The internet is our voice — Do not let governments shut it down.

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Imagine that the president had the power to push a button and instantly paralyse the vocal cords of everyone in the country. No one could talk, not to say anything.

It's intended for emergencies, and you are assured that it will only be used very, very wisely. Your government knows best, and it is acting to protect you.

I do hope you'd be sceptical. You might call it a tyrannical power, and I think you would be right. You might say that it should never be used, and that it should probably never even exist: The mere temptation to use it would create a chilling effect on speech, even in ordinary times. That too would be completely right.

In most circumstances, our voices are no longer our primary means of communication.

The internet is.

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Lately I have noticed more and more governments resorting to shutting down the internet, our chief means of communication, in times of crisis--that is, at precisely the times when private communications are the most urgently needed. In Sri Lanka, Kashmir, and now Papua and West Papua in Indonesia, governments have used this tactic in an effort to suppress political violence or misinformation.

But a government that fears communication itself is a government at war with humanity. It has forfeited any possible claim to legitimacy, and it should be resisted by any means necessary.

This is not primarily a political or an ideological claim, either: it is a question of mere survival, because in any society, the lives of ordinary citizens now depend on the internet in ways that they formerly depended on the voice.

Historical analogies mostly fail to capture the injustice of this action. Even prior restraint censorship--historically the worst form of censorship, preventing in advance a book from even being published--even prior restraint censorship still allowed SOME books to be published. The only thing that roughly approximates this action is the former prohibition on literacy among slaves. And that too was a particularly atrocious crime against humanity.

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Some will be inclined to misunderstand me on this point, so I will be clear up front that I disavow and reject the idea of American military action in any of these cases. It's a righteous fight, but it's not our fight, and if I am calling for America to do anything here, it would be to ask Americans to resist their own government if such an abominable practice ever occurred in the US.

Unfortunately I see little reason why this tactic will not spread in the near future--unless it becomes generally understood that any state disruption to the internet is a universal, unconditional signal for open revolution, with no possible quarter for the perpetrators.