Date: Monday, 19 August 2024
https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/why-all-censorship-is-harmful
https://theduran.com/why-all-censorship-is-harmful/
Why All Censorship Is Harmful
Eric Zuesse (blogs at https://theduran.com/author/eric-zuesse/)
It’s not ONLY because dictatorship thrives under censorship, and democracy dies under censorship; but, also, because censorship is COUNTERPRODUCTIVE toward achieving the very goals/objectives that are cited as being its ‘justifications’ — censorship is harmful EVEN for achieving the benefits that its ‘justifiers’ cite as being the reasons why they impose censorship.
FOR EXAMPLE:
The billionaire rapper, whose fortune was cut below a half billion dollars because advertisers cancelled their promotional contracts with him, Kanye West, but who now calls himself “Ye,” is an anti-Semite, a Jew-hater, who has said “I see good things about Hitler,” “Every human being has value that they brought to the table, especially Hitler.” “I like Hitler,” “I love Jewish people, but I also love Nazis.”
Those things were said in a 1 December 2022 interview of him that was removed from the Web. The next day, the so-called ‘anti-censorship billionaire’ (as-if such a one has ever existed) Elon Musk terminated Ye’s account, and anyone who went to his twitter account saw “Account suspended. Twitter suspends accounts that violate the Twitter Rules.” But that lied: Ye’s account was actually terminated permanently (“This account doesn’t exist. Try searching for another."). And the “twitter rules” are and alweys were mere excuses to censor public statements — to filter-out what the public can see, hear, read, and consider. It’s to control the public.
During a high-level meeting in fall 2015 ... West called Hitler a ‘marketing genius’. … To salvage the meeting, the businessperson recalls correcting West and attempting to shift the conversation, only for West to say, ‘No, [Hitler] really understood how to mobilize people in a way that no one ever has.’”
Also, a former employee of West, Trevor Phillips, filed a suit against West, which was reported in the Jerusalem Post on 3 April 2024, alleging that Ye engaged
in antisemitic rants to his staff after his October 2022 social media tweets about Jews and the ensuing public turmoil.
“The Jews are out to get me,” said West. “The Jews are stealing all my money.” …
In a private meeting at the Nobu Hotel [in Malibu], West allegedly confided in Phillips that he believed that Jews were greedy and that he hated Jewish people.
“Hitler was great,” West allegedly said. “Hitler was an innovator! He invented so many things. He’s the reason we have cars.”
Phillips said that he challenged West’s characterization of Hitler by reminding him of the Holocaust, to which the celebrity said, “That was fake.” [In other words: Ye thinks that the Holocaust never happened.]
“Hitler was a good person,” West continued, according to the suit. “Jewish people are bad, and they run America. And Chinese people run them.” ...
“The Zionist Jews are out to get me. They are a part of human sex trafficking,” West allegedly said. “The Jews are working with Adidas to freeze up my money to try and make me broke! The Jews can’t stop me. Adidas can’t stop me. I will be the richest person in the world.” …
Anti-Semitism — like EVERY type of bigotry — thrives from censorship. To the extent that censorship exists, the public will be evermore locked into their existing prejudices, simply because the society in which they live isn’t challenging their beliefs by presenting the evidences that disprove those beliefs, but is instead CENSORING-OUT their beliefs, ignoring (except to simply condemn) their beliefs. To drive beliefs underground is NOT the way in which democracy can thrive.
A society that censors is NOT a society that requires and demands the presentation of the indisputable EVIDENCE and that encourages building understanding upon that basis, instead of censoring-out what the public can see, hear, consider, and think about.
No matter how stupid a person is, and no matter how solid the evidence is that particular allegations from them are false, and no matter how evil a speaker’s or writer's intent might be (such as, for example, Hitler’s intentions indubitably were), censoring statements is even worse than merely having contempt for the public — that they are so stupid that they must be assumed to need someone ELSE to filter the allegations they read and hear. The reality is that ONLY by means of each individual’s deciding, for him or her SELF, what is true and what is false, can a democracy even exist. This is the OPPOSITE of the authoritarian view that the public are children who stand in need of ‘authorities’ to select what they will and won’t be able to see and hear. It is to affirm that democracy can exist ONLY to the EXTENT that ALL statements are available for their consideration and evaluation, and that the individual recipient is the ONLY person who has the RIGHT to determine which ones are true and which ones are false, and which ones require further explanation and relevant evidence, so as for the individual to make any such judgment — on one’s own, and for oneself. ONLY by means of EACH person possessing this authority for oneself, is democracy even POSSIBLE. Otherwise, only dictatorship is possible — it is, then, in fact, inevitable.
