Armchair Critic,

Quoting a single statement from 1950 - by one man - isn’t the smoking gun you think it is.

//Do we believe it, or is it still a conspiracy?//

James Warburg’s quote is real, yes. But cherry-picking a line out of Cold War-era idealism about postwar peace doesn’t automatically validate modern claims of secretive global domination.

Plenty of thinkers after WWII, including Roosevelt and Churchill, floated grand visions for lasting peace - some noble, some naive - in reaction to the devastation of two world wars. The push for things like the UN, the IMF, even talk of "world government," came from an attempt to prevent another global conflict, not enslave the globe.

What matters isn’t that someone said it once, but what happened next. And there’s no throughline from Warburg’s quote to anything happening today that supports your narrative. If this was the plan, it’s been a pretty slow and ineffective one.

If one powerful figure saying something radical proves a global conspiracy, I guess we should all believe Trump is trying to be a dictator - after all, he literally said he’d be one on "day one."

"It’s one thing to anticipate possibilities; it’s another to treat them as inevitable outcomes. Especially when you're building them on distrust rather than data."

No there's plenty of data. But its data that you can't see.

Oh and I'm not framing it as inevitable outcomes. Just my evaluation based upon decades of experience and a good track record of where this'll end up. But there's many a slip between cup and lip and there's every chance that the rush to censorship will overstep and be derailed.... I hope.

The governmental attacks on YouTube and WhatsApp make no sense other than as attempts to censor. I've just spent a week holidaying with the grandkids - the exact demographic the government's 'benevolence' is trying to protect. They use WhatsApp as their preferred means of keeping in touch with friends since its essentially free. They've already worked out how to circumvent the government's attacks on their freedom. Actually, its been a good education for them in how governments infringe their rights so some good will come of it.

"Framing this as a battle between "the elites" and free speech ignores the obvious: media has never been more decentralised than it is now."

Its not ignoring it. That's the whole point...which yet again flies over your head. When the elites controlled the media and pretty much all sources of mass media, there was little need for censorship. Its only now, when they've lost that control, that they seek other forms of control.

"Broken clocks still manage to be right twice a day. "

Well, quite the admission that I've been right. The problem for JD is that, if you can't tell the time, you can't see if the clock is broken.

Fester,

You’ve misrepresented me again, and layered on a fair bit of projection in the process.

//The east vs west experiment in Germany wasn't fascism vs communism. It was capitalism vs autocracy…//

East Germany was a Soviet satellite state, run by the Socialist Unity Party under a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship. If that’s not communism in practice, then we’re just playing definition dodgeball. The west wasn’t just “capitalist," it was also liberal-democratic. That’s what made the contrast meaningful - not the economic model alone, but the freedoms, openness, and checks on power.

//I think of fascism vs socialism as a fight between fanatical religious sects...//

Pretending fascism and authoritarian socialism are equally compatible with conservative politicians today is ahistorical.

The fascist playbook - scapegoating minorities, glorifying national decline, attacking the press, undermining democratic institutions - has more in common with modern far-right populism than anything resembling social democracy or liberalism. That’s not a smear, it’s a structural observation.

//Hitler or Honecker couldn’t have said it better, John.//

Invoking Hitler to discredit any attempt to address coordinated disinformation is lazy and frankly offensive. You confuse truth-seeking with truth-imposing.

I didn’t say dissent or criticism should be banned. I said that deliberate campaigns designed to confuse, distort, or sabotage democratic consensus (often state-backed) shouldn’t be protected under the banner of free speech. We already draw lines: incitement, defamation, fraud. This is just a modern version of the same ethical concern.

//You believed with certainty that the Uluru statement was a single page, which I saw as a clear indicator of an authoritarian bent.//

It is one page, and I explained all this at the time. So, if you still see that as "a clear indicator of an authoritarian bent," then either you didn’t read what I wrote at the time, or you are choosing now to not to engage with it honestly.

