US Capitol riot: how the internet exposes the weak links in American democracy
- The internet’s role in fomenting insurrection at the US Capitol has shone a light on the flaws of the West’s embrace of open-ended connectivity
- The Chinese model of governance, heavy on censorship, is no example to follow. The challenge remains for the West to prevent the breakdown of order in a free society
It was not supposed to be this way. The internet’s open architecture has long been extolled by cyber-libertarian futurists as a powerful new democratising force. Information is free and available instantaneously – and anyone can now vote with a mere click.
The rapid expansion of the public square is offered as exhibit A. Internet penetration went from 1 per cent to 87 per cent of the US population from 1990 to 2018, far outstripping the surge in the world as a whole, from zero to 51 per cent over the same period. The United States, the world’s oldest democracy, led the charge in embracing new technologies of empowerment.
The problem, of course, lies in internet governance – namely, the absence of rules. Even as we extol the virtues of the digital world, to say nothing of the acceleration of digitisation during the Covid-19 pandemic, the dark side has become impossible to ignore.
The Western model of open-ended connectivity has given rise to platforms for trade in illicit drugs, pornography, and paedophilia. It has also fuelled political extremism, social polarisation and now attempted insurrection. The virtues of cyber-libertarianism have become inseparable from its vices.
The Chinese model provides a stark contrast. Its censorship-intensive approach to internet governance is anathema to free societies. The state (or the Communist Party) not only restricts public discourse but favours surveillance over privacy.
For China, governance is all about social, economic and, ultimately, political stability. As a self-proclaimed bastion of democracy, America obviously doesn’t see it that way. Censorship of any sort is viewed with abject scorn.
Chaos at the US Capitol was a Trumpian farce, with shades of Mao
Yet scorn is a good way – to put it mildly – to describe most Americans’ reaction to the deadly assault on the US Capitol. Internet-enabled social and political mobilisation – first evident in Iran’s 2009 Green Movement and then in the Arab spring of 2011 – has now struck at the heart of America.
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But that is not the only line that has been crossed in the US. As Shoshanna Zuboff shows in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, the business models of Google, Amazon and Facebook are based on the use of digital technology to gather and monetise personal data. This blurs the distinction between cyber-libertarianism and Chinese-style surveillance, and it highlights the essence of the privacy issue – proprietary ownership of personal data.
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Whether or not we want to admit it, the aspirations and values of the so-called originalist interpretation of American democracy are being challenged as never before. The insurrection of January 6 and the pandemic share one critical implication: the potential breakdown of order in a free society.
It’s not that China has it right. It’s that we may have it wrong. Unfortunately, today’s hyper-polarisation makes it exceedingly difficult to find a middle ground.
As American exceptionalism falls, Chinese exceptionalism rises
Sadly, this complacency has come at a time of growing fragility for the American experiment. Internet-enabled connectivity is dangerously amplifying an increasingly polarised national discourse in an era of mounting social and political instability. The resulting vulnerability was brought into painfully sharp focus on January 6. The stewardship of democracy is at grave risk.
Stephen S. Roach, a faculty member at Yale University and former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, is the author of Unbalanced: The Codependency of America and China. Copyright: Project Syndicate