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Who censors the censor?
As a writer and human rights supporter, I react to proposals to censor expression in the same way as I do with a noxious odor. Justice Brandeis was right to say that when we find bad speech — what we regard as bad, at least — the remedy is more speech, not silencing those who disagree with us. But the forces who wish to silence the ideas of their opponents or subjects appear to be a perennial bloc in humanity, and for the moment, I wish to consider what goes on in the mind of the censor.
A friend recently told me about his experiences as a low-ranking member of Army Intelligence whose job was to read the mail of service personnel to remove any sensitive information. This fitted in with some recent reading that I have done on authoritarian regimes of the twentieth century and with the long history of attempts to control what thoughts people share with each other.
The goal of the censor is to shut down the expression of an idea that is not politically correct — not in conformity with the doctrines of those in power. But this requires the person with the scissors or black marker to have some awareness of institutional objectives — a list of naughty words, a set of principles that are understood to be absolute, or in the most advanced form, a thoroughgoing comprehension of the establishment’s doctrines.
