Censorship Advantages Quotes

However, Trump’s flaws must be weighed against the disturbing nature of the opposition arrayed against him—an army of corporate-funded left-wing activists who excused and encouraged violent riots across the country; technology oligarchs who made unprecedented efforts to normalize censorship; state and local officials who radically altered the way Americans vote in the middle of an election for partisan advantage; an ostensibly free press that credulously and willfully published fake news to damage the president; politicized federal law enforcement agencies that abused the federal government’s surveillance and investigative powers to smear Trump as a puppet of a foreign power; and an opposition party that coordinated all these smears and spent years trying to impeach and remove a duly elected president from office.

Democracy and freedom of information go together, because if the electorate does not know what has been done in its name, it cannot pass a fair verdict on its rulers. Democracy’s advantage over other systems is that it allows countries to replace rulers without violence. But electorates cannot ‘throw the scoundrels out’ if censorship prevents them from learning that the scoundrels are scoundrels in the first place. The limiting of state corruption, meanwhile, is also an ambition that is beyond conventional politics, because it is a universal human aspiration that everyone who has experienced the insolence of office shares.

Will they achieve a uniformity in censorship methods among the various regimes?” “Not uniformity. They will create a system in which the methods support and balance one another in turn....” The Director General invites you to examine the planisphere hanging on the wall. The varied color scheme indicates: the countries where all books are systematically confiscated; the countries where only books published or approved by the State may circulate; the countries where existing censorship is crude, approximate, and unpredictable; the countries where the censorship is subtle, informed, sensitive to implications and allusions, managed by meticulous and sly intellectuals; the countries where there are two networks of dissemination: one legal and one clandestine; the countries where there is no censorship because there are no books, but there are many potential readers; the countries where there are no books and nobody complains about their absence; the countries, finally, in which every day books are produced for all tastes and all ideas, amid general indifference. “Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do,” Arkadian Porphyrich says. “What statistic allows one to identify the nations where literature enjoys true consideration better than the sums appropriated for controlling it and suppressing it? Where it is the object of such attentions, literature gains an extraordinary authority, inconceivable in countries where it is allowed to vegetate as an innocuous pastime, without risks. To be sure, repression must also allow an occasional breathing space, must close an eye every now and then, alternate indulgence with abuse, with a certain unpredictability in its caprices; otherwise, if nothing more remains to be repressed, the whole system rusts and wears down. Let’s be frank: every regime, even the most authoritarian, survives in a situation of unstable equilibrium, whereby it needs to justify constantly the existence of its repressive apparatus, therefore of something to repress. The wish to write things that irk the established authorities is one of the elements necessary to maintain this equilibrium. Therefore, by a secret treaty with the countries whose social regime is opposed to ours, we have created a common organization, with which you have intelligently agreed to collaborate, to export the books banned here and import the books banned there.” “This would seem to imply that the books banned here are allowed there, and vice versa....” “Not on your life. The books banned here are superbanned there, and the books banned there are ultrabanned here. But from exporting to the adversary regime one’s own banned books and from importing theirs, each regime derives at least two important advantages: it encourages the opponents of the hostile regime and it establishes a useful exchange of experience between the police services.” “The

Those in control of America’s most powerful institutions-- business, media, academia, bureaucracies, and even the FBI-- are engaged in a permanent struggle against half the country: technology oligarchs who made unprecedented efforts to normalize censorship; state and local officials who radically altered the way Americans vote in the middle of an election for partisan advantage; an ostensibly free press that credulously and willfully published fake news to damage the president; politicized federal law enforcement agencies that abused the federal government’s surveillance and investigative powers to smear Trump as a puppet of a foreign power; and an opposition party that coordinated all these smears and spent years trying to impeach and remove a duly elected president from office.

At the most basic level of protecting a writer’s personal safety, democratic countries offer a further advantage. If you steal hundreds of thousands of documents from the Russian state and put them online, the FSB will try to kill you. Steal American secrets, and the CIA will not.

Motrich hasn’t published a thing and never will, but the advantage of censorship is that you can be an unpublished author without anyone suspecting you lack talent—on the contrary.

There is no fear that a modern king will attempt to override the constitution; it is more likely that he will ignore the constitution and work behind its back; he will take no advantage of his kingly power; it is more likely that he will take advantage of his kingly powerlessness, of the fact that he is free from criticism and publicity. For the king is the most private person of our time. It will not be necessary for any one to fight again against the proposal of a censorship of the press. We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press.

Not for the first time in his career, Brunetti reflected upon the possible advantage of censorship of the press.

My task was nothing less than the moulding of the cultural sense of the nation, and it had two main heads. I had to guide taste into the right channels and I had to see that no one else guided it into the wrong. Thus it was just as important to discourage bad influence as to encourage good. To send a promising and impecunious young painter to an Art School with a Government grant was in itself a praiseworthy act ; but it was useless from the national point of view if it was not accompanied by drastic measures to keep the most suggestive sorts of French literature from entering our ports. To help a young genius to Valhalla was one thing. But it was almost as important, from the national point of view, to see that our youth was not brought into contacts with those packets of French postcards which are labelled, “Très rare, très curieux. Discrétion.” I take a good deal of credit to myself—though, of course, Pettinger got the kudos at the time—for tightening up the administration of the Customs so that such authors as Joyce, whose name was either James or John—I forget which—Stein, Baudelaire, Louÿs, Anatole France, Proust, Freud, Jung, Rolland, and others, were intercepted at the ports by the special Pornographie section of the Constabulary which I created with men borrowed from the uniformed branch of the Metropolitan Police. These men, ail of whom could read and write English fluently, performed admirable service in the détection of immoral literature. Art Exhibitions also came within the scope of my department, and I closed at least a dozen objection-able ones which contained nudes and other suggestive subjects. It was always a matter of regret to me that I was unable to take strong action about Epstein’s “Genesis.” But the Marchioness of Risborough—a leader of taste and fashion, who was not only persona gratissima in exalted circles, but also the daughter of a millionaire steelmaker—had publicly declared her admiration of it, and so there was nothing for me to do except to déclaré mine. And now, looking back on it, I realize how right I was to choose Lady Risborough’s opinion rather than the small advantages to be obtained from Epstein’s gratitude. Small tradesmen who tried to sell miniature replicas of the “Genesis” were ruthlessly prosecuted, however, by my department on the charge of exhibiting, or causing to be exhibited, indécent figures.