Freedom of speech only existed if you didn’t have freedom of reach. Eugene Debs was an opposition politician with over a million votes who was jailed for subversive speech. His crime was talking against entering the first world war. Woodrow Wilson had his political opponent imprisoned for such speech.
We want to jail Julian Assange the publisher. His crime was publishing news that went against the elites and their dominant narrative. The real crime was that it received broad coverage.
Our government and the FBI targeted black owned bookstores for carrying anti-slavery, anti-racism and black empowerment books.
None of this censorship is new. It will be applied to all mediums when they have broad reach.
This is a an excellent point. As a corollary, it's easy to tell precisely who the elite is just by looking at who's doing the most censoring of others (and doing it effectively).
A lot of the folks out there demanding that others be censored or cancelled still see themselves as scrappy underdogs, when in reality they're the Capitol in the Hunger Games.
>it's easy to tell precisely who the elite is just by looking at who's doing the most censoring of others (and doing it effectively).
I'm not so sure that the circus that is contemporary public discourse is a good measure for where elite power is located. I think the actual elites manage to stay outside of this stuff entirely quite effectively.
I see the take quite often in recent times that the NYT et al. hold extreme power because they can censor or chastise whoever they want. My view is that they're more like a court jester. They're allowed to do it because it's utterly meaningless. Does anyone really think WaPo (owned by Bezos) writing critical pieces on Bezos is an example of journalistic power? No, it's an example of how little impact journalism still has.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debs_v._United_States
We want to jail Julian Assange the publisher. His crime was publishing news that went against the elites and their dominant narrative. The real crime was that it received broad coverage.
Our government and the FBI targeted black owned bookstores for carrying anti-slavery, anti-racism and black empowerment books.
None of this censorship is new. It will be applied to all mediums when they have broad reach.