Queer how Australian Press Council would suppress the truth, by Jennifer Oriel.
Australia is sleepwalking into a state of political censorship. While major media organisations have united to defend the free press against government interference, the chilling effect of political correctness does not prompt such unified action.
Yet state-designated minority groups frequently target journalists who dissent from PC ideology. The Australian Press Council should make the unfettered pursuit of truth its core business. But it has handed down guidelines advising journalists how to write on sexual politics, including queer and transgender issues. …
Beyond criticism
Questioned by The Australian, the APC was at pains to stress the guidelines were not mandatory. It is cold comfort. Those of us too old to be naive know that radical activists are content with conventional debate until they begin to lose. Then they compel dissenters to comply. In the final act, they enforce. …
Artists who endure life in totalitarian regimes have spoken of how parallel institutions and realities are created to suppress unfashionable truths. Ran Yufei, a Chinese public intellectual who was imprisoned for exercising freedom of speech, described the need to refuse becoming complicit with such lies. … “The (Chinese Communist Party) created a parallel language system (of untruth) that is on an equal basis with the language of truth.”
Political censorship is the refuge of cowards. The censor is unable to mount a compelling argument and unwilling to compete fairly in the contest of ideas. Freedom of thought leads naturally to the free expression of speech in the spoken and written word. …
The censor introduces a penalty for words he dislikes because they embody ideas that challenge him. By attacking the words or images, he attacks dissenting thought. If the assault is sufficiently punitive, the message is clear: use that word and you will suffer. As the words change, so too do the ideas that precede them. They lose clarity, sharpness and direction. If a certain word is not permitted, the idea has nowhere to go. …
In a state of political censorship, liars control the truth and make truth a lie.
The APC guideline should be rejected for what it is; an exercise in PC sophistry that renders truth subordinate to fallacy.
I will not submit.
Never hear any criticism of feminism in the media, anymore.
Climate skeptics have now been completely suppressed in Australia. The only criticism allowed of the carbon dioxide theory of global warming is from people who don’t know the real problem or are nuts, and are presumably allowed media time in order to discredit skeptics.
These two areas seem to have been the lead areas in using PC suppression to win, and it’s now spreading to other areas.
