via eviemagazine:
Throughout history, we see the same pattern repeated over and over again.
Totalitarian regimes — from Germany’s Third Reich to the Soviet Union to Communist China— have consistently imposed censorship on the freedoms of thought and expression of their citizens. And today, we can witness the same pattern repeated here in America through “cancel culture.”
Hailing from a country where freedom of speech is widely prohibited, I can tell you this: once you have lived for years under conditions of censorship and you now have complete freedom of expression, you do not want to go back to censorship. And yet here I am, watching as America falls more and more into self-censorship.
Self-Censorship in America
Censorship starts when we don’t allow others around us to speak as they want. The recent resignation of opinion columnist and editor Bari Weiss from the New York Times illustrates this growing problem of censorship through the pressure of the online mob. As she stated in her open letter of resignation, the Twitter mob has become the ultimate arbiter in what can and can’t be expressed openly.
The Twitter mob has become the ultimate arbiter in what can and can’t be expressed openly.
Bari Weiss isn’t alone in being persecuted. The Twitter mob has successfully silenced many other creators, like in the case of Young Adult fiction writer Amélie Wen Zhao. Zhao, who had her publishing deal (worth half a million dollars) destroyed because her fictional novel contained an “insensitive depiction about slavery.” According to the mob who “canceled” her, Zhao’s sin was that she attempted to tell a story that had elements of slavery which she supposedly had no right to tell.
Thought Control in the Worst Form
Writers work with language, and what a dictatorship does is restrict the use of language. When a creator of a story can’t even conjure up a world that only exists in the imagination of their own mind, let alone share that world they’ve created with someone else, you need to recognize that this is thought control in its most terrifying form.
It’s not an exaggeration to point out how in the case of Amélie Wen Zhao, the mob of online SJWs decided that the creator can’t speak at all. And in order to prohibit ideas that are unacceptable to them, the online mob employs high volume pressure in the form of fear to silence any undesirable creative expression. Cancel culture is totalitarian culture, with their clearest manifestation being the dictatorship of the angry online mob.