5 ms·

Talk about the military industry, crime financial complex, pretexts to war or history of US foreign policy - anything with actual weight that isn't just "cultur

Talk about the military industry, crime financial complex, pretexts to war or history of US foreign policy - anything with actual weight that isn't just "culture wars" - and see yourself get delisted from Google, smeared in the media, then get harassed by various agencies until you either flee the country or end up like Hastings or car bombed like Daphne. There is only freedom of speech until you actually go against those in power.

jmnicolas 6y ago
Voltaire said something like "to know who your masters are, look at who you can't criticize".
- gruez 6y ago
  And the popular reply to that is "orphans with leukemia"
  - betaby 6y ago
    https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/comedian-mike-ward-seeks-permission-to-take-freedom-of-speech-case-to-the-supreme-court-1.4778825 https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/comedian-mike-ward-seeks-permiss...
    - gruez 6y ago
      That meets the "can't criticize" criteria, but not the "are your masters" criteria, unless there's some sort of secret cabal of disabled boys ruling over us.
      - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
        right, which means that Voltaire's quip, although clever as everything he said, did not happen to actually cover all the possibilities of censorship in every possible society. In his time, certainly, the people you couldn't criticize were the rulers, in our time there is a wider range of people you can't criticize.
        orestarod 6y ago
        The statement makes much more sense for today's world if the "who" in the question "Who you can't criticize" is specific instead of broadly targeting a demographic. You won't get hunted down for saying "rich people are bad and should die", but if you start spewing facts with names and pointing fingers ("CIA is a terrorist organization, and this is why"), or e.g. in Greece you say "Marinakis is a drug dealer" publicly, you should start worrying for yourself.
    - 4bpp 6y ago
      I'm not sure joking about drowning someone meets the usual definition of criticism.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - jmnicolas 6y ago
    You don't go in court nor in jail for that. So you can indeed criticize them even if it probably will cost you socially.
  - 4bpp 6y ago
    I think you could make a good case that orphans with leukaemia are a stereotypical example of a utility monster, where the moral halo around them leads our society to waste tons of resources that would go much further doing something unglamorous like, say, free mass vitamin D supplementation. Would this rise to the level of criticism? Because I wouldn't be particularly worried about making that statement and signing it with my real name. Sure, the Society for Saving Orphans with Leukaemia and the ten people who read their tweets may be very upset at me, but I doubt that my employment or social situation would be seriously threatened, I'd find my phone calls mysteriously redirected, be rejected at the US border or barred from flights altogether.
    - jl2718 6y ago
      I think any public figure would be eviscerated for such a suggestion. It would certainly cost you tech jobs if it were known to the hiring committee. Perhaps the ‘masters’ statement would apply to the people profiting from public funding of such causes. And in a totally different response, the vitamin D comment reminded me of the ad council messages of the 80s and 90s, which would tell people things that were unambiguously good for them, like “go play outside”, in a mitigation effort for their negative effects. The Mormon church also ran a lot of these type of ads. This was intended to be the opposite form of social good, one with high leverage through a small positive effect on everybody. This sort of thing seems unrecognizable today in the corporate media.
- capableweb 6y ago
  That quote seems to be coming from nazist and convict Kevin Alfred Strom, not Voltaire. According to Wikipedia, the full quote is "To determine the true rulers of any society, all you must do is ask yourself this question: Who is it that I am not permitted to criticize?" and Strom first published "All America Must Know the Terror that is Upon Us" in 1993. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/27/cory-bernardi-mistakenly-quotes-voltaire-on-twitter-with-supposed-neo-nazis-line https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/27/cory-...
