Exactly. No country has a perfect history but by confronting past mistakes you have a chance to learn from them and hopefully support laws or norms that prevent them from happening again.
Perhaps this only applies in countries that practice democracy, where the people's awareness has a chance of translating into representation. Otherwise it's only likely to create discontent with the inability to change things (and thus unrest).
Present day thinkers and reporters are given the same silent treatment on mainstream media which is obviously controlled by the narrow oligarchy which controls everything else. Same treatment is happening on youtube as China is doing; non-conforming perspectives are actively sought out and removed by censorious apparatchiks. Oh yeah, and now they're also sometimes denounced as "russian agents" as well -a pack of absurd, paranoid and Orwellian nonsense which makes anything the ChiComs say look like objective common sense.
The US engages in ritual denunciation of itself for slavery and killing off the Indians. Somehow our most excellent international adventures, ridiculous military provocations, poisoning of the food chain, extractive slave economics of the native population and colonial control of half the population of the world is A-OK. For all I know, China engages in ritual denunciation of its pre-Maoist self as well. That doesn't mean they're not carefully controlling the narrative now.
Name some, I'll get you copies on Amazon and you can yell about them here on HN.
You seem to be trying to conflate group think (which is a real thing) with censorship (also real, very different, and much worse). And that doesn't make much sense to me at all.
I mean, fine. Maybe "no one talks about" your particular favorite injustice. But you talk about it (you just did!) and can work to convince the rest of us about the truth of your opinions (like you're doing right now!).
In the PRC, you can't.
But it's not the same discussion . To make it relevant would be to ask :
Once China works the same way at the same scope (Somehow assuming they don't) Will they drop the censor ?
Again, US colleges definitely engage in ritual denunciations of the bad old days. So do the Chinese. US colleges engage in political indoctrination that talks about problematic issues in the modern US which the US regime wants changed. So do the Chinese.
The only real difference is the US doesn't have to be as brutal and obvious as the Chinese to police thought. It does occasionally look a lot like old Maoist struggle sessions, but somehow people never make that connection.
EDIT: As a matter of fact, we just had a Muslim congress-woman openly discuss goals to impeach our sitting president. Things work differently in a democracy with representatives than they do in an authoritarian dictatorship.
Let me give you a bit of obvious propaganda by people who really do run the country:
https://twitter.com/Raytheon/status/1021446302515847168
Perfect embodiment of ruling caste self regard ... we blow up brown people ... but at least we are real smart and we ain't sexist!
Yes, exactly. Because this isn't an authoritarian dictatorship. We have democracy. We vote in representatives. We discuss policies with peers and campaign for people who represent changes we want to see. That's the difference and that's what our free speech protects.
EDIT:
> Let me give you a bit of obvious propaganda by people who really do run the country
Are you being censored for speaking up against Raytheon though? Are you being stopped from electing politicians who would curtail their power or regulate them in some way?
Read and/or watch Manufacturing Consent. This is what Chomsky calls[1] the "standard model" of social democratic societies (the one that the technical class helping run society must be "deeply indoctrinated" to believe).
Problem is, if you look at whose interests are actually represented in our politics it's nothing but a pacifying fiction. His "alternate model" describes how the society actually functions, and... well... why spoil the video? :D
If I were and could get my message out (people are trying on youtube; they're being censored), well, no doubt my life would be worth girl scout cookies. I'd be unpersonned at the very least.
FWIIW yes, I am being stopped from voting for politicians who would make this state of affairs end. Just as effectively as Chinese people are.
Otherwise it sounds like you're talking vaguely about what I can only interpret as a conspiracy theory of some kind but I have no idea what point you're trying to make.
Which just goes to show you more or less why the Chinese guy above doesn't see anything wrong with how his country's regime polices content either.
Anyway, have some more ruling class propaganda: https://twitter.com/WokeCapital/status/1081583730018476032
>> Otherwise it sounds like you're talking vaguely about what I can only interpret as a conspiracy theory of some kind but I have no idea what point you're trying to make.
> There's a great Mitchell and Webb sketch called "are we the baddies" -google (or better yet, qwant) it. If you can't put yourself in their shoes, well, you'll never get it.
It would be helpful if you precisely specified which ideas you think are getting censored on youtube and could cause you to get "unpersonned" before you start throwing around vague insinuations like that. Otherwise what you say has very little credibility.
If you don't like the military contractors, protest them and vote for change instead of trying to use it to rationalize China's censorship campaign.
But do you think that there's a hidden branch of US government dictating which books are used or what words aren't allowed, carefully crafting this revised perception of our reality? Or is it just social effects that happen in all countries?
Meticulous and widespread censoring of phrases like "rubber duckies" just because it might remind people of Tiananmen Square or "Winnie the Pooh" just because people mocked Xi Jinping is another thing.
No matter how many mistakes are made in the US, we have that as a bedrock. There is a fundamental difference between the US and China in this regard.
There are about 6.6 million American Indians in the US today.
A quick Google came back with words and phrases banned by the US government. It's federal employee who are ordered not to use the words and phrases not individuals, but chilling nonetheless.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/cdc-g...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/07/usda-cli...
That sounds more like a branding guideline for employees than censorship of a topic. But, as you said, this doesn't apply to normal citizens and presumably is done so that the spokespeople seem like they're on the same page.
It's not censorship, it's just stupid leadership and it's from ephemeral positions that our democracy can be used to reverse by putting people with sane policies in place.
You also think it's better to cover up events like Tiananmen Square? It seems like it's almost entirely forgotten even though it happened only 30 years ago. My country (US) doesn't have a great human rights track record either, but at least we're allowed to talk about it.