Saudi Arabia has just declared online satire a punishable offense, and offenders are subject to fine and jail time according to a report:
Saudi Arabia will punish online satire that “disrupts public order” with up to five years in prison, the public prosecutor said Tuesday, as the kingdom cracks down on dissent.
“Producing and distributing content that ridicules, mocks, provokes and disrupts public order, religious values and public morals through social media … will be considered a cybercrime punishable by a maximum of five years in prison and a fine of three million riyals ($800,000),” the public prosecution tweeted late Monday.
The kingdom’s powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has drawn harsh criticism from rights groups over the targeting of human rights activists and political dissidents across the spectrum since his appointment in June 2017.
Saudi Arabia’s legislation on cybercrime has sparked concern among international rights groups in the past.
Dozens of Saudi citizens have been convicted on charges linked to dissent under a previous sweeping law, particularly linked to posts on Twitter.
In September 2017, authorities issued a public call for citizens to report on the social media activities of their fellow citizens, under a broad definition of “terrorist” crimes.
Saudi Arabia’s public prosecutor on Tuesday also announced it was seeking the death penalty in the case against Sheikh Salman al-Awda, a prominent Islamist cleric arrested last year along with 20 others. (source)
Saudi Arabia is completely right to do this. They are right because of a man who inspired former President Obama and was a major influence on American society and the political left.
American Jew Saul Alinsky was a major political organizer on the “left” in the Chicago area. His most famous work was Rules for Radicals, which was dedicated to the devil and was repeatedly mentioned by conservatives during the Obama Presidency. The full text of the book is here, and it is a case study in a practical application of the Hegelian Dialectic to a society, outlining a series of “rules” that a radical can use to bring about social change.
One of the rules he writes is as follows:
Humor is essential to a successful tactician, for the most potent weapons
known to mankind are satire and ridicule.A sense of humor enables him to maintain his perspective and see himself for what he really is: a bit of dust that burns for a fleeting second. A sense of humor is incompatible with the complete acceptance of any dogma, any religious, political, or economic prescription for salvation. It synthesizes with curiosity, irreverence, and imagination. The organizer has a personal identity of his own that cannot be lost by absorption or acceptance of any kind of group discipline or organization. I now begin to understand what I stated somewhat intuitively in Reveille for Radicals almost twenty years ago, that “the organizer in order to be part of all can be part of none.” (source)
This is why the demonic always attempts to mock God and Christianity, because it is a way of causing instability in order to eventually destroy the system itself.
Now, I want to make clear that I am not a supporter of Saudi Arabia, for she is a nation that hates Christianity, persecutes Christians, is engaging in a genocide against Yemen, is a major supporter of Islamic terrorist activity, is ruled by a laughably hypocritical elite class, mistreats her own citizens, and exists only due to the greed and gluttony of the Americans and the British that veritably run Saudi ARAMCO and were it not for them would be a nation left to die in the lifeless desert sands that make up much of the Arabian Peninsula.
But that said, the idea of banning all forms of ridicule, even online, is not something that is inconsistent with the desire of any ruler who wants to preserve his rule. In other words, Saudi Arabia is not engaging in any kind of “human rights violations” or otherwise public scandal that should be called abnormal.
Now one might respond and say that America embraces satire and the so forth, and that is true to a point. However, as is often incorrectly attributed to Voltaire, there is a well-reasoned point to be made in the quote that “To determine the true rulers of any society, all you must do is ask yourself this question: Who is it that I am not permitted to criticize?” This remains consistent for all cultures and times.
For example, consider the position of Shoebat.com about the LGBT. Why is it considered a form of “extremism”, “hate speech”, and something to receive direct threats over- far more in number and worse in severity than anything ever received from a Muslim has ever sent- to quote what the Bible says in the New Testament and Old Testament? Is it because there is a “culture war”, or rather that there was a “cultural coup” and the LGBT is already in charge and just needs to solidify its power?
For another example, consider the overlap between American, German, and Israeli industrial and financial interests in government from as early as the First World War to the present day. It is a known fact that the weapons manufacturing lobby, the oil industry lobby, the financial sector lobby, the eugenicist lobby, and the Israeli lobby all overlap and mix with each other in a fluid-like symbiosis so much that one can hardly read about one without reading about the others. Yet in spite of the open existence and operation of these lobbies at the highest levels of government, the reactions to them range from open denial to accusations of “hate” for simply acknowledging their simple existence. As such one must ask if the USA is really a “free country,” or if she is a quasi-corporate plantation with citizens as the livestock and is administered by a series of farmers in the form of oligarchic lobbies?
In addition, Saudi Arabia’s position against mockery is also shared by other nations. Thailand, for example, is known for being a nation where for the greater time, “anything goes.” They have no problem allowing foreigners to come and have as much hedonistic sex with as many women as they desire. However, there is a strict and absolute rule against saying anything derogatory about the Thai King, and he who does is punished swiftly and severely. This rule came into existence for the purpose of suppressing rebellions against the Thai monarchy which posed a legitimate threat to it in the past.
While Saudi Arabia has many problems. As Shoebat.com has warned, Saudi Arabia is most likely living on borrowed time and whose survival is directly tied to the continued American care about her situation. She has no stable allies in the Middle East except for Pakistan, and Pakistan is equally hated and in an unstable situation herself. Her attempts to reform her image are questionable and it is not known if they will work. What is known is that a large part of the Muslim world hates her and her historical enemy of Turkey is looking ravenously at Saudi Arabia, seeing her as a usurper from her role and in doing so has committed blasphemy against Islam and must be destroyed.
Saudi Arabia is not putting these restrictions on criticism without reason. She is doing it because she is trying to control the same revolutionary speech and tactics encouraged by Saul Alinsky that the Republicans criticized the Democrats for using in the USA, with the difference in the Saudi case a choice between the Saudi royal family sitting on a Turkish khazouk or not.