Speaker 1: Welcome back, fellow conspiracy realist. We've dug through the vaults
Speaker 1: and we are declassifying one of our classic episodes, The
Speaker 1: Future of Censorship? What should people be allowed to say?
Speaker 2: Online?
Speaker 3: Who Buddy?
Speaker 2: Who Doggies?
Speaker 3: November twenty eighteen feels like another lifetime ago.
Speaker 2: That was it kind of was.
Speaker 1: We were asking the right questions and we hope that
Speaker 1: you find some of the exploration here, folks as prescient
Speaker 1: as we did, or better or worse?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Who gets to control what you say and think?
Speaker 3: Is it a group?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Is it a company? Is it just an individual? Air?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Or somebody commenting?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Is someone in a comment section? Do they control what
Speaker 3: you get to say or not? It's so weird, man,
Speaker 3: let's jump into it.
Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 1: They call me Ben, and we are joined with our
Speaker 1: super producer Paul Mission Control Decat most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 1: You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
Speaker 1: want you to know.
Speaker 2: This is an.
Speaker 1: Episode though was surprised we hadn't done before.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna go ahead and stop you there. We can't
Speaker 3: continue on that line. Okay, We're gonna have to stop
Speaker 3: going down that line. So let's just move on with
Speaker 3: something else.
Speaker 2: Okay, understood.
Speaker 1: Well, then let's let's jump to the second point and
Speaker 1: get this out of the way first.
Speaker 2: Very very very.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry that one is also just oh man, we
Speaker 3: can't go there either. I'm sorry. They're just telling me.
Speaker 3: I've got them in my ear and they're telling me
Speaker 3: we can't.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, let me phrase this in a different way way.
Speaker 1: Let's get this out of the way first. Very very
Speaker 1: few countries you will visit in the modern day are
Speaker 1: completely free from censorship.
Speaker 3: Okay, we'll let that one stand.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, is that vague enough?
Speaker 1: It's still, no kidding, a vast improvement over the days
Speaker 1: of past civilizations. Though we talk about censorship where we
Speaker 1: talk around it so often. In our show, Matt earlier,
Speaker 1: you and I dove into a very dark taiale of
Speaker 1: current concentration camps and the vast amounts of censorship that
Speaker 1: the Chinese government is applying to the weaker communities.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, we did Unfortunately we had to We talked about
Speaker 3: that because it's real and it's something that needs to
Speaker 3: be shared at least. But in this case we're just
Speaker 3: we're talking about thought control. Really, that's what this is,
Speaker 3: this whole subject.
Speaker 1: Yeah, ultimately this is an episode on thought control. How
Speaker 1: does it work, What if anything, can you do to
Speaker 1: prevent it? And how is it evolving in the modern day.
Speaker 1: We're talking about censorship, and the first thing that we
Speaker 1: have to explore when we talk about censorship, this word
Speaker 1: that we all hear thrown around so often, is how
Speaker 1: it is defined. What do we mean when we say censorship.
Speaker 3: Generally it's the suppression or in many cases, the complete
Speaker 3: prohibition of books, art, films, news, speech itself, works of
Speaker 3: art that depict certain things, all of these things that
Speaker 3: could be considered, for one reason or another, obscene to
Speaker 3: a ruling group, something that's seen as politically unacceptable or
Speaker 3: in some way a threat to the status quo, or
Speaker 3: like anything basically having to do with the people who
Speaker 3: are in.
Speaker 1: Power, right or a threat to security, or sure a
Speaker 1: threat to social, spiritual, cultural norms. And right now there
Speaker 1: are several broad category worries of what we call censorship
Speaker 1: The first one, historically speaking, is moral censorship, and right now,
Speaker 1: this is one of the most universally accepted forms of
Speaker 1: censoring things, especially regarding stuff that most of the world
Speaker 1: can get on board with, like the censorship of certain
Speaker 1: types of illegal pornography.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, or the censorship of things like beheading videos, certain
Speaker 3: forms of violence depicted.
Speaker 1: Not everyone agrees on that one agreed.
Speaker 2: Not everyone agrees is terrible, but true.
Speaker 3: But it's generally generally something that's done. There are also
Speaker 3: types of moral censorship just through social media right now,
Speaker 3: just by enough people talking and pointing out things that
Speaker 3: would be considered to be morally apprehensive.
Speaker 2: You're absolutely right.
Speaker 1: And we went to pornography first because it's a hot
Speaker 1: button issue and it's banned in a lot of countries.
Speaker 1: But imagine that you are, say, traveling to certain Middle
Speaker 1: Eastern countries, and in your possession you have the wrong
Speaker 1: kind of Islamic text or the wrong kind of Judeo
Speaker 1: Christian text, and additionally, you have something kind of lewde
Speaker 1: like a playboy magazine, because that's apparently you're reading material
Speaker 1: when you fly across the ocean, playboys and religious works.
Speaker 3: To be fair, it was a vintage, vintage Playboy magazine,
Speaker 3: and it had the old article in there's an interview
Speaker 3: with Michael Jackson. So I thought it was worth it.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, you thought it was worth it to play
Speaker 1: the dangerous game of passing customs with the help of
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson. In several of those countries, these works would
Speaker 1: be confiscated and you may well be detained because the
Speaker 1: possession or importation of these things is a violation of
Speaker 1: the law, and being sovereign countries, they get to decide
Speaker 1: what breaks the law. This stuff happens today, it's not
Speaker 1: just on the internet, and it's been happening for a
Speaker 1: long time. It goes hand in hand with its close cousin,
Speaker 1: religious censorship.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, religious censorship. It's really speaking of vintage. This
Speaker 3: is the one that goes all the way back pretty much.
Speaker 3: In this version of censorship, you're looking at pretty much
Speaker 3: any material, book, speech, otherwise art again that is questionable
Speaker 3: or seen as questionable by a religious group. Again where
Speaker 3: if you go back far enough, the religion, the religious
Speaker 3: groups are the power, right, that's your government essentially in
Speaker 3: a lot of places. And in this you're even going
Speaker 3: to have limitations that are forced on less prevalent religions
Speaker 3: by the ruling religion in a land. Let's say a
Speaker 3: good example as the Catholic Church, which we'll see a
Speaker 3: little further on in this episode.
Speaker 1: And I wouldn't even say questionable. I would say objectionable
Speaker 1: because this this kind of stuff reaches its heyday in
Speaker 1: places where there is no descent or times and places
Speaker 1: where there's no free speech. And as you said, man,
Speaker 1: it's the dominant religion forcing limitations on less prevalent ones.
