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Michael Hudson Explains Why Banking Isn’t What You Think It Is (central Banks, Misconceptions Of Marxism, And The Scary Phobia Of Socialism)
Michael Hudson Explains Why Banking Isn’t What You Think It Is
Support Michael’s work via Patreon. Please. Michael Hudson unpacks the realities of modern banking, economic rent, and financialization. He explains how banks create credit, why Western financial systems differ from China’s, and how economic rent distorts markets. Hudson critiques the multiplier effect, arguing that debt-driven economies are unsustainable.
As the title suggests, in this post, I would like to tackle misconceptions about Marxism as well as the ideology of socialism-phobia, which is quite concerning. I also wanted to address word manipulation and distortion, which are connected to socialism-phobia and the way our world is shaped by this. However, one of my previous posts ended up being around 15 pages long, and I worry that such a lengthy post might be too much for the average reader. Therefore, I will tackle that issue in my next post instead.
I would love to hear your opinion in the comments – should I stick to shorter posts, or is it okay to make them longer?
I also want to thank everyone who takes the time to read my posts.
Central Banks
Now, let’s start with a fragment that relates to my recent post.
In this post, I highlighted a fragment that I agree with but believe was manipulated.
“And so, the part of the equation that we see, because it’s visible, is we see these large global corporations like BP and Shell and Exxon and KBR and Halliburton and you know hundreds of these foreign corporations go abroad and they develop foreign resources. But the part that we don’t see is that actually most of the wealth that’s thereby extracted from these effectively colonies actually goes to the banking centers in the West—Paris, London, Wall Street, etc. And so, this is where the whole system of incentives for our system of governance originates. It has been this way in the West, it has defined the Western civilization, and it goes back, depending on how you wish to define it, 500 or 600 years, or you could even draw back all the way to Greek Antiquity. The same principle turned Greece into an empire, and then Greek bankers migrated to Rome, and that system turned Rome into an empire. And then it reemerged again in Venice in the Middle Ages, and then it gave rise to the Lombard banking system, and then the Venetian bankers migrated to Amsterdam and gave rise to the Dutch Empire, and then from there they migrated to London, where it gave rise to the British Empire, which you know, unlike what they teach us in school today, is still very much alive and it still is kicking. And I think that today that this is becoming increasingly apparent because even, you know, in today’s historical episode around Ukraine, we see that the United States has withdrawn and London has stepped right into the role of backing up Ukraine.” -Alex Krainer
I wrote in my post that I agree with this statement, but I also highlighted the differences between my point of view and that of Alex Krainer. While Alex Krainer claims that the US is somehow controlled by the British, the British Crown, and MI6, I stated that, in my opinion, this is absurd and that it is actually the US controlling Britain. A similar historical explanation to the one I highlighted here by Alex Krainer was presented in the main video of this post by Michael Hudson, whose views are more aligned with mine. Here is the fragment I mentioned.
“I'm still working on my book on the history of debt from the Crusades until World War I and how it was actually the Catholic Church that brought banking into being to finance its wars against other Christians. The Crusades were mainly against other Christians, primarily Constantinople, which Rome wanted to absorb, but also against Germany, France (including the Cathars in France), and anyone who did not pledge fealty and pay tribute to Rome.
The problem arose when the Church recruited warlords, offering to make them kings if they pledged loyalty and agreed to pay Peter's Pence and other income. This happened with the Norman Conqueror, and the same occurred in southern Italy and Sicily, where warlords were made kings. However, with so many warlords willing to fight for the Church—waging war against Orthodox Christians in the East, German Christians who sought independence, and any Christian who wanted to preserve the original Christianity, including its sanctions against interest—the Church needed a way to finance these armies. Those who resisted were often targeted by the Inquisition.
To fund these wars, the Church developed financial mechanisms in the 13th century, with the scholastics redefining "usury" as "interest." When I was in school, the concept of interest seemed plausible: if a merchant lends money, he forgoes profit from its use, so charging interest compensates for that loss. If there is a late payment, the lender also loses time value. However, when examining the actual contracts, it becomes evident that late payments started accruing interest after just a month, alongside additional charges such as international foreign exchange fees and fees for locating debtors. The entire system was structured to maximize extraction.
