Censorship Now

On global tyranny

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has been blasted for comparing free speech online to "weapons of war" in a recent speech to the U.N. that critics called "authoritarian."

"How do you successfully end a war if people are led to believe the reason for its existence is not only legal but noble," she said last week.

"How do you tackle climate change if people do not believe it exists? How do you ensure the human rights of others are upheld, when they are subjected to hateful and dangerous rhetoric and ideology?"

Ardern acknowledged that taking away free speech is a threat to society. But, she argued that disinformation is just as dangerous and, therefore, censorship is justifiable.

Ardern further connected free speech to war and chaos, suggesting censorship brings peace and order.

"The weapons may be different but the goals of those who perpetrate them is often the same. To cause chaos and reduce the ability of others to defend themselves. To disband communities. To collapse the collective strength of countries who work together."

Last year, Ardern said any information people seek regarding COVID-19 and vaccines should be directly from her government and no one else.

"We will continue to be your single source of truth. We will provide information frequently. Everything else you see, a grain of salt."

"Unless you hear it from us, it is not the truth," she added.

Not quite a century ago the USSR was afraid of ideas, afraid of poets writing poetry, afraid of free speech and like our Covid Soviet functionaries globally, Arden being but the most recent, insisted all truth was from the State.

Akhmatova held on to one of Modigliani’s drawings and gave it pride of place above her bed, but the time of her Paris triumph was long past. No thought of publication crossed her mind now, in the middle of the 1930s, as she was composing her new poem. The state would simply not allow it. Ever since Martin Luther had demonstrated what could be done with print, authorities had been try­ing to control publishers and authors. Permission had long been required for many publishing projects, forcing the likes of Cer­vantes to apply for a royal license. But licenses could be circum­vented, as Franklin knew when he published a Bible without one, and books could be printed abroad and copies smuggled back into censored territory, as Marx and Engels found. Only in the 20th century was control over print finally within the reach of the state, at least some states. Equipped with centralized power, totali­tarian states such as the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany commanded guns and manpower, but they also relied on a large bureaucratic apparatus to keep track of their citizens. Innumerable dossiers were created, processed, and stored. Bureaucracy, first de­veloped 5,000 years earlier with the invention of writing, had become an all-encompassing force. Anna Akhmatova never engaged in any political activity, and yet her police file grew to some 900 pages. https://lithub.com/writing-poetry-under-stalin-samizdat-and-memorization/

Covid demonstrated the power of the post-modern state to use lies to kill their populations. Lies backed by tools short of murder openly. Lies so heinous they require censorship by non state bodies to perpetuate. Lies so thick only deep pockets and professional institutions combining to crush any alternative to the lie could serve the aim of the petty Tyrants. Lock downs, masking, social distance and vaccines for non-existent Covid. The great lies that still ride roughshod over all. California now will punish doctors for “disinformation” on Covid. Other nations do now. Freedom is taken away by fiat. People think the State is as infallible as a Pope.

Poets so far have not been censored. No FEMA camp is open for verse. Essayists are not published who speak truth, contracts are cancelled of course, shouts arise to punish the dissenter.

But as of now under Covid despotism intellectuals and artists are not Akhmatova.

Nor Mandelstam-

Brothers, let us glorify freedom’s twilight –
the great, darkening year.
Into the seething waters of the night
heavy forests of nets disappear.
O Sun, judge, people, your light
is rising over sombre years

Let us glorify the deadly weight
the people’s leader lifts with tears.
Let us glorify the dark burden of fate,
power’s unbearable yoke of fears.
How your ship is sinking, straight,
he who has a heart, Time, hears.

We have bound swallows
into battle legions - and we,
we cannot see the sun: nature’s boughs
are living, twittering, moving, totally:
through the nets –the thick twilight - now
we cannot see the sun, and Earth floats free.

Let’s try: a huge, clumsy, turn then
of the creaking helm, and, see -
Earth floats free. Take heart, O men.
Slicing like a plough through the sea,
Earth, to us, we know, even in Lethe’s icy fen,
has been worth a dozen heavens’ eternity.