On Thu, 10 Jun 1999, Doug Henwood wrote:
> ... I'm not likely to get arrested for publishing LBO, and you're not
> likely to get arrested for anything you post to this list. We may get
> ignored, harassed, whatever, but we do have considerable freedom of
> speech. That was not true of the USSR. I know there are all kinds of
> constraints on our media, lots of subtle forms of censorship, but our
> formal guarantees of freedom of speech are still worth something.
Without disagreeing on the (limited) value of formal guarantees, I think it's important to note the relative effectiveness of different forms of control. It's worthwhile to recognize that (and how) one's available media are controlled. Comparing "information systems" in the USSR and the US, Chomsky wrote in 1992,
[In Brezhnev's USSR] there were dissidents and alternative media:
underground samizdat and foreign radio. According to a 1979 US
government-funded study, 77% of blue-collar workers and 96% of the
middle elite listened to foreign broadcasts, while the alternative
press reached 45% of high-level professionals, 41% of political
leaders, 27% of managers, and 14% of blue-collar workers ...
(James Miller and Peter Donhowe, Washington Post Weekly, Feb. 17,
1986, p. 16).
Dissidents were bitterly condemned as "anti-Soviet" and
"supporters of capitalist imperialism," as demonstrated by the
fact that they condemned the evils of the Soviet system instead of
marching in parades denouncing the crimes of official enemies.
They were also punished, not in the style of US dependencies such
as El Salvador, but harshly enough...
[In the US] there are dissidents and other information sources.
Foreign radio broadcasts reach virtually no one, but alternative
media exist, though without a tiny fraction of the outreach of
samizdat. Dissidents are bitterly condemned as "anti-American" and
"supporters of Communism" as demonstrated by the fact that they
condemn the evils of the American system instead of marching in
parades denouncing the crimes of official enemies. But they are
not severely punished, at least if they are privileged and of the
right color. Again, the concept "anti-American" is particularly
striking, the very hallmark of a totalitarian mentality...
--C. G. Estabrook