Ultimately, the Catholic Church worked to extinguish any trace of original Christian opposition to banking. In doing so, it inadvertently created the banking class, which rose so rapidly that it eventually took over the papacy. By the time of Pope Leo X, the Medici Pope, the bankers had essentially gained control. The Catholic Church had sought to establish a pan-European system to dominate all of Europe, but the bankers saw an opportunity to replace the Church itself. They wanted to do what the Church had done—control governments by lending them money.
Thus, banks began financing the most war-prone governments, particularly Spain and France. However, by the 1600s and 1700s, monarchs repeatedly defaulted on their loans, sometimes wiping out entire banking families. This created a problem: kings could only pledge their own royal domains and their power to tax. In France, for example, the king controlled less land than some of the major dukes, and taxation power was limited by Parliament, much like the Magna Carta had constrained English monarchs.
The bankers, seeking to secure their loans, found a model in the city-states of Venice and Florence, where communal governance ensured collective responsibility for debts. They realized that a democratic commune provided the best security for loans, as its leaders could pledge the wealth of all its members. The bankers then sought to apply this city-state model to entire nations. This approach expanded from Dutch cities like Amsterdam to all of Holland, and later, through the Glorious Revolution of 1688, it was imposed on England.
Thus, the banking class played a key role in pushing parliamentary democracy—not necessarily for the sake of democracy itself, but to create oligarchies that would replace royal rule and ensure that governments could be used as debt-collection agencies for the banks. Since the 1700s and 1800s, modern states have functioned primarily to collect taxes to service war debts. Most early bank loans—from the 13th through the 17th centuries—were war loans to governments.
Interestingly, the 13th-century scholastics, who justified banking by arguing that it facilitated commerce and trade, never acknowledged that banking primarily funded warfare—often against other Christians—to create a centrally controlled Europe. Over time, this process led to the banking class taking over much of Europe, establishing what economic historians now call the "fiscal state." The state was created as a means of taxation to pay foreign debts to bankers, who, in turn, funded endless wars.
This system continued until the late 19th century when increasingly democratic states, like the United States, emerged. At that point, bankers faced a new challenge: how to maintain control when the state had the power to regulate money and taxation. Their solution was one of the most significant financial developments in history—the creation of central banks, particularly the Federal Reserve.
The Federal Reserve was established in 1913 by J.P. Morgan and other financiers who sought to remove control of monetary policy from Washington and place it in the hands of bankers. They created Federal Reserve districts, particularly in financial hubs like New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. Since then, banks have dominated monetary policy, controlling interest rates and fiscal policies while reducing the power of the U.S. Treasury.
As a result, the financial sector has promoted a libertarian ideology that strips power from the state. If the government does not regulate and plan the economy, then Wall Street does. This shift has defined modern economic policy and continues to shape the financial world today.”
Now, I would like to highlight points of contention and differences between both historical explanations. While they are similar and I agree with both, Michael Hudson's explanation is longer and more detailed. However, the key difference lies in how each explanation concludes.
Alex Krainer's explanation ends with: "Amsterdam gave rise to the Dutch Empire, and then from there they migrated to London, where it gave rise to the British Empire." In other words, he only explains the transition of the Dutch Empire to London, which Michael Hudson also mentions.
The difference is that while Alex Krainer stops at London, Michael Hudson goes further, providing a more complete account of events - one that Alex Krainer does not include because it contradicts the narrative he is trying to establish: that the U.S. is good, the British are bad, and all the evil things the U.S. does are ultimately because of the "evil, pesky British." Because of this, Alex Krainer ends his story at London, whereas Michael Hudson continues to explain what led to the creation of the Federal Reserve:
"Their solution was one of the most significant financial developments in history—the creation of central banks, particularly the Federal Reserve."
This crucial part is omitted by Alex Krainer because it challenges his assertion that the U.S. is good while the British are bad. This is an example of how manipulation works - not just through outright lies but by selectively using the truth to support a particular point while omitting inconvenient facts.
