Joshua Philipp Profile picture
May 19, 2019 34 tweets 5 min read Read on X
Thread:

‘ThoughtCrime’ Is Becoming a Reality

Column here: theepochtimes.com/thoughtcrime-i…
Cases are emerging in several Western countries where people are getting visits from the police to question them on their political views, and some have been arrested. (1)
Cases in the UK and New Zealand often involve people who make comments against mass migration and Islamism, and include a viral video of a NZ man being questioned by police for his alleged online posts about the mosque shooting in Christchurch. (2) facebook.com/10003538906548…
Of course, the real issue isn’t about religious “intolerance.” It’s publicly accepted for people, including public leaders, to openly condemn religions like Christianity. (3)
This is very specifically a political issue, related to state policy on mass migration, which is often heavily from Muslim countries. (4)
Condemning state policies has become synonymous with a double standard on “intolerance,” which is punishable by the state. (5)
And by latching their policies to social issues, political parties have found a way to silence people who are criticizing their policies, by using using the powers of the state for harassment and intimidation. (6)
Even in the United States, similar practices are now in place, only they’re being enforced by large corporations. (7)
Chase Bank is accused of cancelling accounts of people for having “right-wing” views. (8) theepochtimes.com/chase-bank-den…
Twitter and Facebook are accused of censoring conservatives. (9) theepochtimes.com/conservatives-…
Google is accused of firing employees for questioning politically correct company culture. (10) theepochtimes.com/google-employe…
Systems like these were warned about by the British writer, George Orwell, who told of a fictional “Thought Police” in his book “1984.” He envisioned this secret police force tasked with finding thought-criminals, and punishing them for “thoughtcrime.” (11)
These “thoughtcrimes,” as Orwell imagined, referred to illegal thoughts—which included unspoken beliefs or negative thoughts towards the fictional ruling party of English Socialism (Ingsoc). (12)
The ideal good citizen of this system, Orwell said, “is expected to have no private emotions and no respites from enthusiasm. (13)
He is supposed to live in a continuous frenzy of hatred of foreign enemies and internal traitors, triumph over victories, and self-abasement before the power and wisdom of the Party.” (14)
Of course, even in the time when Orwell published the book in 1949, examples of regimes like this had been seen under Hitler’s National Socialists, Stalin’s Soviet Union, and Mao’s Chinese Communist Party. (15)
All three regimes had their own forms of “thoughtcrime,” and people risked imprisonment or death for opposing the ruling regimes. (16)
The deeper nature of the socialist idea is in struggle, and much like Orwell’s views of people under his fictional English Socialism regime people are expected to hold a “continuous frenzy of hatred.” (17)
The systems rely on the state identifying a “privileged” group, framed as taking advantage of the “oppressed,” and anyone who says otherwise is deemed guilty of ideological treason for aligning with the “privileged.” (18)
As Orwell imagined, people would go through a series of mental gymnastics to avoid committing “thoughtcrimes.” This included acts such as “DoubleThink,” where Party members could simultaneously hold two contradictory viewpoints. (19)
In today’s world, we’ve seen this in many cases—the leftist policy that criticizing Islamism is “religious intolerance,” but criticizing Christianity is somehow fine, is among the many examples. (20)
Yet, to understand the deeper logic behind this modern “DoubleThink,” we need to understand the root cause of these wild concepts. (21)
Socialists hold that their ideas are Utopian—the ultimate goal of “progress” towards their envisioned state—and so anything that opposes this “progress” is guilty of all the things they seek to destroy. (22)
Under Mao Zedong, for example, people who opposed his 1967 theory of “political correctness” to guard his destruction of Chinese culture during the Cultural Revolution, could be labelled a “counter-revolutionary” and be killed by the regime. (23)
In the United States, the idea that anyone who opposes the socialist goals should be attacked by any means comes from the Marxist Frankfurt School’s theory of “repressive tolerance.” (24)
The idea from Herbert Marcuse’s “A Critique of Pure Tolerance” in 1965 held that only things that support the socialist cause should be tolerated, and anyone who opposes it should be met with intolerance. (25)
With "repressive tolerance," socialists introduced a warped concept of “tolerance” that tolerates only its their views. (26)
The result of these policies, as Orwell imagined, was a state where people censor themselves—not just in public speech, but even in their own minds. ... (27)
... Orwell referred to this as “CrimeStop,” which he described as “the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought.” (28)
He described this self-censorship as a form of “protective stupidity” that supports the totalitarian regime, even at the defiance of logic. (29)
He called this “BlackWhite”. “Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this.” (30)
We see the same thing today: intolerance is bad, unless it’s intolerance of those who oppose socialist policies—then it’s encouraged. (31)
Under socialism, attacks on religion are bad, unless they’re attacks on religions that the regime opposes. Racism is bad, unless it’s attacks on the “oppressive” races. (32)
What we’re witnessing today is the same theory of ThoughtCrime that Orwell envisioned, with a similar Thought Police enforcement branch, and with the same DoubleThink, CrimeStop, and BlackWhite tools to justify it. (33)

