Jacob Mchangana, author of Free Speech: A Global History From Socrates to Social Media, thinks banning RT in Europe in retaliation for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is a really, really bad idea. (And I agree.) He has set out his reasoning in UnHerd.
In 1922, the USSR established the General Directorate for the Protection of State Secrets in the Press (known as Glavlit) to weed out “propaganda against the Soviet Union” that “stirred up public opinion through false information”. The mission of Glavlit reflected Lenin’s view that the press was “no less dangerous than bombs and machine-guns” and that its proper role was to serve as “a collective propagandist [and] agitator” for Bolshevik ideas.
Like Lenin and Stalin before him, Vladimir Putin is obsessed with controlling the public sphere through censorship and propaganda. In 2022 Glavlit has been replaced by the media regulator Roskomnadzor, which, in the past week alone has ordered media outlets to only use official Russian sources and banned words like “invasion” and “war” when reporting on events in Ukraine. It has also blocked online access to media outlets for “disseminating false information”, a crime which has seen at least ten media outlets facing legal sanctions. In addition, Russia is seeking to spread its propaganda globally through outlets such as state sponsored broadcasters like RT and Sputnik.
Faced with this development the European Commission is moving forward with an EU-wide total ban on RT and Sputnik – both online and offline – while a similar move in the UK has been proposed by Labour leader Keir Starmer. According to Ursula Van Der Leyen the EU´s “unprecedented” initiative is needed to “ban [Russian] toxic and harmful disinformation in Europe”.
While sanctions targeting Russian oligarchs and the kleptocratic infrastructure of Russia’s economy should be expanded, European democracies should be careful not to copy and paste Putin’s censorship tactics. Once the centralised command and control of media freedom in 27 democracies based on inherently vague definitions of “propaganda” and “disinformation” has been established, the danger is that it will almost inevitably be used to target other forms of undesirable information in the future.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Fraser Myers wrote a piece in Spiked a few days ago making a similar argument.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
RT has responded and re-routed and can be accessed through conventional browsers like Firefox with DuckDuckGo.
https://www.rt.com/russia/
Alternatively using a VPN or browser such as Tor will allow access.
The odysee option has always been open as it refuses to de-platform media, preferring to let viewers/listeners make up their own minds – as it should be.
https://odysee.com/@RT:fd
There are other links as well. It’s difficult to block info nowadays, as the UK government found out over the last 2 years.
The reaction to Russia’s attack on Ukraine, no matter what you think about it, has exposed the West’s double standards.
https://www.rt.com/news/550990-us-nato-sanctions-wars/
So that would make us know even less of how Russia might see things. Just exactly how does it help us to understand less? I have read heaps of material, some of which I disagree with massively, like ‘The Communist Manifesto’. It is called critical thinking, Or perhaps they want to ban that repulsive hate-filled document? No? I thought not.
Faced with this development the European Commission is moving forward with an EU-wide total ban on RT and Sputnik – both online and offline – while a similar move in the UK has been proposed by Labour leader Keir Starmer
I switched to RT channel 511 in the UK yesterday and it said “channel unavailable”, so what’s that all about?
Do they have an “offline” offering by the way? Haven’t seen the RT newspaper or the Sputnik magazine.
https://rumble.com/vwbbjn-putin-announces-special-operation-in-donbass-special-coverage.html
RT live
How long before George Galloway is taken off Youtube!
https://t.me/rt_news_mirror
When I try to open that, I get “this channel can’t be displayed because it violated local laws”.
Bloody Hell Shane Warne has died, age 52, heart attack.
Saw him up close at the 1999 World Cup, he commandeered a golf buggy after winning the match and drove it through the crowd at high speed….was hilarious.
Still, 52 is a ripe old age for a healthy sportsman to die of a heart attack, lots of sportspeople are dying of heart attacks in their 30s, 20s and even teens so we mustn’t be ungrateful.
Shocker. Our non-tyrant ‘leaders’ in our ‘free’ Western deMOCKracies, aided and abetted by tech giants and the mainstream media have been censoring us for years. It is very important we don’t hear or read anything but The Truth™️ from its pristine source, or try to make our own minds up about things from information from a variety of maybe contradictory sources.