So, while Alex Krainer’s statements may be factually accurate, he strategically leaves out the conclusion of the story, which contradicts his narrative. This highlights an important reality. Just because someone states truthful things it does not mean they are telling the whole truth. By selectively using some truths and omitting others, a person can give legitimacy to a narrative that may not be entirely accurate, engaging in manipulation by omission.
Michael Hudson’s discussion of the Federal Reserve was also expanded upon in a video I shared in another post.
1:25:00
“The deliberations of the ECB's decision-making bodies are secret. The mere attempt at influencing the ECB, for instance through democratic debate and discussion, is forbidden according to the Maastricht Treaty. The ECB is an international organization that is above and outside the laws and jurisdictions of any individual nation. Its senior staff carry diplomatic passports, and the files and documents inside the European Central Bank cannot be searched or impounded by any police force or public prosecutor. The ECB is well known among economists as one of the world's most powerful and least transparent central banks, yet its former president Jean-Claude Trichet dealt with this problem by merely asserting that there was no problem.
‘the ecb is one of the most transparent central banks in the world and has helped define the state-of-the-art of central banking in this domain.’-Jean-Claude
The European Commission, an unelected group whose aim is to build a United States of Europe with all the trappings of a unified state, has an interest in weakening individual governments and the influence of the democratic parliaments of Europe.
It turns out that the evidence for central bank independence that was relied upon in the Maastricht Treaty derived from a single study that was commissioned by none other than the European Commission itself, published in 1992 under the name "One Market, One Money." The study purported to demonstrate that central bank independence led to low inflation. James Forder, an Oxford academic, has since demonstrated that this study was manipulated to obtain the desired result.
The story we're being told by the central banks just does not add up, and there is evidence that central banks work differently from what they would like us to believe as to how they work.
The world over, central banks hold significant yet little understood powers. Often independent, unaccountable, and obscure, central banks operate in the shadows, yet their actions affect us all. Central banks in almost all countries worldwide—and the IMF has helped a lot in achieving this—have become totally independent and, in practice, not accountable to any democratic institution, and accountability to parliaments is usually minor and, in practice, meaningless. Whether it is the Bank of Japan, the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, or the European Central Bank, examples of central bank deception abound.
In the United States in the 1920s, banks were encouraged to create money and give it to speculators. The resulting depression persuaded the freedom-loving Americans that a decentralized federal system without strong national controls could not work.
In the 1990s, the Japanese were persuaded that their economic system, which had brought considerable prosperity and equality, needed to be changed into a so-called free market system. And while Japan's transformation was not yet complete, the central bankers struck again with an IMF-led raid on the Asian Tiger Economies.
The present European debt crisis is yet another example of central bank deception. To create a public consensus for the need for structural reform by purposefully creating a recession and then needlessly prolonging it must constitute an abuse of power. Do citizens really want to be manipulated in such a costly and dishonest manner?”
This highlights the issue with central banks and shows that they were shaped in this way by the IMF, which was created and controlled by the U.S. The U.S., through the IMF, transformed central banks such as the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank into something similar to the Federal Reserve. So, it was not the Bank of London or the British who were responsible for this, but rather the U.S. and the Federal Reserve that initiated this harmful system.
By using the IMF, the U.S. forced other central banks to adopt the same practices as the Federal Reserve. However, you won’t hear this from Alex Krainer, as it contradicts his assertion and narrative that the U.S. is good, the British are bad, and that all the negative actions of the U.S. are merely the result of British, British Crown, and MI6 influence - an idea that I find laughable.
In my opinion, Britain is the cancer of Europe, serving as a tool for the U.S. to exert influence over the European continent and spread American ideology. This was evident with Reaganomics and Thatcherism: the U.S. created Reaganomics and then spread it to the U.K. through Thatcherism as a means of introducing and reinforcing this ideology in Europe. Reaganomics was an economic cancer invented by the U.S., which was then transferred to Britain with the intent of spreading it further across Europe. This is why I view Britain as an American tool and the cancer of Europe - serving the purpose of promoting U.S. ideology and extending American influence.