I research EVERYTHING, and the more that I dig, the more false I find that most people’s views are. And the main reason why that is the case is the enormous censorship — such as I myself experience as a writer, because the information and linked documentation I provide is of the type that no billionaire anywhere would want the public to have access to. Many of the media that used to publish my articles were either forced out-of-business by Google, the U.S. Government, ’NewsGuard’, etc., or else otherwise suffer the economic hardships for their NOT censoring-out such writers as I — writers who dig, present the basic evidence, and provide the links to them.
The most basic responsibility of the citizen is to dig constantly so as to have access to the fundamental and indisputable evidence so that one can then decide, on one’s own, what is true and what is false, regarding any particular question. This requires an ongoing attitude of constant skepticism and constant open-mindedness. That is what the dictators are constantly trying to (and usually do) crush out. People such as Kanye West or “Ye” are perhaps extreme cases of what results from that. Such cases are symptoms of a dangerous dictatorial society falling apart into conflict, not of a healthful democratic society coming together in a rational and peaceful way.
Actually, censoring-out hate speech (such as Ye’s) is merely to fertilize the ground upon which it grows. It is counter-productive. The only way to bring down a bigotry is to expose it and then to expose that it is founded upon deceptions and faulty reasoning. Hiding the fact that it exists, or the prevalence of its existence, allows it to fester in the dark, and grow, and thrive — such as happened before Hitler came to power, and which helped him to come into power.
All censorship about public matters is harmful. (This doesn’t pertain, of course, to private matters. Private matters are private.) Censorship has plenty of excuses, but no justification (except when a nation is at war — and, even then, that’s censorship ONLY of facts, never of opinions). A democracy is inconsistent with any censorship of public matters. The censors bring us to conflict and war, not to harmony and peace.
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Anyone who has read my book WHY the Holocaust Happened: It’s Religious Cause & Scholarly Cover-Up, which is out of print (but has been well summarized here, and for which I also summarized the book’s biblical part here), will understand that (as I documented in that book) Hitler was inspired to the Holocaust by his reading of the Bible, and anyone who listened to Ye’s two hour and fifty minute InfoWars Alex Jones interview on 1 December 2022 (which was fortunately copied to a Web archive before it was yanked and can thus still be seen and heard here), will understand that Ye’s hatred of Jews is likewise based upon the Bible. This reality (their similar literalist interpretation of the Bible as being, as Hitler privately called it, the “Monumental History of Mankind” — history not myth) binds Ye to Hitler — they both are/were literalist believers in the Bible. The most censored-out reality is that anti-Semitism, such as has existed since the times of the first pogroms (Church-organized or authorized massacres of Jews), which started at around the year 1000 with the Christian Crusades, was/is based upon such biblical passages as John 8:44, and Matthew 23:31-38, which Christians are still falsely taught were written by Jesus’s followers but which were actually written decades later by the followers of Paul who never met Jesus and who had abandoned the Jesus sect of Jews and started his own new religion that came to be called Christianity and produced (from Paul and his followers) the New Testament. So, it’s easy to see why knowledge of what caused anti-Semitism — which cause is the New Testament — is suppressed. Not to know that Jesus had nothing to do with it, makes all the difference in how the NT is read and understood, but hiding this fact (of fraud in the NT) is also hiding what causes anti-Semitism — namely, the New Testament itself. Anti-Semitism cannot be reduced by continuing to hide its actual source. But censoring-out my book and that interview of Ye, is based upon the false belief that hiding the truth in this public matter is the way to go. The people who are in ‘authority’ have contempt for the public. Notice that NONE of the ‘news’-articles about that Ye interview (such as I’ve linked to here) makes any mention of Ye’s believing himself to be a follower of Jesus, instead of a follower of Paul. He’s ignorant of history, and steeped instead in the standard myth. But the news-reports likewise hide Ye’s belief that he is a follower of Jesus. It’s not something that the ‘news’-media want the public to know — though it’s essential to know in order to be able to understand how he sees and interprets the world. They instead censor it out — hide from the public that crucial fact (the biblical basis of his anti-Semitism).
Censorship is no solution. It’s the problem. Including the problem of anti-Semitism. Ancient myths can and do cause hatreds. Truth, even if real research is necessary in order to get to the bottom of it, can be a great healer. Hiding truth merely continues the problem into the future, generation after generation. Ye is just one more example of the phenomenon. Censoring anyone is counter-productive in every way.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
