Totalitarian regimes — from Germany’s Third Reich to the Soviet Union to Communist China— have consistently imposed censorship on the freedoms of thought and expression of their citizens. And today, we can witness the same pattern repeated here in America through “cancel culture.”
Hailing from a country where freedom of speech is widely prohibited, I can tell you this: once you have lived for years under conditions of censorship and you now have complete freedom of expression, you do not want to go back to censorship. And yet here I am, watching as America falls more and more into self-censorship.
Self-Censorship in America
Censorship starts when we don’t allow others around us to speak as they want. The recent resignation of opinion columnist and editor Bari Weiss from the New York Times illustrates this growing problem of censorship through the pressure of the online mob. As she stated in her open letter of resignation, the Twitter mob has become the ultimate arbiter in what can and can’t be expressed openly.