When the European Central Bank (ECB) was created, it was not as problematic as the Federal Reserve. However, over time, the IMF pressured the ECB to become more like the Fed, further proving that it is the U.S., not Britain, that is the real force behind these policies. The U.S. is the only country with veto power over the IMF, demonstrating that the IMF is simply a tool of American influence. Since the IMF pushes all central banks to operate like the Federal Reserve, it is clear that it is the U.S.—not some imagined British, British Crown, or MI6 conspiracy—that is poisoning the world.
It is not Britain manipulating the U.S.; rather, the U.S. is using Britain as its tool, its cancer within Europe. This completely contradicts Alex Krainer’s assertion and narrative, which is why he fails to mention the role of the Federal Reserve, the IMF, or the fact that the U.S. is the only country with veto power within the IMF.
Misconceptions of Marx.
52:50
“The theory of value's focus wasn't really on labor; it was on isolating economic rent. If you define value as the basic cost of production, then how do you explain when prices are higher than the cost of production? That difference is economic rent. Marx devoted most of volume two of Capital to that, and much of volume three.
However, most people think of Marx as volume one. He said, "When you're talking about the labor theory of value, what expense of labor are you talking about? Are you talking about what the industrialist pays for the workforce, or what the industrial capitalist sells the product of labor for?"
Now, that may sound like economic rent at first glance, because after all, isn't buying something and selling it for a higher price economic rent? Marx said no, profits are not like economic rent. The rent recipient does not earn the rent; they get it in their sleep. Rent is something that goes up without the owner of the property doing any active productive function.
However, the industrialist, the capitalist, plays a productive function because when he hires labor, he organizes the whole business. He organizes a supply chain for labor. He arranges bank financing if he needs it. He puts together a whole marketing system so that before he actually employs labor to produce the commodities, he already has a whole marketing plan so that he can sell the products of labor to somebody else. In that sense, Marx said the capitalist is playing a productive role.
At some point, when there's a socialist government, the socialist is going to do exactly what the industrial capitalist does. He tries to organize markets in a way that cuts prices and cuts all the unnecessary costs of production—the faux frais of production, as Marx said. So, the role of the capitalist is to essentially lead a social revolution that got rid of the landlord class as a class, and got rid of the monopolies that simply increased the cost of living and doing business, and hence the cost of labor to the capitalist.
So, capitalism itself played a productive, forward-moving role to free economies from economic rent. That's what classical economics in the whole 19th-century takeoff of industrial capitalism in Britain, the United States, and Germany was all about.
Industrial profits were part of the production process because you had to pay the industrialist, the capitalist, for playing the organizational role to actually create products and to undersell competitors. That was the role of the industrialist, Marx said, always to try to undersell competitors. An industrial nation such as Britain would have the aim of underselling other nations by freeing themselves from a rent-collecting class, freeing themselves from the landlords, freeing themselves from monopolies, so that England would end up as a low-priced economy, not the way it became under Margaret Thatcher and her followers.”
This is a misconception of Marx and something people do not understand about him. This topic was also addressed in another one of my posts, which included a video by Michael Hudson.
People don’t understand Marx because they focus only on Das Kapital Volume 1 while ignoring Volumes 2 and 3. Even Marx himself was aware of this misunderstanding, as shown in a quote from one of my previous posts, where he said at the end of his life:
"All I know is that I am no Marxist. God save me from my friends."
A major misconception about Marx’s theory of value arises from this selective focus on Volume 1. Many people assume that Marx believed all capitalists - meaning all employers - are evil and that they belong to the Rentier Class. However, that is not what Marx was saying, as explained in the video featuring Michael Hudson. Because people neglect Volumes 2 and 3, they misinterpret Marx, believing he classified all capitalists as rentiers. This misinterpretation contributed to the development of Communism - which is not Marxist socialism, but rather a distortion of it. As Lenin himself said:
"Socialism is merely a state capitalist monopoly that is made to serve the interests of the whole people and, to that extent, ceases to be a capitalist monopoly. The new means of control were not created by us but by capitalism in its military-imperialist stage."
