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Defending Freedom and Democracy Sure Requires an Awful Lot of Censorship

51 points by k1m 5y ago

bryant 5y ago
Relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance A pretty sound argument can be made that the reactions of the international community are consistent with intolerance of the intolerant (in this case, a superpower that decided to invade a neighbor without cause or provocation). The hate mail to and vandalism of innocent businesses e.g restaurants (Russia House in DC for instance) needs to stop, but RT is a state media arm and is thus complicit by nature with its parent government's decisions. Since nobody within the apparatus is choosing to rebel against state-sanctioned intolerance of another country's sovereignty, it's clear the whole organization needs to be addressed.
- sinyug 5y ago
  > A pretty sound argument can be made No, it cannot. The US and Europe accusing Russia of acting without provocation is like a serial killer with 600 dead girls buried in his basement complaining to the cops about his noisy neighbor. > intolerance of another country's sovereignty, 2003. Iraq. Ukraine was a part of the "coalition of the willing" which invaded the sovereignty of another country.
  - user-the-name 5y ago
    "Noisy neighbour"? Here you are again, completely dismissing that Russia is killing innocent civilians as we speak. I am losing my ability to give you the benefit of the doubt here. Why are you constantly minimising the crimes Russia is committing right this moment?
    - sinyug 5y ago
      - user-the-name 5y ago
- WaxedChewbacca 5y ago
  [dead]
lupinglade 5y ago
The Russian state media are reporting lie after lie - see some of the real footage from the war that you can easily find anywhere online and compare to what they are reporting. You don't need to be an intelligence expert to see that the Russian media is spreading outright lies and propaganda. Stopping this propaganda is the right thing to do.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- zaptheimpaler 5y ago
  If they are such obvious lies then people will figure it out on their own - why do we need to censor them?
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    >> The Russian state media are reporting lie after lie - see some of the real footage from the war that you can easily find anywhere online and compare to what they are reporting. You don't need to be an intelligence expert to see that the Russian media is spreading outright lies and propaganda. Stopping this propaganda is the right thing to do. > If they are such obvious lies then people will figure it out on their own - why do we need to censor them? Enough people will be fooled, which is why they spread the lies. They're not stupid. You're also kind of twisting the GP's meaning. He's not saying the lies are obvious on their face, but they're discoverable by a layman from critically comparing sources. However a lot of layman (most?) don't compare sources.
- native_samples 5y ago
  How do you know which is true? Are you just assuming Western sources are true and any contradiction is evidence of a lie? This is reasonable to ask because Western sources have (also) been lying a lot, e.g. presenting photos taken last year as the Ukrainian president fighting on the front line today. So we have two lying groups and no obvious ways to figure out what's true. Occasionally you get lucky and e.g. reverse image search saves the day, but mostly, there's no way to detect lies.
dash2 5y ago
I agree it’s not good to censor RT and similar, though I do remember Churchill’s comment that in wartime “truth is so precious that it must be surrounded by a bodyguard of lies”. RT are scumbags and it’s been depressing to see some of my stupider/more self-serving academic friends go on there to pump their personal hobbyhorses. But they don’t need censoring, just our contempt. The article would be better if it didn’t make spurious and unsupported assertions about how NATO “had a hand in starting” this conflict.
- jesusofnazarath 5y ago
- kragen 5y ago
  You might think Johnstone's assertions are wrong, but you too are lying when you say they are unsupported; in the sentence you are referring to, she linked to her own previous article which explains the history https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/experts-warned-for-years-that-nato https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/experts-warned-for-y... as well as some guy named "Aaron I Killed" on Substack https://mate.substack.com/p/the-ukraine-crisis-sponsored-by-us?s=r https://mate.substack.com/p/the-ukraine-crisis-sponsored-by-... and, more credibly, a FAIR backgrounder by Bryce Greene https://fair.org/home/what-you-should-really-know-about-ukraine/ https://fair.org/home/what-you-should-really-know-about-ukra.... These do in fact support the assertion. "Aaron I Killed" in particular seems perhaps partisan enough that his assertions should be handled with tweezers. The FAIR article is pretty solid and reliable; the only criticism I'd make is that, as progressives often do, it overstates the importance of the neo-Nazi movement in both Ukraine and in the US, for example neglecting to mention that the Ukrainian neo-Nazis lost all their parliamentary seats in the last election. I haven't been watching RT so I don't know firsthand how much they're lying, but see a lot of secondhand reports that they're lying an enormous amount, and those seem reliable.
