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« It’s Coming Together Now: Oil+GST+Ketuanan+…
Life After Ketuanan 我们回来了 »

The Internet As Tool of Tyranny

December 14, 2009 by rihaku

Belatedly, to borrow from Nick Cohen at Standpoint:

The overwhelming majority of political writers on the internet do not fact-check allies or warn them that they are making a mistake. Indeed, the standard web author rarely sees the need to spell out what his or her side believes in and argue for it in the marketplace of ideas. Instead, they encourage group loyalty and group-think by denouncing opponents. Free access to content makes the building of tribal identification by ritual jeering at opponents the dominant style. We are so used to it we forget its novelty. A generation ago, a conservative would have been aware that left-wing newspapers contained ideas he found ridiculous or sinister. However, as he would never waste his money buying a copy, he could spend his life in happy ignorance of the specifics. The same applied to liberals with the Tory press. Now it is easy, far too easy, for a blogger to click on an ideological opponent’s site or newspaper and select heretical thoughts to copy and denounce to his allies.

It reminds of Raja Petra’s Malaysia Today, pigsty of mud-raking, old little monkeys, a barbarian horde, stroking each other’s back, shouting down the establishment, and shrieking away when they don’t like what they see. Read? Illiterates don’t know how to read, much less illuminate issues. And they think of themselves as great freedom lovers and democrats. Tian-ah!

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Posted in Snippets |

  • Erich Maria Remarque

    "No," he said quickly. "Never. Stay friends? Try to grow a small rose garden on the ashes of broken feelings? No, this will never work for you and me. It happens only after small affairs and it looks fake. Love should not be spoiled by friendship."
    *
    No one can become stranger than the person you once loved.
    *
    How clumsy a person behaves when he is truly in love! How quickly his self-confidence fades! And how lonely he feels; all his praised experience seems to be gone, just like fog, and he feels so weak and helpless.
    *
    Love cannot stand explanations. It requires actions. Love wants to be eternal. That is the source of the torture it causes us.
    *
    "I have always thought a woman should not tell a man she is in love with him. Her shining and happy eyes should bear witness to that."
    *
    "You have to break your principles sometimes. Otherwise they bring you no joy."
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    "Whatever you can’t get always seems better than whatever you have. This is the romance and the stupidity of our life."
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    "Nothing’s lost yet," I said. "You only lose someone when he’s dead."
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    Quotes from: 'Three Comrades', 'Triumphal Arch', 'All Quiet On the Western Front' and 'Life on Loan'.

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