Joseph Stalin issued circa 1950 a decree on revealing state secrets, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote:
There was a good-sized wave from the new Decree on Revealing State Secrets. (State secrets included such things as: the district harvest; any figure on epidemics; the type of goods produced by any workshop or mini-factory; mention of a civil airport, municipal transport routes, or the family name of any prisoner imprisoned in any camp.) For violations of this decree they gave fifteen years.
The Gulag Archipelago, Volume 1, p 91
Did you notice the epidemics reference?
- Stalin banished for fifteen years anyone who published any USSR figure on epidemics.
In contrast:
- Facebook permanently banished LifeSiteNews for sharing COVID-19 vaccine research;
- Twitter permanently banished Dr. Li-Meng Yan for publishing a scientific paper demonstrating that the COVID-19 virus was manmade;
- YouTube permanently banished a video of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ COVID-19 roundtable with credentialed medical experts.
Yes, physical banishment is much different from banishment from a social-media site. But, as Michael Knowles points out in his book Speechless, those who control words are those who control minds.
- A banishment by Stalin under his Decree on Revealing State Secrets meant that one person for fifteen years could not communicate with print readers, at some cost to the publisher or to the readers and typically in weeks or months.
- A banishment by Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube can mean that one person or organization for life cannot use that platform to communicate with social-media users, at no cost to publish or receive the information instantly.
Social-media sites beat Joseph Stalin in mind control of the masses.