Blacklisting And Censorship Are Hallmarks Of Repressive Societies. Let’s Head Them Off At The Pass In America
By: Jane Hampton Cook
This Federalist writer is so right on about everything she wrote here except that she was too generous to today’s censors and cancel culture. They are leading us on a path toward totalitarian rule and a total lack of rights, freedom, liberty based on the ideas and beliefs of the objectified being silenced into second class subjects or worse by the secular progressive bi coastal elites
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
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.
[deleted]
That would be Leon Trotsky's line. However Trotsky would add that fascism is a tool of the ruling class. It is wielded by the bourgeoisie AGAINST the petty-bourgeoisie [middle-class, privileged, banking/investor, Democratic Party aligned j'progressives'].
A near textbook definition of fascism. Yet again -- it is not the 'petty' but the 'big' bourgeoisie which wields it.
Who would have thought that the ruling class would put people to fighting among themselves rather than against the ruling class! Apparently, 'divide and conquer' works afterall.
AINST the petty-bourgeoisie [middle-class, privileged, banking/investor, Democratic Party aligned j'progressives'].
Describing the progressive movement as "petty-bourgeoisie " is flawed. They are, in fact, the ruling class (Wall Street, Tech), supported by largely minority members of the proletariat.
Two classes together -- the bourgeoisie [the 1%, the ownership class (factories, fields, forests, mines, logistics/communication/energy/etc. corporations)] and the petty bourgeoisie [the Next 9%, the banking/investor/finance company/etc. (which you reference as 'Wall Street, Tech') class] TOGETHER constitute two sections of one and the same the ruling class.
Whichever ruling class section they support, proletarians as a class have neither place in nor representation from EITHER section of the ruling class.
The proletariat ALONE can and must represent itself, pressing its own demands DIRECTLY into civic discourse and counter to the claims/policies of both sections of the ruling class.
Unless or until that is firmly grasped, one lacks even the most rudimentary tools of political analysis and is therefore politically illiterate.
The 90% has no future with the bourgeoisie or the petty-bourgeoisie.
That is what the World Socialist Web Site said of the 'Me Too' movement and other petty-bourgeoisie attacks.
deleted
Ironic.
Trump attempts to ban TikTok and WeChat.
The BBC bans CGTN (China Global Television Network)
Therefore, America and Great Britain are "unfree societies".
But hypocritical.
"Cancel culture?"
More paranoid nonsense.
Some form of responsible documentation is requested.
This looks like a tautology.
By that I mean that whatever 'regime' is currently 'our most hated enemy' [inevitably] is 'fronting' us [one way or another].
When we needed an excuse to give US corporations no-bid oil contracts, IRAN "was" 'our most hated enemy government.
The pay-off and enemy-government identity changes; but it's the same argument every time.
Politics would work better if every time someone said, 'out most hated enemy government,' we instantly clamored for war.
Some do.
And where that reaction is automatic, 'patriots' seem to gather.
Icing on the cake! If anyone else did what we do, THEY would be 'the most hated enemy government on the face of the earth bar none.'
America is FAMOUS for "Do as I say, not as I do." America has Homeland Security and denies others of that same right, accuses anyone of being a danger to its "national interest" but God forbid anyone else should do or be the same - a weapon used by means of an accusation but without any proof whatsoever. Bravo. UNBELIEVABLE hypocrisy.
I damn well wish my son would move with his family back to his homeland - I fear for his life. I used to love the USA - travelled all through it (maybe seen more of it than even you have), spent many vacations in it, attended symphony, dance and folk music festivals in it, shared ownership of a golf club condo in Florida with my brother, but today I wouldn't step foot in it.
America CAN be redeemed. That would start as long as it has a POTUS and lawmakers who honour the oath they take.
Is that the American oath of office? That's news to me, and probably to those who take the oath.
That's pretty much sums up why Trump Humpers keep getting banned on social media. Companies don't want to be associated with bigots, racists and violent insurrectionists.
Everybody wants somebody banned. But no one more than our glorious [un]free societies does it with more hypocrisy. Look at our ongoing, multi-reichadistration campaign against Julian Assange.
The Joe McCatthy Regime has risen from the dead [deleted]
Even Johnathon Chait gets it:
In the late 1940s and 1950s, Hollywood studios — under pressure from the right — promised they would not “knowingly employ a communist.” This blacklist eventually became notorious, especially in Hollywood, which came to lionize its victims in several films. And yet it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish the blacklist policy from the emerging current treatment of right-wingers.