I have a cousin who was born and raised in California and moved to Spain in his twenties where he married and still lives. Making a comment about Big Tech and other corporate suppression of free speech, he posted a question about it, specifically when and how or should it be suppressed.
As expected there were a couple of comments all in favor of such suppression and so I felt compelled to supply another viewpoint. You see, I had just finished reading the 1993 book called “The Killer Department” [Pantheon Books/Random House] by Robert Cullen, Newsweek’s Moscow bureau chief at the time . It is about the search for a serial killer in the USSR during the eight years before glasnost. You may remember the movie based on that true story, “Citizen X”, starring a brilliant cast of Stephen Rea (detective), Donald Sutherland (the detective’s boss), Max Von Sydow (psychiatrist), and Jeffrey DeMunn (the killer).
The killer’s hunting grounds ranged far and wide with 52 victims — that he admitted to and that they could prove. The book details how it is that the man, who had been giving clues since his teens (being caught molesting children and teen girls) through his professional working life (stealing from employers and otherwise not doing his job of procuring because he was looking for victims) and up until he was caught (at 57 years old), managed to brazenly get away with his tortures and murders of victims of both sexes ranging in ages from 10 to 42.
The difficulty with the investigation was lack of free speech: The inability of detectives to share information that went against the Communist holy of holies: Their political ideology. The generational State suppression of free speech made it difficult to report criminal behavior. Thus Andrei Chikatilo was simply passed along to another job opportunity by simply making promises of never returning to that workplace ever again.
Recordkeeping by local LEOs was also hampered by lack of free speech: If their records showed an uptick in crime or that crimes went unsolved, it was the police that were punished, so they made up statistics to please their overlords. This made the beleaguered law enforcement personal just not do what was asked of them by the lead detective in this case as they assumed it was all business as usual for them. Many did not believe such a killer could exist.
Citizens and police who did try to report Chikatilo were laughed off and told such crimes did not exist within the Soviet citizenry and to say otherwise was punishable with imprisonment, loss of job and housing, and or stripping of other benefits, what little there were.
Under cover of the inertia of the State and its citizens who had been trained not to question “authority” or authority figures lest they be punished, the killer had free reign.
But glasnost happened and the press, previously unable to report the crimes, were now feeling quite capitalistic and reporting the hunt for the serial killer in as much detail as they could in hopes circulation would improve. (Our liberal elite journalists on print, broadcast, and online should take the lesson to heart of sharing accurate information to improve profitability.)
Should all speech be considered as free?
Freedom of speech should only be illegal in cases where actual loss of life could accrue (i.e., yelling fire in a crowded theater). All other suppression of free speech eventually leads to a society that supports opportunity for criminal behaviour.
People should be allowed to question, defend, and weigh information and points of view without worrying they will be punished by the government and any of their handmaiden organizations such as BLM, ACLU, etcetera.
Also, for those who would abuse freedom of speech, they can be held accountable. For instance, if I report statistics to support my point of view: Anyone should feel free and be able to challenge those stats by asking how I arrived at them or where I got them and, if it is found out that I blatantly lied and made them up, I could and should be held legally liable, in some instances, and in others readers would stop reading my columns thus punishing my lying boohiney in the marketplace of the free exchange of ideas.
Needed: Balance, an accounting, and an excising of the “worm that turned the apple”.
So, here we have in the U.S. and Britain and other countries claiming to be lovers of freedom, groups who quietly wormed their way into positions of power.
For instance, the mayor of Washington D.C. just called for an increase in police overtime in order to combat growing violence. Yet her pussy-hat conciliatory ways have found her caught between activists and police. To defund or not to defund? That is the question she was having a hard time answering and thus violence by criminals is causing a loss of life.
Gee, sounds just like back in the USSR before glasnost and to some degree even after.
Then there is the worship of criminals, such as George Floyd who has been turned into a martyr for the Communist cause, and social justice gigalos and streetwalkers — these days known as the Democratic Socialist movement. Free speech and freedom of action are being guaranteed to criminals by weak-willed, yella-belly, entitled, spineless politicians (many with “disorderly sex lives”, a Soviet phrase) who, having abdicated their role, are now leaving it to the citizens to protect and defend.
Well, these weak-willed, yella-belly, entitled, spineless politicians will get — if not already are getting — what they are asking for. Weapons for self-defense are flying off the shelves and these weak-willed, yella-belly, entitled, spineless politicians are doing their damnedest to shut down citizens’ rights to self-protection by claiming that to protect one’s self or loved ones or fellow citizens makes one an enemy of the state, at worst, and a hater of [insert a variety of categories here].
Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, yappy talk…but we get bad outcomes instead.
Actions of the Democrat Socialists dream chasers, Commies by any other name, consist solely of bumping gums, formulating plans, and issuing edicts are already leading to what the Soviets experienced: False reporting of crime stats and the making up of fake reports to pass up the line.
Just like the warm and fuzzy Soviet propaganda slogan “Children are our only privileged class” combined with suppression of free speech did nothing but harm every single child in the USSR, Democratic Socialists don’t care about children. They just want you to think they do.
Just like in 1964 when the SCOTUS Justice Potter Stewart had to describe his threshold test for obscenity in Jacobellis v. Ohio, his written opinion stated: “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [“hard-core pornography”], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”
Just like Neo felt the damaging effects of the Matrix and went against his job, his boss, and his friends to combat those who built the Matrix, and knew it when he felt it, citizens today are feeling and seeing the effects of the push of the Communist philosophy in action in the democratic republic, the United States, and they are quietly but firmly holding their ground in defense.
Exactly like Satan relies upon good people believing they don’t exist, criminals and the power hungry rely upon that same mindset. Why let them systematically brainwash you?
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Born and raised in Georgia, Angela K. Durden is an author, publisher, editor, songwriter, performer, and more, living in the Metro Atlanta, Georgia, area. Support your Citizen Journalist and visit her Consolidated Author Page and buy a book. See more about Angela here. Want to watch a fun video? Click here.
