Backstory:Â Population Control and Information Control Are Part of the Same PackageÂ
A fortnightly column from The Wire s ombudsperson.
Illustration: The Wire
gleichschaltung, or the complete ideological packaging of political, social and lived experience.
So while, on the one hand, mores of social behaviour, including sterilisation, were forcibly prescribed â by the end of Third Reich in 1945 an estimated 360,000 had been sterilised, among whom were those deemed genetically inferior or regarded as âpolitical enemies of the stateâ â on the other, there was a concerted purging of unwanted ideas, as reflected in censorship protocols and even the mass book burnings that took place shortly after the Nazis came to power in May 1933, and which was reported by the newspapers of the day as âaction against the un-German spiritâ.Â
Backstory: The IT Rules Put âDemocraticâ India in the League of Dictatorial Regimes
A fortnightly column from The Wire s ombudsperson.
Illustration: The Wire
Media03/Jul/2021
As journalists appeared before the Loni Border Police Station (Uttar Pradeshâs Ghaziabad district) to make statements over whether or not they were guilty of a communally motivated crime by reporting/tweeting on that ugly assault on a 72-year-old Muslim, two aspects jumped out of the page for me.
First, the Ghaziabad Police themselves do not seem to have made any credible effort to establish whether this was a hate crime or not. As far as I know, we only have the statements of the miscreants that deny the charge. Two, and more important, the promises Union ministers Ravi Shankar Prasad and Prakash Javadekar made while introducing the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, in February this year â that the government welcomes criticism a