//You’ve defined yourself with your repeated lies and aggressive verballing.//

You keep calling me a liar, but haven’t shown a single lie. Disagreeing with you isn’t lying. And if you believe I’ve misrepresented anything, quote it and I’ll happily address it.

Then where is this data, mhaze?

//No there's plenty of data. But it's data that you can't see.//

You can’t assert the existence of invisible evidence and then claim your view is more grounded than mine. Speculating based on trends or experience is one thing - but once you elevate those speculations to “this is what’s happening, trust me”, you’ve traded analysis for dogma.

//The governmental attacks on YouTube and WhatsApp make no sense other than as attempts to censor.//

If you begin with the assumption that the government is always scheming to suppress truth, then everything they do will inevitably look like censorship. But context matters. Addressing foreign disinformation, regulating algorithmic harms, or ensuring transparency isn’t the same as silencing dissent - especially when those very platforms still host non-stop government criticism 24/7.

//They’ve already worked out how to circumvent the government’s attacks on their freedom.//

What “attacks”? What’s been banned? What penalties have been introduced? You’re describing teenage app use as if it’s 1984. You’re not watching a dystopia unfold - you’re watching your grandkids install a VPN.

//When the elites controlled the media… there was little need for censorship.//

That’s a claim without evidence.

Governments have censored wherever and whenever they could - from newspaper raids to secret surveillance to banned books. What’s different now is how much harder it is to control the narrative. We live in an era of millions of content creators, open-source platforms, and AI generators - yet somehow you frame this as more controlled?

Yes, the volume of speech has exploded - but so too has the volume of falsehoods. A response to that isn’t automatically tyranny. It might just be democracy trying to protect itself.

You’re turning a golden age of open expression into a paranoid fantasy where unseen forces are closing in. Ironically, your ability to say all this publicly - and loudly - disproves your own thesis.

Still missing the point JD.

I agree that the diversity of views in the current world is close to unprecedented.

My point is that this is what terrifies the elites and why they are fighting back. I'm not saying the suppression is already occurring, just that it will occur if governments continue on this path.

Its probably comforting to the censors that there are hordes of people such as yourself who see all this as just trying to stop misinformation. You're exactly their demographic - desperate to be told what to believe.

But remember that today's misinformation is often tomorrows fact. It was disinformation to say covid originated in the Wuhan labs. It was disinformation to say that the young were safe from death against covid. It was disinformation to say that the FBI was embedded in the J6 crowds. It was disinformation to say that the Obama regime spied on Trump. It was disinformation to say that Trump didn't colluded with the Russians in 2016. It was disinformation to say that electricity prices would rise as renewables rose. Struth, in Canada, its proposed to make denying mass indigenous graves illegal even though none have ever been found.

Disinformation is one of those words that people use to dress-up censorship. It refers to things people would prefer not said.

"You’ve misrepresented me again, and layered on a fair bit of projection in the process."

No need John. You do it to yourself by such things as saying there is no absolute truth, but then contradicting yourself by arguing that the length of the Uluru statement is a single page is a matter beyond question.

"You’re turning a golden age of open expression into a paranoid fantasy where unseen forces are closing in. Ironically, your ability to say all this publicly - and loudly - disproves your own thesis."

The irony here is that I am for maintaining the status quo, whereas you are the one advocating change, so presumably you are the one consumed by all these paranoid fantasies that will be addressed with measures you claim will be benign. Further, I'd observe that many concerns about law and order that people have, like all those hate marches stoking antisemitism, occur not because of a lack of laws, but because of a lack of enforcement.

"You keep calling me a liar, but haven’t shown a single lie. Disagreeing with you isn’t lying. And if you believe I’ve misrepresented anything, quote it and I’ll happily address it."

You're a liar and an aggressive verballer. That I have experienced first hand. That you deny your conduct further proves my point. It would be hard for me to imagine a bigger hypocrite.