This misunderstanding led to what Michael Hudson explained in my previously mentioned post:
"That everything else is outside of Marxism, that Volume 2 and Volume 3 don’t have anything to do with Marxism, that finance and rent don’t have anything to do with Marxism, and that the economy is not an economic system. All that Marxism talks about is labor-capital relations, and you need a big state for that. The state becomes the employer of labor. That’s the trivialization of capitalism."
Now, let me explain this issue in my own words. The core misunderstanding of Marxism stems from the misinterpretation of the Rentier Class. Many people who stop at Marx’s ideas from Volume 1 of Das Kapital mistakenly believe that all capitalists and employers belong to the Rentier Class. This is incorrect, as explained by Michael Hudson.
If you employ workers and manage a company, you are not part of the Rentier Class - the class that Marxism and socialism aim to fight against. The Rentier Class consists of people who earn money passively, without contributing to the process of production - for example, bankers, investors, monopolists, and land or resource owners. These individuals profit merely by owning something rather than through adding value to production. According to Marx and socialist theory, they are a cancer on the economy because they drive up prices without adding anything to the production process. Investors, landowners, and monopolists, for example, increase the price of goods without adding value to production.
To simplify this issue, let’s consider a state where all farmland is bought by a capitalist or a group of capitalists. Because they now own all the land, they can increase rent prices, thereby taking a larger share of farmers’ profits without contributing to agricultural production. This forces farmers to either accept lower profits or raise the prices of their products, even though neither the quality of the products nor customer satisfaction has improved. This is an example of economic rent, which is the defining characteristic of the Rentier Class.
Another example is monopolists. Suppose a capitalist or a group of capitalists controls an entire industry. Because they have no competition, they can raise prices at will, again without improving quality or customer satisfaction. This is another example of economic rent - the exploitative system that Marxism and socialism seek to eliminate.
In contrast, true capitalists operate in a competitive market, striving to reduce production costs, improve product quality, and increase customer satisfaction. This competition benefits the economy, and Marxism and socialism do not oppose it. If the price of a product rises due to increased quality or customer satisfaction, that is not an issue. The problem arises when the Rentier Class artificially inflates prices without adding any real value. This is why they are not true capitalists - they are rentiers, and according to Marxist and socialist theory, they are a cancer on capitalism itself.
Marxism and socialism are about eliminating economic rent and the Rentier Class, which inflates costs and prices without contributing to production. According to these ideologies, this rent-seeking behavior harms the economy and the capitalist system itself.
I hope this explanation helps people better understand true Marxism and socialism while dispelling myths and misconceptions. It is incorrect to believe that Marxism classifies all capitalists and employers as part of the Rentier Class. This misunderstanding led to Leninist state monopolies - communism - which is not true Marxism or socialism. Marxism and socialism do not argue that all capitalists are evil, nor do they advocate for complete nationalization and state control of all industries, as many people mistakenly believe.
Scary socialism phobia.
This is connected to word manipulation and ideology, which is a broad subject. I will not explain it fully in this post, as it is already quite long, and I fear many people may be discouraged by its length. However, I will delve into it more deeply in my next post. For now, I would like to touch on this subject briefly.
Once again, I will use an example of my educated friend with whom I have been debating. Recently, he has been insulting and degrading me, to the point where he is literally scaring me. He is a perfect example of Western intellectualism and educational indoctrination, which makes me even more grateful that I did not pursue higher education. He constantly calls himself an intellectual and behaves as though he is superior to others because he is more intelligent and educated. He considers himself part of an intellectual elite, which I despise, as it is an ideology deeply ingrained in people through Western education.
I have said before: "If you think you are better than others because you are smarter, you are not intelligent; you are merely intellectual, which is completely different." He is a perfect example of this indoctrination and elitism. I have said many times that, while I may be smarter than most people, I have never felt superior to them because intelligence comes at the cost of other things. While I may possess more intelligence than others, they surpass me in other aspects, which ultimately makes us equal. I have always thought that way. In fact, I used to believe that my intelligence made me worse off than others because I cannot enjoy life the way "normal" people do. Later, I discovered that Dostoevsky felt the same way, as expressed in Notes from Underground, where he claims that the underground man suffers from the greatest ailment of all: consciousness - because thinking too much is a disease. He also states that the underground man takes solace in knowing he is smarter than the people he meets, yet socially, they are all well above him. The underground man considers men of action to be the true "normal" man, while he sees himself as a product born out of a test tube. When I studied the human mind and learned about many intelligent individuals, it comforted me to know that many of them felt the same way I do. Quotes like Albert Camus' "Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal." made me feel understood.
