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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: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday October 03 2018, @07:46PM
I agree up to a point -- I think as soon as the Antifa contingent (here used as a catchall including their buddies from CAIR, the heirs to SDS, and whatever other outfits are funded by Soros and the Muslim Brotherhood) start getting actually shot, most of their "resistance" will evaporate, because most of the warm bodies are just LARPing at being revolutionaries; they have zero experience at being seriously thwarted, let alone at being live targets, and have no idea what they're getting into. (I still remember how the L.A. riots steered around Koreatown shops with their armed proprietors on every rooftop.) But afterward, I expect the hardcores will resurface as IRA-style domestic terrorists, more akin to European Antifa..
I'm also thinkin' it may cause considerable backlash in cities that have started going purple (eg. Austin), and even more so in flyover country, which thus far has not really had to deal with "inclusion and diversity" and doesn't understand how it's calculated to undermine them politically. As a northern plains native, I didn't understand either, until I did 28 years in SoCal, and watched CA's slide into collective insanity. Ain't nothin' like a real-life demonstration to make a point hit home.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.