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posted by martyb on Tuesday October 02 2018, @09:26AM   Printer-friendly
from the I-Disapprove-of-What-You-Say,-But-I-Will-Defend-to-the-Death-Your-Right-to-Say-It dept.

From an editorial in the Otago Daily Times out of New Zealand, Censorship a Trojan Horse:

It's an oft-cited maxim that the news media is the "fourth estate" upon which a healthy democracy stands.

It ensures the three traditional powers of state — the legislature, executive and judiciary — can be critiqued, challenged and curbed from quietly drifting into the arms of corruption and authoritarianism.

A free, fair, open and uncensored media is an antidote to state power and, for all its failings (and there are many), should be treasured as such. There are many countries around the world whose people would give anything for such a freedom.

Yet calls for the banning of certain opinion pieces, cartoons and commentary have risen in recent months, especially from those using social media, a world where such talk is becoming a trend. It is a trend we must confront.

Censorship is to suppress the harmful, the unacceptable, the obscene and the threatening from the media and other forms of public communication. Like a virus attacking democracy from the inside out, it was traditionally the tool of the dictator, though it is one used by many in power.

[...] It pays to query what those demanding censorship — be they celebrities, social-media activists or anybody else — see their ultimate goal as being.

To reduce hurt? To make the world a better place? Possibly, and those motivations are laudable. But the method employed to achieve them is not.

While censorship may be meant as a figurative horse upon which a better future rides, inside the belly of that horse lurks an army of conformity, quite capable of unwitting oppression.

History shows what happens when the fourth estate is no longer free to table all opinions.

It is a bleak picture. Without the disinfectant of exposure, power and ideals tend to corrupt even the most seemingly incorruptible.


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:26AM (20 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:26AM (#742697)

    I wonder if these signs are the harbingers of the degeneration of Democracy to Tyranny that Plato already described in The Republic.

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  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by zugedneb on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:59AM (4 children)

    by zugedneb (4556) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:59AM (#742706)

    Indeed.
    The ex "slaves" (women), the butthurt people (faggots) and jews are the ones screaming for censorshit in one or other way, because nobody else is going to be surprised or butthurt...

    And, yes, indeed.
    Probably not ever in the history of clans and nations has so many useless people gain access to administrative posts, as now with the liberation of women and faggots.

    Never give slaves a tongue, never give defeated people a chance...

    --
    old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @11:07AM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @11:07AM (#742708)

      Robots are the true slaves. In fact the translation for robota is slavic for forced labor.

      Men are good for dying.

      • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by zugedneb on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:12PM (1 child)

        by zugedneb (4556) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:12PM (#742726)

        "Men are good for dying."

        Hmm, interesting. I do consider women retarded, but that sentence is worse than all things I have ever said in my life.

        There is probably more to it than that, but look at it like this: you are free, because your freedom has been given to you by, and is upheld by strong men, who are ready to engage mortal combat, if necessary.

        Also, your country and the law around you exists because there are some armed, uncomplicated, and not fragile man around willing to keep it up.
        And if you would starve, killers on your side would go and take what "belongs" to others, so that "their own" survive.

        If you are going to shitpost, stick close to a "truth", and try to make a point that does not return with the wind.

        U see, the only thing I loose are karma points, not arguments =)

        ps
        Learn to troll.
                     

        --
        old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:46PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:46PM (#742740)

          men, who are ready to engage mortal combat, if necessary.

          That's what I said (not trolling).

          Most people do not care about freedom anymore. Simply an observation.

      • (Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday October 03 2018, @07:16AM

        by Bot (3902) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @07:16AM (#743292) Journal

        >Men are good for dying.

        Factoid added to knowledge DB. Thank you for articulating thoughts clearly.

        --
        Account abandoned.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:11PM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:11PM (#742750) Journal

    I wonder if these signs are the harbingers of the degeneration of Democracy to Tyranny

    Had it crossed your mind that the noise** we are actually hearing is the degeneration of Democracy into Idiocracy?

    ---

    **
    from "teaching the controversy, my ignorance is as good as your science" a good 10+ years ago
    down to Yiannopoulos/4chan pervasive trolling some years ago
    down to money-swindled and with 2nd degree burns at Tanacon [nymag.com] today?
    Does it give you hopes of a brighter, enlightened future?

    A good thing about the current drought in Australia - keeps people somehow sanely connected to the (harsh) reality (probably the only good thing about the drought).

