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What's interesting is in the US that kind of censorship is attributed to the most mainstream religion but China is officially atheist and does the same. Wheneve

What's interesting is in the US that kind of censorship is attributed to the most mainstream religion but China is officially atheist and does the same. Whenever people tell me that it's only one religion standing in the way of equal rights for disadvantaged groups I remind them that there's an atheist superpower that's even less permissive except for on reproductive issues(although, in their case they do regulate it heavily, only in the other direction with limits on the amount of children you can have and forced terminations in the past).

no_where 4y ago
Also that the self imposed censorship in America was a response by the studios to their customers. Where was Chinese government is furthering its Communist briefs.
- Animats 4y ago
  China's government seems to be more concerned about containing criticism of the current Chinese government than Communist ideology. It's not like the Maoist period. The Economist has a good story about that this week.[1] Some militant Communists are now in opposition to the Xi regime.[2] The current regime is more authoritarian than Communist. Which is what usually happens when you get a Supreme Leader for Life. [1] https://www.economist.com/china/2022/08/25/chinas-communist-party-says-it-welcomes-complaints https://www.economist.com/china/2022/08/25/chinas-communist-... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/world/asia/china-maoists-xi-protests.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/world/asia/china-maoists-...
  - no_where 4y ago
    Authoritarianism does not preclude communism. Likewise, their model more resembles fascism with all facets of life serving the government's ends. Which is the reason for my classification of it as Communist as fascism is a mere variant of communism. The fact that some disaffected communists disagree with Xi is quite common as Communists often disagree.
    - int_19h 4y ago
      I would agree that modern China is basically fascist, but fascism is not a "mere variant of communism" in any sense. The key tenet of communism is common ownership of capital; in the authoritarian and totalitarian varieties, this is implemented as ownership by the state that represents "dictatorship of the proletariat". The fascist economic system is completely different.
shusaku 4y ago
A lot of people in the west (especially the US) are raised with the Sunday school idea that religion is something you choose after an objective weighing of ideas. The reality is that both China and the US have engrained cultural values which lead to these regulations. Those cultural values sometimes manifest as religious practice, but there is no hard distinction.
- thrown_22 4y ago
  The current discussion around 'harm' from AI generated images is the most hilarious example of a cultural more trying to find a justification for its existence after it is no longer applicable. Will no one think of the pixels being exploited? The older I get the more I realize that culture is what keeps us back. The Romans didn't invent steam engines not because they didn't want them but because they couldn't imagine a world where you wouldn't need slaves. The Catholic Church didn't survive the printing press. Currently there is no society which is friendly to digital information. The first one which is will overtake everyone else in the same way that industrialization let the west overtake everyone else.
  - seszett 4y ago
    > The Catholic Church didn't survive the printing press. It's a little bit off-topic, but you have to live in a very different world to believe that, as the Catholic Church is by far the largest Christian church still today. The only religion that is larger than it, not by an extremely large margin, is Islam (not sure if you split Islam in its different branches). The reality is that after a short initial resistance, the Catholic Church quickly turned around and embraced printing. I would argue that the Catholic Church is probably one of the most agile among the main organised religions and adapts rather well to changes. It pains me to say that, but it's clearly not going to die anytime soon.
    - thrown_22 4y ago
      You have to be completely ignorant of the history of the Catholic Church to think that today's version has anything on the Church of 1500AD. https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2015/07/papal-overlordship-of-england-the-making-of-an-escape-clause-for-magna-carta.html https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2015/07/papal-overl... One of the more colorful moments, when the Pope owned England. What we have left is the losers of a rear guard action which has been going on for 400 years.
delecti 4y ago
There's definitely a tendency to oversimplify authoritarians by criticizing them for other aspects. American right-wing authoritarians are bad because they're authoritarian, but get criticized for the Evangelical tone through which they enforce it. Likewise with Chinese authoritarians getting criticized for being communist while they do authoritarianism, rather than for the authoritarianism itself.
- kelnos 4y ago
  That's a fantastic point that I think many people miss. And others are well aware of it, but try to deflect attention from the authoritarian bits by focusing on the other bits.
- somenameforme 4y ago
  There's a very specific reason for this that can be illustrated quite easily: The current Wiki page on authoritarianism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarianism The same page, but from 2006: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Authoritarianism&oldid=79655368 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Authoritarianism&... The Wiki 'definition' of authoritarianism has shifted quite radically in recent years. There's a line in the older page, completely scrubbed at some point, that's quite relevant: "Democracies rarely exhibit much authoritarian behavior except in transition to or from authoritarian states. Many (if not most) citizens of authoritarian states do not perceive their state as authoritarian until late in its development." Recent history (that extends beyond just the past 2 years) has emphasized that the vast majority of people are perfectly fine, if not enthusiastic, about authoritarianism when they share the values of said authority. This makes it near impossible to criticize authoritarianism, in and of itself, because it trends towards immediate hypocrisy. So instead people criticize a system of values they disagree with, while using authoritarianism as a convenient slur to make the critique sound more noble and meaningful than a simple value disagreement would. The same thing has happened to the Wiki page. The older page emphasizes quite clearly that the West has long since entered into the world of authoritarianism, but we don't want to imagine this could ever happen. So instead we've redefined the word in an effort to focus largely on the differences between the United States and "the bad guys."
kelnos 4y ago
Any people in power will find justifications for asserting control over others. Personally I would prefer someone coming out and being (mostly) honest about why they're trying to control others, not the religious "we're saving your soul!" nonsense.

no_where 4y ago

Also that the self imposed censorship in America was a response by the studios to their customers. Where was Chinese government is furthering its Communist briefs.

