31–40 of 137 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
George Orwell was against all kinds of authoritarianism. A large portion of the left has always disavowed authoritarianism as well, so there is no conflict here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess a lot of people enjoy his style of "humour" where he randomly insults people, countries or cultures for no apparent reason.
If you'd watched the segment, you'd realise there was a reason for it. Specifically he used the segment to point out that Xi Jinping has more power and influence than almost anybody in China's history, that a personality cult has started to form around him, and that he is using that power in ways that has a wide range of long-term profound domestic and international consequences, including America's place in the Worl…
Having a mainstream liberal thought leader (in my opinion) like Oliver breaking silence on whether the rise of China, while it is still an authoritarian state, might pose some risk to America is a very welcome and I think significant change. I can't recall the other incidents, but this isn't the first time I've noticed a change in the mainstream information feed on this topic, hopefully this is the sign of things to come. I would love to see a bit on China still enjoying the benefits that come with developing nation status within the WTO, despite the massive economic transformation they've undergone (with a little help from Western CEO's along the way) since their original inclusion.
That's entirely predictable given that was explicitly John Oliver's objective. The real question now is when will this experiment implode? Isn't there a theory that totalitarian states must inevitably collapse?
All states must inevitably collapse.
One of the plausible catastrophic end states for humanity is an ultra-stable technocratic totalitarian global state, enabled by pervasive super high tech surveillance and censorship. It’s one of the ‘great filter’ possibilities for why sentient beings never colonise the galaxy - they’re all trapped in bureaucratic self serving versions of 1984 where the state only exists to maintain the state. Democracies and other forms of goveenment are never stable, the only stable state is bureaucratic autocracy, and falling into one only ever has to happen once and you’re done.
This is what China is building, and the model they are exporting to the world.
I don't agree with the censorship decision, but I completely get why other countries don't like Oliver's show. He likes to denounce other countries' politics from the point of view of liberal, first world policy, which may not be in the best interest of other nations. Even though he is doing comedy for the first world market, it comes off clearly as another attempt of propaganda directed at these countries. The way C…
However, the logical side of me can’t fathom how the reported events are anything remotely “propaganda”. They are legitimate things that free-press nations can discuss how they like, including laughing at them.
You can’t call things that rustle your jimmies propaganda just like you can’t call news you don’t like fake.
Did they remove him from hacker news too?
Context: in his China segment, Oliver asserts that China has banned Winnie the Pooh from the internet because it was used to mock the president. And then he (Oliver) used tons of Winnie the Pooh references.
We already are seeing a lot of partisan arguments in this thread (as one could have expected, I guess). For my part, I don't care about the politics on this topic, I'm just glad someone stands up against internet censorship. Making tons of Winnie the Pooh references is the way to go, we must prove censorship doesn't work.