There's not a lot we can do. An analogy is phoning in to a radio show which sells a specific perspective. They control your mic volume, let you speak for a few seconds and then they turn you off, spend a few minutes misquoting you and pushing their polemic.
You are done. Today online is far worse - 'news' sites like the Guardian have comment sections on only a few unimportant articles. Any dissenting or differing opinion is typically deleted by admins and at worse bans are put into place. In the commercial world there are much higher stakes in an increasingly claustrophobic and judgmental world.
The result is disastrous limits on free speech- often imposed by the individual, for fear of being ostracized or worse - rapidly corroding the foundations of western democracy.
The result is an increasingly meaningless media - the whole reason blogging took off, because there are plenty brave investigative journalists but very few editors willing to publish. (Matt Taibbi is a good example).
The stakes are now very high, and I'd argue the whole pay-to-be-framed-as-an-influencer and awards circuses are increasingly losing credibility, with nothing replacing their inauthentic products.
It's not so much sad as knowing how to fight this, censorship is corrosively pernicious and alarmingly large numbers of people appear to be all for it. Reminds me of the 1930's essay 'who goes nazi?'
It's worth noting that the nazi's were sold to the people as socialists blended with the Lebensraum settler colonialism idealism. We are arguably seeing a similar warped 'socialism' today complete with aggressive censorship and cancelling of dissenters, this time focused on globalists as the true north
There's not a lot we can do. An analogy is phoning in to a radio show which sells a specific perspective. They control your mic volume, let you speak for a few seconds and then they turn you off, spend a few minutes misquoting you and pushing their polemic.
You are done. Today online is far worse - 'news' sites like the Guardian have comment sections on only a few unimportant articles. Any dissenting or differing opinion is typically deleted by admins and at worse bans are put into place. In the commercial world there are much higher stakes in an increasingly claustrophobic and judgmental world.
The result is disastrous limits on free speech- often imposed by the individual, for fear of being ostracized or worse - rapidly corroding the foundations of western democracy.
The result is an increasingly meaningless media - the whole reason blogging took off, because there are plenty brave investigative journalists but very few editors willing to publish. (Matt Taibbi is a good example).
The stakes are now very high, and I'd argue the whole pay-to-be-framed-as-an-influencer and awards circuses are increasingly losing credibility, with nothing replacing their inauthentic products.
Very sad isn’t it?
It's not so much sad as knowing how to fight this, censorship is corrosively pernicious and alarmingly large numbers of people appear to be all for it. Reminds me of the 1930's essay 'who goes nazi?'
https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/
Just read that essay which is new to me. Astonishing in its observational power and hard to find fault with its logic. A must read for today.
It's worth noting that the nazi's were sold to the people as socialists blended with the Lebensraum settler colonialism idealism. We are arguably seeing a similar warped 'socialism' today complete with aggressive censorship and cancelling of dissenters, this time focused on globalists as the true north