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Need a new word for non-violent-censorship
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I often have the same difficulty when speaking with
Objectivists. They define "censorship" as "silencing the
speaker by force", which is a fine and useful definition, but
suppose we want to talk about a similar phenomenon which does
not involve force? For example, the magnate who owns all the
newspapers, television stations, bookstores and movie theatres
in a small town decides that never again will homosexuality be
publically mentioned in any of these venues. Force? No.
"Censorship"? Not by _that_ definition, but what _is_ it?
We need a new word, or else we have to continue using
"censorship" to mean both of those things. I sometimes use
"violent-censorship" and "non-violent-censorship" in
conversation.
As long as we continue to try to overload "censorship" we will
waste much of our dialogue energy on semantic quibbling or pure
misunderstanding.
Regards,
Zooko
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