I just wanted to share this because I think it is really well written (it’s also short if you want to give it a read).
Thanks, well worth reading.
In other words, when we look at history’s major censorious regimes, all of them —I want to stress that; all of them —invested enormous resources in programs designed to encourage self-censorship, more resources than they invested in using state action to actively destroy or censor information. This makes sense when we realize that (A) preventing someone from writing/saying/releasing something in the first place is the only way to 100% wipe out its presence, and (B) encouraging self-censorship is, dollar for dollar and man-hour for man-hour, much cheaper and more impactful than anything else a censorious regime can do.
I probably shouldn’t ask, but has their ever been a regime in history where the people doing the censoring are the good guys? Can’t think of any.
All of the ones that were otherwise good guys. There’s never been a regime of any large size nation that didn’t censor some stuff in one way or another. Not every nation ever has been one of the bad guys.
Present day Germany and their censorship of Nazi stuff is a good place to start, but the list is a lot longer than that.
Apologies for the double post, but relevant to Germany. The linked article has a photo that is captioned as being a book burning taking place in Berlin in 1955. Is it mislabeled? For that time period they should have at least specified west or east. But I don’t recall the old fashioned communists of that time being into book burnings, much less a western nation. Was it actually from the Nazi era and they just got the year wrong?
The dress certainly looks more 1950s than 1930s. It would be interesting to know the context.
I think sunlight is the best disinfectant. Censorship just drives it underground, and a great many other unintended consequences, however well meaning. The arena of ideas. Many of the universities are a good example, the younger folks today are incapable of dealing with contrary ideas, because they have never even been exposed to them. They just go into vapor lock.
I believe modern Germany censors Nazi propaganda. That seems like a good thing to me.
Well we want it to be a good thing, sure. We can hope it works, but hope isn’t really a strategy. Good intentions don’t count.
Modern Germany also makes Nazi memorabilia and iconography illegal.
But when we were in Munich, we saw young people walking around in Nazi-ish outfits. No literal Swastikas or Iron crosses or SS insignia, but recognisably fascist Nazi-style outfits.
My takeaway was that banning the stuff made it cool and edgy, and the counterculture in Germany adopted it. Also, given that the AfD is more popular than it’s ever been, the censorship certainly didn’t keep the right from rising.
On the other hand, the biggest damage suffered by the KKK was not due to a government crackdown or censorship. No, it was a reporter (Stetson Kennedy) who infiltrated them, then had their secret rituals exposed and mocked on episodces of the Superman Radio show. He exposed them to the light and made them look ridiculous.
Had all mention of the Klan been banned, they’d still operate in darkness with an air of mystery around them. Instead, they look like foolish old men playing silly games in funny outfits.
The Skokie Nazi trial allowed them to publicly march and protest. Did it make them more powerful? Nope. It got them mocked. Even the Blues Brothers got in on the act: “I hate Illinois Nazis”. And the face of the movement became Arte Johnson and his idiot henchmen.
Sunlight is always the best disinfectant. Censoring ideas just pushes them underground where they are harder to counter. And once you accept the principle of censorship, it will be slowly applied to more and more things those in power don’t like.
I should add that our recent history with censorship is that it has a coarsening effect on civil society, promotes the rise of conspiracy theories, and makes people distrust authority.
Wrong alum of Laugh-In, it was Henry Gibson.
But fair point.
Oh, that’s right! Thanks.
Arte Johnson was a different Nazi. Very interesting…and also very stupid.
He played a dumb Nazi. I wonder if that could be shown in Germany?
How so? Of course those things are happening, but how is censorship playing a part in those things? Do you mean that legitimate sources don’t treat the conspiracy theories as legitimate, such as most physics professors not teaching the flat earth theory or most biology professors not teaching young earth creationism in their classes? Or legitimate scientific journals refusing to publish articles on those topics? I wouldn’t count such things as censorship.
AFAIK the United States is the closest any country comes to free speech absolutism (at least we were before 1/6/2021) but we definitely aren’t the pinnacle of a population that embraces civil society, disbelieves conspiracy theories, and trusts authority figures.
This is basically true. Consider NAMBLA: they have some sites, that, TBMK, can be reached without too much diificulty. Sounds pretty vile, and why should we allow that? Well, one of the things they talk about openly, AIUI, is how to draw in prey. This gives the rest of us that same knowledge, which means we have the tools to teach our young’uns what to watch out for. As long as they are cmmfortable sharing that information, which is to say that as long as the actual consequences to them are out of view, we gain a valuable view into what they are doing. This would be the case for any problem group.
What bothers me is bullshit. Like anti-AGW or anti-vax nonsense, which has consequences for all of us. We fail in our education system by not having Bullshit-101 in elementary school, to teach the majority of our children how to recognize, aviod and defend against problem lies. Critical thinking skills are the best tool to complement open speech.
When people believe information is being censored, it leaves lots of room for conspiracy theories on the grounds that the reall information you need to know about it is being censored. It breeds distrust because you can’t trust that what you are seeing and hearing is the full truth. It gives ammunition to conspiracy nuts who will claim that the government censors vaccine harm information, etc.
There’s another reason: censors can be biased, and/or they can make bad decisions. And information is the lifeblood of a modern economy. Screwing with the information stream is a good way to get people to make poor choices.
in a free society, people are accepted to be rational actors making their own decisions about good and bad actions. For that to work, everyone must have access to the same information. Gatekeepers and censors become common-mode failure points, which makes society less resilient and increases systemic risk.
