When Artists Become the Censors

The new moral majority comes for Joe Rogan. 

Winston Marshall February 3, 2022

In 1984, of all years, rock bands in the Soviet Union were in a panic. The Ministry of Culture had decreed that, for these groups to keep performing and touring in the USSR, they would have to show that 80 percent of the songs in their live sets were not their own, but written by someone from the state-sanctioned Union of Composers.  

This crackdown was part of a Kremlin campaign to push back against what it viewed as the dangers of rock n’ roll—a Western concoction that turned young people against adults and made otherwise normal, law-abiding citizens question authority. 

The Soviet Union is long gone, but the impulse hasn’t died: More recently, Vladimir Putin’s subordinates smeared Viktor Tsoi, the Bob Dylan of the Soviet Union, claiming that Tsoi’s lyrics had been written by Americans seeking to destroy the Motherland. (For the full history of rock music in the Soviet Union read “BACK in the USSR: The True Story of Rock in Russia,” by Artemy Troitsky. It wasn’t long before Troitsky himself, a Muscovite rock critic, found himself banned like the blacklisted musicians he was writing about.) .........To Read More.....

• UK: more Criminal Restrictions for Online Speech? Peter Caddle - A further tightening of criminal restrictions on online speech is being looked at by the UK’s Conservative Party government. UK Conservatives within government are looking at the possibility of further tightening restrictions on online speech, with officials looking at criminalising posts that are “likely to cause harm” as part of a new Online Harms Bill. The UK’s hate speech rules already in place have previously been accused of allowing “trolls” and “conmen” to weaponize the police, while the UK Home Secretary Priti Patel has promised to take measures protecting free speech..............