Comment by zozbot234
5 years ago
> There have been plenty of times of censorship and social strife in history.
Sure, but the notions of "re-education", "self-criticism" and the struggle-session as a form of public humiliation where someone is forced to admit their "crimes" before the "people" are a distinctive part of leftist social strife and oppression. And it seems quite relevant to point out that these social practices have led to mass murder in at least one instance that we know about, where they were promoted in an extensive "grassroots" campaign and thereby became widespread. We're not talking about willful and intentional physical purges of intellectuals ala Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, where your contention that mass murder is the defining element of it all would be far more on point.
Forced recantations and blacklisting are not new things or something that require strained analogies to Chinese history. In my view shouting "hey, look over there! A slippery slope! We'd better watch out!" takes away from a more serious message about how we are currently repeating our own, very serious, mistakes of the past. (although to be sure, there are some genuinely new aspects of how things are playing out in social media)