THE SELF DESTRUCTION OF DIGITAL ACTIVISM IN SAUDI ARABIA

Activism is difficult, but present, in one of the most repressed countries in the world. The Saudi Arabian regime tightly controls expression and harshly punishes dissent. This is one of the reasons the regime survived the Arab Spring of 2011, which toppled many authoritarian governments in the Middle East but barely manifested in Saudi Arabia. Nevertheless, activism lives on in the country. The different Saudi activist movements have been tied to the communication media of the time. Activists used speech, radio, satellite television, and lately, the internet to communicate, organize, spread ideologies, and mobilize support. Despite increasing the ability for activists to spread ideas, internet adoption has harmed activism in Saudi Arabia because it enabled the state to further repress dissent, and it replaced communities where activism originally thrived.

THE REACH OF THE INTERNET

Activists have utilized the internet to spread messages and mobilize support more effectively than previous mediums. In the last decade, activist movements in Saudi Arabia adopted the internet as their primary mode of communication.¹ Activists use social media and other internet services to express dissent, spread their ideology, and organize movements and uprisings. State repression has been unable to stop online activism, as instances of the state arresting well-known dissidents resulted in more online dissent rather than silence.² However, this increase in online activism has not been enough to overcome the barriers to meaningful change in Saudi Arabia. Major uprisings before and after the transition to the internet have had similar outcomes. In 1979, the long-oppressed Saudi Shi’a minority organized an uprising in Qatif. Inspired by the success of the Iranian revolution and the radio broadcasts from the post-revolutionary government, as well by pamphlets distributed by the Organization for the Islamic Revolution in the Arabian Peninsula, thousands of Shi’a took to the streets demanding change. Within days, the uprising had turned violent, and the national guard swiftly quashed it with deadly force. This effectively ended the uprising, and despite occasional flareups of unrest in the subsequent months, the uprising did not reignite or successfully spread to other regions.³ However, with only access to radio, printed pamphlets, and speech, the Shi’a of Qatif were able to organize one of the largest uprisings in modern Saudi Arabia. In the Saudi uprisings of 2011, the activists relied upon the internet. Once again, the Shi’a living around Qatif organized the uprising. This time, inspired by the Arab Spring and increased online activism, organizers on Facebook called for a Day of Rage. This began protests that lasted for months. Videos shared online of state security gunning down protestors propelled the protests. But eventually heavy police retaliation overwhelmed the protestors and stopped them before the uprising could spread to other regions.⁴ Even though protestors utilized the internet to organize and gain international attention, the outcome was similar to the uprising of 1979. Internet activism was not enough to meaningfully change the outcome of an uprising in Saudi Arabia. Additionally, during the protests, dozens of activists were arrested for spreading messages online without physically participating in the protests. Dr. Yusuf al-Ahmad was one such detainee—a cleric who was arrested for tweeting support for the protestors’ cause.⁵ The transparency of the internet enabled the state to track and silence the thought leaders, not just the people who participated in riots. The benefits of the internet were not enough to overcome the state’s crackdown, and the nature of the medium enabled even more repression.

STATE REPRESSION

The Saudi state has extensive control over the internet, which limits the spread of activist messaging and enables the state to surveil activists’ online activity. Saudi Arabia has one of the most censored internets in the world, online speech that is critical of the government is punishable by death, and a lack of privacy laws allows the government to spy on the web traffic of domestic internet users.⁶ Previous forms of media that activists used were not as controllable. In the 1950s and 60s, a Marxist movement was growing among Saudi Aramco workers. Teachers employed by Aramco, Marxist pamphlets, and radio broadcasts exposed workers to the political philosophy. Particularly, workers listened to Radio Moscow, which had good reception in the Gulf, and Sawt al-’Arab, Nasser’s radio program which preached Arab unity and socialism.⁷ The Saudi state could not touch either of these broadcasts, as they were located in other countries. There is no way to block a radio frequency, and listening to a radio broadcast is anonymous, so activists had full, unrestricted access to revolutionary ideas. However, the state can and does block information on the internet and surveil the web traffic of Saudis who access dissident content. The state is even able to spy on dissidents in other countries. In 2018, the Saudi regime murdered Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist and well-known dissident, when he entered their consulate in Istanbul to obtain marriage papers. Journalists have found evidence that the Saudis hacked Khashoggi’s phone and installed Israeli-made spyware, which enabled them to see Khashoggi’s activity and know when he would enter the consulate.⁸ Saud Al-Qahtani, a close advisor to crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, ordered Khashoggi’s murder and watched it over a skype call. Al-Qahtani allegedly heads the Saudi’s hacking and foreign surveillance efforts. Independent investigators have found a trail of Al-Qahtani’s internet activity and determined that he has attempted to purchase spyware from foreign groups, registered domains meant to spread malware, and targeted spyware at dissidents in and outside of Saudi Arabia.⁹ This means that activists are never safe when expressing dissent online, even after fleeing to another country. By using the internet, activists are committing crimes that are punishable by death on a medium that the government fully controls. But government intervention is not the only reason the internet is a worse medium for activism. The decentralized nature of online movements has restructured activist organizations in ways that will eventually make them falter. 

