1/ The apparent intention to destroy Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty comes with a bleak conclusion: the United States is no longer interested in promoting democracy, because it's no longer interested in democracy.
https://twitter.com/RFERLPress/status/1900995458702733594
2/ VOA was founded in 1942 to broadcast American news, values and culture - especially music - to countries across the world, many of which were under enemy occupation at the time. It gained a new purpose in the struggle against Communism in the Cold War.
3/ Many of those who lived in Eastern Europe under Communism can testify to the importance that VOA played in breaking through state censorship. During the early 1950s, almost every defector from the Soviet bloc cited VOA as an influence in their decision to defect.
4/ The German band Rammstein, who grew up in East Germany, paid tribute in their song "Radio" to the role that VOA and other Western radio stations played for the populations living under Communism:
5/ "We weren't allowed to be part of it.
Don't see, talk or disturb anything
Every song was forbidden
So dangerously foreign notes
But a little happy every night
My ear very close to the world receiver"
Don't see, talk or disturb anything
Every song was forbidden
So dangerously foreign notes
But a little happy every night
My ear very close to the world receiver"
6/ Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty likewise played a major part in the fight against Communism from 1949 onwards. After the revolutions of 1989 it refocused as "a surrogate free press in countries where such a press is banned by the government", as one former head has put it.
7/ It provides a unique resource for reporting on Russia, Belarus and the Central Asian autocracies. Nobody else is doing the kind of reporting that it's doing. RFE/RL has been, for me personally, an invaluable source on the Ukraine war.
8/ The funding it gets is not even a rounding error in the US federal budget; closing it and VOA has no discernible effect on the budget deficit. As Elon Musk has already made clear, the apparent intention to close it is purely ideological.
9/ The bottom line is that VOA and RFE/RL exist to promote democracy and provide the facts about things happening in countries where the truth is suppressed by dictatorial governments. This has been the core of their missions for 80 years.
10/ That US now wants to abandon the promotion of democracy and factual reporting tells us that it is no longer interested in democracy and factual reporting. Unfortunately, it's a very clear sign of which direction the US is now rapidly heading. /end
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