The Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate the World by Evgeny Morozov– Review

Abstract

This article reviews the book The Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate the World, Evgeny Morozov. The themes of the book explore the dichotomy between the democratic nature of the internet being used by opposition forces all over the world and the blatant repression of stable authoritarian regimes in Asia and the Middle East.

The internet is also used by these regimes to carry out repression on opposition forces by controlling and shadow their movements as well as implanting law enforcement to control their propagandistic actions against the government.

As it states this Guardian article the book provides a very "powerful critique of 'cyber-utopianism", showing that the net "isn't always what we think" (Chatfield, 2011). In The Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate the World, Evgeny Morozov (2011) analyses this dichotomy, highlighting the fact that political commentators in the Western world seem to only take into account the positive, more democratic aspects of the internet, such as its ability to provide regular people with voice, the online world as an instrument for the divulgation of certain points of views repressed by authoritarian governments.

What social and political scholars seem to have forgotten and / or disregarded with the use of the internet by authoritarian entities to intimidate and repress the opposition to the regime.

Morozov (2011) provides a balanced examination of the use of the internet by both the oppressors and the oppressed, stating that the internet enables dictators and authoritarian regimes all over the world to implement the prosecution and intimidation of those social movements opposed to the regime followed.

Internet, in this respect, makes the promotion of democratic values extremely difficult. In the context of the aftermath of the spring revolution in North Africa and the Middle East, these observations are very significant for the political study of the background of the revolts. Free information does not simply always generate a free society.