[flagged]
replies(14):
I believe in democracy. If people want to listen to ridiculous and false Russian propaganda or support Russia against Ukraine they should be able to without hindrance, even if their politicians or the better informed don’t like it. It’s their job to persuade their fellows. They shouldn’t get to declare their beliefs are right and beyond democratic contestation.
Sometimes democracies make really bad decisions. Alciabiades conned the Athenians into the disastrous Sicilian Expedition. That’s the tradeoff you get for having a democracy. Declaring some subjects out of bounds is taking away democracy and installing something else instead, with those tradeoffs, that we as a society decided we weren’t going to make, without consensus.
Sorry, I'm more confortable with RT being blocked than having another Adolf Hitler screaming their own propaganda.
Screw Russia and China. The Internet blocking committee should probably also block Tiktok while they're at it, as it makes people's brains rot.
Is that really a good example? Weimar Germany regularly suppressed and censored Nazi newspapers and publications, shut down hundreds of Nazi newspapers, and even at one point suppressed party gatherings.[1] Obviously, it did not work, and the Nazis used the same laws and precedent to suppress their enemies when they took power, and were able to campaign with statements like "in all of Germany, why are WE silenced?"
You can take two things away from this:
1. Weimar should have suppressed the Nazis EVEN HARDER. Weimar needed an even more stringent censorship regime, shutting down any publication and arresting the editors at the slightest whiff of wrongthink. They should have deployed informers to identify and arrest dissidents before they broke out into the public arena.
OR
2. Weimar Germany was a deeply unpopular and dysfunctional regime that had already failed. Governments should do better to represent the interests of their people so that things never get to that point. The Nazis would never have obtained any power if Germany had been doing well and people felt represented by their government, no matter what kind of crazy propaganda they put out; people don't choose extremism because of propaganda, they become propagandized when they are deeply disaffected. Censorship only further delegitimized the regime and increased the popularity of the Nazis, as it showed they were a threat to the people in power that were perceived to be mismanaging the country.
[1] https://www.thefire.org/news/blogs/eternally-radical-idea/wo...