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It depends on how do you define “censorship”, and your view of the fundamental role of the state. I used to be a free speech absolutist (especially as a teenag

It depends on how do you define “censorship”, and your view of the fundamental role of the state. I used to be a free speech absolutist (especially as a teenager, campaigning against Internet filters in school, as one is want to), I’ve refined my position over time away from that unsophisticated and unhelpfully simplistic position, but I haven’t yet found an accurate succinct way to describe my current feelings beyond saying I’m “aligned with defensive-democracy” ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_democracy ) - but I try to avoid advocating DD with language like “reasonable restrictions” because that’s currently the language used by people who I’m ideologically opposed to, but I don’t want to come across as a libertarian… nor a V-for-Vendetta fan either. As much as I’d love to blame Ofcom’s letter on the Tories, I believe under Labour it would be just as bad: Labour is/was the party of Wacky Jacqui Smith after-all; whereas this perennial paternalism comes from the current constitutional design of the Home Office: until and unless the Home Office changes their attitude we’ll keep on seeing this kind of policymaking - it’s an analogue to the US’ “foreign policy blob” situation, imo ( https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/16/us/politics/blob-afghanistan-withdrawal-biden.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/16/us/politics/blob-afghanis... )

brigandish 4y ago
I agree with what you wrote but wanted to comment on the link you shared. I read some of that Wikipedia page on defensive democracy, it has as one of the examples Holocaust denial in 10 countries. I do wonder why in countries, such as Germany, that do have a continuing problem with Nazis and anti-semitism, people think that restricting speech is the way to combat it. It didn’t work in the past as it arguably gave rise (or at least was a supporting factor) in the rise of both ant-semitism and National Socialism to such prominence, and the problems aren’t going away despite it being three quarters of a century since their terrible apex even with these laws in place. Britain, Canada, Australia, NZ and the US, which all (historically) have a speech culture derived from Locke’s liberalism (to varying degrees but broadly similar, hence the strong objections to infringement of speech in them by the populace regardless of legality) have had no such problems as both anti-semitism and National Socialists are thankfully a fringe activity in those places. Liberal speech laws reduce authoritarianism and racism because they can only grow without opposition. In fact, we see growing anti-semitism and clearly racist behaviours amongst “progressives” in those places, and they are the biggest supporters of censorship because they understand this too as they fail to persuade others of the merits of their position when people can say what they like in return. All my soapbox-standing being said, I’m confused as to how you’ve got a foot in the defensive democracy camp, given your clear sympathies with strong free speech allowances (if no longer so absolutist), a clear understanding of the failings of our legislators, and the role of the Home office in all of this. I’m not criticising you, I’m just at a loss as to how to reconcile them. Perhaps it’s the narrow examples given on that page?
- DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
  I see the rhetorical tricks used by (buzzword warning) cryptonazis and protofascists as exploiting vulnerabilities in how we think and operate: I believe most of everyone is primed to respond to arguments against otherness and those based on fear. (Bad analogy warning) It’s like a heuristics-based anti-virus with root permission: userland processes can largely do what they want, but if I see an executable program making a syscall that it has no good reason for making, like DailyExpress.exe or FoxNews.exe manipulating the memory space of processes owned by the ImpressionsbleAudience user-group (which contains all of us) instead of going through hardened, public, well-defined interfaces then yes then I’m going to kill-9 it.

brigandish 4y ago

I agree with what you wrote but wanted to comment on the link you shared. I read some of that Wikipedia page on defensive democracy, it has as one of the examples Holocaust denial in 10 countries. I do wonder why in countries, such as Germany, that do have a continuing problem with Nazis and anti-semitism, people think that restricting speech is the way to combat it. It didn’t work in the past as it arguably gave rise (or at least was a supporting factor) in the rise of both ant-semitism and National Socialism to such prominence, and the problems aren’t going away despite it being three quarters of a century since their terrible apex even with these laws in place. Britain, Canada, Australia, NZ and the US, which all (historically) have a speech culture derived from Locke’s liberalism (to varying degrees but broadly similar, hence the strong objections to infringement of speech in them by the populace regardless of legality) have had no such problems as both anti-semitism and National Socialists are thankfully a fringe activity in those places. Liberal speech laws reduce authoritarianism and racism because they can only grow without opposition. In fact, we see growing anti-semitism and clearly racist behaviours amongst “progressives” in those places, and they are the biggest supporters of censorship because they understand this too as they fail to persuade others of the merits of their position when people can say what they like in return. All my soapbox-standing being said, I’m confused as to how you’ve got a foot in the defensive democracy camp, given your clear sympathies with strong free speech allowances (if no longer so absolutist), a clear understanding of the failings of our legislators, and the role of the Home office in all of this. I’m not criticising you, I’m just at a loss as to how to reconcile them. Perhaps it’s the narrow examples given on that page?

DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
I see the rhetorical tricks used by (buzzword warning) cryptonazis and protofascists as exploiting vulnerabilities in how we think and operate: I believe most of everyone is primed to respond to arguments against otherness and those based on fear. (Bad analogy warning) It’s like a heuristics-based anti-virus with root permission: userland processes can largely do what they want, but if I see an executable program making a syscall that it has no good reason for making, like DailyExpress.exe or FoxNews.exe manipulating the memory space of processes owned by the ImpressionsbleAudience user-group (which contains all of us) instead of going through hardened, public, well-defined interfaces then yes then I’m going to kill-9 it.