However, my friend does not understand this. He calls himself an intellectual and believes he is better than others, which, in my opinion, means he is not truly intelligent but merely intellectual - something entirely different, as I stated earlier.
Recently, I had a discussion with him in which I showed him a fragment of a video featuring Michael Hudson discussing the Rentier Class. He immediately launched a verbal attack on me. He argued that if he wanted to rent someone a bike, I would not allow it because it would be a form of passive income - which is in my opinion an oversimplification of the issue. He insisted that private property is sacred and should not be restricted.
I explained to him that renting out a bike requires maintenance, keeping track of who is borrowing it, and determining rental fees. This involves actual work and does not qualify as Rentier Class activity in the sense that Hudson described. Moreover, the discussion was about the macroeconomic scale, not microeconomics. He first attacked me for not specifying that the Rentier Class issue was about the macro scale, accusing me of being irresponsible because "stupid people" might misunderstand and be misled into communism. In response, I provided an example: a capitalist who buys up all farmland from the state, increases rent, and raises product costs without adding any value to production. I argued that if, as he claims, "private property is sacred and should not be touched," then we should allow capitalists to buy all the land and create economic rent without adding value, which would be harmful to the economy.
He responded that it was obvious that such a thing should not be allowed and that he did not need to specify this when discussing private property. I admitted that I was wrong for not explicitly stating that the Rentier Class issue applies to the macro scale, and I acknowledged that I should have been more precise. However, I pointed out that he had made the same mistake regarding private property - he should have clarified that his argument applied only on a microeconomic scale and that, on a macro scale, private property should have limits to prevent situations like the one in my example. Instead of admitting his mistake, he attacked me, claiming that I was uneducated and did not understand the definitions, while insisting that his point was "logical" and did not need further clarification.
I asked him if he saw the double standard in his reasoning: while my lack of specificity about the Rentier Class could supposedly lead to communism, his vague argument about private property could just as easily lead to fascism. He denied the double standard outright, claiming that I was simply wrong, undefeated and because of that I do not understand definitions. This shocked me because, even when confronted with clear logical inconsistency, he refused to acknowledge his mistake. To me, this is intellectual dishonesty.
This elitism, intellectual arrogance, and socialism phobia are deeply embedded in higher education in the West, as many socialists and Marxists have pointed out. I believe this is connected to the glorification of Rome, as explained by Michael Parenti and other socialist thinkers. The issue stems from accepting historical sources uncritically, without analyzing the perspective from which they were written. Historical records are often written by elites - ordinary working-class people did not have the skills or time to write books, so we rarely see their perspective. Failing to recognize this and ignoring the fact that history is documented from the viewpoint of the ruling class distorts our understanding of the past.
This is central to Marxist materialist historiography, which is largely omitted from Western education and academia. What we know about Rome, for example, is from the viewpoint of the wealthy elite, not the common people. Ignoring the perspective from which historical sources were written results in a distorted vision of the past. Marxists and socialists analyze history through a materialist lens, taking into account that most historical records come from the ruling class, while the voices of ordinary working-class people from those eras are absent. This was well illustrated in another of my posts, where I cited Douglas Valentine:
"Well, that’s the end result of decades of military propaganda in the United States, and it goes back to the Iliad. The rulers of society, who own the property and control the means of production, hire people like Homer to tell their story. Their story only focuses on the heroic soldier who goes off to fight in foreign wars and becomes a hero. It’s the hero myth. The myth tells us that the only way to become a true hero is to fight and die for your country overseas—supposedly in service of the nation, but really in service of corporations like General Electric, Morgan Stanley, and pharmaceutical companies."
