Who will be our Bogart?
Today, as I write this, some are celebrating Trump’s re-ascension – a few of them rather exuberantly – while many, many more around this globe of ours live in fear of what tomorrow might bring. Many of us spoke about the incoming alliance between Big Tech and autocracies everywhere, but pretty much everyone was shocked by the speed of transformation and the nakedness of ambition.
Out of the shadows they walked, and into the limelight. No longer inhibited by the necessity of having to hide their real intentions, they are also no longer obscuring their ambition or hiding the tactics they use. One of the strategic goals appears to be the end of the news media as we know it.
For years now, it’s been obvious that Big Tech is not news media’s friend, willing collaborator or even its willing co-traveller through our space-time continuum. Empowered through Section 230 of the 1996 US Communications Decency Act to take all the money off the table – and with practically no responsibility when real life hits the fan – the Big Tech gurus, and their businesses, have grown. And grown. And grown. So much so that they have become possibly the greatest threat to our civilisation and to accountable democracies around the world.
There is not a single day that goes by without Elon Musk waking up from his latest ketamine-induced dream to troll, attack and harass elected leaders, their countries and their political views. Not to be left in the musky dust, Mark Zuckerberg’s infamous fact-checkers speech had a most sinister line included – that Meta will work with Trump’s administration to confront the countries standing in Meta’s way of defending “free speech”.
Sovereignty/shmovereignty. Everyone will have to Like and Subscribe. Or else. Google has decided it will not respect the EU’s fact-checking laws. (Funny how brave, righteous and brilliant they all can be when the world’s most powerful military is at their beck and call.) Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, “entrepreneur, venture capitalist and political activist”, wrote in a Financial Times op-ed about the pre-2016 US government as “ancien régime” and compared it to the French aristocrats before the revolution of 1789 – presumably ready for some type of guillotine resolution tool.
As I write this, Musk’s goons have gained access to America’s central payment system. In any other time, this would have been deemed a coup. This time, it was thrown into a pile with other crazy news. The pile is growing. The Trump 2.0 administration – now infused by the Heritage Foundation’s efficacy born out of their Project 2025, Big Tech’s emotionfree delivery, and Musk’s unceasing X-fuelled threats – is also much more effective this time around. The aggression feels calculated and methodic. Bend the knee, apologise, be a good boy. Pay the money to Trump’s Library. Think carefully what you will say. Next time we might not be so generous.
There’s a method in the chaos too. Cutting America’s own fund stream for the thousands of global programmes is not enough – they also need to scare away the would-be donors to the same programmes. The apparent targets of many of these dark efforts are newspapers, publishers and journalists. As it happens, the news media stands at the intersection of every trek, path, road, byway and highway at this crazy point. We are our very own sum of all fears. And if there’s a physical locus for the metaphor, to my mind it can only be London.
The city reminds me these days of Casablanca. Not the wonderful and well-priced tourist attraction of modern-day Morocco, but the 1942 studio set version that was set up for the eponymous classic starring Humphrey Bogart. I can still see Peter Lorre lurking behind the staircase, contemplating the crime. As much as Casablanca was a movie about love during wartime (OK, also about the longing to find one’s meaning next to the right soul, so as to bridge the existential darkness, etc) it was a story about refugees, people torn from their native soil, suspended in an airless weightlessness of waiting.
This time, however, these modern refugees to London will come from the ranks of the news media. The world has morphed into an unfriendly and dangerous place for journalists, public intellectuals and practitioners of truth. London is one of those havens now – perhaps the main one, the Casablanca of our times. It is no longer a point of departure for America once the visa arrives. This time, the passage to America will have to wait.
For years now, the coffee shops, bars and secret joints of London have been frequented by journalists, editors and publishers working far away from their home countries – Russia, China and Zimbabwe, and many others – planning their next steps, sometimes plotting their return. With Trump 2.0, that picture intensifies – many times over. For decades, the news media in many countries have relied on the tacit support of the EU and US, should things become tense with whoever happens to be in power. In South Africa, every time the ANC pushed against the news media during the period of State Capture, we knew that there would be a global reaction if the government tried to limit our freedom to report. That unspoken, but very real, support was the difference between us remaining a free country and devolving into another one-party state. What is going to happen now, when the US government obviously stands for exactly the opposite?
The UK, with its centuries-old institutions and the marvel of shared reality that is the BBC, might indeed be a haven for all these modern refugees. This new influx of journalists, intellectuals and publishers is not simply a migration – it’s a snowballing agglomeration of individuals who stand and fight for free thought and a future that is not defined by ones and zeroes.
London will be the centre for the preservation of truth in a world increasingly hostile to the truth. The future remains uncertain, though. The fight for independent journalism and free expression is just starting, and the results will be unknown for decades to come. The arc of the Universe did manage to bend towards justice, so far. But… there’s always but. The previous performance does not guarantee future wins, as they keep reminding us in financial adverts.
Can London, and the international community, sustain its vital role in the face of powerful, coordinated global attacks on justice and accountability? I hope it can, and sure hope it will. The answer will help determine not only the fate of journalists and intellectuals seeking sanctuary, but the very future of informed democracy itself. No pressure.
Footnote
Branko Brkic created Yugoslavia’s biggest privately-owned publishing house before moving to South Africa, where he launched the Daily Maverick. @brankobrkic
Read the original article here.
