More context please?
It’s redacted
The Post-WW2 reeducation programs for denazification were probably justified. Like showcasing the horrors of the nazi regime by giving people mandatory tours of the concentration camps etc.
When trying to combat verifiable misinformation. We’ve got people working in bad faith to muddy the waters in democracies around the world, they’re purposely trying to amp up the chaos in the social space and sow division amongst different groups.
I think if some people are found to be purposely spreading misinformation on a mass scale, there needs to be some sort of special punishment that restricts their freedom of speech. Maybe they’re restricted from social media altogether, fined, or there’s jail time, I don’t know, but something should be done to weed heavy, repeat offenders (above and beyond just misquoting something or throwing out an opinion or whatever 90% of the population probably does).
Obviously, some guardrails would need to be put in place to prevent Trump or others from turning around and using that to silence critics or journalists, but at the same time, people/organizations who are heavily abusing our democratic system should be punished somehow. It’s a really fuzzy line between a journalist just getting their facts wrong on a developing story vs entire news organizations that are purposely trying to misinform people.
some guardrails would need to be put in place to prevent Trump or others from turning around and using that to silence critics or journalists
That’s the real issue though, isn’t it? No matter what “guardrails” you put in place someone is always going to find a way to exploit any kind of restrictions like this for their own selfish purposes
Exactly. The issue you run into is always that bad-faith actors are going to intentionally misuse laws and regulations, unless you write them to be very narrow. Most laws dealing with censorship need to be at least a little broad so that minor tweaks don’t allow the targeted material to be tweaked to avoid regulation. But as soon as it’s broad enough to prevent really repellent speech, it can be used against people that are already marginalized.
“Re-education” is an interesting question though. How are you defining that? We already know that we would sharply reduce recidivism rates if we made sure that incarcerated people were put in substance abuse programs and given access to college degree programs. (And those college programs cost less in the long run than recycling people through the criminal justice system again.) Does that count as re-education? What about having group therapy, so that people who had hate-crime multipliers had to confront their racism, etc.? Is that re-education?
To me the examples you listed would just fall under “education”. The term “re-education” heavily implies imprisonment and forced brain washing.
If the condition of parole is successfully completing substance abuse treatment, isn’t that a forced–or heavily coerced–brain washing? If it isn’t, then what’s the bright line between them?
The person in this scenario could still choose to go to jail instead of rehab. They could also slack off in rehab and start using again once they are released if they so chose. Obviously these are not ideal solutions but the person still has some kind of choice in the matter. Hopefully they would take it seriously and choose not to go back to drugs.
“Re-education” would be if they were sent to some kind of Clockwork Orange style reprogramming process where these choices were taken away from them, making them unable to ever do drugs again wether they wanted to or not.
I don’t. Who would? This sounds like the plan of an evil dictator, a deranged cult leader, or a cartoon supervillain.
PonyOfWar made a good point in pointing out that Nazis were re-educated and had their ideology censored. I believe it’s generally still censored today in Germany.
(I’d have linked the comment, but I don’t know how, lol)
I mean murder is bad. Telling people that murder is bad is a good thing. But too much more beyond that is well into dictator range.
Telling someone that murder is bad and why it’s bad would just be “education”. “Re-education” would mean holding someone against their will and forcing them to believe that murder is bad wether they understand why or not.
I don’t.
Neither censorship nor reeducation would be generally voluntary, so somebody would have to be given the authority to mandate them.
There’s a simple test then for whether or not something is a good idea:
Think of the person or people or political party you consider to be the greatest threat to others. Then think of what they would do with that power.
Because it doesn’t matter what the original intent is - if such a power is granted, no matter to whom or for what, those people WILL, sooner or later, get their chance to wield it.
@MGN22 One can always try to justify using information control tactics as a way to manipulate in favor of what is right, correct or just. But using manipulative tactics for ‘doing good’ cannot guarantee that they will not be used, in return, for ‘doing evil’. It just means someone else decides for you what the narrative is, gets to decide what is right or wrong, and gets to decide how you think, rather than you being able to get ahold of all the information and making that decision for yourself.
