Censorship

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While censorship may impede expression, it is seldom effective. People ultimately find ways to communicate their sentiments to one another.[1]

Censorship is the suppression of statements or information for ideological reasons. Current examples of censorship include:

  • Liberals are actively trying to destroy Fox News Channel through lawsuits and bullying because it disrupts the left-wing narrative, which it does not submit to.[2] They have also tried to destroy Sean Hannity for the same reason.[3]
  • Facebook suspended 30,000 accounts in France a mere ten days before its national election in 2017, in censorship of supporters of the right-wing, eurosceptic Marine Le Pen[4][5]
  • Refusal to carry news about the horrors at the abortion clinic of Gosnell Kermit, on trial for murder in April 2013 in Philadelphia
  • The banning of prayer in the classroom.[6]
  • The restrictions on sidewalk counseling of women about the harms caused by abortion.
  • The removal of conservative ideas from Wikipedia, for example, Wikipedia has no articles about the ills of atheism[7]
  • The refusal to report on news that a prominent African American endorsed a conservative candidate.
  • The refusal to expose, in a timely manner, falsehoods published by the Communist or other media.
  • The rejection of pro-life advertisements.[8]
  • The banning of mention of intelligent design and evolution in schools.[9]
  • Firing media columnists because they express politically incorrect conservative views.[10][11]
  • The vandalizing of pro-life displays and conservative websites (including Conservapedia).
  • Censorship can also take the form of ostracizing students for expressing pro-life or other conservative views. Also information relating to LGBT issues.[12]
  • Protesting and disrupting invited conservative speakers on campuses.[13]
  • Censorship is sometimes based on a misuse of copyright, as in the unsuccessful attempt to censor the movie Expelled:No Intelligence Allowed about intelligent design.[14]
  • The destruction or theft of conservative newspapers on college campuses.[15]
  • Censorship of conservative talk radio via the Fairness Doctrine.
  • Internet censorship employed by a country, which can include such things as the filtering of anti-government sites in China or the censoring of women's rights or anti-Islam sites in Middle Eastern, and other countries
Adolf Hitler's rise to power was greatly aided by censoring his critics.[16][17][18][19]
  • Schools banning or using placement bias to keep students from books including the Bible, or books critical of the theory of evolution or science..
  • Big Tech, acting in collusion with each other, engaged in illegal censorship[20][21][22] of conservatives and Christians, in violation of both the First Amendment[23] (and equivalent free speech laws in other countries) and civil rights[24] and anti-trust laws in the US[25][26] and other countries.[27] In August 2018, multiple social media giants, with the support of the Left, mainstream media, and Democrats,[28] illegally banned Alex Jones's InfoWars from their sites simply because of his political views.[29] In February 2019, Facebook removed 22 pages related to Jones and InfoWars.[30]
  • Various studies have found that Facebook and Google, among other social media platforms, engage in censorship against conservatives.[31][32]
  • In 2018, Brown University censored a study on transgender youth because it did not approve of the study's results, worrying that its findings might "invalidate the perspectives" of transgender people.[33]
  • Facebook banned several people whose views it opposed, labeling them "dangerous," even though they did not violate the site's terms[34] – Facebook continued allowing actual left-wing hate speech to go unpunished, however.[35]

Political censorship involves a government preventing information from reaching its citizens. Perhaps the best-known contemporary example of this is China's censorship of the Google search engine, known as the "Golden Shield Project", which prevents Google from displaying search results of some human rights websites, websites promoting Tibetan independence, references to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, and others. A famous example in fiction is George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which the main character works as a civil servant in the department responsible for altering or destroying historical information which the government wishes to keep secret. The rationale behind political censorship is that the political party in power can protect itself from revolution if the public is kept uninformed.