Speaker 1: But it could also be a less dominant religion just
Speaker 1: preventing its adherents from reading anything outside of the community's
Speaker 1: approved scripts.
Speaker 3: Sure like cult like behaviors.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that happens all the time with cults because they
Speaker 1: don't want to They don't want your mind to be
Speaker 1: polluted by worldly things or words that are not the
Speaker 1: words of the great leaders, divine understanding, postulations, postulations, revelations,
Speaker 1: they would say, regurgitations.
Speaker 2: Quite so, some of.
Speaker 1: Their opponents would say, you know what, some of the
Speaker 1: cult leaders would say that too, because they're just speaking
Speaker 1: for the trees or the space gods or whatever.
Speaker 3: They're a conduit.
Speaker 1: They're a conduit. Yes, they're the conduit. There are two
Speaker 1: other types of closely related censorship that have I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe some merit, that's the thing. A lot of these
Speaker 1: have some kind of merit. There's military censorship, which is
Speaker 1: just keeping its opsack, you know, it's keeping military intelligence
Speaker 1: and tactics confidential and away from specifically the enemy. This
Speaker 1: only becomes problematic when the native civilian population is considered
Speaker 1: the enemy, which happens all the time historically speaking absolutely.
Speaker 3: And then of course you've got the cousin to that one.
Speaker 3: They're all just distant cousins in a way. Some of
Speaker 3: them may be a little even closer related. But the
Speaker 3: act of political censorship, and this is important again, like
Speaker 3: military censorship, sometimes governments have to keep things quiet or
Speaker 3: secret so that a other countries and leaders don't know
Speaker 3: what they're doing, which is even closer related to military
Speaker 3: censorship than I'm letting on. That's like the I don't know,
Speaker 3: the twin brother twin sister kind of deal, because a
Speaker 3: lot of times the politics and the military are that
Speaker 3: closely related. Sorry I'm going along here, but it's also
Speaker 3: really important for countries and politicians and governments to keep
Speaker 3: things from their own people to prevent them from overthrowing
Speaker 3: the throne.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, to prevent rebellion. And that's so similar to
Speaker 1: religious censorship too, right. The last one, which is the
Speaker 1: rising star in the world of censorship is corporate censorship
Speaker 1: is increasingly common in these our modern days. This is
Speaker 1: the process through which editors of a corporate media outlet
Speaker 1: would intervene, So anything from The New York Times to
Speaker 1: our very own podcast would intervene to disrupt publishing of
Speaker 1: information that makes a business or a business partner a
Speaker 1: chrony look bad and then also suppress any alternative views or,
Speaker 1: in the case of open advertisement, any alternative offers from
Speaker 1: reaching the public sphere. So, just to pick an example
Speaker 1: out of the ether, this would be something where let's
Speaker 1: say NBC doesn't allow eight commercials for ABC shows to
Speaker 1: be on their networks. But it could also be something
Speaker 1: like Walmart moves to town and buys up all the
Speaker 1: newspaper space so that the mom and pop story can't
Speaker 1: buy a supplement to put in the Sunday paper.
Speaker 3: That's not very nice, no, but.
Speaker 1: It is censorship. And all of these forms of censorship
Speaker 1: are currently extant. They exist today.
Speaker 2: In the world.
Speaker 1: Likely some version of this kind of stuff exists in
Speaker 1: your own country, even if maybe like in the case
Speaker 1: of religious censorship, your own country doesn't condone it. I
Speaker 1: can almost guarantee you that if you have a military,
Speaker 1: your government may not completely control aspects of it, and
Speaker 1: that need to know basis is its own form of
Speaker 1: self enforcing censorship.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And even if you believe that you live in
Speaker 3: a country that doesn't have some kind of censorship over
Speaker 3: its people, where we unfortunately have to inform you that
Speaker 3: you're probably wrong.
Speaker 1: Right, Oh yeah, oh my, you're so wrong. Yeah, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: especially here, guys. Yeah, it's here in the US where
Speaker 1: we record this podcast, in this episode of this podcast,
Speaker 1: And that leads us to ask, so, how long have
Speaker 1: these practices been around? This is not stuff that we
Speaker 1: just figured out as a species. Censorship is ancient. It
Speaker 1: has followed human civilization throughout history like a sinister shadow,
Speaker 1: just one step behind, sometimes looming larger than other times,
Speaker 1: but always at every moment with us. And we'll get
Speaker 1: to the crazy stuff pretty quickly. In this episode, we
Speaker 1: want to explore where censorship came from. The modern word
Speaker 1: we use today comes from Roman civilization.
Speaker 2: There was an.
Speaker 1: Actual dude, there was actual person, an actual political position
Speaker 1: called a censor, and they ruled certain areas of Roman
Speaker 1: policy with absolute power. When we say we mean absolute power,
Speaker 1: we mean the other leaders could not contest or not
Speaker 1: change their findings. And then when they were done serving
Speaker 1: their time, a new censor could not change the findings
Speaker 1: of the previous.
Speaker 3: One at all.
Speaker 2: No, Oh my gosh, it's just your word is law,
Speaker 2: and that's all there is to it.
Speaker 3: This is now what civilization can and can't do.
Speaker 1: In these certain aspects of the law. The censor was
Speaker 1: responsible for maintaining the census, not a big surprise there,
Speaker 1: supervising public morality, and then overseeing some aspects of government finance.
Speaker 2: So the most important part.
Speaker 1: For our purposes today is there charged to supervise public morality.
Speaker 1: This was something called the regimen morum. And it's key
Speaker 1: here because the censors at first would punish or shame
Speaker 1: people as individuals, both for activities in their private lives
Speaker 1: that could be anything very serious from being quote overly
Speaker 1: cruel to slaves or quote acting in theaters. You could
Speaker 1: get in trouble for that as seen as dishonorable.
Speaker 3: Acting in a theater mm hmm, and spoke.
Speaker 1: Poorly to your character you could also get people in
Speaker 1: trouble for their public behaviors, perjury, taking a bribe, or
Speaker 1: keeping a good horse in bad condition, not taking good care.
Speaker 2: Of your horse.
Speaker 3: Okay, I can see why those would be looked down upon,
Speaker 3: perhaps or at least frowned upon. All of those, actually,
Speaker 3: especially the theater's one. And here's the other thing. The
Speaker 3: consequences from being censored can include anything from being expelled
Speaker 3: from the Senate if you were serving in the Senate
Speaker 3: at the time, or you could even be expelled from
Speaker 3: the tribe, your tribe, which would be a major blow
Speaker 3: to you and your family.
