Silence!

  Mike Kole comments at BlogCritics, relating to The Silenced Singer USA episode:

1.
"If you own land, will you let me erect a pro-libertarian billboard on your land?"
If the land in question is for renting space for billboards yet discriminates than this will be an unlawful business, propagating monoculture.

2.
"If I own a stage, by what right do *you* or anyone else get to impose your will on me?"
The stage is yours in every sense as long as it and the theater are empty.
The moment you open it to the public and to a performer/artist it has become a public space where by law you are not allowed to discriminate, nor announce in words or deeds, before or after: I accept Only people who think uniformly like me.

Eric Olsen did not accept my reference to "Holocaust, Fascism, etc.".
The essence of Fascism is not just Censorship but the Self-Censorship which enables it willingly. It was so throughout history, it spread all over during the Holocaust Era and is evident to this day. If we do not take notice and stay vigilant, then we'll wake up as the protagonist in Eugene Ionesco's play Rhinoceros, or worse:

"The "epidemic" of the rhinoceroses serves as a convenient allegory for the mass uprising of Nazism and fascism before and during World War II. Ionesco's main reason for writing Rhinoceros is not simply to criticize the horrors of Nazis, but to explore the mentality of those who so easily succumbed to Nazism. A universal consciousness that subverts individual free thought and will defines this mentality; in other words, people get rolled up in the snowball of general opinion around them, and they start thinking what others are thinking. In the play, people repeat ideas others have said earlier, or simultaneously say the same things. Once other people, especially authority figures, collapse in the play, the remaining humans find it even easier to justify why the metamorphoses are desirable..."

As long as they do not deter us from staying humanly benign, I do not mind the zoo yet prefer Noah's whole survival kit. He owned that boat, he made it with his own hands, right? Even the almighty did not order him to censor the passengers. It is good for our survival to cultivate differences. Ok, Ok, too bad there was not room for all and each living creature, but the rule was still fair representation of diversity, not so?

This issue comes up more than once in Israel. Some time ago a famous veteran Israeli singer, one of the two singers from the Independence War (1948) performed at a Protest event and expressed her disagreement with the Occupation. As a result she lost many engangements. The "property owners" in that case were goverment officials and private self-censors alike...


 

 

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posted by Unknown at 2:04 AM