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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.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:36PM
No. it's not tiny. It may look tiny in comparison with other methods of oppression, but it's essential if you don't want to end with killing or jailing a good proportion of the population.
In 1956, the soviets entered Hungary to quell a revolution there [wikipedia.org]. There were little news about the events broadcast in the rest of the East Europe block countries, not even the kind of "Hungarian patriots, with Soviet assistance, smashed the counter-revolution" version. It doesn't pay to give people the idea that a revolution is even possible, revolutions only happen to bring the powers-to-be... well... into being; but they must remain history.
The same with the Velvet Revolution [wikipedia.org] - with some notable exceptions which rather confirm the rule.
After a while, those opinions must be censored, in spite of other existing forms of oppression against any opposition.
There is this category of idealists, people that value some ideas higher than their own well-being or life. Let their ideas unchecked and the next thing you'll have is a Gandhi or Nelson Mandela - it may be even too late to kill them lest you transform them in an untouchable symbol of the ideal (they are dead alright, can't kill them a second time).
Yes, you may try to co-opt them, like it lately happened with Aung San Suu Ky - but you'll need to cede a part of your power to the co-opted (and you can't co-opt many, for obvious reasons).
Ever heard of sluggish schizophrenia [wikipedia.org]? That's the best a dictatorship can do to close the mouth of those pesky idealists who "disseminate their pathological reformist ideas among the masses" but, from where a dictatorship stands, t needs doing. Or else.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford