4 ms·

Great Firewall? Is that where you think we - Europeans, Americans, anyone living in what used to be called the 'free world' - should go, just follow the Chinese

Great Firewall? Is that where you think we - Europeans, Americans, anyone living in what used to be called the 'free world' - should go, just follow the Chinese and North Korean and similar regimes in restricting access to whatever those in control deem to be appropriate? Do you even realise what you're proposing here? We in what used to be called the 'free world' used to revel in our freedom of movement, our freedom of thought, freedom on conscience, religion and more. We used to look at places where such freedoms were not a given like they were and to a large extent still are here. The Chinese 'Great Firewall' was seen in the same light as the Berlin Wall: a means to keep an oppressive regime in power, to keep the citizenry of China unaware of anything the regime did not want them to know about so they could mow them down at Tienanmen Square without people outside of the area learning about it. Now there's some HN user claiming that Europe should also build one - why exactly? What is it that we Europeans should not be allowed to access? Why should the European Commission - maybe I should start calling them the European Commissars - have such power over Europeans? I say no to any such proposal and will, just like the Chinese, find a way around any such tool of oppression.

hunglee2 9mo ago
It is 2026 and you still speak of the 'free world'. I give you credit for at least using doubt quotes.
- hagbard_c 9mo ago
  How otherwise would you refer to 'The West' which used to be called 'the free world' other than by stating this? Why, then, do you claim I 'speak of the free world'? History does not change by choosing to ignore it. We in 'The West' used to think of ourselves as 'the free world' and to a large extent there was truth to this claim when comparing 'us' with people behind the Iron Curtain and communist China. Once the wall was broken, the borders opened and the Soviet Union dissolved this ceased to be true. By and large we're still better off than e.g. people in Russia but in many ways it seems like the bad ideas from places like the Soviet Union and China are being implemented at large scale in many countries on the west side of the former Iron Curtain. So yes, I will keep on referring to these countries in this way, 'used to be called the free world' because this is how those countries did refer to themselves. History matters, it is there to be learned from.

hunglee2 9mo ago

It is 2026 and you still speak of the 'free world'. I give you credit for at least using doubt quotes.

hagbard_c 9mo ago
How otherwise would you refer to 'The West' which used to be called 'the free world' other than by stating this? Why, then, do you claim I 'speak of the free world'? History does not change by choosing to ignore it. We in 'The West' used to think of ourselves as 'the free world' and to a large extent there was truth to this claim when comparing 'us' with people behind the Iron Curtain and communist China. Once the wall was broken, the borders opened and the Soviet Union dissolved this ceased to be true. By and large we're still better off than e.g. people in Russia but in many ways it seems like the bad ideas from places like the Soviet Union and China are being implemented at large scale in many countries on the west side of the former Iron Curtain. So yes, I will keep on referring to these countries in this way, 'used to be called the free world' because this is how those countries did refer to themselves. History matters, it is there to be learned from.