A German ISP changed their DNS to block my website

Europe and Germany in particular took from the 30s-40s the lesson where freedom of expression is a risk in democracies because a demagogue can easily sway opinions. For that reason they are in a better position to protect themselves against the 21st century threat to democracy of foreign influences networks

No thanks. I’d rather form my own opinions.

>the “demagogue” who allows free expression is more of a tyrant than a state who blocks wrongthink

Okay

The progress of censorship in every single Western country is an admission that "democracy" is a fallacy born from an exceptional small period of time of civil peace, economic growth and wealth. Countries can only follow a stable political path - good or bad, this is not the point - if they have an authoritarian regime.

Communism did not work because it was not communist enough, now democracy is not working because it's not democratic enough. Democracy is the golden calf of westerners. I truly believe that voting rights are hurting more a society than drugs and alcohol.

Yet even if you were never manipulated by false information or narratives in your life, if you live in the US you live in a country where pizzagate happened, the capital riots, the george floyd protests which also became very violent at times and other events where the russian IRA had a hand

A crucial component of democracy is free and accurate media. Every single functioning democracy in the world has institutions that can apply some amount of sanctions against newspapers and other media that do no live up to the expectation of accuracy.

They are struggling to figure out how to do this in the Information Age, but that doesn’t mean it’s not reasonable or important. Blocking propaganda posing as “news” is a stopgap measure, but we can’t do nothing if we want democracy to work.

"We need more government action and control to protect you from le bad people" does not in fact strike me as the opposite of what happened in Nazi Germany.

When exactly was there “free and accurate” media? Did you mistake the restrictions on some 20th century broadcast media that originated as a consequence of government licensing as some sort of centuries-old universal truth prior to social media? If anything newspapers in particular used to be much more irresponsible and scandalous, certainly as bad as anything on Twitter. And yes, there was plenty of foreign influence operations as well.

Yet, free speech and democracy was exploited by a group that aimed at dismantling free speech and democracy (among many other things)

It's what kept the Nazis from rising again in Germany for 80 years.

So, to prevent that from happening, we ought to dismantle free speech and democracy?

Guy goes to the psychiatrist, he keeps clapping his hands. Explains that this is to keep away the elephants. Doctor goes "But there aren't any elephants around?" Guy replies "See? It's working!"

(I'm sure there's a more sophisticated way to refer to this fallacy, but my point stands.)

> A crucial component of democracy is free and accurate media.

What does "accurate media" mean?

The fact is, there strictly isn't and strictly never was any such thing.

In fact, it is absolutely impossible to attain something like this.

The moment something gets transcribed, it ceases to be objective and therefore, there never isnt any such thing as "accurate" news.

Any student of history learns this in their first semester.

> They are struggling to figure out how to do this in the Information Age

LOL, it was far, far worse before the information age.

True, there was far fewer "official" versions of what actually goes on in the world, but it doesn't mean they were in any way accurate or any less manipulative.

All it takes to check that is to hop from one so-called "free country" to another an compare two mainstream newspapers describing the same event.

The only way you can get a bit close to the actual truth of what's happening is by reading all the opinions, especially the diametrically opposed ones and try to form your own.

Democracy immediately stops existing when elites start to prevent people of "wrongthink". Democracy is just another authoritarian system with a big downside: nobody is accountable of failures. There is no king, no chief to dethrone. Another friend of the temporary suzerain will be placed in power for a couple of years.

Only if you think in absolute ones and zeros

You can prevent organizations whose aim is to destroy democracy by exercising some restrictions on democracy without completely dismantling free speech and democracy.

just as for example you may jail someone and completely restrict their freedom in order to protect others, without completely dismantling democracy

Not only most of europe was overtaken by fascism in the thirties, currently you have democracies that were taken over by authoritarians such as Russia, Turkey and Venezuela.

So it appears to me there are still elephants around

You can read entire twitter threads today completely composed in Russia, where the trolls write both sides

That has never happened with newspapers. Today's many people entire window to reality is through the internet and like it or not, people believe what's popular or if not, can believe an opinion is popular if it's widespread online.

It's very easy to create racial tensions for example that way, as was done by the russians

Except in this case everyone is being jailed, to keep them safe from the criminal.

So if Russia, Turkey and Venezuela had stronger governments, they wouldn't be authoritarian?

Yes, if by stronger governments you mean stronger democratic institutions that could have fought populism, that would have helped.

Democratic countries that are corrupt, weak and have poor cultural defense mechanisms against populism fail. In Germany such a mechanism is the one discussed in this thread, in the US it's a strong , almost religious belief in the constitution

"Accurate" means that an institution is not actively trying to mislead, and takes steps to correct factual errors when they occur. All traditional news media in healthy democracies do this. They distinguish clearly between reporting facts and opinions.

"Objective truth is unattainable, so we shouldn't even try" is overly pessimistic and does not reflect reality. Opinions are not facts, and the truth is not an opinion. The truth is often complicated, and a healthy media landscape contains all the relevant perspectives, but none should get away with misrepresenting the facts. You are saying that truth does not exist, while certain organizations and actors are actively doing their best to get away with lying to your face.

It has nothing to do with an "official" narrative - there is none. It is objective truth that RT is a state organization that exists in order to manipulate and lie to Western audiences.

"Elites"?

Don't project American politics to the concept of democracy. It is not the poster child, because it is not a good implementation. Nor is the decline of the US inevitable. Lots of democracies are not going through that, but watch in horror as plutocrats and fascists undermine the country, and they take steps to avoid the same fate, which is the very reason for banning things like RT.

Contrariwise, there was a widespread belief that we were at significant risk of cascading computer failures that could take out critical infrastructure when the year rolled over from 1999 to 2000. When midnight struck on January 1, 2000, nothing much happened, and skeptics said "See? It was no big deal. Turns out there was nothing to worry about after all." But actually, software engineers had been working since years before to update those critical systems since years before and their efforts paid off, making Y2K seem like a non-event.

Maybe we haven't observed Nazism rise again in Germany because the policies against Nazi expression, first implemented by the Allied occupying forces immediately after WWII, worked so well.