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submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by AgreeableLandscape@lemmygrad.ml to c/communism@lemmygrad.ml

Short answer: We're not for or against censorship as a concept in a vacuum. We're against the goals of US's censorship being to expand and strengthen the US's imperialism. On the other hand, we do support it when it's used to maintain the security and integrity of a country, especially a socialist country.

Censorship, Media Control, Press Control, these are tools. As concepts, they are neither good nor evil, they just are. No country with a government doesn't use them. None. And you DO NOT WANT to be in a country that doesn't use these AT ALL, because its media would be an abject hellscape. Not JUST "trolling" and "edgelords" hellscape mind you, but things like calling for the murder of random people or entire races, shock sites, snuff films, r*pe films, revenge porn, CP, etc. These are things that are, by definition, CENSORED in nearly every country, and the vast majority of people support that.

So we've established that censorship, as an entire concept, is not necessarily a bad thing. But what about censoring political discourse?

Well, political misinformation can be extremely harmful. We've seen this with Trump supporters, white supremicists using pseudoscience to justify their beliefs, antivaxxers/antimaskers, etc. These things can sway the development of a country and/or get people killed. You also have foreign powers trying to get misinformation into your borders to manufacture contempt to your government.

When China censors misinformation and foreign propaganda, socialists support them, because these are all things that can cause the collapse of a country through no fault of its government. In fact, we support capitalist countries censoring patent political misinformation, especially countries facing propaganda attack from the US like Pakistan, Iran, etc, because it's the US's favourite way of staging a regime change.

What we DON'T support is when censorship, a tool, is wielded by capitalists or imperialists. When the US uses censorship to artificially silence pushback against its manufactured narratives, like their false rationale for the Iraq War, we don't support that. When the US artificially raises or lowers attention on some current event, like how they over-represent the conflict in Ukraine but severely under-represent similar conflicts in places like Palestine, we don't support it.

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[-] PoY@lemmygrad.ml -2 points 2 years ago

Well said. For any person at work that brings up anything about Ukraine, I bring up Palestine. I try to let people know there's a whole world out there that isn't being force-fed to them for very specific reasons.

this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2022
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