What about Marx/Lenin/Confucius is anti-porn?

The other day, I saw that the government of China was complaining about Microsoft's "bing" service and Google doing a bad job of blocking pornography in searches.

"Hmmmm..., what about Marx/Lenin/Confucius is anti-porn?" I asked one of my friends. Neither of us had any good ideas; at least followers of the abrahamic religions can fall back on the notion that the supreme all-powerful being that created us doesn't like to see us running around naked (for his own mysterious reasons). But, really, if you're ideologically Marxist/Leninist, pornography may simply be a new opiate for the masses; it serves government's agenda more than not.

But then the other shoe dropped; really, what's going on is that they're using pornography as the stalking goat for enhancing the tools of political control. If you can block porn, you can block links to "how to bypass content filters" and "here's photos of how state power responds to pro-democracy protestors, using tanks and guns." Sure - use porn-blocking to justify tightening your control of information.

One reason this strategy works is because the US (where Google and Yahoo! and Microsoft are) has its own horrible indecision about censorship. Thanks to a run of religious fanatics in our government, we have a Department of Justice that spends a significant amount of effort trying to prevent free speech in spite of the fact that, every time they try, The Supreme Court shoots them down. "The will of the people" doesn't even enter into it - but this kind of nonsense puts US companies in a position where they're already used to being told what is 'acceptable' or not by a government, and the legal structures are already in place to force compliance.

Censorship has always been one of the primary tools of the religious autocracy and dictatorship. Stifling free expression is necessary, especially when you are lying - and know you are lying - to your own people. Whenever you hear about dissent being suppressed, or a crack-down on anti-government speech, you can bet that - if it's on the Internet - the tools being used are the ones that were put in place for "porn" filtering. Think about that, next time someone tells you "it's for your own good."



mjr.