  - dash2 5y ago
    It’s a good idea, and IIRC part of this site’s guidelines, to “assume good faith”. If you find the linked articles more convincing than I do in making the case that NATO had a hand in starting this war, then maybe say “I disagree” rather than “you are lying”.
ajuc 5y ago
Yeah, cancel people for allegedly saying the N-word, but when a whole TV channel is financed by actual dictator invading countries and killing thousands of people, and is spreading his excuses for doing so - just leave them be because "freedom of speech".
supergirl 5y ago
yeah, it’s full throttle on domestic propaganda. it looks like NATO is eager to go to war with Russia. NATO could have avoided this war easily by giving some symbolic win to Russia, placing some sanctions and moving on. but they don’t budge which usually means real war is coming. EDIT: what I meant was NATO prob had a way to prevent the Ukraine war but chose not to: allow Russia to veto NATO membership as they demanded but at the same time impose the same drastic sanctions on Russia. this just avoids the war in Ukraine, leaving the rest the same. the sanctions would aim to push Russia to drop its veto and other demands.
- hellotomyrars 5y ago
  So Ukraine should just slowly give more and more of its territory away to Russia for free until it stops existing? The rest of the world should continue to ignore Russian aggression on foreign soil? NATO isn’t at war but this is an absurd way to look at things and I can’t imagine a good faith argument for what is literally a policy of appeasement, and that didn’t work out last time either.
  - jesusofnazarath 5y ago
- readthenotes1 5y ago
  Easily avoided the reconstitution of Mother Russia? How? By killing Putin? Not so easy, I think.
- notapenny 5y ago
  If NATO wanted to go to war, they'd have supported the Ukraine directly from day one and the world would be a different place now. To be honest, I also thought this would end with the two Eastern regions falling under Russian government and that'd be the end of it. Russia did already annex Crimea in 2014 though, and now they're basically trying to disarm their neighbour and make sure it isn't attractive enough to join NATO/EU. Sounds easy to give Russia a symbolic win, but where does that stop? Is all Russia needs to do fight a war, take a province and wait out some sanctions? At what point do you realise they're not going to settle for a few pieces of the pie?
qqtt 5y ago
Lots of zingers flying around these days. Snake Island, Ghost of Kyiv, we are getting a daily dose of things that are walked back. As much as Ukraine is turning into a humanitarian crisis, the silence from many other humanitarian crisis that are also ongoing is deafening (the Yemen civil war comes to mind). Be extra vigilant - these are not normal times and when Russia and the USA face off like this, there is going to be a lot of manufactured consent flying around. It's pretty clear who the aggressors are, and who is the evil dictatorship starting an unjustifiable war, but don't assume that just because you agree with "the good guys" that the truth will come easy.
hunglee2 5y ago
OP makes a clear case here. Appeals to universal values are fatally compromised by exceptions. If a rule doesn't apply under all conditions then it becomes of matter of importance to determine who decides when they should be suspended. This reveals universalist values as hypocrisy, they are local values applied to others, for political purpose. Its like a cop says 'don't steal cars', then goes ahead and steals _your_car, only to show up the next day and says 'don't steal cars' Institutional distrust emerges this way
- MagnumOpus 5y ago
  > Appeals to universal values are fatally compromised by exceptions Only the willfully naive don't understand that exceptions are necessary. Just like a democracy cannot tolerate elements/parties that want to overthrow democracy if it plans to survive, a society cannot tolerate pervasive (and untrue) war propaganda from foreign enemies lest the actual domestic free press becomes so buried under a pile of manure that everybody throws up their hands and says "the truth cannot be known".