Ironically, liberals and leftists have also at times advocated against censorship, although strictly so they can ensure a revolution that brings themselves and their left-wing politics into power. Examples include the communist George Bernard Shaw, who had advocated the removal of censorship specifically to ensure "progress" (i.e., communism) can be brought into the UK in his preface to "Mrs. Warren's Profession".[36] Similarly, the Philosophes such as Voltaire and Diderot have demanded for absolute freedom of speech specifically to push their anti-Christian agenda on the masses, which ultimately resulted in the anti-Christian nature of the French Revolution,[37][38] and the Free Speech movement in 1964 tried to allow the Communists unrestrained freedom of speech as well specifically to silence criticism against the Communist movement. On a similar note, both the then-radicalized American Library Association and the American Civil Liberties Union (the latter of whom was partly responsible for the former's radicalization) advocated against censorship, even managing to radically interpret the First Amendment as implying a right to receive any and all information as well as protecting pornography in the Constitution and considering minors to have legally the same rights as consenting adults, all while also claiming that even the smallest limitation to any speech or expression in any capacity is equivalent to totalitarian repression. to the extent of automatically leading to it.[39]

The term "censorship" derives from censor, the title of the Roman official who conducted the census and supervised public morality.

The First Amendment and censorship in the U. S.

In the United States, the First Amendment states that "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." Broadly speaking, the First Amendment is designed to prevent the government from exercising censorship. However, the government sometimes censors political and religious speech anyway, based on ideological grounds.

More specifically, the government should not exercise "prior restraint." That is, a citizen should not need advance permission from the government in order to publish something, unless it threatens national security. This does not mean that publication may not have consequences: a citizen can be sued for publishing libel, or incarcerated for disclosing military secrets, but the consequences typically occur after publication, not before.

Censorship is sometimes applied to prohibit obscenity that goes against common standards of public morality; under US law the first amendment does not protect material considered legally obscene. The definition of obscenity has and continues to vary, with the current Supreme Court definition being the Miller test. In practical terms, this allows harmful material such as pornography to be criminalized without violating the First Amendment.

Censorship may also be directed at religious ideas, as in the Saudi Arabian prohibition on preaching Christianity, liberal restrictions on public expressions of religion, or the Roman Catholic Church's now-rescinded Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

Certain language and images that may have been censored in the past are typically common fare in the American media today. On the other hand, while nudity, for example, may be acceptable on mainstream French television, that is much less likely to be accepted on American television and even less acceptable in Islamic countries.

Quotes

  • All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship. George Bernard Shaw[36]

See also


Contrast with:

References

  1. https://marketrealist.com/p/why-are-people-calling-biden-brandon/
  2. Harper, Jennifer (May 25, 2017). Inside the Beltway: The strategic war on Fox News. The Washington Times. Retrieved May 25, 2017.
  3. Kew, Ben (May 25, 2017). Brent Bozell: Attack on Hannity Part of ‘Liberal Strategy to Monopolize the Media’. Breitbart News. Retrieved May 26, 2017.
  4. Hoft, Jim (April 14, 2017). Facebook Suspends 30,000 French Accounts 10 days Before Election in Attempt to Censor Le Pen Supporters. The Gateway Pundit. Retrieved April 14, 2017.
  5. Facebook Targets 30,000 Fake French Accounts Before Election. Breitbart News. April 14, 2017. Retrieved April 14, 2017.
  6. See, e.g., classroom prayer.
  7. See Bias in Wikipedia.
  8. See, e.g., "Canadian City Backpedals on Decision to Censor Pro-life Bus-shelter Ads." [1]
  9. See, e.g., Expelled:No Intelligence Allowed.
  10. Hasson, Peter (April 5, 2018). What Ingraham, Sinclair And Williamson Have In Common. The Daily Caller. Retrieved April 5, 2018.
  11. DeGroot, Christopher (April 5, 2018). Kevin Williamson Finds a Fitting New Home — NOT! (Updated). The American Spectator. Retrieved April 5, 2018.
  12. See, e.g., liberals and friendship.
  13. At Columbia, Students Attack Minuteman Founder Ny Sun, October 5, 2006
  14. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7432860.stm
  15. http://www.thebulletin.us/site/index.cfm?newsid=19383118&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576361&rfi=8
  16. http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/censorship_in_nazi_germany.htm Censorship in Nazi Germany
  17. US Holocaust Museum
  18. Censorship of media and the fine arts
  19. Essay on Bookburning
  20. POTUS Trump blasts ‘illegal’ social media BIAS and censorship, vows actions
  21. Trump: Facebook, Twitter, Google are ‘treading on very, very troubled territory and they have to be careful’
  22. Xiao, Bowen (July 24, 2019). Young Conservatives Feel They Can’t Express Themselves on Social Media. The Epoch Times. Retrieved July 24, 2019.
  23. Twitter's censorship may be unconstitutional at the Washington Examiner
  24. Social Media Censorship and the Law
  25. Conservative publishers targeted for censorship by Facebook speech Nazis should LINE up to file class-action suit against the social media giant
  26. Facebook Censorship – An Anti-Trust Resolution?
  27. Bomberger, Ryan (May 10, 2019). Big Tech’s separate and unequal treatment of Christians and conservatives. LifeSiteNews (from the Radiance Foundation). Retrieved May 10, 2019.
  28. Multiple references:
  29. Multiple references: See also:
  30. Bowden, John (February 5, 2019). Facebook removes 22 pages linked to Alex Jones, InfoWars. The Hill. Retrieved February 5, 2019.
  31. Duke, Selwyn (August 28, 2018). Google Is Not a Search Engine; Twitter and Facebook Aren’t Social Media. The New American. Retrieved August 28, 2018.
  32. Haverluck, Michael F. (March 16, 2018). Facebook algorithm kills conservative news feeds, boosts left's. OneNewsNow. Retrieved August 28, 2018.
  33. Mikelionis, Lukas (August 30, 2018). Brown U. censors 'gender dysphoria' study, worried that findings might 'invalidate the perspectives' of transgender community. Fox News. Retrieved September 19, 2018.
  34. Multiple references: See also:
  35. Multiple references:
  36. 36.0 36.1 "The Author's Apology, preface to "Mrs. Warren's Profession."
  37. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05418a.htm
  38. http://myemail.constantcontact.com/JAN--11---Plot-to-destroy-Christianity-revealed-by-Yale-President-Timothy-Dwight.html?soid=1108762609255&aid=CbibQMZY5JY
  39. https://web.archive.org/web/19980119060706/http://www.eagleforum.org/educate/1996/feb96/focus.html
    "Where did the ALA's current, radically subjectivist/individualist philosophy come from? The ALA, which constantly quotes from the First Amendment and whose brochures picture the Founding Fathers, would have you believe that it springs from James Madison's Enlightenment ideas about freedom. Not so. The ALA's philosophy comes from four sources: first, the later Enlightenment philosopher, Voltaire, who was hostile to all revealed religion. Second, to John Stuart Mill, whose mid-19th century writing preached that the individual is sovereign over his own mind and body, and who shifted the focus of life away from helping others toward the need to fulfill the self. Yet, even Mill believed that freedom should stop short of harm to others. Thus, he accepted the need for libel and slander laws, and believed that children needed protection from themselves. The ALA has rejected this idea of the Right to Protect and has instead accepted the nihilistic ideas of the 19th century German philosopher, Friedrick Nietsche, who preached the now-familiar refrain that "God is dead" and that there is no common good to which we are all responsible. The fourth source is Jean-Paul Sartre, the French existentialist who was so fashionable in the 1940s. He held the absolute freedom of the individual to be the highest good and yet saw all values as relative. His idea that there are no rules by which we must govern our conduct dispenses handily with Madison's idea that the Ten Commandments are necessary for peaceful self-government.
    "To sum up, the radical individualist/subjectivist philosophy which informs the policies and actions of the ALA, sees freedom of speech as radically extendible. Little or no attention is paid to the concept of harm to others. The right to know is always seen as more important than the right to protect, even where children are involved. And a relativist value system finds the use of standards of judgment in acquiring library material to be elitist and old-fashioned. Indeed, good and evil are seen as merely subjective opinions. Under these philosophic views, the ALA no longer encourages libraries to be responsive to the community, but encourages confrontation, viewing the community as a dangerous source of potential "censorship" against which librarians must be eternally vigilant.
    "When did these ideas begin to infiltrate the ALA? And who brought them in? During the social turmoil of the late sixties, the Office of Intellectual Freedom in the ALA headquarters in Chicago became very important in the making of policy. Around this time, Judith Krug began her tenure as director of that office, and in 1970 forged strong links between the ALA and the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU functioned under a philosophy of nihilism/individualism since its founding by Roger Baldwin after the turn of the century. For a time in the 1970s, Ms. Krug served simultaneously as ALA Intellectual Freedom Director and as a board member of the ACLU, which has given her several awards. The ACLU, according to George Grant's 1989 study, believes that children should have the same rights as adults, that pornography should be protected by the Constitution, that the First Amendment's free speech clause implies a right to receive information, and that the smallest limitation of any speech or expression will automatically lead to totalitarian repression."