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@seekjustice

I love this topic! 😀

On whether banning or censoring is more effective: Censoring. No doubt. In the short run, banning is obviously more effective but as the others have pointed out, it is human nature to go after the forbidden. People would always have a need for entertainment. A cunning, clever government would realise that trying to stop that would be futile so what they should do is to ensure that people will satisfy that need on the government’s terms (by providing their own propagandist media).

Case in point: the mass media in the modern, commercialised world today. I mean, think about all the disinformation and false truths that have become widely accepted in the last few decades (e.g. ‘casual’ sex, the triviality of marriage) thanks to positive portrayals in the media. The most brilliant thing about it all (for much of the western world at least) is the ‘free market’ illusion it has. Due to the lack of explicit banning and how people may not be very well-informed about media regulations (if there are any), a lot of people don’t realise just how much control large media corporations and governments (both of which are run by the elites in society) have on the content that they see. People may think that they are discerning audiences and that what they are seeing is the output of a free, fair art market when there are really a lot of hidden agendas going on behind the scenes in the industry.

Giving funding and resources to the content that supports their agenda while subtly starving the opposing voices is, in my view, a strategy more frightening than any book burning or mass execution of artists.