Is Censoring Necessary? The Dark Side of Censorship.
Censorship has a broad range of reasons for existing, some positive and some negative. In the positive regard, censorship protects the innocent and impressionable minds from the majority of unsavory subjects that they may be subjected to – whether this is from violence, sex or profanity in media such as films, television shows or radio stations. Censorship does have some good uses, especially in the protection of children and young adults from these taboo subject matters. But what happens when censorship is taken too far, and is used to absolutely control a society? There is a definite dark side of censorship, and unfortunately the majority of use of censorship lends itself to the negative spectrum, since it is primarily used in restricting the information flow in societies, thus keeping a stronger grip on the control of the population.
The purpose of this essay is to illustrate the dangers of too much censorship, and how it can affect entire countries of people in a life changing way. Through examining some prime examples of restrictive and oppressive governmental regimes, the methods of censorship used and their effects on the societies will be seen. Also, this essay will attempt to assertate whether such control and censorship is necessary, weighing up the positives and negatives on the societies involved. Also Plato’s republic will be brought into discussion, along with Sir Thomas Mor’s dissertation of Plato’s ideas into Utopia, and ideal society and whether this can ever exist in the real world.
Censorship and propaganda have a lot of similarities – censorship restricts the flow of truths and facts, and propaganda propagates false ideologies and fake truths. All of these are strong tools in controlling a society of people, and keeping them under control of a singular leader or group – usually referred to as a dictatorship, or Totalitarian state. Although this sounds a lot like the movies, many countries in the world today fall prey to this type of dirty tactics. This idea has been expressed in many movies, for example Equilibrium and V for Vendetta, and also the past, for example Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Countries such as China and North Korea, home to large populations in the world, have a stranglehold on the information dispersed to the general public. In fact there are at least 15 countries in the world today that censor and restrict Internet access to their population. For the naming purposes of this essay, they are Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Iran, Libya, Maldives, Nepal, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. They use censorship to control their societies, and restrict what they deem to be inappropriate for general consumption. These countries go so far as to have localized versions of the Internet, and massive firewalls set up to block off the global network. A panel of governmental agents must filter through every piece of information before it is duplicated, and placed on their localized Internet for the public of their country to view. This way there is no possible way for their citizens to come across censored materials, unless they find a way to circumvent these firewalls or protection schemes. If you think it is only government groups of these countries that are in on such dirty tactics, think again. In 2006 the Google Corporation cooperated with the Chinese government to filter the search results through their popular Internet search engine. Chinese visitors to the site could feel free to search as they pleased, but any inappropriate material would be automatically filtered out and restricted from them. Google received a lot of bad press for the incident. An example of the filtering is by searching for the words ‘Tiananmen’ on the Google Image Search on both the Chinese and normal versions of the site. The Chinese version shows pictures of the buildings, and general pictures of interest of the square. The normal version shows pictures from the Tiananmen Square massacre, with tanks and a dead students body. Censoring in this case has erased a very delicate piece of China’s history from their public’s knowledge.
In China the firewall is referred to as The Golden Shield Project, and is known as the Great Firewall of China outside of the country. It was first created in 1998, with a total cost of $800 million US dollars; The Golden Shield is one of the largest pieces of technology solely devoted to censorship. With such a huge amount of money allocated to such a purpose, it becomes very clear how much China depends on censorship of its large population of approximately 1.3 billion citizens.
One of the main reasons these countries encourage such tactics is fear – the fear that with free access to any type of information, the general individual will come across knowledge that will shake their perceptions of the world – namely the world they have been lead to believe, from the generally accepted world view of their government. The dangers of free speech and individual liberty should be clear to leaders of these types of countries. They fear that should information on all topics be abundant and available, there would be a lot more resistances towards their oppressive governments. It is a lot harder to keep a population under total control if they have access to freedom of speech. So freedom of speech is suppressed, and individual liberty is removed from the citizens of these countries.
In particular, China has great concern to keep control of its huge population. Dubbed the ‘Sleeping Giant’, China has one of the largest commercial potentials of all countries in the world, due to its huge landmass and resources, population, but most importantly sub-par human rights relating to wages and standard of living. Millions of Chinese citizens are forced into employment receiving the bare minimum of wages, while still maintaining a productive output, albeit being an output of mostly inferior products.
While these countries may believe that censorship is one of the primary ways of keeping control and power, they may be doing a lot more damage than they realize. Freedom of speech and freely available knowledge has been linked to creativity and progress in the fields of art, science and politics. With the power in the hands of the few instead of the hands of the many, the society as a whole suffers.
In other countries where censorship isn’t as prevalent, control is still exercised in various amounts of what is deemed acceptable for general consumption by the public. In many cases, films, games and music is censored to appeal to a more general audience. In all cases of censorship, a small group, or panel, of people who use their opinions to judge what will affect the entire population, do the censoring. This can affect things like freedom of speech in the exact same way as it does for the more affected countries, although is not carried out to the same extent.
