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John Oliver is erased from Chinese internet following segment on China
- DINKDINK 8y agoThe Ministry of Truth has no record of one "John Oliver"[1] [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_hole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_hole
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- stcredzero 8y agoGeorge Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair,) was a lifelong avowed socialist. However, the Memory Hole was an observation squarely aimed at the behavior of the Far Left. Beware of those who push a narrative against the facts.
- Daishiman 8y agoNo, it was an observation against authoritarianism. You do know that Orwell was, above all, anti-fascist and anti-Stalinist right?
- mikeash 8y agoLots of people don’t seem to understand that it’s possible to be both socialist and anti-Stalinist.
- icebraining 8y agoIt's even possible to be socialist and non-Marxist, and certainly anti-Bolshevik.
- bobwaycott 8y agoIt’s also possible to be Marxist, socialist, and vehemently anti-Stalinist.
- stcredzero 8y agoAt this point, I'm reminded of the jail cell scene in "Kentucky Fried Movie."
- bobwaycott 8y agoHaha. For sure. :)
- stcredzero 8y agoHowever, the only socialist countries that survive without devolving into totalitarianism seem to do so because they allow for a burgeoning capitalist economy.
- Covzire 8y agoI Think Orwell's point about socialism was far more pointed then that. Orwell in his travels, written partly about in "The road to Wigan Pier" partly illustrated the recurring theme we see in society where people (who will inevitiably rise to power, unless stopped) will use socialism not as a tool for lifting everyone up but explicitly to tear their perceived enemies down, something that has never resulted in a better society by any metric unless "well at least everyone is miserable" is your primary goal.
- coliveira 8y agoGeorge Orwell was against all kinds of authoritarianism. A large portion of the left has always disavowed authoritarianism as well, so there is no conflict here.
- EGreg 8y agoIn fact libertarians were originally socialists, railing against capitalism as a tool of the state, back when the state used to break up eg strikes with violence. See Oscar Wilde for instance, “Man’s soul under socialism.”
- AndyPandy 8y agoLibertarianism is only really considered fiscally conservative in the US.
- icebraining 8y agoThe word still carries that connotation in some places. The Center of Libertarian Culture, in my EU country, is left-wing anarchist.
- tomjakubowski 8y agoI know anarchism isn't the same as libertarianism, but in that vein, there is a legendary post from the ancap subreddit about one naïve American's confusion hanging out with Greek anarchists. https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/3ucp8y/i_was_beat_up_by_left_anarchists_in_greece/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/3ucp8y/...
- sonnyblarney 8y ago'George Orwell' is a fictional character. Real name: 'Eric Blair' who went to Church every Sunday, though I think he was kind of an Atheist. Not the same dude as Orwell. He had complicated views, and was not a 'socialist' in the more popular sense. Remember in 1984 that the 'bad guys' ideology is 'IngSoc', i.e. 'English Socialism'. So not exactly a big Social Dem supporter of the era.
- drogorbrn 8y agoDid they remove him from hacker news too?
- oelmekki 8y agoI think it's safe until we mention Winnie the Pooh. Woops. Context: in his China segment, Oliver asserts that China has banned Winnie the Pooh from the internet because it was used to mock the president. And then he (Oliver) used tons of Winnie the Pooh references. We already are seeing a lot of partisan arguments in this thread (as one could have expected, I guess). For my part, I don't care about the politics on this topic, I'm just glad someone stands up against internet censorship. Making tons of Winnie the Pooh references is the way to go, we must prove censorship doesn't work.
- adventured 8y agoIt won't work, China is perfectly happy to block every external Web site as necessary. They're fine with relying solely on their internal network, they've structured things to that end as it is now. Censorship does work if you're willing to insulate your nation from external media, as they prove time and time again that they are. That's why censorship has worked in North Korea for nearly 70 years. It works if you're willing to pay whatever the consequences involved happen to be.
- oelmekki 8y agoOr maybe not. As Oliver was mentioning, China is shifting from self focus to expansion. This is already something I thought when I saw the China sea quarrels. If it's the case, it's not just only their population opinion that matters, but they need to have a good reputation in the world - that is, if they really want to be a part of it. With US withdrawing from the world, China has a good opportunity. But the tyranny/autocracy archaism won't fly past their borders.
- vinni2 8y agoExcept countries and companies will eventually cave as their trade and profits are at stake.
- lavazon 8y agoIs John Oliver any more important than all the other things that China has banned? Or is this just something that happens to be popular which creates outrage even when it's not nearly as bad as other things that China censors?
- anoncoward111 8y agoThe interesting thing is that because John Oliver is not really a big deal, the Chinese government shouldn't waste its time silencing him. And yet they did!
