Dissent Of The Day

By Patrick

A reader writes:

I was really glad to see your post, "Loving the Firewall." I live and teach in China, and had a conversation on this subject last night with one of my colleagues. Your last line--"The greatest trick of state controlled media is getting the population to demand its own censorship."--is a bit of a stick in my craw. It oversimplifies the situation implies that the demand for censorship is something that common people have been duped into from the top down. This might have been true thousands of years ago, but by this time the negative attitude towards dissension permeates the culture to such an extent that I think the top-down framework needs to be jettisoned. The deference to superiors, government officials not least, is deeply ingrained in the culture here. Many positively believe that allowing more criticism would be an act of weakness on the part of the government, a failure to protect the public from pernicious ideas. I have a hard seeing that the people here have been tricked into something that they positively want and demand.