How much difference, if any, is there between the old Soviet attitude towards free expression and that of current Western governments? From J.B. Shurk at americanthinker.com:
There is no shortage of Internet forums filled with energetic contributors all predicting the imminent collapse of the West. Communicating about current events, culture, war, and the economy, a multitude of anonymous speakers publicize their worries every day. Western governments — increasingly insecure, hostile to tradition, and unmoored from any abiding principles — have decided that the best way to project strength is to silence critics.
As European governments more overtly embrace censorship and criminalize speech, the incremental push toward a regulated online system requiring authenticated digital identities promises a future when only government-engineered narratives will be approved for public expression. Society will lose another “pressure release valve” as the Western Establishment welds shut the ventilators of public debate — hoping to trap citizens’ combustible grievances deep underground.
This century has been eye-opening for many reasons. Technological innovation has weakened institutional control over public opinion and empowered regular people to question authorities in meaningful ways. Among the important revelations that have subsequently come to light is the inescapable conclusion that Western governments are not at all committed to free speech. For many Westerners who lived through the Cold War, this has come as a bit of a shock.
The principal distinction that supposedly separated the Soviet Union from the “free” West, after all, was that the former maintained a “closed” system managed by a strong central government, while the latter restrained government power and ensured protections for citizens’ personal liberties. In the Soviet Union, government apparatchiks constructed and disseminated official “truths.” In the U.S.-led West, no government had a legitimate monopoly over truth.
The phrase “those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable” is a quote attributed to John F. Kennedy, delivered in a speech at the White House in 1962.
(from AI)