بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
The Age of Social Media: The Unveiling of Lies
Throughout the years, the western world has been able to commit atrocities against countries, by framing it as them offering a helping hand to countries in need, in newspapers such as the New York times, and new programs such as Fox news.
Examples of this include the war on Iraq, which killed more than 650.000 people, framed as necessary because Washington believed there to be “Significant evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and that it posed a genuine threat”.
When it comes to the ‘intervention’ in Yemen, it claimed to wish to help defeat the Houthi government. By using news outlets, whenever the US wished to enter a country, it could paint itself as the hero to its public.
However, with the rise in social media, people have found themselves able to connect to people on the other side of the globe. This was profitable to companies and governments until it was used against them. When the genocide against the Palestinian people started, the Gazan people were able to connect to social media platforms such as TikTok to publish pictures and videos of the current situation.
Furthermore, this connection has enabled them to read the lies the Jewish entity and US tried to tell and refute them by publishing videos and pictures that proofed they were lying.
When the Western powers claimed to send aid the Palestinian people, the people were quick to show proof that what they received were body bags.
When the Jewish entity tried claiming that its people were suffering because of the attacks of Hamas, people found videos of IDF soldiers filming TikTok dances in the destroyed homes of Palestinian people.
When the US claimed to send aid during Ramadan, the Palestinian people showed that the aid had managed to kill people and contained pork and expired food.
Recently posts were also published about the protests in American Universities such as USC and Harvard by students, called “encampments.” These protests have been met with suspensions by the university and the intervention of the US military and police.
These protests have been recorded and are trending on social media platforms such as TikTok. Videos showing students barricading themselves in building to not allow the police and military inside, have been shared thousands of times, with one clip of a student hitting a cop with an empty water bottle becoming the icon for the resistance against the ‘fascist government’.
All this has led the US government to pass a bill to ban the use of TikTok in the U.S. Senator Pete Ricketts has revealed that this ban stems from the fact that “pro-Palestinian and Hamas videos on TikTok have more reach than the top 10 US news websites combined”.
The US has found that it no longer can hide its implication in the genocide of innocent people for profit. This has left them unsure of how to regain the sympathy of their own people, as every attempt to lie has immediately been unveiled and caused even more hatred and mistrust in the government. This has pushed them to ban platforms, proving to the public that the concept of ‘free speech’ is only applicable if you possess the money and the ideas that suit the government’s needs.
Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Isra Tarchoun