Why do you ask?
O/T but Shane Warne dead of a heart attack at 52, wonder what might be implicated?
Well he definitely had the Pfizer shot, he was bragging about it in the Daily Mail last year
The virtue signalling, the hysteria, the propaganda, the censorship, the legacy media in absolute lockstep… I feel like I’m back in the halcyon days of 2020. Only instead of anti-lockdown, anti-mask sceptics being the target of the deranged masses, Russians are now in the firing line
Shane Warne, yet another case of myocoincidentalitis. So many pro-vaxx sports people suddenly popping their clogs, if you were into conspiracy theories you’d think it was planned…….
That one cheered me up. Thanks.
In 2022 Glavlit has been replaced by the media regulator Ofcom
Discuss
It really is the ultimate sign of weakness that you think that your own arguments are so weak that your people might be seduced by Russian lies, isn’t it?
I actually want CNN banned for its never ending lying, but good luck with that one.
It’s no longer about equality opportunity to express genuinely held opinions, right or wrong. It’s about the ability to lie for money to serve you particular masters.
Listening to eg, the BBC, was also illegal in Nazi-Germany.
But this just illustrates how our overlings think about us: We’re feeble-minded underlings who must be protected from exposure to information our poor brains just cannot interpret correctly. This is obviously fundamentally undemocratic as it amounts to the tacit admission that the sovereign in a democracy – the people – is really just an imbecile who needs to be guided carefully by the experts appointed for this task lest he makes wrong decisions.
Not about protection. About obfuscation.
It’s highly tactical.
Experience shows that once the public perception of a situation is established it’s a hard long process to change it.
We’ve been assaulted by a blitzkrieg of pro-Ukraine, anti-Russia propaganda so that the public mindset can be firmly established.
It worked a treat with all things covid. First that it was super dangerous, then that masks work, then that the vaccines save lives. Dismantling those lies will take years, perhaps they never will.
Like 9/11. The story of the long bearded Jihadi coordinating a dozen Saudis from an Afghan cave was so firmly established in the minds of our society by a well planned media blitz that it will always continue to be widely believed.
In our modern times, history is written at the very outset.
The Canadians have a dish called “poutine”. A diner in Quebec has removed the name from the menu, although they’re still offering it.
I detest the banning of these communications. During the last war, we could listen to Lord Haw-Haw without the government supposing the country would fall in love and side with Germany. My father in the Eight Army and his opposition both had “Lili Marlene/Unter der Laterne” to keep them happy.
@ModerateRadical sums it up pretty well for me. What needs banning in the UK makes for a long list of things and people, which doesn’t include RT etc.
I think I am right in saying that RT was the ONLY TV station that actually televised the demos in London over the past year.
The BBC, ITV, Sky and all the rest of the Fourth Estate did not do so.
There were (there always are 7,000 who have not bowed down to Baal) some media outlets that DID report those demos. Not the crew listed above, however.
They also talked to people on the ground in the Canadian Truckers protest, and one of the journalists got attacked. BBC are all to gear to mention old people getting arrested in Russia, what about the Holocaust survivors arrested in UK in 2020 or the old lady trampled in Canada. They are the ‘wrong’ sort of old people.
I was filmed by RT once on a demo!! I could see myself on film on the RT site. Fame!
It was a demo for Julian Assange. Completely ignored by the BBC.
Would you describe yourself as a ‘professional protester’?
No. I never get paid.
“Boris Johnson admits he did play £160,000 tennis match with ex-Russian minister’s wife
He defended his party for taking the money, saying it was wrong to create a “miasma of suspicion” around all Russians who have made the UK their home.”
https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/boris-johnson-admits-he-did-play-160000-tennis-match-with-exrussian-ministers-wife
The BBC did, however, give coverage to a few hundred Ukrainians demonstrating in London a few days ago.
Funny that.
Anybody that hasn’t lost their mind doesn’t need this explaining why it’s a bad idea. We’re in a sorry state of affairs that we’ve got to a stage where this does need to be explained. Just like with Covid, people have lost their heads. I just can’t help but keep going back to Rudyard Kipling’s If, and it becomes more poignant with every passing day. Helps keep me sane.