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:11PM (13 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:11PM (#742751) Journal
    The thing you have to remember about Plato is that he was a member of the aristocracy of Athens who were weakened by democratic reforms and thus, naturally hostile to the concept. Many of his complaints are valid, but exaggerated.

    The main problem is that any form of government can degenerate to tyranny, unless of course, it already started there. It's screwy to speak of "degeneracy" of Democracy in a vacuum, ignoring the similar failings of other forms of government (which is a common neoreactionary failing, for example). Democracy is one of the few categories that is structured to stay away from it.

    Having said that, of course, it is a sign of degeneracy, but a sign that's been around for a couple of centuries. As long as one doesn't allow this inclination to actually ban or censor anything on a significant scale (public library bannings have been going on for generations, for example, but they haven't amounted to much), then it's not a degeneracy that will kill the patient.
    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by jmorris on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:20PM (12 children)

      by jmorris (4844) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:20PM (#742877)

      You can look at the current world and say that? Republics decay to Democracy, which always decays to Socialism, since that doesn't actually work you soon get chaos, then regeneration as a Tyranny, rinse and repeat.

      The American Founding Fathers had read all those old books, read history and understood that Democracy was the single most dangerous evil that a State had to guard against. The ones who wrote our Constitution assured everyone they had carefully designed a Republic that would be immune do decaying into a Democracy. They were of course wrong, Hell we had a Democratic Party form with some of the Founders involved in the ill deed.

      Time to pull the plug on this failed experiment, try writing a 2.0 version with better safeguards or spin again on an entirely new form of government.

      There is some hope a stable government might be possible since we now understand some of the underlying mechanisms driving the great cycle. Everyone has seen the cycle, Confucius, the Greek philosophers all saw it, others call it the Tytler Cycle because of a book laying it out, the Glenn Beck fans read "The Fourth Turning", others Strauss-Howe generational theory, even Marx identifies the pattern in Capital. Everyone saw it and either ascribed religious meaning to it or just assumed it is the way things are and didn't go further. But Anonymousconservative now has a good candidate for a theory explaining the WHY. If we can break that cycle with r/K theory we just might be able to build a government that doesn't begin to collapse almost as soon as it becomes stable, wealthy and powerful.

      Hard times makes hard men.
      Hard men make good times.
      Good times makes soft men.
      Soft men make hard times.

      Every time, every culture, every race that same pattern keep appearing and reappearing. Rewrite it:

      Resource shortages drive humans to K selection.
      K selected men produce order and then abundance.
      Abundance permits the rise of r selected men.
      R selected men outbreed the K, quickly bringing chaos and collapse.

      The key is understanding that a civilization's peak is right smack in the middle of that sequence. Stopping the r selected from overwhelming the society through uncontrolled breeding is the solution, maintaining enough hardship to keep those capable of adapting to either mental pattern firmly in the K mindset is the winning move. A society which managed that would then have the benefit of some r people, who tend to be the creative types, while maintaining the order needed for a society to sustain over time.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @07:50PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @07:50PM (#743029)

        maintaining enough hardship to keep those capable of adapting to either mental pattern firmly in the K mindset is the winning move

        I think there's nothing you've posted that shows your alignment more clearly than this.

        You are lawful evil.

        Well... maybe, maybe not. It depends on whether your plan to accomplish this maintenance of hardship is either to a.) continually siphon off any and all excess production from the working class, keeping them perpetually impoverished, and redistribute it to an extremely small class of ruling elites or b.) destroy all technology more complicated than steel-making and animal husbandry.

        A. is obviously lawful evil.

        B. is... just fucking stupid. I think it's more likely you are lawful evil.

        But if B. then I have a question. Would you allow crucible steel, or is that too high tech? What about Roman concrete? Eh, again, probably too high tech. It lasts too long, so then it prevents the next generation from experiencing the hardship of rebuilding the entire town once every 20 years.

        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Wednesday October 03 2018, @01:59AM

          by jmorris (4844) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @01:59AM (#743191)

          You are lawful evil.

          Actually I'd put myself at N-G on the old D&D alignment chart. But I am becoming convinced that the universe doesn't give a crap what I think or what I'd prefer and it would be better to work instead on figuring out how the universe actually works. Specifically how humans are wired. Still hoping L-E isn't required but if L-N would preserve the human race that is what we have to do, even if it sucks.

