this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2025
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Comradeship // Freechat
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Every community has censorship to filter out its perception of noise or topics they feel are dangerous/ destablising/ upsets decorum/creates havoc with internal structures etc etc. We do it here for example with bad-faith liberal slop. It could be de facto or de jure.
In capitalist society it would be those that fit with their narratives and perspectives. For example, we live in a world of (crumbling) Western Hegemony so there will be self-censorship on the genocide or pro-Russian perspectives of the Ukraine war; from schools to newspapers to entertainment media - there does not need to be someone at the top pulling the strings, the associated communities (formal and informal) will do that themselves.
Education will not in itself lead to "enlightenment". One of the first organisations to discover climate change were oil companies but their class perspective did not take them down the path of environmentalism.
We have to a degree accept the fact the people intelligently seek narratives that they feel benefit their perceived material perspectives - including us - and it behooves us as MLs to understand this and allows us to better understand which class our audience is and focus our energies where it is productive.
Anti-vaxxers and flat-earthers could look up the same information we do but choose not to believe them. It comes from a level of privilege where they feel the consequences of their ignorance does not affect them. They create spaces for themselves to talk about the issues that are important to them and filter out the "noise" in those spaces.
In the wider community the above two groups fester as they are not a threat to capital. In a spcialist society such nonsense is stomped out for the greater good.
There are for example stories where "traditional" communities with overbearing patriarchal structures who were forced at gunpoint for their women to be literate and educated. There is a "generational trauma" but the outcome of good is exponential as a result for all the following generations. (This is not a specific example of socialist history, this was actually Kemalist Turkey. Socialists usually use more tactful approaches)
We have to understand freedom not from an idealistic conception but a scientific understanding of social sciences, and it ia from that true freedom is acheived.
The west has at its disposal significant access to vast volumes of knowledge through the internet but people voluntarily choose wilful ignorance for their perceived material benefits.
The above is not a nihilistic perspective, it is encouraging to know there is a scientific approach to liberation of the world despite what it seems like an unsurmountable obstacle of bad-faith ignorance. It just means we have to direct our energies towards the revolutionary classes.
(English was not initially my first language either; hope life at your end gives you a break!)
Oh, what you are describing is called an echo chamber. It's mostly an opt in mechanism?
I wouldn't call that censorship at all! But I get your point.
Maybe but includes more scalable societies including whole nations and alliance of nations, and censorship could be de facto or de jure.
The choice to opt in and out depends on the class perspective in bourgoisie society; the more subjugated one is the less of a choice that will feel. If one can imagine a censorship in favour of the dictatorship of the bourgoisie then why not in one favor for the dictatorship of the proleteriat?
If a formal censorship is not declared it does not mean an informal does not exist, one which is dictated by class relations within that society (this is itself one of the criticisms against anarchist ideas of post-capitalism ie not based on science but on utopia/idealism of the assumption of lack of formal hierarchies would free mankind's innate nature for freedom or some such Bakunin nonsense. Our nature is in a relationship with nature outside us, each constantly changing the other - ie it is dialectical. )
You say that informal censorship is always dictated by class relations ?
That's an interesting take.
I always saw echo chambers (what you call informal censorship) as inability to cope with a cognitive dissonance. It's a way to emotionally protect one self from others beliefs.
In more than a way, a semi closed environment like lemmygrad is that, I think.
I don't see it as censorship but more like a way to have constructive conversations about some subjects.
That's an interesting take none the less!