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> My country (US) doesn't have a great human rights track record either, but at least we're allowed to talk about it. Exactly. No country has a perfect history

> My country (US) doesn't have a great human rights track record either, but at least we're allowed to talk about it. Exactly. No country has a perfect history but by confronting past mistakes you have a chance to learn from them and hopefully support laws or norms that prevent them from happening again. Perhaps this only applies in countries that practice democracy, where the people's awareness has a chance of translating into representation. Otherwise it's only likely to create discontent with the inability to change things (and thus unrest).

stochastic_monk 8y ago
Discontent and unrest can lead to revolution and the chance to improve. Authoritarians simply bank on the cost of revolution being prohibitive.
- mc32 8y ago
  When Mao felt threatened he unleashed the very impressionable and mouldable Hongweibings. Once he reaffirmed his power, the Hongweibings were disbanded. So, they have a few more options as laid out by Lennin.
scottlocklin 8y ago
This perspective always cracks me up. The way the US does it is less brutal and obvious, but pretty much the same thing; old books are scrapped and forgotten. Formerly popular thinkers are memory holed or declared 'thought criminals' (pick your '-ist'). Their books are no longer taught in college, and the perspectives they represent are gone forever. Present day thinkers and reporters are given the same silent treatment on mainstream media which is obviously controlled by the narrow oligarchy which controls everything else. Same treatment is happening on youtube as China is doing; non-conforming perspectives are actively sought out and removed by censorious apparatchiks. Oh yeah, and now they're also sometimes denounced as "russian agents" as well -a pack of absurd, paranoid and Orwellian nonsense which makes anything the ChiComs say look like objective common sense. The US engages in ritual denunciation of itself for slavery and killing off the Indians. Somehow our most excellent international adventures, ridiculous military provocations, poisoning of the food chain, extractive slave economics of the native population and colonial control of half the population of the world is A-OK. For all I know, China engages in ritual denunciation of its pre-Maoist self as well. That doesn't mean they're not carefully controlling the narrative now.
- wybiral 8y ago
  That's not apples-for-apples. Yes, history and society are subject to shifts and bias. But do you think that there's a hidden branch of US government dictating which books are used or what words aren't allowed, carefully crafting this revised perception of our reality? Or is it just social effects that happen in all countries?
  - paraditedc 8y ago
    Luckily this was just recently discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18816040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18816040
    - wybiral 8y ago
      Withholding information about military strategy or the operations of an intelligence agency to the press is one thing. Meticulous and widespread censoring of phrases like "rubber duckies" just because it might remind people of Tiananmen Square or "Winnie the Pooh" just because people mocked Xi Jinping is another thing.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
- quxbar 8y ago
  My college education was pretty honest about the atrocities of the USA. I get to openly post about politics all day on facebook without any fear of reprisal. Pretty different from a country with a whole dictionary of secret codewords used to discuss politics and history. There is no 'both sides', there's just your self-pity - the people you call censorious apparatchiks are just people who don't respect your opinion. You mistake being unpopular for being persecuted, which is common for privileged engineering types like us.
  - xfs 8y ago
    The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so on. In such an environment it is easy for speech to be "free" because a change in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic instruments. Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like badgers and birds, free. In states like China, there is pervasive censorship, because speech still has power and power is scared of it. We should always look at censorship as an economic signal that reveals the potential power of speech in that jurisdiction. The attacks against us by the US point to a great hope, speech powerful enough to break the fiscal blockade. -Julian Assange

stochastic_monk 8y ago

Discontent and unrest can lead to revolution and the chance to improve. Authoritarians simply bank on the cost of revolution being prohibitive.

mc32 8y ago
When Mao felt threatened he unleashed the very impressionable and mouldable Hongweibings. Once he reaffirmed his power, the Hongweibings were disbanded. So, they have a few more options as laid out by Lennin.

scottlocklin 8y ago

This perspective always cracks me up. The way the US does it is less brutal and obvious, but pretty much the same thing; old books are scrapped and forgotten. Formerly popular thinkers are memory holed or declared 'thought criminals' (pick your '-ist'). Their books are no longer taught in college, and the perspectives they represent are gone forever. Present day thinkers and reporters are given the same silent treatment on mainstream media which is obviously controlled by the narrow oligarchy which controls everything else. Same treatment is happening on youtube as China is doing; non-conforming perspectives are actively sought out and removed by censorious apparatchiks. Oh yeah, and now they're also sometimes denounced as "russian agents" as well -a pack of absurd, paranoid and Orwellian nonsense which makes anything the ChiComs say look like objective common sense. The US engages in ritual denunciation of itself for slavery and killing off the Indians. Somehow our most excellent international adventures, ridiculous military provocations, poisoning of the food chain, extractive slave economics of the native population and colonial control of half the population of the world is A-OK. For all I know, China engages in ritual denunciation of its pre-Maoist self as well. That doesn't mean they're not carefully controlling the narrative now.

wybiral 8y ago
That's not apples-for-apples. Yes, history and society are subject to shifts and bias. But do you think that there's a hidden branch of US government dictating which books are used or what words aren't allowed, carefully crafting this revised perception of our reality? Or is it just social effects that happen in all countries?
- paraditedc 8y ago
  Luckily this was just recently discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18816040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18816040
  - wybiral 8y ago
    Withholding information about military strategy or the operations of an intelligence agency to the press is one thing. Meticulous and widespread censoring of phrases like "rubber duckies" just because it might remind people of Tiananmen Square or "Winnie the Pooh" just because people mocked Xi Jinping is another thing.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
quxbar 8y ago
My college education was pretty honest about the atrocities of the USA. I get to openly post about politics all day on facebook without any fear of reprisal. Pretty different from a country with a whole dictionary of secret codewords used to discuss politics and history. There is no 'both sides', there's just your self-pity - the people you call censorious apparatchiks are just people who don't respect your opinion. You mistake being unpopular for being persecuted, which is common for privileged engineering types like us.
- xfs 8y ago
  The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so on. In such an environment it is easy for speech to be "free" because a change in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic instruments. Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like badgers and birds, free. In states like China, there is pervasive censorship, because speech still has power and power is scared of it. We should always look at censorship as an economic signal that reveals the potential power of speech in that jurisdiction. The attacks against us by the US point to a great hope, speech powerful enough to break the fiscal blockade. -Julian Assange