Since you brought up vaccines, let’s go with that. Back in the day before the conspiracy theories were widely disseminated, we had much higher rates of vaccination. We managed to wipe out smallpox and came close with polio and measles. Now that the conspiracy theories are free to flourish on social media, rates of vaccination are lower. Of course that wasn’t classical book burning type censorship, but it was the self censorship of medical journals and the regular media like newspapers and TV news programs not giving airtime (or at least giving a lot less airtime) to stories that vaccines were causing all kinds of problems that they weren’t.
You are assigning causation without evidence, though. I could just as easily say the early attempts to control and censor information about Covid bred the mistrust that triggered the conspiracy theories, and the increase of such material online is an effect of the increase in conspiratorial thinking, and not the cause of it.
Let’s look back at the start of Covid. People remember the full-court press to remove the Wuhan association from Covid entirely. Calling it the Wuhan virus was verboten, then the wet market theory was pushed. Anyone suggesting it came from a lab was called a conspiracy theorist.
Consider the point of view of someone without a strong science education. They aren’t equipped to evaluate all this. But man, that sure seems like a coincidence that the virus started in the same place where they are trying to make that exact virus… And they saw a guy on the internet who said it was a lab leak. Hannity someone.
Now information comes out that actually it may have been a lab leak, and the majority of people now believe it was. What are the odds that this person will now tend to believe everything else Hannity says, and be more distrustful of government authorities when they tell them the vaccine is safe and effective and should be taken?
If you want authorities to run things, you’d better hope they keep the public’s trust. Censoring what they can see erodes that. And if a government censorship system is set up, how trustful will you be of authority and of the information you hear if the other party gets back in power with a new censorship toy? Are you more or less likely to take a new vaccine if the other party tells you to trust them, it’s safe - and you know they have the power to suppress contrary information?
Don’t think about censorship power in the hands of the best people. Think of it in the hands of the worst. Because when that much power to control opinion is vested in so few people, it will attract the worst sorts like moths to a flame. That’s another good argument against censorship: It vests way too much power in too small a group. In a democracy you do not want that, ever. And you especially don’t want star chambers determining what the people will be allowed to know. That never ends well.
Maybe we’re coming at this with different ideas of what we mean by censorship. I think of it in terms of certain information not being allowed to be printed, published, broadcast, etc. I don’t consider the authorities refusing to take seriously something that lacks merit as being censorship. Of course with something that was brand new like COVID-19 was back in 2020, the consensus of the scientists studying it is bound to change as new studies reveal additional information. That’s the whole point of the scientific method. We can’t just refuse to discuss it altogether or say something like “all the viewpoints are valid because we just don’t know enough yet” or some such mealy mouthed message just to avoid being accused of censorship. An authority like Dr. Fauci saying that they think those who hold to a position other than the current scientific consensus are wrong doesn’t equal censorship. It just means that they think those other hypotheses are less likely to be correct than the one that currently has the most evidence to support it.
So this i have issue with:
we cannot and should not draw a line between state censorship and private or civilian censorship
I mean we absolutely should draw a line between those things. To use the example given in the article, sure, the censorship that occured during the 2023 Hugo awards was technically self-censorship. No agent of the Chinese government turned up and forced them to remove certain nominees at gunpoint, the non-governmental awards committee voluntarily removed those nominees. But they did so because the Chinese government has laws making it illegal to criticize the government, so the ideas espoused in their books were actually illegal in China so the nominees and the organizers could have gone to prison if they had included them.
I have no problem at all drawing a very obvious fine line between that and say, the self-censorship of not including a nominee whose book is extremely homophobic if they were holding the awards in the US (or even not including book who was critical of evangelical Christianity as the awards were held in Alabama). State censorship is far far worse and should be held up as something particularly heinous.
Here’s an article about some cases regarding censorship that are before the SCOTUS. The way I see it, this is another example of that shows that it isn’t a bad thing when the authorities, especially if we’re talking about non-governmental entities, refuse to publish or let their platforms be used to disseminate viewpoints that are considered by the experts to be highly likely to be incorrect. Forcing social media (or a scientific journal or a professor or teacher or other expert) to give airtime to BS is a bad thing. Call it censorship if you want, but that would just lead to me concluding that censorship is sometimes a good thing under that definition.
Though that’s the thing, though this looks totally different if we are talking about a government doing the censorship, and we absolutely should draw a big line distinguishing governmental and non-governmental “censorship”.
For a non-governmental entity what you describe is exactly true, whether you talking are Facebook or my aunty’s Christmas email, it’s up to you what viewpoints and opinions you disseminate. Whether or not you call it censorship, choosing not to disseminate a viewpoint you consider incorrect or objectionable is not infringing anyone’s right to free speech, in fact it’s part of your right to free speech.
The government on the other hand in the same circumstances is saying “we will send you to prison if you choose to disseminate this viewpoint we consider objectionable (or if you fail to disseminate this viewpoint we like)”, that’s a problem. Now peoples right to free speech is definitely getting infringed.
In the SCOTUS case you posted above, we have states telling social media companies “if you don’t
publish viewpoints we agree with, we will punish you”. That’s a pretty blatant free speech infringement by the state governments IMO. Though with the current SCOTUS who’s to say how they will rule