Amid the chaos and ruckus that is being created in the world currently due to the invasion of the Russian army into Ukraine through air and land strikes, there is more to this story than only the attacks and the crisis that it has led to.
The censorship of the hate speeches that were given in the giant social media platform against the Russian actions saw a blow when the Moscow court on Monday banned Facebook and Instagram.
Words such as “war” and “invasion” were also censored in the country and refrained from using.
As Putin had put forward that the attack was to “demilitarization and denazification” of the Ukrainian city of Donbas, which, Putin claimed to be pro-nazi and which had tortured the Russian-speaking minority in Ukraine for past eight years.
The two platforms have come under the fire of Russia, in recent weeks, after they announced a policy change to allow hate speech and calls for violence against Russian nationals.
The censorship showcases that the government is strolling and blocking the basic freedom of criticizing the government for its actions. As Vladimir Lenin had put forward, “so long as the state exists there is no freedom. When there is freedom, there will be no state”. This is very much evident from the current situation where Russian censorship on certain words and also on the hate speeches reflects the reality of freedom in the Russian state.
Also, the media has been threatened with imprisonment of any journalist who deviates from the kremlin’s line portrayal of the Ukraine attack. TikTok has also banned users from uploading any new content. But YouTube and the encrypted messaging app Telegram, which is heavily used in the state to run the propaganda, are reportedly still available and widely used in Russia.
The censorship of all kinds of media from Russia is due to reason that it reflects the Kremlin’s concern about the impact that real news would have on Russian citizens. Due to this there, is intensified clampdown on the censorship of sensitive cases in Russia so the citizen does not lose their identity in the global sphere.
As the reality has claimed the elites and the government in control of the control of media always puts censorship on the news which they feel might hurt the sentiment of their benefit and might lose the nationalist sentiment of the people.
Just like George Orwell in his novel “Nineteen Eighty-four (1984)” shows that the Big brother of the party always keeps a track of the people and have controlled their life and media as well, even with the case of Russia it same through media one can easily control the people’s life and ideology. Therefore ‘big-brother is always watching you.’