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    I'm pretty sure Voltaire didn't say it in English, meaning the full quote above it like the one that parent comment said was like something Voltaire said - a translation of something that Voltaire actually said. In that case I think the two translations convey the meaning about equally well, and I don't think that because one translation comes from a bad person makes it any worse a translation of what Voltaire intended.
    - capableweb 6y ago
      > I'm pretty sure Voltaire didn't say it in English, meaning the full quote above it like the one that parent comment said was like something Voltaire said - a translation of something that Voltaire actually said. Dr Paul Gibbard, of the University of Western Australia, one of the world’s leading experts in Voltaire who worked as a researcher at the Voltaire Foundation in Oxford, disagrees with you and says that Voltaire never said anything like that, in English or what I presume could also be French. Source for that: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/27/cory-bernardi-mistakenly-quotes-voltaire-on-twitter-with-supposed-neo-nazis-line https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/27/cory-... And I never meant to say that the quote is good/bad/wrong/correct, simply that it was mis-attributed to Voltaire, when in reality doesn't seem to come from him.
      - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
        ah ok, sorry I misunderstood your comment as saying that the quote was wrong and that voltaire had actually said the quote you gave.
- joijoiwejrr 6y ago
  That quote is often attributed to Voltaire, but, sadly, it actually belongs to Kevin Alfred Strom, a white nationalist.[0] Doesn't make the quote less true though. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Alfred_Strom#%22True_Rulers%22_quotation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Alfred_Strom#%22True_Rul...
  - throwaway2048 6y ago
    Yeah, the dying orphans with leukemia are holding all the reigns.
    - joijoiwejrr 6y ago
      Well whether or not you think the quote is true, the only point I was trying to make is that the truth of the quote doesn't depend on who said it.
gruez 6y ago
>Talk about the military industry, crime financial complex, pretexts to war or history of US foreign policy [...] and see yourself get delisted from Google, smeared in the media, then get harassed by various agencies uhh, what? You frequently see posts critical of all of those on reddit and hn, and to my knowledge the things you've listed didn't happen to them.
- capableweb 6y ago
  I don't know what to think here. If you get harassed by US agencies, you might stop posting on the internet, so we wouldn't see anything from them. Simply impossible for us to guess what happens to strangers on the internet, after they post US critical thinking publicly.
  - gruez 6y ago
    That might be true, but these posts have been on reddit/hn for years. You'd think that if there was some sort of effort to harass people making these posts that we'd stop seeing them and/or hear more people speaking out about government harassment.
    - StanislavPetrov 6y ago
      You mean harassment like calling them, "Russian agents" (soon to be "Chinese agents" as our geopolitical focus shifts)? Or harassing them by having their websites deranked and hidden on Google, like what happened to WSWS (among many other "dissident" sites)? Or simply disappearing them on Facebook and Twitter with unexplained and unappealable shadowbans and account suspensions? Do you think the widespread establishment push for censorship because of "disinformation" is coming out of the deep concern for people who are being misled? Its about tightening the screws of narrative control, which used to be near absolute when 99%+ of Americans got all of their information from the 3 major networks and was lost with the uncontrolled spread of information on the internet and social networks. The powers-that-be want that narrative control back and they will stop at nothing to get it. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/04/goog-n04.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/04/goog-n04.html
AnHonestComment 6y ago
I was permanently shadowbanned on HN for showing a video where a BLM founder described how they were a Marxist organization. There’s plenty of petty censorship by minor thugs with limited power.

