this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
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You can't use the full power of government sanctions and criminal charges to silence the people you disagree with (for whatever reason. Even if they are valid reasons) so you try to find creative ways to punish them. Well... not really "creative", since the idea of excommunication is not new. But my point is that this is still about using power to silence voices you don't like - you just use a slightly different power in a slightly different way.
Excommunication? What? This is requiring journalistic integrity to work in journalism, just like how medical malpractice can make you lose your medical license or legal malpractice can get you disbarred. There is precidence for this system, and I chose it specifically to reduce punishments and make sure those affected can still make a living.
I even point out one of the big issues of truth being difficult to define, and how this system might just push the problem down the road, and wonder if the actual problem (politics becomming unbound by reality for political gain, or a loss of political integrity) can even be regulated at all.
You want to silence certain voices (the one telling lies) but can't/won't use proper government sanctions, so instead you coordinate the community to keep distance from these voices, hoping to deter people from voicing them and preventing the ones too determined to be deterred from getting any reach. This is excommunication.
My problem is not with the exact way you are trying to censor your political opponents - it's in the very fact you are set out to censor them. You don't have to listen to them, you don't have to give them a platform, but if you try to establish a wide system to prevent other people from hearing these voices - that's censoring.