The Roots of Censorship

 

The root of the current drive for censorship, “deplatforming,” cancel culture, and unfriending, which has destroyed so many lives and so many relationships, is simple and obvious. Too many people are lying; especially people in power. You never want to silence anything you believe is untrue. There is no drive to censor the claim that the earth is flat, or the sun goes around the earth. Conversely, you never want to end debate if you believe you are telling the truth. If you discover the earth goes around the sun, contrary to what others have assumed, your instinct is not to suppress the field of astronomy. It is to publish, present your arguments, and take the win.

Therefore, what we are not permitted to say is a reliable indicator of what is true.

An obvious current example is the drive to criminalize any claim that the Indian Residential schools in Canada were not genocidal, or that there are no mass graves of students.

I suppose I’d better not proceed to other examples. It is, after all, taking a risk. But you can find them for yourself.

Once one becomes committed to any one lie, there is a multiplier effect: truth in general begins to look threatening. You will want to restrict speech as a matter of principle. .Who knows otherwise what might slip out?

And underlying the commitment to a lie is a growing popular philosophy that we are gods and can decide for ourselves what we want to be true.