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    Yeah, because the censorship is working so great. How could I be so naive to not believe that. The west did arm Nazis in Ukraine by the way, the US senate voted to supply the arms. This is a fact but there is also a context. And I think people should look into it.
  - hunglee2 5y ago
    I would suggest only the wilfully naive accept universalist values as true. Feel free to propagate them onto other people, but let's at least be honest that is what we are doing. Example: when was the last time US was sanctioned for invading another country? Didn't happen, won't happen.
blackbear_ 5y ago
I see the argument against censorship, in principle. > You'd think the truth would be more robust than that. You'd think freedom would extend farther than that. You'd think democracy would be more tolerant of dissent than that. Yeah, I'd think that. I wish it was true, but in practice it's not. > If perhaps we have foolishly consented to a reality where the most powerful people in the world get to control the information people consume in order to shut down dissent against a murderous and oppressive globe-spanning oligarchic empire. We really don't have a choice. The reality is that one side is perfectly fine with using misinformation as a weapon. And it's really effective! What is foolish is to do nothing and hope truth will prevail automagically. What are alternatives to censorship that can be used today?
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Do you have any single example in history where this censorship was required?
- letsargue 5y ago
  there is a difference between censoring dictator-state propaganda and censoring single citizens. On top of that, let's add that official state opinion about something (especially about war enemies), with punishment for different opinions, is typical of totalitarian state. In democracy one would have the statement of the russian dictator publicly commented by joirnalists. Here we have cancellation of statements. And this applies down to single citizens. Are we dropping our rights down the toilet? Anything makes you think this will be limited to russian war? How would you elaborate an informed opinion if everything gets canceled?
raverbashing 5y ago
Yeah "Both-sideism" is BS Complaining about some warnings when Russia is blocking Twitter and others is just naive Blocking RT is just tit-for-tat and sanctioning. During a war, controlling propaganda sources is important. And if you think there's no war, or that the west is not a target, you're wrong. Funnily enough anti-vax content on these past days seem to have calmed down or even stopped. Funnily enough. Cynical takes like this only make the author sound like a complete moron who never studied any XXth century history or just a plant
des1nderlase 5y ago
I think people need to understand, that there is no "absolute truth" but rather a view point on both sides. And to protect each system of values, implicit (by ignoring) or explicit (by blocking, invalidating) censorship takes place and both micro and macro level. People find rationalization for their system of believes and governments take use of that. Ignoring that would be just another narrative to ignore western own violent history. Everyone simply tries to protect their own interests in the national and economic conflict of powers. - Think about why is narrative around Russia so much different than any other NATO or US "intervention" in the past? - Why is TikTok controlled by Chinese gov, worse than FB, with majority stakes with a single man, controlled by US? For the largest portion of the world, in both cases, those are all foreign governments protecting their own interests.
- des1nderlase 5y ago
  If anything I feel sorry for both Ukranian and Russian people who didn't have a choice not to be part of this conflict, each suffering in their own way.
TMWNN 5y ago
I am reading Clark's Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia (<https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002RI9PMM/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002RI9PMM/>). Right after hearing about YouTube shutting down Russian state media channels, I was surprised to learn in the book of the extent of the freedom of the press in late 18th-century Prussia. A British visitor wrote that people were as free to speak as back home, citing a work that was very critical of the king in the context of Poland. During the Napoleonic wars, despite the existential threat to Prussia from France, at least four newspapers that celebrated Revolutionary France as the next step in human freedom were allowed to publish. It's always preferable to counter propaganda with free speech. Even liars deserve the opportunity to speak. This is especially true when there is no formally declared war between the US and Russia.
dirtyid 5y ago
Prescience of the Great Fire Wall I suppose.