jmnicolas 6y ago

Voltaire said something like "to know who your masters are, look at who you can't criticize".

gruez 6y ago
And the popular reply to that is "orphans with leukemia"
- betaby 6y ago
  https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/comedian-mike-ward-seeks-permission-to-take-freedom-of-speech-case-to-the-supreme-court-1.4778825 https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/comedian-mike-ward-seeks-permiss...
  - gruez 6y ago
    That meets the "can't criticize" criteria, but not the "are your masters" criteria, unless there's some sort of secret cabal of disabled boys ruling over us.
    - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
      right, which means that Voltaire's quip, although clever as everything he said, did not happen to actually cover all the possibilities of censorship in every possible society. In his time, certainly, the people you couldn't criticize were the rulers, in our time there is a wider range of people you can't criticize.
      - orestarod 6y ago
        The statement makes much more sense for today's world if the "who" in the question "Who you can't criticize" is specific instead of broadly targeting a demographic. You won't get hunted down for saying "rich people are bad and should die", but if you start spewing facts with names and pointing fingers ("CIA is a terrorist organization, and this is why"), or e.g. in Greece you say "Marinakis is a drug dealer" publicly, you should start worrying for yourself.
  - 4bpp 6y ago
    I'm not sure joking about drowning someone meets the usual definition of criticism.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jmnicolas 6y ago
  You don't go in court nor in jail for that. So you can indeed criticize them even if it probably will cost you socially.
- 4bpp 6y ago
  I think you could make a good case that orphans with leukaemia are a stereotypical example of a utility monster, where the moral halo around them leads our society to waste tons of resources that would go much further doing something unglamorous like, say, free mass vitamin D supplementation. Would this rise to the level of criticism? Because I wouldn't be particularly worried about making that statement and signing it with my real name. Sure, the Society for Saving Orphans with Leukaemia and the ten people who read their tweets may be very upset at me, but I doubt that my employment or social situation would be seriously threatened, I'd find my phone calls mysteriously redirected, be rejected at the US border or barred from flights altogether.
  - jl2718 6y ago
    I think any public figure would be eviscerated for such a suggestion. It would certainly cost you tech jobs if it were known to the hiring committee. Perhaps the ‘masters’ statement would apply to the people profiting from public funding of such causes. And in a totally different response, the vitamin D comment reminded me of the ad council messages of the 80s and 90s, which would tell people things that were unambiguously good for them, like “go play outside”, in a mitigation effort for their negative effects. The Mormon church also ran a lot of these type of ads. This was intended to be the opposite form of social good, one with high leverage through a small positive effect on everybody. This sort of thing seems unrecognizable today in the corporate media.
capableweb 6y ago
That quote seems to be coming from nazist and convict Kevin Alfred Strom, not Voltaire. According to Wikipedia, the full quote is "To determine the true rulers of any society, all you must do is ask yourself this question: Who is it that I am not permitted to criticize?" and Strom first published "All America Must Know the Terror that is Upon Us" in 1993. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/27/cory-bernardi-mistakenly-quotes-voltaire-on-twitter-with-supposed-neo-nazis-line https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/27/cory-...
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  I'm pretty sure Voltaire didn't say it in English, meaning the full quote above it like the one that parent comment said was like something Voltaire said - a translation of something that Voltaire actually said. In that case I think the two translations convey the meaning about equally well, and I don't think that because one translation comes from a bad person makes it any worse a translation of what Voltaire intended.
  - capableweb 6y ago
    > I'm pretty sure Voltaire didn't say it in English, meaning the full quote above it like the one that parent comment said was like something Voltaire said - a translation of something that Voltaire actually said. Dr Paul Gibbard, of the University of Western Australia, one of the world’s leading experts in Voltaire who worked as a researcher at the Voltaire Foundation in Oxford, disagrees with you and says that Voltaire never said anything like that, in English or what I presume could also be French. Source for that: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/27/cory-bernardi-mistakenly-quotes-voltaire-on-twitter-with-supposed-neo-nazis-line https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/27/cory-... And I never meant to say that the quote is good/bad/wrong/correct, simply that it was mis-attributed to Voltaire, when in reality doesn't seem to come from him.
    - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
      ah ok, sorry I misunderstood your comment as saying that the quote was wrong and that voltaire had actually said the quote you gave.
joijoiwejrr 6y ago
That quote is often attributed to Voltaire, but, sadly, it actually belongs to Kevin Alfred Strom, a white nationalist.[0] Doesn't make the quote less true though. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Alfred_Strom#%22True_Rulers%22_quotation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Alfred_Strom#%22True_Rul...
- throwaway2048 6y ago
  Yeah, the dying orphans with leukemia are holding all the reigns.
  - joijoiwejrr 6y ago
    Well whether or not you think the quote is true, the only point I was trying to make is that the truth of the quote doesn't depend on who said it.

gruez 6y ago

>Talk about the military industry, crime financial complex, pretexts to war or history of US foreign policy [...] and see yourself get delisted from Google, smeared in the media, then get harassed by various agencies uhh, what? You frequently see posts critical of all of those on reddit and hn, and to my knowledge the things you've listed didn't happen to them.

capableweb 6y ago
I don't know what to think here. If you get harassed by US agencies, you might stop posting on the internet, so we wouldn't see anything from them. Simply impossible for us to guess what happens to strangers on the internet, after they post US critical thinking publicly.
- gruez 6y ago
  That might be true, but these posts have been on reddit/hn for years. You'd think that if there was some sort of effort to harass people making these posts that we'd stop seeing them and/or hear more people speaking out about government harassment.
  - StanislavPetrov 6y ago
    You mean harassment like calling them, "Russian agents" (soon to be "Chinese agents" as our geopolitical focus shifts)? Or harassing them by having their websites deranked and hidden on Google, like what happened to WSWS (among many other "dissident" sites)? Or simply disappearing them on Facebook and Twitter with unexplained and unappealable shadowbans and account suspensions? Do you think the widespread establishment push for censorship because of "disinformation" is coming out of the deep concern for people who are being misled? Its about tightening the screws of narrative control, which used to be near absolute when 99%+ of Americans got all of their information from the 3 major networks and was lost with the uncontrolled spread of information on the internet and social networks. The powers-that-be want that narrative control back and they will stop at nothing to get it. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/04/goog-n04.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/04/goog-n04.html

AnHonestComment 6y ago

I was permanently shadowbanned on HN for showing a video where a BLM founder described how they were a Marxist organization. There’s plenty of petty censorship by minor thugs with limited power.