Speaker 2: Social excommunication. Right.
Speaker 1: Then, of course this could lead to death. Everybody dies,
Speaker 1: or most people do. It's just the timing would probably
Speaker 1: not be to your liking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is crazy to think that you could be
Speaker 3: censored to death.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And from this original duty, this one aspect of this
Speaker 1: one to two person job, the Regiment Morham grew to
Speaker 1: include the scrutiny of public speeches and performances and then
Speaker 1: written work. And censorship was not seen as a bad,
Speaker 1: authoritarian or heavy handed thing. It was seen as a benevolent,
Speaker 1: just necessary, even noble way to maintain social order.
Speaker 3: I think we got to just talk about this for
Speaker 3: a second, because I think it's a difficult stance, but
Speaker 3: it has to be taken that it's something that you
Speaker 3: said at the top Bend, that this type of censorship,
Speaker 3: once we get to this place where it's looking at everything,
Speaker 3: is kind of necessary to get enough people on the
Speaker 3: same page to build an empire or build a massive civilization,
Speaker 3: especially on the scale of the Roman Empire at the time.
Speaker 2: Sure, but does necessarily make it good?
Speaker 3: Absolutely not, right, absolutely not, But but in a way
Speaker 3: I guess in a way it is good in the moment, right,
Speaker 3: And it's good for both the status quo of the
Speaker 3: people who are trying to create this new order or
Speaker 3: whatever it's going to be, as well as for the
Speaker 3: citizens to some extent, because it sounds like they are
Speaker 3: or the attempt here is to alter people's behavior to
Speaker 3: be more in line with suiting a larger civilization.
Speaker 1: Right And at the time, you know, these civilizations were
Speaker 1: attempting to expand and enforce systematic inequality.
Speaker 3: Yes, by engulfing other civilizations, smaller civilizations.
Speaker 2: Right, right, And this.
Speaker 1: One practice of a lot of ancient civilizations was a
Speaker 1: very effective form of censorship restricting literacy to certain social classes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you cannot write or read, then how are
Speaker 3: you going to change anything?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: The most famous case of censorship in ancient Rome dates
Speaker 1: back to Socrates. He was sentenced to death and they
Speaker 1: told him to ingest poison in three ninety nine BCE.
Speaker 3: What was his crime, though, corruption of youth and the
Speaker 3: acknowledgment of unorthodox divinities.
Speaker 1: Now right, wrong parties, wrong gods, that's what that sounds like.
Speaker 1: Maybe causing the children of well to do members of
Speaker 1: society to ask too many tough questions.
Speaker 3: I think that's exactly what his issue was.
Speaker 2: We literally call it this democratic method.
Speaker 3: Yeah, by listening to someone's argument, taking parts of what
Speaker 3: they say into your argument, and then coming up with
Speaker 3: a consensus.
Speaker 1: Interesting interestingly enough, Yes, I like you brought that interestingly enough.
Speaker 1: In the Republic, Socrates student Plato argues for censorship.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, in Plato and a few other of his
Speaker 3: contemporaries are the only ways we actually know anything about Socrates,
Speaker 3: because that's true. His life actually wasn't written down a
Speaker 3: whole bunch by him, At least not a lot was
Speaker 3: recorded by him in the moment.
Speaker 2: So did he exist?
Speaker 1: Story for another day, but it is safe to assume
Speaker 1: if we first assume they was real, it's also safe
Speaker 1: to assume he was not the first person to be
Speaker 1: punished in this way. And boy oh boy, speaking of
Speaker 1: setting a precedent, the Romans sure did. We'll see how
Speaker 1: this plays out in their descendant civilizations. Shortly after this.
Speaker 1: We should also mention censorship was common in ancient China
Speaker 1: is very old and two twenty one BCE, an entire
Speaker 1: library was burned down in the Kingdom, and their first
Speaker 1: official law regarding censorship, surprise they were for it was
Speaker 1: introduced in three hundred CE.
Speaker 2: But we mentioned Europe, right, so let's just go right there.
Speaker 1: Europe has a ton of civilizations descended in some way
Speaker 1: from Roman culture, and this means it also has a long, laughable,
Speaker 1: tragic history with censorship.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and first to get hit here is free speech.
Speaker 3: This is an idea that we hear a lot nowadays.
Speaker 3: It implies the just the free expression of thoughts. That's
Speaker 3: all it means, really, But this was a challenge to
Speaker 3: the pre Christian rulers at the time, and you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's a funny thing to have free thought and
Speaker 3: then to express those thoughts to other people and then
Speaker 3: have a group of like minded people all having free
Speaker 3: thoughts that don't exactly go along with the church. That's
Speaker 3: very troublesome, at least to the guardians of at the
Speaker 3: time Christianity. But it's you know, it becomes much more
Speaker 3: troublesome when the church itself organizes to a point where
Speaker 3: there's an official orthodox this is what is the church
Speaker 3: and nothing.
Speaker 2: Else, and there's dogmas exactly. Yeah, you're right, Matt.
Speaker 1: And as more books were written and copied and even
Speaker 1: more widely disseminated, the ideas that were perceived as subversive
Speaker 1: and heretical were spread beyond the control of rulers. It
Speaker 1: didn't matter now if you killed one heretic, if they
Speaker 1: had written a pamphlet or a book and someone else
Speaker 1: had copied it, then that person's ideas lived on and
Speaker 1: they spread or metastasized, as their opponents will probably perceive
Speaker 1: it across the land.
Speaker 3: But it's important because at this time, when you say copied,
Speaker 3: you mean actually written down in a blank paper or
Speaker 3: a blank parchment, and written down exactly what was written
Speaker 3: on the other one.
Speaker 1: Right, And this this was an advantage over something like
Speaker 1: a subversive oral tradition in terms of storytelling her songs,
Speaker 1: because if you kill everyone who knows the song, it's fine,
Speaker 1: it won't get out. But you have to. Books don't
Speaker 1: die as easily as people. You have to burn them.
Speaker 3: You have to you have to find them.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: A book can, even even if it won't be in
Speaker 1: great condition, in the right environment. A book can just
Speaker 1: sit somewhere for decades and decades. It needs no food,
Speaker 1: it needs no cycle of sleep and wake. It's just
Speaker 1: there for someone to pick it up.
Speaker 3: You can't coerce the book to not say it story anymore.
Speaker 1: Right, you have to destroy or mutilate it. And as
Speaker 1: a consequence of this, censorship became increasingly rigid. Punishments became
Speaker 1: increasingly severe. And then, of course, one of the life
Speaker 1: last things that the establishment probably wanted to happen happened,
Speaker 1: and the printing press was invented in Europe in the
Speaker 1: mid fifteenth century, and this increased the need for censorship.