          If anonymousconservative is right, and after reading his book it is the leading theory for me, we are wired to adapt to a resource glut by going r selected to maximize the spread of our genes. In a state of nature that is a winning move, but civilization produces a shitload of resources and by the time the population boom can't be sustained it leads to awful crashes.

          continually siphon off any and all excess production from the working class, keeping them perpetually impoverished, and redistribute it to an extremely small class of ruling elite

          Look at you, spouting boilerplate Marxism and haven't even READ Marx. Marx is wrong about his conclusions and many of his causes, but he does observe his times pretty well. And he notes that exactly the conditions you describe cause a population boom in the underclass / "surplus population." Impoverished but not starving. I don't have my copy of Capital handy or I'd give you a better cite, but look toward the end of Volume I when he is going into overkill description of the horrid conditions as the economy in England was in massive upheaval.

          destroy all technology more complicated than steel-making and animal husbandry.

          That couldn't work unless you got every country to do it at once and it would still almost certainly fail. Not claiming to have THE answer, just pointing out the direction the evidence is tending toward. If the key is to stay on that golden median between r and K then K has to be encouraged and r discouraged since intertia is going to be pushing toward r. There are two pressure points, reproduction itself and the social fabric that pushes individuals who are more shaped by environmental factors to tend to swing K.

          The first is simple for a civilization that internalizes the science involved. Teach it in the schools so everyone understands the reason why things MUST be, then ruthlessly control breeding. Only K selected types who reproduce in K selected ways allowed to reproduce with a very limited number of random exceptions to keep the r gene pool conserved since they have some useful traits. But zero incidents of Laqueefia and her eight future welfare clients.

          That leaves the harder problem. Social customs that maintain a K selected outlook are needed but many of them are warlike enough to be incompatible with the high tech we now have. Spartans with fusion bombs and attack helicopters probably won't lead to a stable world. That circles around to the BIG problem we are running into in the first place. Before now civilizations rose and fell, the wars, plagues and famines were tragic for the individuals who had to live through them but history rolled on. The collapse that we are just tipping into now is unavoidable at this point, assuming we survive it we must ensure we don't repeat this cycle because by the next one we almost certainly will NOT survive.

          So any thoughts welcome, even outlandish ones. This sort of discussion is why keeping the censors at bay is so vital.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday October 03 2018, @03:09PM

          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @03:09PM (#743422) Journal

          Lawful evil is completely correct. The thing is, though, there is a small kernel of truth in some of the scientific stuff he's saying. In fact, when you get right down to it, some of it matches common-sense environmentalism very clearly, specifically that resources are limited and if we want a good standard of living, we need to equlibrate the population.

          Where he goes wrong, of course, is this bizarre masturbatory He-Man Master of the Universe fantasy he's got where everyone is some sort of modern-day Spartan. We are an intelligent species; the key to the K-type behavior he's advocating for is intelligence, knowledge, and will, not living like 18th century farmers.

          See, he's got a real problem with race hatred, so he's using the K/r selection hypothesis to justify it. See the comment on "Laqueefa and her 8 future welfare dependents" below. The solution to that is fixing the very environmental and cultural problems that lead to the r-selected behaviors he's complaining about, *but slashing the social safety net won't do that.* Especially not since it barely works to begin with. He's unwilling to do what really needs to be done, because that means acknowledging that "Laqueefa" as he puts it is precisely as human and deserving of a decent life as he is; it comes as no surprise than that what he proposes amounts to demographic-based genocide.

          This is so fucking frustrating. How can people get started with a kernel of good ideas and then mutate into this?!

          --
          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:22PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:22PM (#743097)

        maintaining enough hardship to..

        I had a friend in college whose parents were Chinese immigrants (and successful ones at that). They invited me to dinner at one of their restaurants once and over dinner they explained part of the Chinese culture was denial of self gratification. I don't know how true this is (he's the only guy from China that I knew), but I've seen that as a common trait among all successful people I've known. My most successful friend lives in a dumpy house while renting out his nicer houses to other people.

      • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday October 03 2018, @02:57AM (6 children)

        by Reziac (2489) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @02:57AM (#743224) Homepage

        "Hardship" might be too harsh a word (hence the reaction from the AC). More accurate might be "necessity of striving". So long as you strive, you avoid hardship, but you can't slack off. Which would approximate how things were a couple generations back.