- rm_-rf_slash 8y agoIn a way his segment is a big deal. The Chinese can censor anything they like. During the Arab Spring, which inspired Chinese protests and at the time was sometimes referred to as the “Jasmine revolution”, the word “jasmine” was effectively banned from the Chinese internet. From the rice itself to the Disney character, “jasmine” disappeared overnight. The implication of such a strict censorship system is that any uncensored content is endorsed by the Communist Party. So if anybody says anything that China doesn’t like, into the censorship bin it goes. This comment would probably get censored.
- AznHisoka 8y agoYep, Mr. Bean, for example is a much bigger deal in China than John Oliver.
- Tharkun 8y agoI guess a lot of people enjoy his style of "humour" where he randomly insults people, countries or cultures for no apparent reason.
- PaulRobinson 8y agoIf you'd watched the segment, you'd realise there was a reason for it. Specifically he used the segment to point out that Xi Jinping has more power and influence than almost anybody in China's history, that a personality cult has started to form around him, and that he is using that power in ways that has a wide range of long-term profound domestic and international consequences, including America's place in the World and perhaps even democracy's. Yes, he used comedy. Yes, he referenced Winnie the Pooh and Xi Jinping's hatred of being likened to him. It's an entertainment show. The fact it is a comedy entertainment show doesn't make the point he makes any less true. He had a point. He made it. China reacted to the point, not because it was a "random insult", but because if Chinese people watched that segment they may start to raise questions. He was censored for the same reason that many other things questioning China's authoritarianism are banned from comments like this one I'm making here all the way through to many of the images at the top of this google search: https://www.google.com/search?q=tiananmen+square https://www.google.com/search?q=tiananmen+square Further, Oliver had used his show to make points about Trump, Obama, veterans, affordable healthcare, TV evangelists and a whole host of other social affairs using comedy to tell a story that would be hard to make entertaining using any other device. What exactly is your problem with that? Just because you don't like his style of humour does not mean he is "randomly insulting people, countries or cultures for no apparent reason". Also: next time, before throwing statements like that around, question whether you're doing it yourself. What _exactly_ were you hoping to achieve with this comment?
- toyg 8y agoThe "ephemeralness" of the internet is still a huge, huge problem. We've only started to scratch the surface of the issue, and between censorship, "right to be forgotten" and linkrot, it's already a complete shitshow. We need a distributed and censorship-resistant conservancy system, because the Wayback Machine can only do so much (and it can trivially be censored). Unfortunately, it's not a money-making enterprise.
- throwawayjava 8y ago> We need a distributed and censorship-resistant conservancy system, because the Wayback Machine can only do so much (and it can trivially be censored). Unfortunately, it's not a money-making enterprise. Color me skeptical, but it seems like such a system would eventually need to seek out a business model and would turn into mugshotsonline.us writ large. Or "toxic yelp reviews of dubious origin" but for humans instead of businesses. And with all the perverse incentives. Censorship is bad, but profit-motivated society-wide forever-grudges against people in no significant position of power is also bad.
- rotexo 8y agoOnce I got doxxed by bloggers from one end of the political spectrum who thought I was a blogger from the opposite end (we have similar names, but the doxxers put out all of my info). Even after I got my info taken down, someone archived it and the archives got passed around on Twitter, prolonging the mess. Even now all that stuff shows up if you google my name. Should you care about what happened to me? I can’t really argue for it. But I can say that the dangers the above comment lists are real.
- rmorey 8y agohttps://ipfs.io https://ipfs.io
- icebraining 8y agoI don't think IPFS is uncensorable; if you have MITM on a user (like the Chinese government does), can't you just block any requests for a certain hash?
- bdamm 8y agoThat's entirely predictable given that was explicitly John Oliver's objective. The real question now is when will this experiment implode? Isn't there a theory that totalitarian states must inevitably collapse?
- SimbaOnSteroids 8y agoAll states must inevitably collapse.
- simonh 8y agoThere’s no law of the universe about this, other than the sun exploding and heat death. One of the plausible catastrophic end states for humanity is an ultra-stable technocratic totalitarian global state, enabled by pervasive super high tech surveillance and censorship. It’s one of the ‘great filter’ possibilities for why sentient beings never colonise the galaxy - they’re all trapped in bureaucratic self serving versions of 1984 where the state only exists to maintain the state. Democracies and other forms of goveenment are never stable, the only stable state is bureaucratic autocracy, and falling into one only ever has to happen once and you’re done. This is what China is building, and the model they are exporting to the world.
- outworlder 8y agoCan you expand on this or provide some source material for further reading? I find this a fascinating subject.
