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A Journal of Literature, Democracy & Dissidence In the Samizdat Tradition of Writing against the Machine |
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Quotes Regarding Censorship
You would do well
to learn what words like "censorship" and "ad hominem" actually mean. I don't
expect this to happen.
L’intolleranza tende a censurare, e la censura accresce
l’ignoranza della ragione altrui e quindi l’intolleranza stessa: è un circulo
vizioso rigido difficile da spezzare [Intolerance tends to result in censorship,
and censorship increases ignorance in the reasoning of others and therefore
intolerance itself: it is a rigidly vicious circle difficult to break]
—Sinclair Lewis, “Letter to
the Pulitzer Prize Committee” (The Man from Main Street)
The peculiar evil of silencing
the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as
well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more
than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the
opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost
as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth,
produced by its collision with error.
Nowadays this kind of veiled censorship even extends to books. The MOI [Ministry of Information] does not, of course, dictate a party line or issue an index expurgatorius. It merely ‘advises’. Publishers take manuscripts to the MOI and MOI ‘suggests’ that this or that is undesirable or premature, or ‘would serve no good purpose’. And although there is no definite prohibition, no clear statement that this or that must not be printed, official policy is never flouted. (As I Please, Tribune, 7 July 1944)
—George Orwell
The sinister fact about literary
censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be
silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official
ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of
sensational items of news—things which on their own merits would get the big
headlines—being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government
intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to
mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to
understand. The British press is extremely centralized, and most of it is owned
by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important
topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and
periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is
an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking
people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say
this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in
mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trouser in the presence of a
lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with
surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never
given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow
periodicals. What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.
—Salman Rushdie
and Jonathan Rauch, “Censorship Is Harmful” Glavlit is the Russian acronym for the body which censored all printed matter in the USSR. Each glavlit censor was supplied with a secret book of instructions, constantly amended and updated, which lists the topics that may not be mentioned in print.
—Vladimir
Lakshin, Solzhenitsyn, Tvardovsky and Novy Mir (1980)
Many union members and even delegates at this congress know how
they themselves bowed to the pressure of censorship and made concessions in the
structure and concept of their books, changing chapters, pages, paragraphs,
sentences, giving them innocuous titles, only to see them finally in print, even
if it meant distorting them irremediably.
Without any censorship in the West, fashionable
trends of thought and ideas are fastidiously separated from those that are not
fashionable, and the latter, without ever being forbidden, have little chance of
finding their way into periodicals or books or being heard in colleges. Your
scholars are free in the legal sense, but they are hemmed in by the idols of the
prevailing fad.
So I have no grounds to complain; on the contrary, writers should
consider the condition of permanent controversiality to be invigorating, part of
the risk envolved in choosing the profesión. It is a fact of life that writers
have always and with due consideration and great pleasure spit in the soup of
the high and mighty. That is what makes the history of literature analogous to
the development and refinement of censorship.
El censor hizo un
trabajo excelente... In a
nation whose future depends upon an education in freedom, colleges and
universities are teaching the values of censorship, self-censorship, and
self-righteous abuse of power... Universities have become the enemy of a free
society, and it is time for the citizens of that society to recognize this
scandal of enormous proportions and to hold these institutions to account...
Universities are administered, above all, not by ideological zealots, but by
careerists who have made a Faustian deal.
Initially, I hadn’t even thought of suppression as a problem in
science and academia. Now I realize that it is pervasive. Each case has its
own peculiarities, but there are some regularly recurring “issues of suppression
cases. First, someone does something–research, teaching or public comment–that
threatens a powerful interest group. Second, there is subsequent attack on the
person. This might be censorship, disciplinary proceedings, slander, transfer,
dismissal, or blacklisting. A few cases are dramatic. [...] But most cases are
more subtle. Job applications don’t lead to jobs; publications are rejected;
promotion is denied; grant applications are unsuccessful.
High on the list is the myth that we now live in an ‘information
age’–when, in fact, we live in a media age, in which the available information
is repetitive, ‘safe’, and limited by invisible boundaries.
Censorship is the strongest drive in human nature, sex is a weak
second.
We’re not in the business of censorship. If you scratch one
word, where does it stop?
Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself. It
is the hallmark of an authoritarian regime.
The result [of school censorship] usually is an unquestioning
attitude among students, an unhealthy acquiescence in pronouncements of school
authorities no matter how unfair or oppressive they may be. In such
authoritarian schools, students' rights are routinely denied, with little or no
protest by students. The cost of such controls is not only the absence of a free
student press but also bland, apathetic students who are unaware of or
uninterested in their rights… "What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist." —From The Swedish "Censorship" Homepage (since censored!)
It is our attitude toward
free thought and free expression that will determine our fate. There must be no
limit on the range of temperate discussion, no limits on thought. No subject
must be taboo. No censor must preside at our assemblies. Fear of ideas makes us impotent and ineffective. Thus if the First Amendment means anything in this field, it must allow protests even against the moral code that the standard of the day sets for the community. In other words, literature should not be suppressed merely because it offends the moral code of the censor. The great and invigorating influences in American life have been the unorthodox: the people who challenge an existing institution of way of life, or say and so things that make people think. —William O. Douglas
All despotisms should be
considered problems of mental hygiene, and all support of censorship should be
considered as problems of abnormal psychology.
The vigor and passion with which Solzhenitsyn began his crusade
to liberate literature from state censorship may surpise the Western reader. It
is well to remember, however, that Russians regard literature, not just as a
source of entertainment or aesthetic pleasure, but rather as an open forum for
the most serious discussion of social ills, the destingy of the nation, and the
goals and aspirations of their nation and mankind. Thus without a free and
honest literature, the Russians and other nationalities in the Soviet Union lack
the opportunity to discuss and, by extension, to think creatively about their
past and future, and to shape their own destiny.
Censorship is the commonest
social blasphemy because it is mostly concealed, built into us by indolence,
self-interest, and cowardice. I look upon those who would deny others the right to urge and argue their position, however irksome and pernicious they may seem, as intellectual and moral cowards. —William E. Borah
If the press is not free, if
speech is not independent and untrammeled, if the mind is shackled or made
impotent through fear, it makes no difference under what form of government you
live, you are a subject and not a citizen.
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficient. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. —Chief Justice Louis D. Brandeis
All censorships exist to prevent
anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All
progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by
supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress
is the removal of all censorships. There is the whole case against censorships
in a nutshell.
Free speech is life itself.
The problem of freedom in
America is that of maintaining a competition of ideas, and you do not achieve
that by silencing one brand of idea.
"Freedom of speech means that
you shall not do something to people either for the views they have, or the
views they express, or the words they speak or write."
Without free speech no search
for truth is possible... no discovery of truth is useful... Better a
thousandfold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in
a day, but the denial slays the life of the people, and entombs the hope of the
race.
Censorship reflects society's
lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.
The test of democracy is freedom
of criticism.
If we don't believe in freedom
of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.
Take away the right to say
"fuck" and you take away the right to say "fuck the government."
Les hommes se
jugent à l’usage qu’ils font de leur puissance. Il est remarquable que les âmes
inférieures ont toujours tendance à abuser des parcelles de pouvoir que le
hasard ou la bêtise leur ont confiées.
C’est le propre
des censures violentes d’accréditer les opinions qu’elles attaquent.
[It is characteristic of vicious censorship to
give credence to the very opinions it seeks to annihilate. trad. gts]
La censure,
quelle qu’elle soit, me paraît une monstruosité, une chose pire que l’homicide ;
l’attentat contre la pensée est un crime de lèse âme.
[It] puts a severe
strain on the very power principle that the writer has an absolute right to say
what he likes. In a civilized world we all have a moral obligation to apply a
modicum of censorship to our own work in order to reinforce this principle of
free speech.
The idea that the First
Amendment permits government to ban publications that are “offensive” to some
people puts an ominous gloss on freedom of the press. That test would make it
possible to ban any paper or any journal or magazine in some benighted place.