Animats 4y ago
China's government seems to be more concerned about containing criticism of the current Chinese government than Communist ideology. It's not like the Maoist period. The Economist has a good story about that this week.[1] Some militant Communists are now in opposition to the Xi regime.[2] The current regime is more authoritarian than Communist. Which is what usually happens when you get a Supreme Leader for Life. [1] https://www.economist.com/china/2022/08/25/chinas-communist-party-says-it-welcomes-complaints https://www.economist.com/china/2022/08/25/chinas-communist-... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/world/asia/china-maoists-xi-protests.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/world/asia/china-maoists-...
- no_where 4y ago
  Authoritarianism does not preclude communism. Likewise, their model more resembles fascism with all facets of life serving the government's ends. Which is the reason for my classification of it as Communist as fascism is a mere variant of communism. The fact that some disaffected communists disagree with Xi is quite common as Communists often disagree.
  - int_19h 4y ago
    I would agree that modern China is basically fascist, but fascism is not a "mere variant of communism" in any sense. The key tenet of communism is common ownership of capital; in the authoritarian and totalitarian varieties, this is implemented as ownership by the state that represents "dictatorship of the proletariat". The fascist economic system is completely different.

shusaku 4y ago

A lot of people in the west (especially the US) are raised with the Sunday school idea that religion is something you choose after an objective weighing of ideas. The reality is that both China and the US have engrained cultural values which lead to these regulations. Those cultural values sometimes manifest as religious practice, but there is no hard distinction.

thrown_22 4y ago
The current discussion around 'harm' from AI generated images is the most hilarious example of a cultural more trying to find a justification for its existence after it is no longer applicable. Will no one think of the pixels being exploited? The older I get the more I realize that culture is what keeps us back. The Romans didn't invent steam engines not because they didn't want them but because they couldn't imagine a world where you wouldn't need slaves. The Catholic Church didn't survive the printing press. Currently there is no society which is friendly to digital information. The first one which is will overtake everyone else in the same way that industrialization let the west overtake everyone else.
- seszett 4y ago
  > The Catholic Church didn't survive the printing press. It's a little bit off-topic, but you have to live in a very different world to believe that, as the Catholic Church is by far the largest Christian church still today. The only religion that is larger than it, not by an extremely large margin, is Islam (not sure if you split Islam in its different branches). The reality is that after a short initial resistance, the Catholic Church quickly turned around and embraced printing. I would argue that the Catholic Church is probably one of the most agile among the main organised religions and adapts rather well to changes. It pains me to say that, but it's clearly not going to die anytime soon.
  - thrown_22 4y ago
    You have to be completely ignorant of the history of the Catholic Church to think that today's version has anything on the Church of 1500AD. https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2015/07/papal-overlordship-of-england-the-making-of-an-escape-clause-for-magna-carta.html https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2015/07/papal-overl... One of the more colorful moments, when the Pope owned England. What we have left is the losers of a rear guard action which has been going on for 400 years.

delecti 4y ago

There's definitely a tendency to oversimplify authoritarians by criticizing them for other aspects. American right-wing authoritarians are bad because they're authoritarian, but get criticized for the Evangelical tone through which they enforce it. Likewise with Chinese authoritarians getting criticized for being communist while they do authoritarianism, rather than for the authoritarianism itself.

kelnos 4y ago
That's a fantastic point that I think many people miss. And others are well aware of it, but try to deflect attention from the authoritarian bits by focusing on the other bits.
somenameforme 4y ago
There's a very specific reason for this that can be illustrated quite easily: The current Wiki page on authoritarianism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarianism The same page, but from 2006: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Authoritarianism&oldid=79655368 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Authoritarianism&... The Wiki 'definition' of authoritarianism has shifted quite radically in recent years. There's a line in the older page, completely scrubbed at some point, that's quite relevant: "Democracies rarely exhibit much authoritarian behavior except in transition to or from authoritarian states. Many (if not most) citizens of authoritarian states do not perceive their state as authoritarian until late in its development." Recent history (that extends beyond just the past 2 years) has emphasized that the vast majority of people are perfectly fine, if not enthusiastic, about authoritarianism when they share the values of said authority. This makes it near impossible to criticize authoritarianism, in and of itself, because it trends towards immediate hypocrisy. So instead people criticize a system of values they disagree with, while using authoritarianism as a convenient slur to make the critique sound more noble and meaningful than a simple value disagreement would. The same thing has happened to the Wiki page. The older page emphasizes quite clearly that the West has long since entered into the world of authoritarianism, but we don't want to imagine this could ever happen. So instead we've redefined the word in an effort to focus largely on the differences between the United States and "the bad guys."

kelnos 4y ago

Any people in power will find justifications for asserting control over others. Personally I would prefer someone coming out and being (mostly) honest about why they're trying to control others, not the religious "we're saving your soul!" nonsense.