That poem kept me going through a good portion of the last two years. Now, listening to the people I meet on my daily dog walk segue neatly from ‘the unvaccinated should be shot’ to the BBC/virtual signalling stance on Ukraine, I feel like I am a different species.
‘the unvaccinated should be shot’
On the boaters’ forum, many of whom adopt the attitude that ‘the unvaccinated are vermin’ are bemoaning the death of Shane Warne… “he was only 52!”.
I helpfully suggested that his death could have been worse if it were not for the ‘vaccines’. To be met with the usual fake shock and horror by the very people who want all sorts of nasty things to happen to ‘the unvaxxed’.
Some on there say the ‘unvaxxed’ should be forcefully injected, as they have a right to live without the fear of catching Covid, and gleefully jest at the ‘unvaxxed’ who have lost their jobs, income, businesses, properties, homes and lives.
“If” won a popular poetry poll a few years ago, didn’t it. It doesn’t seem as if many of the voters understood it at all.
I was taught ” don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers”.
Clearly that lesson should now be :-
“Don’t believe ANYTHING you read in the newspapers”. (Aka MSM ).
I certainly learnt that over two years ago re covid hysteria – helped by a degree of expertise in immunology.
I know virtually nothing of the hugely complex histories of Russia/Ukraine, but the recent and continuing trashing of medical science causes me to think that maybe, just maybe, sinister forces are again at work.
What does it take to wake up sheep – or at least to bloody well get them think, just a little bit.
I read somewhere, in the past year or so, that in the 70’s the KGB did an experiment and found out that if you fed people non stop propaganda for 66 (I think) days, not only did they go on to accept further propaganda without question, but they were more likely to believe even more extreme propaganda. Helps me to remember this when I feel the world has lost its mind.
I have not heard of this before, but it does seem to be borne out by what I see around me.
Propaganda has been fed to the public for over 2 years now, that’s around 730 days. And some people still think ‘the sheep’ are going to ‘wake up’?
You are right. They will never wake up. Maybe the trance just gets deeper.
Most are just numbskulls who’d rather just share their dinner, or a beer pic on Facebook. Not a care in the World. They are usually the ones lining up for the clot shot.
I was somewhat amused, when driving this morning, to catch a bit of a 5Live programme, on which a dissident Russian emigré was discussing the Russian state takeover of broadcast media since the invasion of Ukraine.
The BBC anchor opined, without a shred of a sense of irony, that state control of such things was bad and undemocratic. As if we had not just gone through two years of Ofcom (presumably under threat of disbandment) ordering our own media to stay clear of contradicting or questioning the validity of UK government pronouncements and edicts concerning the covid restrictions and associated fuck-wittedness.
Perhaps ‘amused’ was the wrong word for me to use, there…
Are Russians the new unvaccinated?
Yep very much so and no punishment is too great for them!!!
(sarc)
Look. Everyone can calm down as a definitive action is about to happen. One which will solve it all.
A Faceache “friend” has shared with me that at 7pm tonight (UK time), church bells will ring and we are all supposed to turn out our lights….wait for it….”to show Mr Putin that we’d rather sit in the dark than buy his oil and gas.”
Bwahahahaha! Well, the numpties had better practice sitting in the dark, because without Russian gas and oil, and relying only on those nice windmills and solar panels, dark will be the only option.
And I bet Putin is soooo bothered by this.
I think people have run mad. Truly. I’m starting to feel like the only sane person in the madhouse.
Oh bollocks. I’ve been banging a pan on my doorstep for the last half hour and now you tell me this. I wish you’d sort out which virtue signal we’re doing.
I’m not sure if it happened, mind. Haven’t heard church bells, and all the neighbours kept the lights on. I’ll try to give you more notice next time, alright? Apologies for tonight!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVbrH09HYoQ&ab_channel=TheDuran
Good update on todays Ukraine situation from Mercouris
As we are talking about censorship here, here are some useful links to sites where you can find fair coverage of the Ukraine situation.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/
https://consortiumnews.com/
https://www.moonofalabama.org/
https://thesaker.is/the-relatively-civilized-people-should-ally-themselves-with-the-uncivilized-ones/
https://war.jermwarfare.com/w/892y1VCz9VLAyJkegsjvraGg/f6eU48KLicrvTXoLWsGXTg/W1s3oDfVZOea1LM8922wjnaQ
The latest jerm warfare video.