THE DESTRUCTION OF COMMUNITY

The internet has replaced communities that were originally the heart of activist movements. A prominent activist movement that has been developing in Saudi Arabia for decades is the Sahwa, or the Islamic Awakening. Activist-established organizations were the backbone of the Sahwa, as they introduced young people to the movement and kept them engaged. The strongest of these organizations was the state’s own educational institutions. Upon creation of the state’s education system, administrators picked members of the Muslim Brotherhood as faculty because they often had college educations from the countries they had been exiled from. Muslim Brothers ended up comprising the majority of the faculty for many of the nation’s universities and secondary schools. This resulted in a wide-spread, Islamist influence on the curricula.¹⁰ This exposed entire generations of young Saudis to Sahwa thinking and reinforced the ideology through the influence of their teachers. Certain programs were aimed at younger students, specifically the Qur’an memorization circles and activities planned by teachers that imparted Islamist principles.¹¹ The education system exposed young activists to the Sahwa, but their involvement was maintained by many organizations. Camps kept students involved outside of school, where students would participate in religious activities and sports.¹² Even services such as addiction clinics¹³ were set up to help the community and keep people immersed in a culture of activism. Then, these organizations began to disappear. Much of this was due to an intense crackdown from the state.¹⁴ But, part of it was due to a transition from in-person activist communities to online ones. In Graveyard of Clerics, Menoret recounts attending the meetings of a club formed by young activists who wanted to see change within the Muslim Brotherhood. These activists were challenging the hierarchy and norms of the organization, particularly by reading Western philosophy and literature, which the Brotherhood heavily discouraged. To develop this offshoot of the Brotherhood, the club members invited controversial lecturers and then engaged in intellectual discussions in the following Q&A sessions. But, as Menoret attended these meetings, he saw their attendance decline and eventually the club ceased meeting entirely. Confused and disappointed, Menoret questioned one of the club members about why the club had stopped meeting. The member said that there was no point in hosting discussions anymore, as the internet was full of political discussion with more varied opinions.¹⁵ The internet exposed young activists to more ideas, but they became less immersed in activist communities. They had sacrificed depth for breadth. Eventually, this influenced many activists to move on from the Awakening movement. Menoret interviewed another activist named Thamir, who had also slowly moved on from the Muslim Brotherhood. He wanted to continue to be an activist, but in a broader world of activism beyond just the Awakening. He found the idea of leaving his organization, meeting more activists, writing opinion pieces, and becoming visible on the Internet alluring.¹⁶ The varied but decentralized activism of the internet drew him away from the structured, rigid activism of the Muslim Brotherhood which had sustained the Sahwa for so long. Many young activists like Thamir stepped away from the original organizations of the Sahwa into the broader but more dangerous world of the internet.

CONCLUSION

Using the internet to communicate, spread ideas, and organize has harmed activists in Saudi Arabia. It is true that the internet has exposed activists to more ideas and increased their ability to express dissent and organize. In other states across the Middle East, this was central to the spread of the Arab Spring and the eventual toppling of the authoritarian regimes. However, in a state like Saudi Arabia where the government has enough wealth and power to tightly control the internet, the benefits of online activism are insufficient to overcome state repression. As a consequence of using the internet, the state is able to block online dissent and easily track the activities of dissidents. By transitioning from in person communities to online ones, young people are becoming less immersed and involved in activist movements. As long as activist communities primarily use the internet to radicalize and organize, prominent dissidents will be arrested and killed by the state and movements will slowly be starved of young supporters, all while failing to build enough momentum to overcome state repression.

FOOTNOTES