This reference to The Iliad and Homer highlights how history is often written from the perspective of those who control property and the means of production. Marxists and socialists recognize this as part of the materialist view of history, a perspective that is largely absent from Western education - a fundamental problem, in my opinion.
I have compared this issue to analyzing modern history through the lens of today's elites. For instance, if we were to analyze the Iraq War or the intervention in Libya solely from the perspective of figures like Dick Cheney or Hillary Clinton - who directly benefited from these actions - we would inevitably conclude that these interventions were justified,beneficial and good.
The reason why socialism phobia and the lack of understanding of the Marxist materialist view of history are so concerning is because of something my friend said to me later. While I believe the United States is responsible for much of the evil in the world, I have admitted that one good thing about the U.S. is its commitment to freedom of speech. In contrast, most of Europe, including my own country, does not have true freedom of speech, as promoting either Fascism or Communism is legally forbidden.
I want to mention a member of our Duran community, whom I previously referred to as Mister C. I completely disagree with his views, and I find them abhorrent. However, rather than silencing him by deleting his comments, I choose to debate him - unlike Mister C. himself, who supports censorship of socialist and communist views. While I am not a communist, I do not support censoring communist views, just as I do not support censoring fascist views. Bad ideas should be countered with good ideas, and bad speech should be fought with good speech - not with censorship. Ironically, Mister C. supports the censorship of communist and socialist views, just as my friend does. However, Mister C. also proclaims to be a fascist and openly supports fascist views, even though both fascist and communist views are forbidden in Europe.
My so-called intellectual friend went as far as to say that people who support communist views should be imprisoned or even executed - "given a bullet to the head and buried six meters underground," as he put it. While Mister C. would likely applaud and agree with this, he fails to realize that people like my friend hold the same belief about those who support fascist views—people like him. For example, Mister C. was pleased that videos from the YouTube channel Revolutionary Communist International cannot be played on the WordPress page where this forum is hosted. Yet, he does not seem to understand that his own fascist views would be subject to the same kind of censorship.
You cannot support censorship while simultaneously demanding the right to say whatever you want. By advocating the suppression of communist views, Mister C. is legitimizing the suppression of his own fascist views.
I find it absolutely abhorrent that someone can claim to be intelligent and intellectual while advocating for censorship of certain viewpoints. To me, freedom of speech is the highest good in this world. When we limit freedom of speech, we also limit freedom of thought. This creates an Orwellian society where certain words and views are deemed unacceptable, leading to wrongthink - which, in my opinion, is anti-intellectual and restricts human thought. This is closely connected to the manipulation of words and ideas, which in turn manipulates our thoughts and our perception of the world. However, this topic deserves a deeper discussion, and since this post is already quite long, I will address it in my next post.
I would like to thank everyone who has taken the time to read this post until the end. I also ask everyone to support The Duran, as I am sure they do not necessarily agree with all the views I present in my posts, yet they still allow me to share my thoughts. This is a true representation of freedom of speech, and it is what makes platforms like The Duran so valuable. This commitment to open discourse is further demonstrated by the fact that they allow Mister C. to comment on my posts, even though they likely disagree with his views. Instead of banning or censoring him, they allow him to express his opinions, which in turn gives me the opportunity to debate him on his views.
Unlike Mister C., I do not believe in silencing views I disagree with. While I think his views are harmful and misguided, I do not support censoring him. In my opinion, bad ideas—such as those held by Mister C.- cannot be defeated through censorship. They must be challenged through debate, discussion, and, ultimately by using the Socratic method.
And like always.
“Knowledge will make you be free.”
― Socrates
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“Knowledge isn’t free. You have to pay attention.”
― Richard P. Feynman
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“Freedom is not free, you need to pay attention.”
― Grzegorz Ochman
Please pay enough attention, or we will all be screwed. God bless you all.
"From mutual respect flows great power in difficult moments."
― Józef Piłsudski
"No healthy society will passively tolerate the economy of bandits supported by the authorities and authorities supported by bandits without resorting to active resistance. And if we are such a society, we should get rid of such masters."
― Józef Piłsudski