Speaker 1: Printing did help, you know what, Maybe I'm being unfair,
Speaker 1: because printing did help the Catholic mission at the time
Speaker 1: to spread what it saw as a divine revelation.
Speaker 3: You can print bibles now but it also.
Speaker 1: Aided the Protestant Reformation and people like Martin Luther who
Speaker 1: were considered heretics. So the printed book became this huge
Speaker 1: religious battle ground, and it began a war that was
Speaker 1: also fought through the medium of books. They started making
Speaker 1: books that would communicate censorship.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, like a book of prohibited books, or at
Speaker 3: least a very long list of prohibited books. There was
Speaker 3: a pope, a gentleman named Paul the Fourth, who ordered
Speaker 3: the first index of capital p prohibited books in fifteen
Speaker 3: fifty nine, and then that an index, like an updated index,
Speaker 3: was issued again twenty times by different different popes who succeeded,
Speaker 3: and then finally from fifteen fifty nine all the way
Speaker 3: until nineteen forty eight, the final prohibited books list was issued.
Speaker 3: Nineteen forty eight, that's not that long ago.
Speaker 1: But they kept that thing in practice. It was still
Speaker 1: on the books for lack of a better phrase, until
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six, when it was finally abolished.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's.
Speaker 3: A long time of prohibiting reading.
Speaker 1: And the Catholic Church was the first and final judge
Speaker 1: of which books emerged on this list, right, and books
Speaker 1: didn't usually get pulled off or forgiven, and the Inquisition
Speaker 1: helped enforce this ideology by banning and burning books when
Speaker 1: they were discovered, and in some cases burning the authors
Speaker 1: along with the books. O. The most famous author that
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church band is, of course Galileo. That was
Speaker 1: in sixteen thirty.
Speaker 3: Three, because he was heretically letting people know about, you know,
Speaker 3: the solar system and the stars.
Speaker 2: He was going against their God.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So the most famous victim of the Inquisition would be
Speaker 1: Joan of Arc probably and maybe Thomas Moore. Additionally, the
Speaker 1: Catholic Church controlled all the universities and all the publications
Speaker 1: that those universities made. In fifteen forty three, they said, okay,
Speaker 1: that's it. No book can be printed or sold unless
Speaker 1: we say it's all right, unless we sign off on it.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: And then a little bit later a guy in France
Speaker 1: doubled down on that.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, he the uh what is he's the King
Speaker 3: of France, Charles the ninth. He declared that nothing could
Speaker 3: be printed without the special permission of the king. And
Speaker 3: then you know, when one ruler that several others their
Speaker 3: ears perk up and they go, hey, that sounds like
Speaker 3: a really good idea. So other rulers in Europe were
Speaker 3: also banning books that were not approved by.
Speaker 1: Them as soon as they heard about it. Yes, immediately,
Speaker 1: post has this practice was pretty effective, tremendously effective because
Speaker 1: also when we consider what it took to operate a
Speaker 1: printing press, where we're looking at the possession of a
Speaker 1: lot of capital that the average European simply would not have.
Speaker 3: You'd have to be a powerful enemy to be going
Speaker 3: against that list in distributing works at least to an
Speaker 3: effective amount.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in a world where a lot of people can't
Speaker 1: afford to eat meat, much less stop the constant grind
Speaker 1: for survival to learn that there could be at least
Speaker 1: a different form of governance.
Speaker 3: And that constant grind of moving this machine forward of
Speaker 3: civilization does at times require people to live below a
Speaker 3: poverty line wherever that may lie, just to be workers,
Speaker 3: to be cogs in that giant machine.
Speaker 1: I would Yeah, I would say most government systems require
Speaker 1: the entire the largest amount of the population to be
Speaker 1: around that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to just be functional machines.
Speaker 1: Essentially at least of the time. So this stuff is
Speaker 1: working so well, this strategy is working so well, that
Speaker 1: becomes a crucial part in the Grand European scheme to
Speaker 1: conquer what they called the New World, Catholic countries worked
Speaker 1: hand in hand with the religious authorities. Philip the Second
Speaker 1: of Spain reinstated the inquisition in fifteen sixty nine and
Speaker 1: then franchised it out, made a Peruvian inquisition in fifteen
Speaker 1: seventy the next year. Just a monitor and censor unwelcome
Speaker 1: beliefs from the people who actually lived on this continent
Speaker 1: before the Europeans got there and the dissidents who are
Speaker 1: trying to escape the be An inquisition system. Really, a
Speaker 1: lot of it focused on controlling the import of books,
Speaker 1: so they would examine ships and luggage and port they
Speaker 1: would look through libraries and bookstores and printing houses, and
Speaker 1: it was oppressive and sinister. Extended to colonies in the
Speaker 1: Americas as well, But it's still paled in comparison to
Speaker 1: another act of cultural genocide, censorship on a massive scale,
Speaker 1: in the case of the Spanish invaders destroying the literature
Speaker 1: of the Maya people. They literally erased history.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's gone. This is what you would call cultural genocide, right.
Speaker 1: A lot of it was, yeah, a lot of was lost,
Speaker 1: sort of like the Library of Alexandria.
Speaker 3: No, I just had to say. This is one of
Speaker 3: the reasons that Mayan civilization is so fascinating in a
Speaker 3: lot of places within this mysterious universe, conspiratorial world. I
Speaker 3: believe the mind civilization so interesting because so much of it,
Speaker 3: the actual explanations of what things are, it's been lost.
Speaker 1: To history, right, Like I knew about the poulvo Vu,
Speaker 1: the cultural story that talks about the mythology and history
Speaker 1: of the Kicha people, but there was a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff that I thought I would have encountered before that
Speaker 1: I only learned through oral tradition, like the the story
Speaker 1: of how the religious syncretism occurs. But be that as
Speaker 1: it may, it is true that, for lack of a
Speaker 1: better word, they did erase history, and it sounds like
Speaker 1: we're paying. The Spanish Empire is just a load of
Speaker 1: real pills. But Britain, France, and Germany weren't exactly progressive either.
Speaker 1: The postal service was invented in France in fourteen sixty
Speaker 1: four and it just like overnight, became this tool of
Speaker 1: state sponsored, religiously supported censorship. And then this meant that
Speaker 1: by the eighteenth century, the press in the majority of
Speaker 1: Europe was subject to the censorship. In the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: things looked like they might have changed, or began to change.
Speaker 1: There was an independent press that started to emerge.
