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Dictators are absolutely terrified of the paper trail. This is the entire reason for existence of the Great Firewall. The CCP invests heavily in sanitizing impo
by zhoujing204 8mo ago
Dictators are absolutely terrified of the paper trail. This is the entire reason for existence of the Great Firewall. The CCP invests heavily in sanitizing imported literature and curating the information supply to maintain cognitive capture over the populace.
We are seeing parallel mechanics from the Trump/GOP camp: look at the library purges in conservative states and the push to co-opt moderation on platforms like TikTok. Access to the historical record isn't just a detail; it is the fundamental substrate of free speech.
- riffraff 8mo agoBut Trump and his administration also prove what GP is saying. Few care about the truth. Trump states obvious lies so blatant ("prices will go down 200%") that anyone who cares could tell they are untruth without needing to look up any paper trail, but it does not matter. Mike Johnson just quoted St Paul as saying you should respect the authority forgetting that the Romans beheaded him. And it's not like the Bible isn't available widely.
- rsynnott 8mo agoThat’s the interesting bit; Winston’s job turns out to be largely redundant. You don’t need to hide the evidence that the chocolate ration used to be higher; if a sufficiently charismatic person with sufficiently stupid hair says that it has increased, a lot of people will believe that.
- TitaRusell 8mo agoHow many Americans give a shit about history?
- Recurecur 8mo agoAll the smart and informed Americans…
- squarefoot 8mo agoPeople is kept away from details by shortening their attention span with the production of continuous pervasive stimuli. Regarding Trump, when he does something apparently stupid (on behalf of the rich people pulling his strings, let's never forget this) he's just forcing the media and people consuming them to start talking about the next event without further exploring more important ones.
- red-iron-pine 8mo agoput another way, they don't care about history because every economic actor in the economy is trying to keep them distracted -- so that they don't learn the history the goal is to keep keep em poor, distracted, and angry
- Recurecur 8mo agoHence the movement to eliminate the “Department of Education”, which at this point would be better named the “Department of Intentional Ignorance”. That’s despite spending more per child than any other country in the world.
- riffraff 8mo agoNo disagreement on this, but we're then talking of Brave New World and distraction, not 1984 and censorship.
- nobodywillobsrv 8mo agoExactly. Interesting that both orwell and azimov were wrong in different ways. Also azimov seems unaware of the Fabian link to the title which is surely a factor in the origin.
- ted_bunny 8mo agoYou sure aggressive propaganda and espionage from the west aren't part of the reason for it? What sort of "cognitive capture" is necessary to maintain control of their population right now? The Chinese are often painted as brainwashed ideological drones in the west, and it says more about us that we tend to believe it than it does about them. You can download RedNote and talk to people in Xinjiang. You can travel there and talk to people in person. Mao is arguably deceased.
- conception 8mo agoThen why does the Chinese government have a blacklist of topics not allowed to be talked about/recorded?
- ted_bunny 8mo agoYeah, I guess you're right. I play devil's advocate frequently enough that I forget I'm doing it. I just hate to see a dogpile, because the criticisms tend to go to extremes. People talk about a lot of asian cultures like they're brainwashed bugmen and those narratives serve dangerous interests. The West is losing its edge on free speech and thought anyway. Criticize Israel in Germany, misgender someone in Canada, say a mean word to someone invading your house in the UK, and see what happens. And it's not going to get better anytime soon.