In a March 11 article, American author and journalist Adam Michael Molon shared his story of being censored for his speech in China and compared it to his experience of being censored by major American social media in recent months. Morrone calls out the importance of not taking a free society and fundamental rights for granted as Americans, but rather the need to continue to uphold and defend them, including freedom of speech.
The following is a translation of Morrone’s article.
“In the United States, I don’t have to worry about being shamed for making comments. Whereas in China, it is a shame that speech is censored!” Ironically, these sentences about online censorship were translated from my original Chinese poem, which put me through the first speech censorship of my Life.
As an American exchange student in the U.S. Department of Defense’s flagship Chinese language program, I completed my studies in Nanjing and participated in a Chinese language competition for foreign students, co-sponsored by the Chinese Communist Party‘s Central Television and the Confucius Institute Headquarters. I was invited by a Nanjing University administrator to participate in this event, and instead of demonstrating my “true knowledge” of the Chinese language and Culture and showing good learning and diligence like other students, I decided to tell the truth.
I wrote an “irreverent” poem in Chinese, entitled “Forever Foreigner”, which humorously tells the reality. I learned from my experience living in China that no matter how good my Chinese was or how well I understood Chinese culture, I was always treated as a foreigner in the isolated society of China.
As a result of my performance, the judges promoted me from a regional competition in Jiangsu Province to a national television competition in Beijing, and my poem was printed the next day in the Yangtze Evening News, one of the largest newspapers in China in terms of circulation.
The title of the poem was “Foreign students are ‘Cool’, local students are ‘School’: Young foreigners’ ‘hip-hop poems ‘ made Chinese audiences laugh”. My entire poem was published, except for the lines criticizing the CCP’s censorship. I think there are other parts of the poem that are also more sensitive, but found that the real red line for censors in authoritarian China is the systematic suppression of speech.
The poem was reprinted in the Yangtze Evening News and later in Chinese textbooks issued by Peking University Press, but with the reference to censorship removed and replaced by a row of vague ellipses.
At the Time, as a student in my twenties, I was proud to have my poem censored and saw it as a symbol of honor. I realized that the authoritarian Chinese Communist Party was afraid to admit to its own people that it suppressed basic human rights, including freedom of expression. Freedom of speech without censorship in the United States is a strictly protected fundamental right, and at the time I was reassured by this.
Censorship in the United States
Fast forward 10 years to 2021, and for the first time in the past two months, my freedom of speech has been censored on American social media. The problem, as the anonymous censors apparently saw, was that I had the audacity to point out that widespread fraud had occurred during the 2020 presidential election. This has been witnessed by people all over the United States and has been well documented by Peter Navarro in a series of his academic reports. He is a professor with a PhD in economics from Harvard University.
Clearly, the establishment in political circles and many on social media platforms fear the fact that the integrity of our elections will be undermined during the 2020 election. Given the near impossibility of convincingly refuting the evidence and statistics of the allegations documented in the Navarro report, the major social media companies then decided to abandon honest debate over reason in favor of blatant censorship.
I was initially censored by Facebook. Then, on January 8, I was censored for the first time by LinkedIn. These two instances are detailed in the article “I’m sounding the alarm: Communist-style censorship has arrived in the U.S.”
Perhaps more surprisingly, I was later censored again by LinkedIn. My post included a simple statement: “My latest work. Today, America says, ‘Thank you, President Trump (Trump).'” The post was deleted by Collage the next day with no explanation.
After Collage censored my second post, I contacted Collage to ask why my post was censored and removed, and then got in touch with a Collage representative through Collage’s help page.
I wrote to the Collingwood representative saying, “I would love to know details about why and how my post was censored… …Will Collage continue to censor free speech?”
“My experience with social media censorship in the U.S. last month reminded me of the social media environment I witnessed when I lived in authoritarian China, where there was systematic censorship and suppression of speech. It was shocking not only to me, but to other Americans who care about the fundamental right to free speech.”
After several days of back and forth, during which I provided detailed information about the censored posts, including screenshots, the representative erroneously and flatly denied that my posts had been censored and tried to end the investigation. She wrote: “Collage has not removed any of your content. If it did, I would be happy to explain what happened and why; however, that is not the case with your account.”
After a few more days of correspondence, the representative apologized and acknowledged that Collage had done a review of my post.
The following apology was one of many written responses I received from the Collage representative: “I apologize for any incorrect or inaccurate information that was initially provided in response to your situation. While there is some information about your post/content that I cannot disclose, I assure you that Collage does not suppress or censor content simply because of a difference of opinion. We welcome content and articles that are informative, meaningful and truthful.”
The representative said the post with the link to the “Thank you, President Trump” article was finally restored after being censored by Collage for nearly a week. She later told me by phone that they had conducted a second review and found that it did not violate any of their policies.
Of course, I had to start and go through a long and tedious process with Collage to get them to finally restore the post.
“Bad Information”
However, my first post with the article “Why I first protested on Jan. 6” is still blocked by Collage.
Although unwilling to answer specific questions in writing about why and how my post was censored, a representative from Collage offered to provide more information over the phone. During the call the representative told me that she could not elaborate on why Collage censored my post. The problem, however, is that any allegations of fraud regarding the 2020 election have not been substantiated.
In response, I pointed out that among the posts I had censored was a compelling article that extensively cited a series of academic reports by Navarro. But that representative told me that wasn’t enough, because they couldn’t verify it themselves.
The representative said that Collage checked the accuracy of the posts marked for review from multiple sources. When I asked which sources Collage used to check, she replied that she couldn’t disclose specific sources, but basically CNN or something like that.
The media has widely reported on the transcripts of CNN staff conversations over the past two years, including leaked raw transcripts of multiple internal CNN conference calls from late 2020 onward, that reveal and confirm a serious anti-Trump bias among CNN executives and reporters.
After weeks of dozens of back-and-forth written exchanges with Collage, including receiving written and verbal apologies from Collage for giving “incorrect or inaccurate information” about my censored post, I finally got something meaningful: from my phone conversations with Collage representatives, I seem to have received an unexpected Confession.
The representative admitted that while the information in my censored post about protesting election fraud “may be accurate,” Collage may have found it “offensive” after checking with sources, including CNN, which is clearly anti-Trump biased. .
As we’ve seen recently, there have been countless Americans who have experienced the political censorship I’ve experienced over the past two months on major social platforms, including Twitter, Facebook and Collage. As an American who has experienced and witnessed systematic censorship in authoritarian China, I know the importance of protecting our freedom of expression in the United States and stopping censorship before it becomes the new normal.
In the final lines of my poem, I end with these words in Chinese: “But don’t worry about me, my story is epic, and when it’s over, I’ll tell it in English.”
The censorship of this poem was just the tip of the iceberg of what I experienced while living in dictatorial China.
Now, when censored in the United States, I exercise my right to free speech here today to share a truth: as Americans, we cannot take our free society and fundamental rights for granted, but must continue to preserve and defend them, including freedom of speech, which we have built up over generations.
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