For countries where the Internet is not restricted, the citizens have a great tool at their disposal – a tool that can be used to circumvent any censorship or restrictions. Which begs the question, is censorship necessary or even relevant when it can be circumvented easily? When games or movies are banned or censored, they can be retrieved on the Internet without any repercussions; unless you are caught. The only downside to utilizing the Internet as a circumvention tool are the laws in place to protect such breeches – downloading copyright files is a breech of copyright law. So countries placing restrictions or censoring certain items may be forcing some citizens to unwittingly break the law, if they wish to have their freedom of choice expressed and view the restricted materials. Of course, a lot of material may be censored for very good reasons – it may run counter to societal values, or any values seen as important to the ethics and values of that society. If censorship was more democratic, and decided upon by the community instead of a small group of opinionated individuals, it would be seen in a much more positive light. If the people in China, or other oppressed countries had the choice of what material to censor, their country would be in a far more enlightened position. How will they ever break free from their Dictatorship-like government if they don’t know what’s wrong with it?
It all comes down to the age-old adage of “Knowledge is Power”. Without the free exchange of ideas and knowledge, societies are forced to be spoon-fed information and ideologies from the ruling parties and groups, who will always use this power to control and stay in power. Knowledge is power, and is can be more than worth its weight in gold when it comes to information about political or government figures. Censorship becomes a key tool in keeping such information hidden and far removed from the general public, keeping the truth and knowledge in the hands of the chosen. By hiding truths and facts about the ruling parties of a country, it is harder for the citizens to make informed decisions when it comes to any voting or choice over who’s to rule. Dictatorships use this to their advantage to suppress any kind of opposition to their rule.
An example is Russia, where the dictator Vladimir Putin has exercised his power to stay in power by suppressing any attempts by competitors to publicize their political campaigns. The clearest example of this is the former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, whose attempts at running in opposition of the current leader of Russia have been stifled. Kasparov has been prohibited from publicly campaigning or promoting himself via the Internet. He was even arrested when leading a protest march about his lack of campaigning rights. Kasparov is campaigning for stronger democratic rights for his fellow citizens, and the current leader Putin is using censorship to stop him from gaining power.
A recent topic of censorship here in New Zealand was the game Man Hunt, which was banned from being sold in the country and restricted from being obtained using other methods, such as the Internet. The game featured very strong renditions of sadistic violence, and the censorship committee of New Zealand was worried about children copycatting the events in the game, just as children have attempted to copy events from the game Grand Theft Auto. Although the game was censored out of circulation, the game grew an underground following the game was distributed around the country regardless. People used circumvention methods to download the game from the Internet, where people in other countries where the game wasn’t banned had made copies available for download. With this downloaded game people then proceeded to make copies and share with their friends. This is another example of the relevancy of censorship, with circumvention of the censored materials readily available.
Back in ancient Greece, the home of democracy, the philosopher Plato proposed a new system of politics in his book The Republic. This new system consisted of three main types of people – Philosophers, lovers of knowledge, who would be the rulers of the society, Traders, lovers of material wealth, who would be free to pursue trade amongst themselves and other countries, and Protectors, citizens with courage and a taste for battle who would protect the borders of the country and the other citizens. In this example, the rulers of the country would be ruling for the benefit of the community, with knowledge being freely dispersed amongst everyone, and being of primary importance instead of material wealth. The protectors would primarily be mercenaries from other countries, with the idea that pitting likeminded bloodthirsty warriors against each other would eventually thin out their numbers, leaving a much greater percentage of peaceful abiding citizens in all countries. Author Thomas Mor used some of these idea’s to create Utopia, his vision of the perfect society. Utopia would include Equilism, few laws and the free exchange of knowledge and ideas. Although this perfect society may never be eventuated or exist, it is easy to compare societies and countries in the world today, and decide how close they are to the ‘perfect society’. A strong proponent of the perfect society is the freedom of speech and ideas, in other words individual liberty. This is strongly linked to censorship, and could be teased out to mean that the stronger censorship and restriction on freely available information in the country, the further away it is from actuating the ‘perfect society’. From this we can determine that censorship, if used the wrong way, can severely damage societies. Although it is hard to define a perfect society that would be perfect for every individual, certain subjects and ideas are beneficiary to all members of humanity, with subsequent improvements in happiness, productivity and progress in general.
It conclusion, it should be very clear that censorship does indeed have a dark side, and can be used for very sinister purposes. Although it can merit some positives if used in a very light sense, censorship is not really effective unless evaluated by the entire community in a democratic fashion. The main danger of censorship is giving power to a small number of individuals rather than the community. Censorship can be used to control entire populations and countries, and is used in this regard by countries such as China and Russia. Censorship can be closely tied with propaganda, and is usually used for very similar purposes – keeping a population under control of the rulers, and restricting freedom of information while propagating false truths. Censorship is a very powerful tool, and although it can be circumvented in less restrictive countries, doing so usually involves breaking the law, so must be used with much discretion. The idea of the perfect society, a Utopia, is defined by ideologies of the freedom of speech and information. Thereby it can be derived that countries with more restrictions and censorship rules are further away from the idea of the perfect society, and countries with more relaxed rules and regulations are closer. Is censorship damaging the progress of humanity as a whole? By analyzing the facts we arrive at the conclusion that censorship is doing a great disservice to the citizens in the world, more so to some than others, but nevertheless has a negative impact. Censorship is a powerful tool and must be used sparingly to reap any kind of benefit from it or show it in a positive light. But the most important question we must return to is whether censorship is necessary. Is it necessary to maintain governmental and dictator control in certain countries? In their eyes it is, as censorship is the main tool available to them to achieve this end. But is Censorship necessary for the well-being and development of the human race? No. Censorship impairs upon such humanitarian ideologies as freedom of speech and free expression of ideas and information, and the world would be better off by refraining from its use.
