Posted on 02/09/2021 1:26:25 PM PST by Kaslin
China's Communist Party uses the Great Firewall to block information from its citizens. Blocking speech based on politics has been a hallmark of every totalitarian government
“That is all right. I had them on my list, too,” a prominent public figure joked after learning that he had been blacklisted by a political opponent.
Who said this? Was it Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., after Simon and Schuster canceled his book deal because he challenged the Electoral College results from Pennsylvania, even though Democrats had similarly objected in 2001, 2005, and 2017?
Was it a Trump administration official responding to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s call to blacklist and deny them future employment?
Was it black conservative radio host Larry Elder after Hollywood censored his documentary “Uncle Tom,” whose IMDB rating of 8.9 surpasses 9 of the past 10 Oscar winners for Best Documentary?
How about someone responding to veteran journalist Katie Couric’s call to “deprogram” Trump supporters?
Or My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, after Twitter banned him along with thousands of conservatives, including former President Donald Trump? Or Newmax reporter Emerald Robinson’s response to CNN’s call to cancel Newsmax?
No. “That is all right. I had them on my list, too,” was the response of David Low, a prominent British cartoonist, when he learned in 1945 that his name was one of 2,300 Britons on Adolf Hitler’s blacklist. Had Hitler captured England, the Gestapo was to arrest those on the list.
No sector of English society or political opinion was spared from Hitler’s British blacklist. The Gestapo targeted Jews in England, members of Parliament, executives and employees of more than 170 British firms, dozens of university professors, members of 400 social clubs and organizations, and journalists at 35 media outlets.
Censorship and blacklisting are the hallmarks of an unfree society. The Third Reich seized power in Germany in 1933 and immediately began controlling newspapers, radio, and films through censorship. Books were banned and burned.
Censorship was also a tactic used by Soviet Russia. When the Bolsheviks took power in Russia in 1917, one of their first acts was to issue the Decree on Press to ban articles critical of their authority. Based on real-life experiences with censorship and other horrors in communist Russia, George Orwell wrote his book “1984” in 1949 to warn the West against totalitarianism. Today China’s Communist Party uses the Great Firewall to block news and online information from its citizens.
Today’s speech punishments by Twitter, Facebook, Hollywood, corporations, and book publishers against Americans are obviously not equal to the mass casualty horrors of totalitarian governments. A direct comparison is not the point here. It’s to point out that certain tools are hallmarks of repressive societies that a society that aspires to be free should not emulate, even faintly.
Censorship and blacklisting are serious unjust cultural acts that increasingly filter Americans into second-class citizens based on their political viewpoints. The censorship and blacklisting that we are seeing in America right now is viewpoint discrimination. Censorship and blacklisting need to be fully rejected by American society before they become accepted cultural norms that make even worse injustices likely and more possible.
It was censorship that gave birth to free-speech advocacy in America and fostered the conditions for our nation’s unique First Amendment, which legally protects unpopular speech. After his brother was thrown in jail for publishing a newspaper in 1722—the new social media of the era—Benjamin Franklin wrote a series of articles under a fake name, Silence Dogood. He had to hide his identity because he didn’t truly have free speech.
His wise words are fitting for today’s threats: “Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech. Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”
Censorship and blacklisting are narrowing Americans’ liberties and subduing the freeness of our nation today. We must hold the line and stop it now before the current climate of fear degrades into an even worse social and government climate in which previously unimagined restrictions become possible.
How can you help stop this vicious cycle from degrading further and refuse to do as you are told to do? Watch Larry Elder’s “Uncle Tom.” Sign up for updates from Hawley’s new publisher (and one of mine), Regnery Publishing.
Use alternatives to Facebook, Twitter, and Google, such as Clouthub and DuckDuckGo. Encourage tolerance for different viewpoints at your workplace and hire conservatives. To counter Couric’s call to de-program, download, read, and share the “1776 Report.” All these and more are strategies all of us can use to exercise our society’s weakening free speech muscles.
^
Godwin’s law is obsolete.
Blacklisting and censorship are the hallmarks of the Bolshevik Party of America AKA The Democratic Party of America.
Despotism (Encyclopedia Britannica film, circa 1946)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaWSqboZr1w
“A community is low on a ‘Respect’ scale if common courtesy is withheld from large groups of people on account of their political attitudes.”
“...in a downright despotism opposition is dangerous whether the despotism is official or whether it is unofficial...”
“A community rates low on the ‘Information’ scale when the press, radio, and other channels of communication are controlled by only a few people and when citizens have to accept what they are told.”
“See how a community trains its teachers”
“...these students are being taught to accept uncritically whatever they are told. Questions are not encouraged.”
“And if books and newspapers and the radio [and facebook and youtube and...] are officially controlled the people will read and accept exactly what the few in control want them to. Government censorship is one form of control. The newspaper that breaks the government censorship rule can be suspended. It is also possible for newspapers and other lines of communication to be controlled by private interests...”
Democracy (Encyclopedia Britannica film, circa 1946)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx25aMPvbJo
“The newspapers of a real democracy meet these tests...”
Newspaper checks.
1. Balance of coverage
2. Disclosure of source
3. Competence of staff
Ironic, coming from the Federalist, a website that dropped their comments section the minute a Lefty said “BOO!” to them.
*
Historically, authoritarian regimes use fictitious tales of treason as the pretext for crushing their political rivals and cowing their citizens into submission.
Propaganda organs parrot the regime’s party line while less compliant media are censored.
America is in a bad place. Elections alone will not extricate us.
Blacklist? Can we say that?
The media has became the instrument of the propaganda for the democrat party that believes it’s the political police.
The left hate for Trump is due to one thing he’s an outsider with the brains to make things greater in four years something the party of the left couldn’t do in it’s history of it’s party.
The left is doing all it can to save Fabianism.
Thanks TM.
I’ve alway thought of myself as more of an anti-federalist, Emersonian - individualism, independence and self-sufficiency. (pg. 567 thought and culture; Encyclopedia of American History; Richard B. Morris.)
Isn’t it ironic, indeed...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jne9t8sHpUc
*** head them off at the pass ***
That ship has already sailed..
The Left wants to cancel us out of jobs, bank accounts and eventually existence, and they are seriously talking about "reeducation" (AKA "death") camps.
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
I meant resolution, not revolution.
Heads them off at the pass? Is this a joke... it’s getting more ridiculous by the day - people being fired and “cancelled” for what they said or wrote when they were teenagers? The next version of this demonic insanity is cancelling people for knowing people who said something the vile demonic scum don’t approve of... just wait.
Anyway, Godwin’s “law” was just a meaningless wordplay tool, designed to mimic well-known classical logical fallacies, created by some dude who disliked how easily progressive policies were mirror reflections of Hitler and nazi Germany.
They hated things like getting tricked into agreeing with the words of Hitler so often. So they created “Godwin’s Law”.
Meaningless, always has been.
Good grief!
The stogy old federalist up there in its ivory towers is, apparently, clueless about what is happening to the common serfs now!
They, as usual, are about two or three decades behind present-day events...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.