51 points by k1m 5y ago

Relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance A pretty sound argument can be made that the reactions of the international community are consistent with intolerance of the intolerant (in this case, a superpower that decided to invade a neighbor without cause or provocation). The hate mail to and vandalism of innocent businesses e.g restaurants (Russia House in DC for instance) needs to stop, but RT is a state media arm and is thus complicit by nature with its parent government's decisions. Since nobody within the apparatus is choosing to rebel against state-sanctioned intolerance of another country's sovereignty, it's clear the whole organization needs to be addressed.

sinyug 5y ago
> A pretty sound argument can be made No, it cannot. The US and Europe accusing Russia of acting without provocation is like a serial killer with 600 dead girls buried in his basement complaining to the cops about his noisy neighbor. > intolerance of another country's sovereignty, 2003. Iraq. Ukraine was a part of the "coalition of the willing" which invaded the sovereignty of another country.
- user-the-name 5y ago
  "Noisy neighbour"? Here you are again, completely dismissing that Russia is killing innocent civilians as we speak. I am losing my ability to give you the benefit of the doubt here. Why are you constantly minimising the crimes Russia is committing right this moment?
  - sinyug 5y ago
    - user-the-name 5y ago
WaxedChewbacca 5y ago
[dead]

lupinglade 5y ago

The Russian state media are reporting lie after lie - see some of the real footage from the war that you can easily find anywhere online and compare to what they are reporting. You don't need to be an intelligence expert to see that the Russian media is spreading outright lies and propaganda. Stopping this propaganda is the right thing to do.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
zaptheimpaler 5y ago
If they are such obvious lies then people will figure it out on their own - why do we need to censor them?
- tablespoon 5y ago
  >> The Russian state media are reporting lie after lie - see some of the real footage from the war that you can easily find anywhere online and compare to what they are reporting. You don't need to be an intelligence expert to see that the Russian media is spreading outright lies and propaganda. Stopping this propaganda is the right thing to do. > If they are such obvious lies then people will figure it out on their own - why do we need to censor them? Enough people will be fooled, which is why they spread the lies. They're not stupid. You're also kind of twisting the GP's meaning. He's not saying the lies are obvious on their face, but they're discoverable by a layman from critically comparing sources. However a lot of layman (most?) don't compare sources.
native_samples 5y ago
How do you know which is true? Are you just assuming Western sources are true and any contradiction is evidence of a lie? This is reasonable to ask because Western sources have (also) been lying a lot, e.g. presenting photos taken last year as the Ukrainian president fighting on the front line today. So we have two lying groups and no obvious ways to figure out what's true. Occasionally you get lucky and e.g. reverse image search saves the day, but mostly, there's no way to detect lies.

dash2 5y ago

I agree it’s not good to censor RT and similar, though I do remember Churchill’s comment that in wartime “truth is so precious that it must be surrounded by a bodyguard of lies”. RT are scumbags and it’s been depressing to see some of my stupider/more self-serving academic friends go on there to pump their personal hobbyhorses. But they don’t need censoring, just our contempt. The article would be better if it didn’t make spurious and unsupported assertions about how NATO “had a hand in starting” this conflict.

