The censors are as radical as those they claim to be dealing with

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

But nothing seems to prove more precisely the fear, hesitation and inhibitions of the politicians and bureaucrats than those who choose this manner of restricting information. Contrary opinions and content are taken literally, as though screening or allowing them to be sold will itself cause upheaval.

Perturbed by the possibility that people can think and critique through works of interpretation, they act drastically. Crippled that their own views could be undermined in the face of more acute and nuanced understanding, they become anxious. Afraid for their own traditions, they take the radical step of purging material.

In other words, the censors are as radical as those they claim to be dealing with. They are a different form of radicalism.

There is nothing more tragic to those who hold on to the view that censorship will resolve historical truths than the fact that this method is never stable in the first place. Like race that is used to identify individuals in their Identity Cards, they are but a temporary impression. They do nothing but give a superficial understanding of what is a surface view.

Questions will emerge; curiosity will continue to take hold for future generations that are not satisfied with an incomplete knowledge, a linear stipulation of pure simplified history, a beatification of economic progress at the expense of social and political history.

For those who look back and think, there will be many questions that arise as a result of all the gaps in history that have been taught (at least during secondary school). All the opportunities that have resulted from the films and books that have been denied a general audience will stand in good stead as exactly the area to fill those gaps.

That is why censorship is self-defeating: it reveals exactly what is most important to it by censoring it. There must be something about this aspect of history that is so crucial, contentious and edifying that needs to be discovered, that it had to be censored.

But perhaps the real problem lies with those who believe in censorship as a tool. Their fear comes from themselves. They are beset by irrational notions of other people’s interpretations. They delude themselves that just because they have censored, those interpretations can be forgotten and everything else conformed.

Fortunately, history is permanent. People will continue to want to discover their own past for a different age. They will want a stronger account as the past diminishes further into the horizon. In this instance, no amount of censorship will ever suppress this desire. No amount of censorship can pretend that nothing has happened.

http://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2014...-has-happened/


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