Russell is also an accredited war correspondent, providing factual news and counter-propaganda about the situation in Ukraine and the Ukrainian government’s war against Donbass. He is trying to expose the US-backed regime in Kiev. Russell is also the vice president of Donbass Humanitarian Aid, a fund which has helped hundreds of innocent victims of the war since 2015.
In short, he is the real deal.
He joined me, last night, from a hotel in Donetsk, where he and his wife currently reside. His house, which is a few kilometres away, is in the line of Ukrainian fire, making living there simply too dangerous. A few hours before our conversation, a Ukrainian bomb exploded near the hotel.
Russell chatted to me about
Those are just a few of the talking points.
Well my Virtue signalling bingo card was completed today with all my Facebook friends who previously had their picture profiles garlanded with ❤️ NHS ,then COVID jab rosettes and now drum roll all had the Ukrainian flag up.
Actually bumped into one in the pub last night.Not a Scooby do about the recent history (30) years of country and politics etc.
But ‘we have to support our brothers and sisters in Ukraine in their Democracy!’
A bad situation all round sadly. However such sober could moments don’t sell media attention.
I didn’t labour the point though as wanted to have a civilised chat about the 6nations.
It’s like a software update for people.
Lots of alternative media out there…
https://southfront.org/
Meanwhile apparently Apple & G0ogle maps have also removed any reference to Rooshia
One could argue that we already live in an outright Soviet society today.
Soviet culture was rife with political and moral norms, not unlike how the West postures itself today. Writers and artists were condemned and repressed by the regime. The New Norm is the modern narrative and culture, and anyone deviating from it is the unperson deserving of correction. How much censorship and “fact checking” have we seen by the regime in modern times? It’s not even funny. If a video, podcast, or essay doesn’t align with the state it is removed, and the person de-platformed and cancelled.
Filmmakers were ordered to submit their scripts to the regime. Anything politically incorrect was to be censored, altered, or sanctioned. How much of Hollywood and Western entertainment industry today has been shoe-horned through a politically correct or “woke” filter before being put into production?
Economic and political activity such as opposition to the Soviet narratives faced harsh penalties, such as gulags and concentration camps. The brutal repression of anti-lockdown protests worldwide combined with the media blackout rhymes all too well with Soviet tactics. The denial of genuine grassroots funding to peaceful protests by the regime, and grave punishments to those bearing even the slightest association to it in Trudeau’s Canada is a prime example of another modern Soviet tactic.
Even speculation and free thought was feared and Stalin could only wish for a microphone under every coffee table to know what everyone was talking about at all times. Oh how he’d love to mandate an Alexa, Siri, Cortana, or Google in everyone’s homes and pockets. It’d be his wet dream! How many people reading this got one of these wiretaps for themselves without even being forced or coerced it?
Just about every Western “democratic” government has used the pseudo pandemic as a pretext to impose ever-greater censorship.
Our own elected defenders of rights and freedom are even now pushing through swingeing new police and press laws to punish anyone who dares even think of questioning their frequently-flawed (think COVID!) policies and prouncements.
People in glass houses. . .
Toby has gone mad. RT is now broadcasting via Rumble. I really think that Toby is so desperate to re enter the circle of his establishment friends he is now prepared to toe the narrative, whatever the facts.
the problem is it won’t stop at RT, now the state has given itself the power to ban views it does not like, this will only extend now and with the online harms bill. The state also wants to ID check people on social media, while it may be voluntary to begin with, if you say have a different opinion over say the virus and hand over an ID, which many people will do to gain full function of the account features like following others who want verifying, then expect to be banned for life if you say the wrong opinion. Countries like Russia would love this powers and would ID everyone on social media and then go around and arrest the dissenters.
Surely anyone with an ounce of intelligence understands that RT is directed by the Russian government to spread its views and propaganda, we know that, so what was the point of banning it?
There are people who think the BBC is fair and balanced as well! People are thick