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Vietnam Imposes New Blogging Restrictions
GMAW is one of many to mention that the Vietnam government has approved a new set of regulations aimed at bloggers. The new restrictions ban bloggers from discussing certain subjects that the government deems sensitive or inappropriate. Not only are the topics limited, but bloggers are being directed to only write about issues that directly impact their personal lives. "The rules, which were approved Dec. 18, attempt to rein in Vietnam's booming blogosphere. It has become an alternative source of news for many in the communist country, where the media is state-controlled. The new rules require Internet companies that provide blogging platforms to report to the government every six months and provide information about bloggers on request."
Communism like capitalism is an economic model and it has nothing to do with freedom of speech, religion or human rights.
Communism as espoused by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto required the use of public education as an instrument of social control, the destruction of the traditional family and the destruction of traditional religion.
"There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc. that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis"
"The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention"
"Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists."
There is of course some context to these quotes, which you can check out for yourself - http://www.gutenberg.org/files/61/61.txt
I don't think it is unreasonable to use the Communist Manifesto to answer the question "What is communism?". The answer most definitely has everything to do with freedom of speech, religion and human rights.
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I think what he's saying is that governments who drive subversive speech underground aren't really doing themselves, or their citizens, any favors. Ideas don't need sunlight to grow.
Look at the US's case. We don't criminalize any speech, really, except kiddie porn and direct incitements to violence. (The McCain-Feingold campaign funding law is an arguable subject but there it's funding and timing, not content as such, that is involved.) So any nutcase with a chip on his shoulder can propagate the most outlandish, hateful tripe you could imagine. Things that would get him prosecuted in much of the EU, or executed in China.
What happens as a result? Not a damn thing. The resulting cacophony of dissidence just raises the "noise floor" of popular discourse. No radical point of view gains any more traction than it would have if it were aggressively suppressed by the government; if anything, we've become a more conservative nation since the Internet gave the nutcases their soapbox.
Suppressing speech is always pointless at best, and more likely counterproductive.