Speaker 3: Yeah, separating itself from the powers that be.
Speaker 1: People were with more and more passionate and articulation demanding
Speaker 1: a free press, meaning one that is not governed by
Speaker 1: the state or the church. But this was not a
Speaker 1: global change. Japan had incredibly strict press laws at the time.
Speaker 1: And then if we keep going, of course, the Nazis.
Speaker 1: The Nazis were big fans of books. They found them
Speaker 1: very flammable.
Speaker 2: They thought that was neat.
Speaker 1: In the modern age, the USSR and the Eastern Bloc
Speaker 1: ran one of the world's most expansive, successful, and contiguous
Speaker 1: censorship programs in the twentieth century. It started in what
Speaker 1: October nineteen seventeen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, it lasted until the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's mind boggling if you think about that.
Speaker 1: A lot of us listening to the show today were
Speaker 1: alive when people were getting arrested in the USSR in
Speaker 1: the Eastern Bloc for various things that may seem kind
Speaker 1: of silly in the modern day and speaking modern day,
Speaker 1: today we live in a world of endless, cheaply transmitted information.
Speaker 2: What does that mean.
Speaker 1: It means that it is possible now for anyone with
Speaker 1: a phone and a good Internet connection, almost regardless of
Speaker 1: their language, to download, in a relatively short period of time,
Speaker 1: more written work than our ancestors would have seen in
Speaker 1: their entire lives. You can right now, for example, download
Speaker 1: the entirety of Wikipedia.
Speaker 2: Just look at it.
Speaker 1: You can have it all on your phone and you
Speaker 1: will not need an Internet connection to read it. That's amazing.
Speaker 1: And so that means that in the wake of this
Speaker 1: massive technological breakthrough, censorship might be losing its importance or
Speaker 1: maybe its influence. Right, there's not a church in charge
Speaker 1: that can shut everything down.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're right, censorship is gone, doesn't exist anymore. We're
Speaker 3: done here. Thanks for this, taking this journey into history
Speaker 3: about censorship with us. Oh wait, nope, nope, that's very
Speaker 3: very wrong. Couldn't be wronger, And we'll tell you why
Speaker 3: after a quick word from our sponsor.
Speaker 2: Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 1: While futurist of Yesterdyear often argue that limitless access to
Speaker 1: information could result in a more transparent and well informed society,
Speaker 1: we're seeing that this is not the case, at least
Speaker 1: not yet in many parts part of the world. In fact,
Speaker 1: censorship is becoming much more common, rather than less common.
Speaker 1: According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, the ten most
Speaker 1: heavily censored countries nowadays are Eritrea, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Azerbaijan, Vietnam, Aaran, China, Myanmar,
Speaker 1: and Cuba. Those are just the top ten worst offenders.
Speaker 1: Some of that is probably going to change, at least
Speaker 1: in the case of Cuba, but that doesn't mean the
Speaker 1: things that aren't in the top ten are super great.
Speaker 1: Belarus is positively.
Speaker 2: Dangerous, yis.
Speaker 1: But what do we mean when they say heavily censored.
Speaker 3: This is just where the laws are extremely extremely strict,
Speaker 3: and there are punishments such as harassment and imprisonment and
Speaker 3: sometimes even worse for people who go against these laws.
Speaker 1: Right right, like the very recent incident in which Saudi
Speaker 1: Arabia of deducted, tortured and murdered a US resident and
Speaker 1: Washington Post journalist named Sala Kashagi. It was extra judicial killing.
Speaker 1: They're obviously not going to get in a lot of
Speaker 1: serious trouble from it.
Speaker 2: From the US.
Speaker 3: The crazy thing is it was almost covered up and
Speaker 3: then it wasn't. And I don't know what type of
Speaker 3: punishment could actually be, you know, laid out for the
Speaker 3: people who are responsible for it.
Speaker 1: The US government would have to impose consequences for that action.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but is that gonna happen. Probably not.
Speaker 1: And embassy is technically this I think the soil on
Speaker 1: which like the soil of the country there. So it
Speaker 1: really goes down to how and if the US is
Speaker 1: a country that protects its residents and citizens, that's really
Speaker 1: what it goes town onto.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and yet it is so much more complicated.
Speaker 1: And yes it's its own episode, right, But just so
Speaker 1: just to you know, the way he died, the official
Speaker 1: explanation from the Saudi Arabian government was that it didn't happen,
Speaker 1: and then it did, and then it did happen. But
Speaker 1: there was a fistfight and he was that the guy started,
Speaker 1: and that he was killed in this fist fight. The
Speaker 1: evidence that Turkish intelligence is providing has there's I believe
Speaker 1: they have audio evidence and forensic evidence that he was
Speaker 1: sawed in half or like he was he was dismembered
Speaker 1: while alive, which is not a fistfight. But we'll see
Speaker 1: what the we'll see what story everybody agrees on pretty soon.
Speaker 1: Right now, everybody except for Saudi Arabia pretty much agrees
Speaker 1: with the with the abduction, torture, murder narrative, especially because
Speaker 1: there was an alleged body double that was sent out later.
Speaker 2: The story is ongoing.
Speaker 1: I think the official position of the US Executive Branch
Speaker 1: is that this is quote unquote under investigation. The official
Speaker 1: position of the well the rumored position, the anonymously quoted
Speaker 1: position of the US military and intelligence agencies, is that yes,
Speaker 1: it is true. The guy was tortured, died, being sawed
Speaker 1: to death, and then his body was transported in pieces
Speaker 1: and hidden. But officially, according to the Executive Branch, it's
Speaker 1: still under investigation. Anyway, it's happening. He was murdered by
Speaker 1: the Saudi Arabian government and by facets of it because
Speaker 1: he was a journalist and they didn't like what he
Speaker 1: was reporting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's becoming more and more dangerous, and it's
Speaker 3: again it seems like it shouldn't be this way in
Speaker 3: this modern era, with this technology, but it is becoming
Speaker 3: more and more dangerous for reporters to go out especially
Speaker 3: to practice investigative.
Speaker 1: Journalism, right right, and you and I found this fantastic
Speaker 1: piece from guy named George Packer writing for The New Yorker.
Speaker 1: He said that censorship and danger to reporters is actually
Speaker 1: these events are growing more frequent, and they're growing more dangerous.
Speaker 1: We've pulled a really cool quote from here.
Speaker 3: I think in recent years reporting the news has become
Speaker 3: an ever more dangerous activity. Between two thousand and two
Speaker 3: and twenty twelve, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists,
Speaker 3: five hundred and six journalists were killed worldwide, as opposed
Speaker 3: to three hundred and ninety in the previous.
