Thread by @carolecadwalla

NEW: A journalist last won a Nobel prize in 1935 & he couldn’t pick it up because he was in a Nazi camp.

We’re again at “a sliding doors moment” says @mariaressa.

My interview with both her & Dmitry Muratov for @ObserverUK & their warning for the world.
theguardian.com/world/2021/dec…

It’s a hair-on-the-back-of your neck moment. Listen to @mariaressa & Dmitry Muratov. They are the canaries in the coal mine.

If freedom of the press is in trouble, democracy is in trouble, we are all in trouble.

And that’s exactly what this Nobel is signalling.

And if you want to look at the specific historic parallels, then this is even more chilling. Carl Von Ossietzky won the prize in 1935 for exposing Germany’s secret re-armament.

And as Muratov points out here Russia’s aggressive military & expansionist plans are in plain sight

Here’s @cdeloire, president of @RSF_inter, acknowledging what @mariaressa calls “an assault on the truth”.

This Fri, the Nobel will draw attention to a profound existential problem: facts no longer work.

We’re in a tech-induced dystopia. That is accelerating authoritarianism.

It’s Ressa who understands Silicon Valley’s role in this. And it’s Muratov who’s living in what increasingly looks like a dictatorship.

There’s another sickening irony in play. The Russian org set up by another Nobel prize winner - Andrei Sakharov - is fighting for its life

Read this by @guardian’s Moscow correspondent @Andrew__Roth to understand how devastating the Kremlin’s assault on Memorial - & therefore on fundamental human rights - is.

This isn’t ‘authoritarianism’. It’s far darker than that.
theguardian.com/world/2021/nov…

What I didn’t manage to say is that Muratov, Ressa & us are points on a continuum.

In UK & US, social media undermined our elections’ integrity. In the Philippines, an authoritarian wants to jail journalists. And in Russia, a dictator has murdered them.

theguardian.com/world/2021/oct…

Finally. This is highly recommended. Muratov was in New York to support this new doc about journalists at Russia’s pioneering @tvrain & their struggle to survive Kremlin’s attempts to crush them. Called ‘Fuck This Job’, it’s by @krichevskaya & coming to @bbcstoryville in new year