jesusofnazarath 5y ago
kragen 5y ago
You might think Johnstone's assertions are wrong, but you too are lying when you say they are unsupported; in the sentence you are referring to, she linked to her own previous article which explains the history https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/experts-warned-for-years-that-nato https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/experts-warned-for-y... as well as some guy named "Aaron I Killed" on Substack https://mate.substack.com/p/the-ukraine-crisis-sponsored-by-us?s=r https://mate.substack.com/p/the-ukraine-crisis-sponsored-by-... and, more credibly, a FAIR backgrounder by Bryce Greene https://fair.org/home/what-you-should-really-know-about-ukraine/ https://fair.org/home/what-you-should-really-know-about-ukra.... These do in fact support the assertion. "Aaron I Killed" in particular seems perhaps partisan enough that his assertions should be handled with tweezers. The FAIR article is pretty solid and reliable; the only criticism I'd make is that, as progressives often do, it overstates the importance of the neo-Nazi movement in both Ukraine and in the US, for example neglecting to mention that the Ukrainian neo-Nazis lost all their parliamentary seats in the last election. I haven't been watching RT so I don't know firsthand how much they're lying, but see a lot of secondhand reports that they're lying an enormous amount, and those seem reliable.
- dash2 5y ago
  It’s a good idea, and IIRC part of this site’s guidelines, to “assume good faith”. If you find the linked articles more convincing than I do in making the case that NATO had a hand in starting this war, then maybe say “I disagree” rather than “you are lying”.

ajuc 5y ago

Yeah, cancel people for allegedly saying the N-word, but when a whole TV channel is financed by actual dictator invading countries and killing thousands of people, and is spreading his excuses for doing so - just leave them be because "freedom of speech".

supergirl 5y ago

yeah, it’s full throttle on domestic propaganda. it looks like NATO is eager to go to war with Russia. NATO could have avoided this war easily by giving some symbolic win to Russia, placing some sanctions and moving on. but they don’t budge which usually means real war is coming. EDIT: what I meant was NATO prob had a way to prevent the Ukraine war but chose not to: allow Russia to veto NATO membership as they demanded but at the same time impose the same drastic sanctions on Russia. this just avoids the war in Ukraine, leaving the rest the same. the sanctions would aim to push Russia to drop its veto and other demands.

hellotomyrars 5y ago
So Ukraine should just slowly give more and more of its territory away to Russia for free until it stops existing? The rest of the world should continue to ignore Russian aggression on foreign soil? NATO isn’t at war but this is an absurd way to look at things and I can’t imagine a good faith argument for what is literally a policy of appeasement, and that didn’t work out last time either.
- jesusofnazarath 5y ago
readthenotes1 5y ago
Easily avoided the reconstitution of Mother Russia? How? By killing Putin? Not so easy, I think.
notapenny 5y ago
If NATO wanted to go to war, they'd have supported the Ukraine directly from day one and the world would be a different place now. To be honest, I also thought this would end with the two Eastern regions falling under Russian government and that'd be the end of it. Russia did already annex Crimea in 2014 though, and now they're basically trying to disarm their neighbour and make sure it isn't attractive enough to join NATO/EU. Sounds easy to give Russia a symbolic win, but where does that stop? Is all Russia needs to do fight a war, take a province and wait out some sanctions? At what point do you realise they're not going to settle for a few pieces of the pie?

qqtt 5y ago

Lots of zingers flying around these days. Snake Island, Ghost of Kyiv, we are getting a daily dose of things that are walked back. As much as Ukraine is turning into a humanitarian crisis, the silence from many other humanitarian crisis that are also ongoing is deafening (the Yemen civil war comes to mind). Be extra vigilant - these are not normal times and when Russia and the USA face off like this, there is going to be a lot of manufactured consent flying around. It's pretty clear who the aggressors are, and who is the evil dictatorship starting an unjustifiable war, but don't assume that just because you agree with "the good guys" that the truth will come easy.

hunglee2 5y ago

OP makes a clear case here. Appeals to universal values are fatally compromised by exceptions. If a rule doesn't apply under all conditions then it becomes of matter of importance to determine who decides when they should be suspended. This reveals universalist values as hypocrisy, they are local values applied to others, for political purpose. Its like a cop says 'don't steal cars', then goes ahead and steals _your_car, only to show up the next day and says 'don't steal cars' Institutional distrust emerges this way