Speaker 1: Decade, which is insane. And a guy we mentioned the
Speaker 1: Committee to Protect Journalists, right, the executive director of that
Speaker 1: outfits guy named Joel Simon, author of a book called
Speaker 1: The New Censorship Inside the Global Battle for Media Freedom,
Speaker 1: and he said the trend nowadays is toward more seecretcy,
Speaker 1: more censorship, and harsher laws, rather than less secrecy, less
Speaker 1: censorship and less what would you say, punitive laws.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we have another quote from him. Deluged with data,
Speaker 3: we are blind to the larger reality. Around the world,
Speaker 3: new systems of control are taking hold. They are stifling
Speaker 3: the global conversation and impeding the development of policies and
Speaker 3: solutions based on an informed understanding of local realities. Repression
Speaker 3: and violence against journalists is at record levels, and press
Speaker 3: freedom is in decline.
Speaker 2: Yikes, yeah, it's true. It's true.
Speaker 1: So there may be a lot of people, a lot
Speaker 1: of us listening now, who think, well, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't really have anything to hide, I don't have anything
Speaker 1: super controversial to say, and most importantly, I'm not an
Speaker 1: investigative journalists, so i don't have these same concerns. We'll
Speaker 1: tell you why this matters. First, we want to tell
Speaker 1: you the four reasons that he believes this rise in
Speaker 1: this new violent era of censorship, or I should say historically,
Speaker 1: this return to this violent era of censorship. The first
Speaker 1: is that there's the rise of leaders like he cites
Speaker 1: in his work Vladimir Putin in Russia, recept type Erdogan
Speaker 1: in Turkey, presidents in Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia, who use
Speaker 1: their power to intimidate journalists and make it nearly impossible
Speaker 1: for them to function. He says, they're elected, but they're
Speaker 1: acting as dictators, which is why he prefers the term democratators, democratators, democratators.
Speaker 3: Ooh, democratators.
Speaker 1: But to me that just sounds like a potato that
Speaker 1: I've voted for. That's exactly what it is.
Speaker 2: Would you eat them? It's the new freedom fry democratators.
Speaker 3: You know. I just started Fallout four, and they call
Speaker 3: potatoes tats and they're tato I think they call him tators.
Speaker 3: Yeah anyway. Oh and by the way, yes, yes, I
Speaker 3: did say Fallout four, not the new Fallout that just
Speaker 3: came out. Because I'm always one iteration behind whatever the
Speaker 3: popular thing is.
Speaker 2: I feel you, man, I'm okay with that. I'm similar.
Speaker 3: It was ten bucks. So yeah, anyway. So the second
Speaker 3: source of censorship, at least according to Simon, is the
Speaker 3: big T terrorism, and he cites the beheading of Daniel
Speaker 3: Pearl and Karachi as being basically the beginning of a
Speaker 3: trend of turning journalists into very specific, high value targets
Speaker 3: for terrorists or for people who practice terrorism. I guess
Speaker 3: I don't know how to say that correctly. But also
Speaker 3: if you go you just look at the Iraq War.
Speaker 3: It's the deadliest in history for journalists. There are a
Speaker 3: lot of people on the ground trying to cover the
Speaker 3: war in very dangerous places. And you know, we hear
Speaker 3: a lot about the highly targeted droning systems. The other
Speaker 3: you know, the dropping of bonds is much more targeted now. Well,
Speaker 3: the Iraq War is the deadliest in history. One hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty killed journalists, eighty five percent of them were
Speaker 3: Iraqi journalists, and most of whom were murdered like murdered,
Speaker 3: not just they accidentally got.
Speaker 1: Killed, and their captures were performative. Their captures and executions
Speaker 1: were performative. It became a disturbingly normal part of the
Speaker 1: media landscape.
Speaker 3: Yeah, similar to the Daniel Pearl event.
Speaker 1: And then Simon goes on to note that he says
Speaker 1: he believes the third reason is the death of foreign
Speaker 1: news desks. So back in the days, in the golden
Speaker 1: days of journalism, every large paper of note would have
Speaker 1: something that they would call a foreign news desk. People
Speaker 1: who had the protection of a larger international news organization
Speaker 1: and often the implied protection or tacit protection of their
Speaker 1: home country would set up an office wherein they reported
Speaker 1: on regional news in a foreign country. The problem is
Speaker 1: that with so much of independent journalism going down the
Speaker 1: tank in the past, few years, these places have closed
Speaker 1: and the only way to get news out falls to
Speaker 1: local reporters doing their best, often with no help or
Speaker 1: protection from a foreign government. Actually the only government around
Speaker 1: their own often will want them dead. In countries like Mexico,
Speaker 1: the Philippines, Pakistan, local journalists are the target of brutal
Speaker 1: campaigns of intimidation and murder by secret service agents, armed groups.
Speaker 1: This could be just extremist religious or separatist groups, Cartel's cartels,
Speaker 1: that's another one. And you know, some of these local journalists,
Speaker 1: it's not like they went to school and dedicated their
Speaker 1: lives to be journalists. They might just be on Twitter
Speaker 1: trying to survive because their families are being black bagged
Speaker 1: or disappeared.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: And the final reason. One of the weirdest ones is
Speaker 1: the invisible global hand of digital surveillance. Various countries have
Speaker 1: gotten closer and closer to perfecting its use. But there
Speaker 1: everyone's getting better all the time. And it's not just
Speaker 1: the boogeyman you hear about in so much Western media.
Speaker 1: It's not just China, it's not just Iran. It's also
Speaker 1: the US, It's also it's also the EU, It's Israel,
Speaker 1: it's Japan. It's anyone who can afford it, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, and it's crazy too, because not only do
Speaker 3: we have in this country things like the NSA sure
Speaker 3: that they're looking at everything, or at least they're tracking everything,
Speaker 3: keeping notes about it, there is also this this very
Speaker 3: real thing called the search bubble, and it's also a
Speaker 3: news bubble. And it's just the thing that in which
Speaker 3: the place in which we all find ourselves where we
Speaker 3: are almost censoring ourselves.
