Facebook Gets Multicultural About China and Censorship
By Jonathan Bean • Monday June 13, 2011 8:21 PM PDT • 11 Comments
In a recent article, the Wall Street Journal quotes Mark Zuckerberg, the kid from Harvard who heads the CEO of a company-not-yet-public. (Goldman-Sachs VIP insiders only, please). What disturbed me about the article is not that another company is breaking into the so-called China market after the Google row over censorship. I’m more disturbed by the mealy-mouth rationalization of Zuckerberg, who seems to have breathed in the multicultural fumes of higher education.
Zuckerberg stated:
“I don’t want Facebook to be an American company [God forbid!],” he said. “I don’t want it to be this company that just spreads American values all across the world. ...For example, we have this [culturally constructed American] notion of free speech that we really love and support at Facebook, and that’s one of the main things that we’re trying to push with openness. But different countries have their different standards around that. ...My view on this is that you want to be really culturally sensitive....”
This is the moral and cultural nihilism that bristles at “American values” and must be “culturally sensitive” and protect the “right not to be offended” lest you face a “hostile environment” charge—or worse. My students spew this because it starts K-12 and many of my colleagues are fond of the “free speech for me but not for thee” quote (Stanley Fish). And, of course, we must “understand The Other” (non-Americans). Or, as Zuckerberg put it: “understand the way that people actually think.”
Now, there is nothing wrong with “understanding the way the people actually think” but there is something wrong when you privilege these “other ways of thinking” at the expense of what you profess to “really love and support at Facebook” (that odd notion of openness and American values).
God help Mr. Zuckerberg, et al., as Iran goes ahead with its foolish autarkic plans to build a new operating system to impose the Islamic ethical code on all computer users in Iran. If or when Zuckerberg sells his out in Iran (and China), he will move one step closer to losing his soul and costing the lives of Others in foreign lands who had hoped that U.S. companies and Americans (of all types) might stand with them as they embrace dissident “American values” (as if they were peculiar to America).
“What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?”
—Mark 8:36
Tags: Business, China, Civil Liberties, Civil Society, Corruption, Culture, Integrity, Liberalism, Personal Liberty, Trade 
Zuckerberg didn’t make his money by making excuses, obviously, but I don’t think it’s appropriate for libertarians to imply that Facebook, or any American business, shouldn’t operate in China or Iran at all because the government there requires an entrepreneur to comply with certain ridiculous restrictions regarding the provision of their services to consumers.
The American government also forces Facebook and entrepreneurs in general to restrict the services they provide to consumers in certain ridiculous ways. Nevertheless, what they are able to provide American consumers is still extremely valuable, and the same goes for China or Iran.
If the CEO of a company has to be the face that pretends to be non-hostile towards government overtures, that’s just a sad reality of doing business in this day and age.
James | Jun 14, 2011 | Reply
James,
I am so tired of libertarians being told to “shut up” about any criticism of a company. I’m not urging political action but AS A LIBERTARIAN I have every right to voice my criticism and note my disapproval. I can also boycott companies that I find violate my moral code. I just wrote a book about this radical critical side of classical liberalism on race and immigration—many people who fought slavery were free-market and no-favors types but they challenged the notion of owning PEOPLE. I suppose today’s libertarians (some of them) would side with the slaveowners because “that’s just a sad reality of doing business in this day and age.” No wonder people are turned off from liberty—we sound like shills for anything goes.
Liberty includes free markets and “free minds” as the REASON slogan goes. Besides, the main point had nothing to do with FB in China but about multicultural education. Did I obscure that point? Zuckerberg is not just making excuses; he is prattling the multicultural nonsense that is inimical to libertarian principles.
Jonathan Bean | Jun 14, 2011 | Reply
CORRECTION: I wrote a book on the classical liberal tradition on race and immigration. I refused to use the label “libertarian” because it has become synonymous with “my market right or wrong, free or unfree.” I favor free markets but far too often libertarians are on the wrong side of free speech issues (except when it suits them). And far too many ignore the many other sides of liberty in the classical liberal tradition: education, cultural criticism, civil liberties, family, spirituality, etc. Being a classical liberal doesn’t mean you call for government action in any of those areas but we ignore them at our peril.
NOTE: I slipped into using the term “libertarian” in my own response above but try to avoid it, particularly since libertarianism doesn’t seem so liberal any more.
Flame away!
Jonathan Bean | Jun 14, 2011 | Reply
Jonathan, I believe that you have hit onto a key problem in the modern world and which affects liberals most significantly—epistemological and moral relativism. The source of this is modernism itself in which neither God nor the derivative objective standards to truth, goodness and beauty are believed to exist. The result has been an incoherent and self-refuting worldview that says on the one hand that no standards (or free will) exist because all is determined, subjective and situational, while failing to see that any such claim necessarily assumes that an objective standard must exist in order to make any inference. For Zuckerberg to claim that all cultures are true relatively is to say that none are true but that his statement is somehow true, which refutes his claim in the first place. Blather upon blather. Modernism implodes into its offspring of post-modern nihilism.
Unfortunately, many libertarians are also caught in this unworkable dilemma. Instead of being rooted in the natural law tradition (of substance dualism, i.e., theism), they believe that all individual choices are equivalent subjectively and for us to judge one as true or correct over others is a sign of naiveté, intolerance and cultural chauvinism and imperialism. For example, many libertarians consider it an outrage for someone to say that drug abuse/addiction or prostitution or alcoholism or profanity or rudeness are immoral, foolish and should be condemned. Who are we to judge others’ freely made choices? They fail to see the absurdity in their own view, for if all is subjective, then so is their own view of moral relativism, meaning that all is not relative. If all is subjective, then knowledge and liberty themselves are relative and tyranny and slavery have “equal” standing. For the moral relativist, “who is to say?” And this is exactly the nonsense of what Zuckerberg and multiculturalists like him are saying.
