Forty years ago, a rock band named Pink Floyd had a hit song, The Wall, describing the institutions of education as indoctrination machines generating thought controls. In the era of the internet, the thought control mechanisms metastasized, but the intents of the gatekeepers remain the same.
In his weekly monologue, Neil Oliver frames new internet safety legislation in the U.K. around the issues of government-controlled speech, free thought and the recent examples of weaponized outcomes in the example of our COVID era. [The transcript is HERE, and the internal citation he mentions from Alana Newhouse is HERE]. Oliver’s perspective is thoughtful. WATCH:
[Transcript] – […] “Moving faster and faster, from the 1970s onwards, the online culture enabled the tiny, ideologically driven elite that created it to win and take all. The online safety bill now making its way through parliament feels a whole lot like yet another move from a playbook that is well worn by now – make us, the little folk, feel we’re in danger from something we cannot see, and promise to make us feel safe by assuming yet more control over our lives.
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Vladimir Putin is a totalitarian dictator who does not allow dissent within his cabinet. Putin does not align with free thought. As a consequence, all of the right-thinking people in the world must unite to crush the wrong thinking people… because freedom demands it, or something.