Subscribe
Notify of
guest

12 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Dermot O'Sullivan
Dermot O'Sullivan
3 months ago

Thank you for that. Illuminating.

Benjamin Greco
Benjamin Greco
3 months ago

Seems like Orwell was only off by half a century.

Mark Kennedy
Mark Kennedy
3 months ago
Reply to  Benjamin Greco

…or nothing’s essentially changed in half a century. In our era, as in Orwell’s, plugging any and all information loopholes with the potential to threaten The Narrative is still the goal of would-be authoritarians.

J Bryant
J Bryant
3 months ago

Excellent journalism. Thanks.

Carl Valentine
Carl Valentine
3 months ago
Reply to  J Bryant

Agreed, we need more like this, Meta needs to me cancelled, sorry guys you will need to do something else with your time… 🙂

Right-Wing Hippie
Right-Wing Hippie
3 months ago

I understand that in our intensely polarised environment, free speech has become a divisive issue
I would reverse the direction of cause-and-effect: by limiting the free speech of their opponents, the elite (who are mostly on the left) have created an intensely polarized environment.

Terry M
Terry M
3 months ago

the elite (who are mostly on the left) have created an intensely polarized environment
Not created, greatly amplified.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 months ago

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle can still unite to voice concerns about the erosion of free expression and government efforts to regulate political discourse.
That’s going to be difficult when lawmakers from one side – as was amply demonstrated with Matt Taibbi, among others, testified – are openly hostile to free speech.

Terry M
Terry M
3 months ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

Apostates like Taibbi and Bari Weiss should be burned at the stake according to many Progs.

B Davis
B Davis
3 months ago

“No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves…. To let you see things you’d like to see…to say things you’d like to say… But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades…sometimes you’d see & say wrong things… and then where should we be?”
Indeed.
It’s really quite simple. There is the Truth. And that’s what I believe in…and that’s what I want to see…and that’s, of course, always what I have to say. And then there lies, damned lies, and really really really damned lies.
Why on earth would you — or anyone for that matter — want to see & say lies, damned lies, and really really damned lies? Of course you wouldn’t. Who would?
I’m from the government and I’m here to help. Plus, I have the very special, highly expert assistance of every HiTech data sorter AI out there. Protecting you from all that bad, wrong, lying stuff is really so easy. Just check this box telling me you want nothing but the Truth, and we’ll all be good.
Here, I’ll just check it for you!
“Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.” Stalin

Sensible Citizen
Sensible Citizen
3 months ago

The democrat party is no better than Xi’s CCP or the Russian Independent party of Putin.

Katalin Kish
Katalin Kish
3 months ago

Being born and having lived the 1st 30 years of my life on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, I can confidently say: Orwell was a naive optimist.

Living with Australia’s absurd crime reality, at times I am nostalgic about the uniform certainty we all had in Hungary under the Russian yoke.

Western ills are far more insidious, metastasised, divisive.