Speaker 1: And where does this lead us. We've looked at the
Speaker 1: origins of censorship, We've seen some of the modern trends. Now,
Speaker 1: let's ask ourselves about the future. After a word from
Speaker 1: our sponsor. All right, so the badger is out of
Speaker 1: the bag on this one. Humanity's constant, sinister shadow of
Speaker 1: secrecy and censorship is not going away. It is and
Speaker 1: I want you to hear the italics here, evolving. We
Speaker 1: talk about the progression of technology all the time. Right now,
Speaker 1: you can tell somebody across the world what's happening to you,
Speaker 1: relatively in real time. As long as everything works, and
Speaker 1: all the pistons or firing in sequence, all them satellites,
Speaker 1: all the Internet tubes are not plugged up. The problem
Speaker 1: is that this technology that allows us to communicate is
Speaker 1: often created or influenced by the same people who create
Speaker 1: technology to monitor this sort of stuff, censorship technology, and
Speaker 1: it only spreads the fuel of these practices. New tech
Speaker 1: is giving governments the ability to more selectively censor online materials.
Speaker 1: This is the stuff they don't want you to know about.
Speaker 2: This.
Speaker 1: This is where it gets spooky because we see several
Speaker 1: factors converging to make a perfect storm. The private tech
Speaker 1: sector is merging. It's increasingly monopolistic, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: The giants of the tech industry Alpha, Google its owner, Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook,
Speaker 1: so on. Mean that there are fewer hubs of information transmission. Essentially,
Speaker 1: this means there's a smaller group of people at the wheel.
Speaker 2: And this is.
Speaker 1: What Lebowski would call not cool man. Yeah, it's problematic, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it means they're a private company. A private company
Speaker 1: does not have a ton of laws telling it what
Speaker 1: it can or cannot show you, what it can or
Speaker 1: cannot prevent you from seeing, or what it can and
Speaker 1: cannot do to influence how you interact online. Older media companies,
Speaker 1: it's no secret if you're a longtime listening to the
Speaker 1: show that older media companies like newspapers mainstream television have
Speaker 1: often worked in secret with intelligence agencies to censor some
Speaker 1: stories or completely ignore them, especially in wartime. Especially in wartime, yeah,
Speaker 1: or in times of great public crisis like the JFK assassination,
Speaker 1: or they've been handed talking points and told to just
Speaker 1: sort of riff on those.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But new media agencies seem much more comfortable with pursuing
Speaker 1: their own enigmatic goals.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, let's look, let's look at him, just
Speaker 3: because we kind of have to for.
Speaker 2: This, all right, But no shirtless pictures.
Speaker 3: Old aj Alex Jones. He's been making the airwaves again,
Speaker 3: even since he's not been on them so much. You
Speaker 3: don't you don't have to agree with this guy at all.
Speaker 3: You don't have to even like him at all. You
Speaker 3: don't have to be a fan in any way. But
Speaker 3: you look at the fall of Alex Jones as an
Speaker 3: example of this. There were some private industry companies who
Speaker 3: just decided, not necessarily out of the blue, let's say
Speaker 3: there there were circumstances that were building and building, but
Speaker 3: either way, a couple of these private industries decided that
Speaker 3: he can't play on in their sandbox. They can't play
Speaker 3: on their platforms anymore. He's done, and all of a
Speaker 3: sudden he was finished or is mostly finished.
Speaker 1: And that's totally within their right. They are a private company.
Speaker 1: They built the sandbox. He they had valid reasons for
Speaker 1: in the in their opinion, for shutting down his access
Speaker 1: to his audience. But it worked. And it's not like
Speaker 1: there was a trial. There was maybe a trial of
Speaker 1: public opinion, you could call it, sure, but it's not
Speaker 1: like he went to Twitter court.
Speaker 2: Don't.
Speaker 1: Don't, but take the financial motivation. These companies have to
Speaker 1: make you a paying participant. For instance, pain is in
Speaker 1: giving them cash in addition to your personal data which.
Speaker 2: They're already using.
Speaker 1: You know, if you have a small business, or you
Speaker 1: have news that pertains to something Facebook doesn't want people
Speaker 1: to see, for instance, you would have to make it
Speaker 1: a sponsored post. Right, you have to be incentivized to
Speaker 1: pay to play environment and for their part, that works
Speaker 1: because they're not a news agency, they are not ethically
Speaker 1: charged to correctly report things. And additionally, this is one
Speaker 1: of more frightening parts. Censorship is becoming increasingly invisible. Forget
Speaker 1: all those old printed out paper documents and fescimile copies
Speaker 1: with the black and white text and the black back
Speaker 1: sharpy marker redacting paragraphs and paragraphs. Nowadays, you might just
Speaker 1: not see a banded web page, or you might just
Speaker 1: go to your kindle one day and a book is vanished,
Speaker 1: or you might find that, like the Maya codesies, certain
Speaker 1: parts of digital history are being erased under your nose.
Speaker 3: Wikipedia is completely different on this page today for some reason.
Speaker 3: I don't remember what was taken out, but I don't
Speaker 3: know sure. It just looks different and there's nothing showing
Speaker 3: up on the history.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, there are information wars going on in Wikipedia.
Speaker 1: If you ever have the time, go to some topic
Speaker 1: you think might be controversial, instead of reading the article,
Speaker 1: click on the talk tab.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you will see these long.
Speaker 1: Bitter things oftentimes by especially in geopolitical things, oftentimes by
Speaker 1: front groups posing as individuals, which is insane. No, I know,
Speaker 1: just the Middle East alone, yeah.
Speaker 3: Crazy.
Speaker 1: In some countries, people only learned that their social media
Speaker 1: activities monitor when they were detained or arrested for a
Speaker 1: political comment or a snarky joke. And we found a
Speaker 1: We found a fascinating map that I'd like to maybe
Speaker 1: share on our website or on our Facebook page.
Speaker 2: Yes, it gets crazy. Did you see that thing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so make sure you're on Facebook check it out.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: A little bit of double think there. So these factors
Speaker 1: that we just named, increasing government surveillance and then increasing
Speaker 1: inequality of power distribution and power in the private sector
Speaker 1: coalesced to create something that might have sounded insane just
Speaker 1: a few years ago. Imagine not a world wide Web,
Speaker 1: but a splintered internet world partially world wide webs, three
Speaker 1: of them. They're divided into the three spheres, the US, China,
Speaker 1: and the European Union.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and if you look at each of these individually,
Speaker 3: you would note probably at least that the US has
Speaker 3: they're the big player here. They have the guns because
Speaker 3: they arguably and did invent the Internet with arpenet. We've
Speaker 3: discussed not that long ago, and a large percent of
Speaker 3: the private companies that actually control large swaths of the Internet,
Speaker 3: how to access the Internet, how information is shared to
Speaker 3: other human beings. We control that here, or at least
Speaker 3: individuals and private companies do, and at least for now,
Speaker 3: that's how things stand. But things are changing pretty rapidly
Speaker 3: in the world when it comes to the powers of
Speaker 3: the Internet. And here's the thing. In this country, I
Speaker 3: don't think you can have a blanket statement as in
Speaker 3: these companies are compliant with well, Uncle Sam when he
Speaker 3: rolls through and has requests. But we have seen numerous
Speaker 3: within the hundreds of cases where there have been companies
Speaker 3: who have been compliant with the government coming through and
Speaker 3: asking for information. Doesn't mean they're giving. These companies would
Speaker 3: give all of the information, but perhaps parts of a
Speaker 3: user or certain posts or things to that nature.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And in the US, at least, and arguably in the world,
Speaker 1: the great balance between state and corporate powers swinging in
Speaker 1: favor of the corporation overtime, overtime. And I am convinced
Speaker 1: this is true. You can call up my opinion, but
Speaker 1: I am convinced it's true.