The First Amendment was designed “to invite dispute,” to induce “a condition of
unrest,” to “create dissatisfaction with conditions as they are,” and even to
stir “people to anger.” Terminiello v. Chicago [1949]. The idea that the First
Amendment permits punishment for ideas that are “offensive” to the particular
judge or jury sitting in judgment is astounding. No greater leveler of speech
or literature has ever been designed. To give the power to the censor, as we do
today, is to make a sharp and radical break with the traditions of free
society. The First Amendment was not fashioned as a vehicle for dispensing
tranquillizers to the people. Its prime function was to keep debate open to
“offensive” as well as to “staid” people. The tendency throughout history has
been to subdue the individual and to exalt the power of government. The use of
the standard “offensive” gives authority to government that cuts the very vitals
out of the First Amendment. As is intimated by the Court’s opinion, the
materials before us may be garbage. But so is much of what is said in political
campaigns, in the daily press, on TV, or over radio. By reason of the First
Amendment—and solely because of it—speakers and publishers have not been
threatened or subdued because their thoughts and ideas may be “offensive” to
some…
Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and
pure and very dead. “¿Por qué no pone usted un periódico suyo? ¿Cuándo sale Fígaro? ¡Es idea peregrina! Ya he visto en los demás periódicos la publicación del permiso para el periódico nuevo. ¿Saldrá por fin en febrero, en marzo? ¿Cuándo? (...) Dicho y hecho, concibamos el plan. El periódico se titulará Fígaro, un nombre propio; esto no significa nada y a nada compromete, ni a observar, ni a revistar, ni a ser eco de nadie, ni a chupar flores, ni a compilar, ni a maldita Dios la cosa. El periódico tratará de todo. ¿Qué menos? Pero como no ha de ser ni tan grande como nuestra paciencia, ni tan corto como nuestra esperanza, y como han de caber mis artículos, no pondremos las reales órdenes. Por otra parte no gusto de afligir a nadie; por consiguiente no se pondrán los reales nombramientos; menos gusto de estar siempre diciendo la misma cosa; por lo tanto, fuera las partes oficiales. Estoy decidido a no gastar palabras en balde; mi periódico ha de ser toda sustancia; así, cada sesión de cortes vendrá en dos líneas, algunos días menos, como de esas veces no ocupará nada. (...) es preciso resignarse, esperar... Al fin lo habrá todo... demasiado va a haber luego... ésta es la idea que me detiene, por fin: que cuando haya director, redactores, impresor, cajistas, papel... entonces también habrá censor... Eso sí, eso siempre lo hay... ni hay que mandarle hacer, ni hay que esperar...” “[...] No existe un público único, invariable, juez imparcial, como se pretende; que cada clase de la sociedad tiene su público particular, de cuyos rasgos y caracteres diversos y aun heterogéneos se compone la fisionomía monstruosa del que llamamos público; Que éste es caprichoso, y casi siempre tan injusto y parcial como la mayor parte de los hombres que le componen; que es intolerante al mismo tiempo que sufrido, [...] que olvida con facilidad e ingratitud los servicios más importantes, y premia con usura a quien le lisonjea y le engaña; y, por último, que con gran sinrazón queremos confundirle con la posteridad, que casi siempre revoca sus fallos interesados”. “[...] un sinnúmero de oficinistas y de gentes ocupadas o no ocupadas el resto de la semana se afeita, se muda, se viste y se perfila; veo que a primera hora llena las iglesias, la mayor parte por ver y ser visto[...] y escribo en mi libro: El público oye misa, el público coquetea, pierde el tiempo y se ocupa en futesas: idea que confirmo al pasar por la Puerta del Sol”.
"Somos satíricos
porque queremos criticar abusos, porque quisiéramos contribuir con nuestras
débiles fuerzas a la perfección posible de la sociedad a que tenemos la honra de
pertenecer".
Codes against “offensive speech,” however, are utterly
incompatible with the goals of higher education. After all, the concept of
“academic freedom,” discussed later in this Guide, ensured, in theory at least,
that discussion of even the most controversial and provocative issues should be
vigorous and unfettered on campuses, all in the name of the search for truth
that almost all liberal arts institutions long have claimed as their governing
ethic. Thus far, courts have agreed, at least on constitutional grounds,
striking down speech codes virtually every time that they have been directly
challenged.
If some zealots had their way all such disagreement would be hate
speech.—p 98
The American Dissident www.theamericandissident.org, a 501c3 nonprofit. |