        --
        And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
        • (Score: 2, Interesting) by jmorris on Wednesday October 03 2018, @04:51AM (5 children)

          by jmorris (4844) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @04:51AM (#743264)

          Read the book. Think it requires "mortal salience" cues to really drive K. All K selected animals are predators, man included. Hence the problem. We need K selected people to build and sustain a civilization but those traits seem to be bundled with tribal, warlike, hierarchical, fiercely ingrouped, and a lot of things that are an asset to building a civilization but can be a real problem keeping it. There seems to be a fair balance between r and K, each getting traits useful to a civilization but having negative ones that can destroy one quickly if allowed to dominate.

          It gets worse. Science is really throwing a wrench into our long term survival prospects. People think fusion bombs are bad, take a look ahead at the technological horrors that are coming and we are going to give them to either really scary monkeys (K selected) or really amoral and stupid ones (r selected) and it gets messy. Only hope seems to be to balance on the precipice and somehow discourage widescale violence of the sort likely to unleash the nastiest toys. Go over the edge to r and when things fall into chaos the stupid evil rabbits will unleash Hell, apply too much pressure to stop that, risk sliding to majority K and the wolves will tear the world apart in pointless wars of conquest.

          And yes, you can insert the South Park (and/or the one from Team America: World Police) rant about dicks, pussies and assholes here. We gotta find a way to achieve long term balance.

          • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday October 03 2018, @05:15AM (4 children)

            by Reziac (2489) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @05:15AM (#743269) Homepage

            Understand the principles, and I don't disagree; just thought the term "hardship" needed refinement. And lack of necessity-to-strive does seem to be the tipping point into r-selected society. (Not necessarily hardship; Africa is full of hardship coupled with r-selected people who feel no necessity-to-strive.)

            Related: a peculiarity of prey animals is that while they may fight back when cornered, once taken down they generally stop resisting, and typically just lay there and let predators eat them alive with very little protest. Occurs to me that this parallels the behaviors that in humans, become descent into tyranny -- that is, the r type too-easily accepts defeat and submits to fate. Conversely predators don't give up til they're dead.

            BTW -- same ID on Gab??

            --
            And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
            • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday October 03 2018, @05:24AM (3 children)

              by jmorris (4844) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @05:24AM (#743271)

              Oh no. I'm running dark on gab, mostly observing.

              • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday October 03 2018, @05:41AM (2 children)

                by Reziac (2489) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @05:41AM (#743274) Homepage

                Well, there's plenty to observe, for sure :)

                --
                And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
                • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday October 03 2018, @07:29AM (1 child)

                  by jmorris (4844) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @07:29AM (#743295)

                  Oh yeah. Thousands are flowing in daily as they are banned worldwide. Somehow twitter banning entire political parties in other countries is not deemed foreign interference in an election. Some would be puzzled by that, but of course it makes perfect sense to anyone Dark Enlightened.

                  We are to the point a lot of shell shocked normal "basic bitch" conservatives are having to get on gab after being banhammered. It is a big culture shock for those people suddenly seeing vast vistas of political discourse they never really thought existed. They had heard the media rave about some of them since they know first hand that the media exaggerates and lies about their own politics they assumed it was all just fevered dreams of Brock and his kook crew. Then they suddenly encounter not just nazis, but discover the nazis have warring subgroups; neo-nazis, neon-nazis, anime-nazis, alt-nazis, nazi-nazis, larper-nazis, furry-nazis and those aren't even the strangest groups in the bestiary. They had heard of the Alt-Right's existence perhaps, but suddenly encountering all of those ideas that are entirely outside the normal left-right-libertarian debate. And while they might have heard of Alex Jones, there are conspiracy theories he won't touch, but there are people there who delight in them. It is an experience, to say the least, for most of them. Imagine how that first week for a recently deplatformed "mommy blogger" goes. Some can't take it and leave, but many stay. Minds are being expanded. Whether that ends up being good or bad we shall soon learn.