Speaker 3: We've talked about this before. You you've predicted that there
Speaker 3: will be a corporation running for the presidency within our lifetime.
Speaker 2: Maybe not the presidency of this country, okay, but of
Speaker 2: the country. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sure, And then I'm sure there will people who are
Speaker 1: I'm sure some of us listening now are thinking, well,
Speaker 1: aren't presidents kind of already at least as sponsored as
Speaker 1: NASCAR drivers. I mean, shouldn't they have to wear patches?
Speaker 1: At least the NASCAR guys are pretty open about it.
Speaker 1: Robin Williams, Man, Robin Williams.
Speaker 3: Last time I saw him on tour, I think it
Speaker 3: was the self of self destruction. I think he had
Speaker 3: an awesome bit on that. It's like beautiful like imagery
Speaker 3: of just that. Oh all right, but I think he
Speaker 3: stole from somebody else because.
Speaker 2: Oh no, he did that a lot unfort Oh yeah
Speaker 2: he did. I remember we're talking about that off air.
Speaker 2: But maybe he didn't do it on purpose exactly.
Speaker 3: You gotta gotta give benefit of the doubt. But that
Speaker 3: that image, I think is unfortunately salient. It's real. It's
Speaker 3: just like the jackets with all the sponsors.
Speaker 1: We have campaigns, systems set up to reinforce that, at
Speaker 1: least again in the US, but maybe it's different in
Speaker 1: foreign governments. In twenty ten, Google shut down its operations
Speaker 1: in China after they learned that the Chinese government had
Speaker 1: been hacking Gmail accounts of dissidents, surveilling them through the
Speaker 1: search engines to find what they liked and censor that.
Speaker 1: If it's a communication hub or to you know, I
Speaker 1: guess the euphemism would be permanently censor the dissidents, so
Speaker 1: they shut down twenty ten. Later this year, we the
Speaker 1: American public learned that Google had been working on a
Speaker 1: new search engine for China.
Speaker 2: It's called Dragonfly. It's not called Chrome.
Speaker 1: The reason it's different from Dragonfly is that it incorporates
Speaker 1: all these surveillance desires of the Chinese government, and Google's
Speaker 1: internal documents don't support what they say publicly about it,
Speaker 1: which is a shame.
Speaker 3: And there's been outcry. Yeah, there's been a lot of
Speaker 3: protesting by employees of Google lately.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, they're smart kids. They know what's up.
Speaker 1: And this means what we're looking at as all these
Speaker 1: factors converge is a new censorship war on the horizon,
Speaker 1: a new evolution in the paradigm of forced silence. And
Speaker 1: while it may start in a corporate boardroom or in
Speaker 1: a DC lobbyist lunch meeting, it will expand to reach you.
Speaker 1: It will expand to reach your television, your news, your laptop,
Speaker 1: your tablet, and your phone. This means that unless you
Speaker 1: go completely off the grid, you are going to be affected.
Speaker 1: It is not it's not a drill. It's not a
Speaker 1: hypothetical thing. It is already happening. It is happening to you.
Speaker 1: In fact, you may be interested to know exactly how
Speaker 1: this continues.
Speaker 2: So this is sold. So there you have it.
Speaker 3: Wow, I think we have to end the show here.
Speaker 3: Let's at least let's at least talk about some questions
Speaker 3: that we have. Oh, by the way, before you even
Speaker 3: get to questions, they killed Socrates, Yeah for censorship.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they killed so Creates.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so creates. That's a callback to Steve Martin, one
Speaker 3: of my favorite comedians. I'm just doing that today. I
Speaker 3: don't know why, because this censorship has been so important.
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna go on a mini soapbox here. Censorship
Speaker 3: has had such an effect on free thought. And that's
Speaker 3: really what it's about. It's about other people wanting you
Speaker 3: to think a certain way and not have other thought
Speaker 3: viruses enter your mind. Thank you, Grant Morrison. And it's
Speaker 3: it's it's terrifying to think that there are powerful forces
Speaker 3: active at this very moment that want to control your thoughts.
Speaker 3: That freaks me out. And they've been these same not
Speaker 3: the same people, but these same mechanisms have been attempting
Speaker 3: to control human thought for for thousands of years and
Speaker 3: we have to fight against it. I think I think
Speaker 3: we do. And the way you fight against it is
Speaker 3: just talk, have an open mind, have free thoughts, and
Speaker 3: talk to your fellow human beings around us, and dogs
Speaker 3: and cats and other animals that are willing to listen.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, but that that goes to the question then too,
Speaker 1: what is the line what should or should not be censored?
Speaker 3: Ah see, then you're getting into some of that morality stuff.
Speaker 1: We're getting into morality stuff. We're also asking ourselves what
Speaker 1: things are.
Speaker 2: Age appropriate for people? Right?
Speaker 1: What things are necessary for a country to function?
Speaker 3: You know, I mean that's the toughest part about this, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: gotta have free thought, but you got to have humans
Speaker 3: that if they're not that nice, or they're not even
Speaker 3: let's say, I don't want to say that smart, but
Speaker 3: if you've got to be able to have some kind
Speaker 3: of control mechanisms for just societal norms, or do you?
Speaker 1: And that's where we will leave it today. This is
Speaker 1: not the end of the episode. This is the part
Speaker 1: where we leave the podcast studio and wait to hear
Speaker 1: from you. We want to hear your responses. You are
Speaker 1: the ultimate arbiters of where this goes.
Speaker 3: And that's the end of this class episode. If you
Speaker 3: have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can
Speaker 3: get into contact with us in a number of different ways.
Speaker 3: One of the best is to give us a call.
Speaker 3: Our number is one eight three three STDWYTK. If you
Speaker 3: don't want to do that, you can send us a
Speaker 3: good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1: We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
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