’s ranked 151 in the 2019 World Press Freedom Index, two spots below Russia, and where political dissidence isn’t well tolerated — I understood why my dear dad would think this way.
