The Science of Censorship
Forrest Bishop
Alongside the rise of illicit censorship these past few millennia and decades comes its ever urgent and improving theory and countering practice. Elements of Bernays' propaganda, Lobaczewski's Ponerology, Girardian theory, DeMause's psychohistory, Lifton's mind control theory, along with the large and growing literature on the social dynamics of natural and functional psychopaths and their ?true believer' authoritarian followers are drawn together. These latter clinical and theoretical advances have given us new tools for recognizing and countering destructive censorship. Specific tools for this purpose are described herein, beginning with Lobaczewski's and Peck's important concepts of psychological immunization and hygiene. A multi-year case study of the censorship of Ivor's Catt's work is presented as a template for the more general situation. The observed machine-like qualities of illicit censorship are reduced to a formal set of propositions which then lead to testable- and tested- hypotheses. From there, a science and technology of anti-censorship is proposed, bearing in mind that ?without barriers to communication there can be no communication?.