- bscphil 8y agoSo basically Brazil (Terry Gilliam)?
- alazoral 8y agoI would disagree with your assertion there that bureaucracies are terminal. Historically, military dictatorships tend to overthrow bureaucracies, while democracies overthrow military dictatorships and bureaucracies subsume democracies. Each of these transitions can be understood thermodynamically; each transition results in a lower energy state for the problems facing them at the time: Bureaucracies lack military response time. Dictatorships lack economic stability. Democracies lack efficiency. Each of these are actually each model's strength, but over time becomes fatal.
- jen729w 8y agoDoes it count as ironic that I can’t watch the segment here in Australia because “the uploader has not made this available in your country”?
- whateveracct 8y agono
- AFNobody 8y agoYeah it kinda is but you know it exists and could "acquire" it if you wanted. In China, you wouldn't have that option.
- zeth___ 8y ago[[citation needed]]
- mikedilger 8y agoIn NZ it says "this video is not available" but plenty of other Last Week Tonight videos are. Was this one singled out?
- mrdrozdov 8y ago> It’s impressive to see the pace of Chinese censors. I'm not sure that impressive is the right term here...
- ggggtez 8y agoIt is. If someone eats 100 hot dogs in 20 minutes, you might still say "That's impressive" but also feel horrified and sickened.
- mrdrozdov 8y agoI see your point, and although technically correct, the writer had a lot of words to choose from. For instance, if a nourishing lake had suddenly dried up, I'd use a different word. Perhaps devastating.
- thomastjeffery 8y agoI see the word choice as more than technically correct. "Impressive" does not necessarily carry a positive connotation.
- Retra 8y agoEven if it did, artistic license allows for a certain degree of irony and detachment.
- Jommi 8y agoIt's not even impressive because it doesnt even work
- coliveira 8y agoI don't agree with the censorship decision, but I completely get why other countries don't like Oliver's show. He likes to denounce other countries' politics from the point of view of liberal, first world policy, which may not be in the best interest of other nations. Even though he is doing comedy for the first world market, it comes off clearly as another attempt of propaganda directed at these countries. The way China has decided to deal with this is banning, so I don't think this is a surprising development.
- amerine 8y agoIf I squint and ignore the fact that personalities like Oliver have been doing their ideological-driven (rightly so IMO) comedy perspective bits for years I can see how how you could naively call that “propaganda”. However, the logical side of me can’t fathom how the reported events are anything remotely “propaganda”. They are legitimate things that free-press nations can discuss how they like, including laughing at them. You can’t call things that rustle your jimmies propaganda just like you can’t call news you don’t like fake.
- tajen 8y agoJohn Oliver is correct but the lack of publication of competing viewpoints is what defines US (Democrat) propaganda. For example I’ve seen him state that the wage gap was 25%, straight face! that’s where the alternative viewpoints are sorely lacking and, when you learn the history of achors who have only questioned the credibility of this statistic, you can clearly say: Censorship is enforced with violence in USA.
- nemothekid 8y ago>For example I’ve seen him state that the wage gap was 25%, straight face! that’s where the alternative viewpoints are sorely lacking I can't believe this "alternate viewpoints" bull is really propagating into the ether. He's either wrong or he's right. He either telling the truth, lying or ignorant. A wage gap almost certainly exists, and can likely attributed to a number of factors backed up by factual research. "Alternate viewpoints" is a laughable reason to let anyone with a soapbox dump garbage into the ether.
- tajen 8y agoWhich is funny, because US television systematically erased pro-Republican reporters and asked John Oliver to publish more anti-Trump topics, which, by the way, are the only ones made available on Youtube and, despite tremendous success on Youtube, doesn’t help enough recovering the audience of the late shows which have become overt Democrat propaganda so Americans have grown tired of... of US television altogether. Now this privileged establishment of journalists are surprised that the Chinese censors wants to choose their programs? «How can they do that!»
- SystemOut 8y ago1) Fox News 2) No one has to ask John Oliver to publish more anti-Trump topics
- outworlder 8y agoThis is not the same thing as state censorship and you know it.
- threatofrain 8y agoPrivileged? You think journalists are privileged? Are they clothed in money and power?
- erikpukinskis 8y agoThey said late night television, not journalists. Like the Tonight Show.
- vfulco2 8y ago"Hurting the feelings of..." is the blanket whine for anything deemed unacceptable. Not going to play well in the free, democratic, mature thinking world.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Jommi 8y agoWhat's funny here is that its completely overblown. No, its not banned at all. I can easily post the whole episode on wechat.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ataturk 8y agoWhich is why I want China to rise to Western standards of speech versus us falling to China's standards.