Freedom to speak
First an old joke:
And now for something serious. In the j-blogosphere, being a reflection of real life, it is getting harder and harder to question and explore certain ideas which are deemed "politically incorrect" especially wrt Jews. This is not a new thing, but it really bothers me. Examples include the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Holocaust, "Jews behaving badly", etc...
I am not naive. I understand the motivations for this pressure, and frankly I don't deny that many of the reasons for this are valid. So I don't really have a good solution for this, except it feels wrong to me.
An American and a Soviet meet. The American says, "You Soviets aren't free. I can stand outside the White House and scream 'Ronald Reagan is an idiot!' and nothing will happen to me." The Soviet replies - "We are just as free as you are. I can stand in front of the Kremlin and scream 'Ronald Reagan is an idiot!' and nothing will happen to me"
And now for something serious. In the j-blogosphere, being a reflection of real life, it is getting harder and harder to question and explore certain ideas which are deemed "politically incorrect" especially wrt Jews. This is not a new thing, but it really bothers me. Examples include the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Holocaust, "Jews behaving badly", etc...
I am not naive. I understand the motivations for this pressure, and frankly I don't deny that many of the reasons for this are valid. So I don't really have a good solution for this, except it feels wrong to me.
posted by e-kvetcher at 10:54 AM
4 Comments:
Hmm... the thing is... I don´t reallly see why anyone should FEEL pressured. Your blog is your blog. You´re not going to get arrested for writing what you really think. The worst that can happen is you´re going to get a bunch of nasty comments, which you can respond to, ignore, or delete.
No, it can get worse than a few nasty comments. I've had my blog seriously hacked several times just in the past few weeks. It isn't funny. Moreover, it's cowardly. I think I read about some covert group that was doing this to Israeli websites that weren't "up to their standards" or something. I don't remember the exact context, but clearly, some "warriors for Hashem" misguidingly think they are modern day Pinchases, when in reality, they are nothing more than common vandals and arrogant ego-ists trying to impose their own vision of Torah upon everyone else.
Liorah,
Did you try talking to Blogger about it? It seems like they need to fix this on their side.
The emes is that it's much easier to rant and put down others than try to say something positive. As the saying goes, "think before you blog".
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