MagnumOpus 5y ago
> Appeals to universal values are fatally compromised by exceptions Only the willfully naive don't understand that exceptions are necessary. Just like a democracy cannot tolerate elements/parties that want to overthrow democracy if it plans to survive, a society cannot tolerate pervasive (and untrue) war propaganda from foreign enemies lest the actual domestic free press becomes so buried under a pile of manure that everybody throws up their hands and says "the truth cannot be known".
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Yeah, because the censorship is working so great. How could I be so naive to not believe that. The west did arm Nazis in Ukraine by the way, the US senate voted to supply the arms. This is a fact but there is also a context. And I think people should look into it.
- hunglee2 5y ago
  I would suggest only the wilfully naive accept universalist values as true. Feel free to propagate them onto other people, but let's at least be honest that is what we are doing. Example: when was the last time US was sanctioned for invading another country? Didn't happen, won't happen.

blackbear_ 5y ago

I see the argument against censorship, in principle. > You'd think the truth would be more robust than that. You'd think freedom would extend farther than that. You'd think democracy would be more tolerant of dissent than that. Yeah, I'd think that. I wish it was true, but in practice it's not. > If perhaps we have foolishly consented to a reality where the most powerful people in the world get to control the information people consume in order to shut down dissent against a murderous and oppressive globe-spanning oligarchic empire. We really don't have a choice. The reality is that one side is perfectly fine with using misinformation as a weapon. And it's really effective! What is foolish is to do nothing and hope truth will prevail automagically. What are alternatives to censorship that can be used today?

raxxorrax 5y ago
Do you have any single example in history where this censorship was required?
letsargue 5y ago
there is a difference between censoring dictator-state propaganda and censoring single citizens. On top of that, let's add that official state opinion about something (especially about war enemies), with punishment for different opinions, is typical of totalitarian state. In democracy one would have the statement of the russian dictator publicly commented by joirnalists. Here we have cancellation of statements. And this applies down to single citizens. Are we dropping our rights down the toilet? Anything makes you think this will be limited to russian war? How would you elaborate an informed opinion if everything gets canceled?

raverbashing 5y ago

Yeah "Both-sideism" is BS Complaining about some warnings when Russia is blocking Twitter and others is just naive Blocking RT is just tit-for-tat and sanctioning. During a war, controlling propaganda sources is important. And if you think there's no war, or that the west is not a target, you're wrong. Funnily enough anti-vax content on these past days seem to have calmed down or even stopped. Funnily enough. Cynical takes like this only make the author sound like a complete moron who never studied any XXth century history or just a plant

des1nderlase 5y ago

I think people need to understand, that there is no "absolute truth" but rather a view point on both sides. And to protect each system of values, implicit (by ignoring) or explicit (by blocking, invalidating) censorship takes place and both micro and macro level. People find rationalization for their system of believes and governments take use of that. Ignoring that would be just another narrative to ignore western own violent history. Everyone simply tries to protect their own interests in the national and economic conflict of powers. - Think about why is narrative around Russia so much different than any other NATO or US "intervention" in the past? - Why is TikTok controlled by Chinese gov, worse than FB, with majority stakes with a single man, controlled by US? For the largest portion of the world, in both cases, those are all foreign governments protecting their own interests.

des1nderlase 5y ago
If anything I feel sorry for both Ukranian and Russian people who didn't have a choice not to be part of this conflict, each suffering in their own way.

TMWNN 5y ago

I am reading Clark's Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia (<https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002RI9PMM/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002RI9PMM/>). Right after hearing about YouTube shutting down Russian state media channels, I was surprised to learn in the book of the extent of the freedom of the press in late 18th-century Prussia. A British visitor wrote that people were as free to speak as back home, citing a work that was very critical of the king in the context of Poland. During the Napoleonic wars, despite the existential threat to Prussia from France, at least four newspapers that celebrated Revolutionary France as the next step in human freedom were allowed to publish. It's always preferable to counter propaganda with free speech. Even liars deserve the opportunity to speak. This is especially true when there is no formally declared war between the US and Russia.

dirtyid 5y ago

Prescience of the Great Fire Wall I suppose.