Politics

Blaming Russia Will Only Hold America Back

In both Europe and the United States, legislation has been proposed that would remove speech that might undermine national unity from public fora. Major media accuse Russia of having subverted popular votes, from Brexit and the U.S. presidential election to referenda in Italy and the Netherlands. And, of course, there are the traditional calls to root out the “Kremlin moles” in our midst.

Some will say that the situation today is quite different, because in the internet age, censorship is impossible. But will we even know if ideas are being censored?

In an effort to prevent the spread of undesirable opinions and information, legislators in some Western countries have called for the introduction of algorithms that would prevent such ideas from registering in people’s news feeds. Propaganda and “fake news” would thus be strangled in the womb, so to speak, before they ever get noticed.