China’s firewall plays a crucial role in shaping the country’s digital landscape, preventing foreign intervention, and maintaining national security. While often criticized in the West, the firewall provides China with the ability to control information flow, shield its population from foreign influence, and protect domestic media.
Or if you are a British journalist speaking out against genocide, in which case you get arrested on terrorism charges
Or if you are in Germany and hold a conference discussing said genocide, in which case the police raids you and shuts you down
Or if you are a European journalist documenting an inconvenient truth from the “wrong side”, in which case you get your bank account seized and face criminal charges and are banned from entering the EU
Or if you are in the Baltics celebrating Europe’s victory over the Nazis and singing songs the government doesn’t like, in which case you get arrested, fined and possibly jailed
Freedom of speech in the West amounts to you being free to shout into the void, and only so long as it doesn’t change anything or threaten the ruling establishment and its political agenda. As long as your speech is entirely ineffectual and can be ignored by those in power then you can scream as loud as you want. As soon as your speech is a real threat to the agenda of the ruling class you are quickly shut down and made an example of with extreme prejudice.
You are functionally not allowed to challenge the official government position in the West either. In European countries the government outright bans candidates from standing in elections if they are anti-EU or anti-NATO, and you are threatened with fines or even jail time for disagreeing with the official narrative on Ukraine conflict. On certain issues, namely those that actually matter, there is only one accepted position, and deviation results in you being branded a terrorist, traitor, Hamas sympathizer, Russian agent, etc.
The West is just as if not more authoritarian than China. China is just more honest about their censorship.
Your German example is legit, but you are completely dismissing their cultural guilt related to WWII; there are signs of them shifting. Your Balics example show possible Goverent overreach, but you are completely dismissing the existential threat of Russia.
You are also trying to be subtle in shifting to mainstream media, when the thread was about internet control and social media.
You are playing very loose with context. There are reasons to distrust all the Governments, which is why an uncensored internet is of value.
So you’re just Motte and Bailying from “the West doesn’t censer criticism” to “our censership is justified! How can you expect Germany not to suppress critism of genocide, don’t you know that they did the holocaust?”
Great, tell me when you find one
Yeah so your argument boils down to it’s okay to dismiss the Chinese context because they’re categorically evil, but the Western governments have “good reasons” because they’re categorically good.
Surprise surprise it’s just chauvinism.
So censorship is bad unless it’s good. Got it.
This is you abandoning your own values the moment someone in authority tells you there’s an implacable horde of scary foreigners who we can’t beat without taking away your rights.
They have no guilt, else they would not be supporting another genocide or giving money and weapons to help Nazis kill Russians again. Their pretense of feeling guilt is purely performative and self-aggrandizing. The only signs are of them getting worse, more self-righteous, more racist, more authoritarian toward any dissenters, more detached from reality.
Is their deranged paranoia supposed to justify their revisionist history portraying SS butchers as the good guys and the liberators of the death camps as the bad guys?
Where have i mentioned mainstream media? And why are you shifting the goalposts? The topic was freedom of speech, regardless on which media. And social media has replaced mainstream media for most people nowadays anyway.
Yes, social media is being censored and controlled across Europe and the broader West. Let’s not even mention how often Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter have banned anti-imperialist channels, deleted pro-Palestinian or pro-Russian content. The governments themselves are legally persecuting social media based news outlets, forcing them to shut down
Both in Britain and in Germany you can get arrested and prosecuted for social media posts. There have been plenty such cases.
In Germany you get sued and even arrested for simply insulting politicians on social media. It is enough to simply call a politician stupid (what else can you call someone who doesn’t know what doing a 360° turn means?) and you can get charged and taken to court. One particularly ghoulish politician has levied over 2000 defamation charges at people for insulting her.
Help Nazis kill Russians? Wtf… I thought you would mentiom Israel as those are literal Nazis but Ukraine literally got hit with huge Propaganda since 2014 and just got attacked by Russia.
Why the fuck should a country being attacked also be the offender and Nazi?
Did Russians flee from their countries because they got attacked by Ukraine? No, they left because the countries leader arrests you or puts you on the battlefield without caring if you are disabled, as disabled people got this letter too (but I believe they corrected that issue). Ukraine people also don’t nearly look like Nazis when I see them in my country and their stories also dont allign with the Russian Propaganda. I mean, with both Russians and Ukraines I can talk face to face and see real opinion.
In WWII, Nazis did attack other countries and started to tell their everyone they got attacked first… oh, wait… didnt Putin do that? Holy shot just do your own non-biased research without being an instant love fanboy of any authoritarian country. (China is still somewhat cool)
The Nazi regime in Kiev which came to power in a US orchestrated coup attacked Russian speaking regions of Ukraine and has pursued a policy of ethnic cleansing since 2014. Sources here: https://lemmy.ml/post/26654686
I tried to follow the sources but even the sources just lack so many things to be trustworthy at all.
Yes those who speak russian in ukraine (many in eastern ukraine) had to flee
Those are ones that had to flee from the nazis probably
No, nuland did that
Damn, you really are not interested in really understanding the first message. I meant Russians from Russia. Seems like you doge topics that speek against your fandom.
You’re such a troll lol
You got me, I guess. Of course I understand liberalspeak, even if I hate it.
I wish they wouldn’t talk in that weaselly liar way, its mentally taxing to constantly have to interpret their cowardly attempts at hiding their inner white supremacist into english.
Sounds like a dunning kruger effect, if you think you can easily understand it and categorize.
I admit that many western news page hide something to steer the user into something. But thats every news page or article page.
They try the steering, but in the end its the westerners that license themselves to believe it. Its in their class interest after all.