/End/

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Joshua Philipp

Joshua Philipp Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @JoshJPhilipp

Dec 17, 2022
Government censorship through Twitter is just the tip of the iceberg. CISA is running a “whole of society” censorship program. There are related programs in different agencies. It’s also not limited to “false” information. @elonmusk cisa.gov/mdm
“In addition to civil society groups, researchers, and state and local government officials, the MDM team works in close collaboration with the FBI’s … the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Defense, and other agencies across the federal government.”
They call it “MDM”. That includes misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation. “Misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation make up what CISA defines as “information activities”.”
Read 5 tweets
Apr 29, 2022
The Biden "Ministry of Truth" under the DHS is just the tip of the iceberg. They already created this under the "MDM" team of CISA. It also targets "maliformation," which they say is "malicious" truth. cisa.gov/mdm
Here's some of their propaganda on how "Disinformation Stops With You": cisa.gov/sites/default/…
The corporate media is complicit. It has guides to “Educate voters,” “Pre-bunk MDM,” and “Build media relationships” cisa.gov/sites/default/…
Read 10 tweets
Dec 13, 2021
Thread: WHO Says No Deaths From Omicron, So Why the Harsh Policies?
theepochtimes.com/who-says-no-de…
The World Health Organization (WHO) has not documented a single death from the Omicron variant of the CCP Virus.
This was confirmed by The Epoch Times, which was told by the WHO that, “for Omicron, we have not had any deaths reported, but it is still early in the clinical course of the disease and this may change.” theepochtimes.com/no-confirmed-o…
Read 18 tweets
Feb 19, 2020
Thread:

The Trump administration took a strong move combat Chinese propaganda operations in the U.S. yesterday — and this could impact several U.S. news outlets that have for years been running paid Chinese propaganda. (1)

Full article here: theepochtimes.com/state-departme…
The U.S. Department of State will force Chinese agents who have been working as journalists in the United States to reveal their identities to authorities and will also force state-run Chinese news outlets to reveal their real estate holdings. (2)
These measures could help the U.S. government get a stronger grasp on how deeply the Chinese regime’s disinformation arms have penetrated the U.S. media landscape. (3)
Read 26 tweets
Feb 3, 2020
Important story on the Caronavirus, and the Chinese regime's previous statements on developing bioweapons to attack the United States.

Great reporting from @JRNyquist - #caronavirusoutbreak #carona #ChinaPneumonia #chinaoutbreak #HongKong

theepochtimes.com/did-chinas-pla…
@JRNyquist "We are not as foolish as to want to perish together with America by using nuclear weapons. Only by using non-destructive weapons that can kill many people will we be able to reserve America for ourselves." - From the Chinese Defense Minister Gen. Chi Haotian at the time.
@JRNyquist Chi said: “If our biological weapons succeed in the surprise attack, the Chinese people will be able to keep their losses at a minimum in the fight against the United States. ..."
Read 5 tweets
Aug 20, 2019
The @EpochTimes response to the @NBCNews hit piece today:

"This comes as NBC’s parent company, NBCUniversal, continues to work with a consortium of Chinese state-owned companies on a multibillion-dollar project in Beijing."

Full statement here: theepochtimes.com/nbc-news-repea…
@EpochTimes @NBCNews I'll thread the statement:

Seeing the success of The Epoch Times as America’s fastest-growing newspaper, NBC News has published a hit-piece that is riddled with inaccuracies, blatant errors, and misrepresentations.
For example, NBC News mischaracterizes our subscription campaigns for our print newspaper. We provided NBC News with a statement back in June to clarify this, but they chose to ignore it—against well established journalistic practices.

theepochtimes.com/our-response-t…
Read 17 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(