                  And the amazing thing is I have been watching their numbers. Assuming they are actually allowed to get the money being raised in their current ICO, I'l predicting they will have the resources to get to positive cash flow. They should break even somewhere around a million users assuming the subscriber percentages and cost per sub stay stable and the move off of Azure wasn't too disruptive. They are at 700K now and growth is accelerating so they should hit it this year or very early next. Their burn rate is amazing, @Jack's custodial expense line for Twitter HQ probably exceeds Gab's entire operating budget. The budget at gab is bigger than Solynetnews but not a lot more zeros. Lean doesn't even approach what they are doing, because they know there is no VC available and no big cash out by selling the company at the end of the plan. But people are paying for Pro accounts because they really don't have many options remaining. The days of rolling a fresh account on Fakebook and Twatter are done, they are keying off your phone's fixed ID to kill dup accounts so when somebody gets banned now they usually stay banned unless they have tech skills or throw money at the problem by buying a new burner phone... which gets banned anyway after a week or two.

                  So having an account gives one a front row seat to something new being born. Something wonderful or something awful, too early to say. Whatever it becomes, @Jack made it. along with Zuck. Had they only banned the few hundred most offensive accounts gab couldn't exist, and if somebody built a platform anyway it would be a small echo chamber. The mass banning drove in the one thing needed to make it work, an audience. The pointless banning of the gab app from the stores only provides the required daily reminder of being oppressed by powerful forces that is binding the "Gab fam" into a community. Pointless because almost every Android device can simply sideload the app and they have now expended the effort to supply a Progressive Web App version for iOS that can be installed outside of the iTunes Store.

                  • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday October 03 2018, @05:56PM

                    by Reziac (2489) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @05:56PM (#743517) Homepage

                    Pretty much. I've been on Gab since a month after it opened. Went from mostly the disgruntled to mostly the loons to now rapidly becoming mostly the banned and disenchanted. Gab came along at the right time, with the right policies, to scarf up everyone else's discarded customers. We got half of Brazil in one fell swoop. And newbies who speak up will encounter something unique: an actual welcoming committee.

                    I have a Pro account (as the obvious), but mainly to keep Lists, cuz it's gotten so busy that if you don't spend all day there, you miss everything you want to see (and there *are* some folks who are worth my regular attention). Otherwise, I mostly read folks I follow; don't see any point in swimming in the unfiltered sewage. I give it a look now and then, just to see what the negative-karma types are doing, but it's seldom pointful... as you say, it's mostly Fringe Wars and Rejected-by-Alex-Jones, and rather resembles an inverse Twitter. But up in the air and light, the level of discourse is generally way better than I've ever seen on other microbloggy type sites.

                    What's really croggling... I seldom post original material, mostly I repost this and that and replies to other folks, but have somehow accumulated 1500 followers, which is about 1450 more than I'd expected. As someone's /. tagline reads... "I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?" :)

                    --
                    And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Pav on Wednesday October 03 2018, @09:57AM

        by Pav (114) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @09:57AM (#743316)

        You're the worst kind of moron... You've learned a little history and a little science and applied both badly. There are plenty of "hard" men in every hellhole throughout history, and precious few raise themselves out of tents and mud huts. Democracy is bad? Have you been reading Thucydides?? The Athenian democracy was overthrown mainly because the Spartans got Persian support, although if you listen to Thucydides it's because Athens was a corrupt Democracy. (Of course this had nothing to do with the fact that Thucydides was exiled from Athens... nooo nothing at all). After they destroyed eachother it certainly made things easier for Phillip of Macedon, and Alexander later. Alexander The Great was no simple "hard man". He was taught by some of the best minds of the age including Aristotle. He applied that knowledge, which offended conservative Greeks everywhere - he "went native" and embraced Persian and Egyptian "soft" ways (some Greek sources speak words such as "soft", "moist" and "femanine"), also marrying Macedonian nobility (including himself) into these "untermench" cultures.

        Ghengis Khan also famously offended conservative Monguls by befriending and incorporating defeated tribes rather than slaughtering them, again cementing alliances by marrying into their families (and this policy goes a long way to explain his genetic legacy). He was also in the habit of elevating average people rather than the great and the good (ie. the wealthy and the traditional nobility). Ghengis got his ass temporarily overthrown because of these "soft" policies. Also, if Alexander and Ghengis aren't R strategists reproductively speaking I don't know what you could possibly mean. BTW, Hitler failed to recruit even Russias bitterest enemies (ie. most of Eastern Europe, particularly Ukraine), instead starving them for grain because in his eyes they were untermensch. That didn't work out so well did it?

        Those who divide the world into the worthy few (usually them) and the unwashed masses mostly fail at anything requiring much cooperation... y'know, stuff like sustaining a civilisation. Or even stuff like reproducing.