> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com] On Behalf Of Michael Pugliese
> Sent: Friday, January 31, 2003 11:33 AM
> To: lbo-talk
> Subject: RE: Vystosky
>
>
> On censorship in People's Poland see, "The Black Book of Polish
> Censorship, " Random House/Vintage, 1984, translated from a
> '77 Polish
> samizdat derived from official files.
>
> <URL: http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/Slavonic/staff/Blackbook.html
> > 1977 London
>
>
> A collection of Polish censorship documents from 1974 - 77
> "Taken from the forthcoming Censorship: A World Encyclopedia,
> edited by
> Derek Jones, to be published by Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers,
> London, in May
> 2000"
I think this whole argument about censorship in Poland starts with a wrong premise that any particular publisher has an obligation to publish any material submitted to him. That premise in untenable in the West - all publishers have an editorial policy, based on theor aesthetic, politicval, literary, subject-matter or what not preferences, which they use to select the material they will publish. Nobody calls that "censorship" - just editrorial discretion. However, the same phenomenon on the other side of the "iron curtain" suddenly becomes "censorship." If this is not double standard, I do not know what is.
I understand that a segment of the Polish intelligentsia used the Western anti-communist propaganda machine to get even for their perceived "injustices." I have no problem with such whistle-blowing, but what bothers me is that these folks did not mind to join forces with the most vicious propaganda machine ever created.
The US is without doubt the emost heavily indoctrinated society in the world - I am not talking here about simple unavailability of information, but a very deliberate and very sophisticated effort to distort the available information and drown or subvert any information deemed harmful to the interest of the US ruling class. In comparison, Polish censorship was child's play - its only effect was to sanitize government owned publications, but they did next to nothing to stop the spread of information published elsewhere. So let's keept the sense of proportion here.
Wojtek