Liberty is based on core principles that cannot be refuted without succumbing to absurdity and consequent evils as objective standards are opposed.
David Theroux | Jun 14, 2011 | Reply
Jonathan, you wrote:
“...far too often libertarians are on the wrong side of free speech issues (except when it suits them).”
Would you care to provide examples?
Carl Close | Jun 16, 2011 | Reply
See James’s statement. Or my students in the honors course on libertarian thought or regular conversations with libertarians who are only concerned with government suppression of speech unless it involves business (business trumps civil liberties). It’s no accident that the fat history of “libertarian movement” is entitled “Radicals for Capitalism”–not for liberty but for capitalism.
Plus in the trenches on campus, working with FIRE (thefire.org) I have had far more support fighting speech codes and the rest from older ACLU-style liberals on the Left. I can’t get my libertarian colleagues and acquaintances to do anything if it doesn’t affect them. And I’ve been doing this since 1990 when I began my career as a free speech troublemaker in higher ed. My top officers in the NAS-Illinois affiliate are Hubert Humphrey-style Democrats.
And on foreign policy, discussions of places like Iran or China’s civil liberties/free speech problems devolve into Chomsky-style “blame America” (OK, we may have blood on our hands but can you also speak up on these issues too?).
In general, though, the wrong side for libertarians is taking “no side” because they really aren’t interested. I wish they were like Rothbard “all on fire for justice” but I rarely encounter that from fellow travelers. And I can’t get them to join or support FIRE and NAS on big issues that erupt on their own campus. Then they wonder why the speech code is used against them several years hence!
Jonathan Bean | Jun 16, 2011 | Reply
Jonathan, Most contemporary “libertarians” come a Randian background which means that their own worldview and personal behavior is largely one of narcissism rooted in naturalism. Historically of course this was not the case, and Rothbard and other contemporary libertarians who have fought against oppression, war, and statism overall were almost without exception rooted in the natural-law tradition, which makes a huge difference.
David Theroux | Jun 17, 2011 | Reply
David,
You are blunter than I am (in this case!). I do think that Rand has had the influence you note. After all, when Atlas Shrugged influence more people than any other book except the Bible, then you know she reached more people, for better or worse.
Jonathan Bean | Jun 17, 2011 | Reply
I think James has some good points. Especially the point that Zuckerburg may have to spin some b.s. about being Culturally Sensitive, when really he’s being State Sensitive. Can Zuckerburg really state the truth? Personally the part I find offensive is the blatant lie that he’s culturally sensitive – but there is a price of doing business in many countries of towing the party line. It seems like it may be an overreaction to get too upset at Facebook. However it is important for those of us who don’t need to maintain correct relations with the Chinese government to maintain correct relations with the truth by calling a spade a spade.
I wonder about Jonathan Bean’s slavery point. Facebook isn’t owning people – it is simply wishing to offer a product which is acceptable to the Chinese government. Now if this hurts other customers I believe this is probably wrong, (though no product is perfect for all.) But if the choice is some kind of Facebook in China or no Facebook in China, I don’t think it is bad for Facebook to offer a product for China. I don’t feel comfortable saying was definitely immoral for people to trade with the South or the North during or before the civil war just because some people had slaves (and yes the North had slaves too) and there was institutional injustice.
We have to remember what happened to Qwest and its head when they objected to the US government monitoring phone calls on their network. US companies in the US have to tow the party line, and we should place the blame for this squarely on the existence of the State. (We can of course blame the US companies for lobbying for special privileges, though it is ok I think to lobby for one’s rights.)
If there wasn’t willingness to work within state regulations there’d be a lot less economic productivity. The state is just another cost that market institutions have to deal with.
In response to David Theroux’s reading, I think Zuckerburg’s statement as quoted by Bean can be interpreted as saying – “If we want to have influence in other countries we have to tread carefully to make sure we’re not shut out.” He doesn’t say other standards are equally valuable – just that that they exist and if they push openness they have be diplomatic. Unfortunately he also doesn’t point out that the standards are state imposed. But that might not be diplomatic to point out.
Similarly if we want to help people or engage people who have addictions, are prostitute, etc. we have to acknowledge they see the world differently without ever saying they’re right. No one likes someone who imposes their worldview with no respect for the other person – and I think no one was influenced by anyone who didn’t really believe in anything either. Same goes for art and communication – a great artist has a huge impact on people, but he does it by being comprehensible to others by accepting other people’s language and ideas and working within that framework to transcend it.
Not saying that’s what Zuckerburg is doing – but history has shown the corrosive effect western media have, so if you’re able to maintain engagement on multiple fronts it will have an impact. Trying to avoid being shut out entirely seems like a good thing.
Anders Mikkelsen | Jun 21, 2011 | Reply
Anders,
I’m not saying “do no business in countries with blameless governments” (there would be no business!). In fact, I say at the outset that my criticism is NOT about
“another company breaking into the so-called China market after the Google row over censorship.”
Rather, “I’m more disturbed by the mealy-mouth rationalization of Zuckerberg, who seems to have breathed in the multicultural fumes of higher education.”
All the rest is about the corrosive effects of multicultural education. The Left and Right both know that education (culture) is important and as an educator I see what the one-sided nature of (so-called) “multiculturalism” does to young people. Now, ’tis true, that we classical liberals are at a disadvantage in education because it is a “hostile environment” (to say the least). Nevertheless, the few of us in the belly of the beast need to pound away.
You are right, absolutely right, about your statement:
“a price of doing business in many countries of towing the party line”
One difference: the country I had in mind was not China, but the USA!
Jonathan Bean | Jun 21, 2011 | Reply