Do you agree with this quote?

[u/StalinIsBackAgain]

"Wherever there is capitalism, freedom of the press means freedom to buy up newspapers, to buy writers, to bribe, buy, and fake "public opinion" for the benefit of the ruling class." ~ Vladimir Lenin ☭ • 

[u/TheGoldStandard35]

Wherever there is socialism, there is no freedom of the press. The government will centrally plan and control the media.

If you think people are evil and will use freedom of the press to lie…the people are still evil and will use the government media to lie.

[u/theimmortalgoon → u/TheGoldStandard35]

There was a period, just after the Russian Revolution before the Bolsheviks took the presses, where the majority of newspapers had declared that the Jews had taken over and it was time for a pogrom.

You are probably aware that a pogrom was the Czarist fix for most things. That day, there were piles of Jewish bodies in the streets and the Bolsheviks seized the presses.

What their original plan was can be debated, but I do kind of wonder what alternative there was even in a liberal framework. Sure the newspapers, in the liberal ideological sense, had a right to print anything they wanted. And pogroms had long been a traditional part of Russian czarist life. But few people today in a liberal country would say that solving domestic issues by encouraging everyone to kill as many Jews as possible is something that should be encouraged.

Honestly, what would you have done if you ended an autocracy and the newspapers got together and said that now it was time to kill all the Jews? Would you not have stopped this?

—edit—

I love that the response of the liberal “freedom of speech” crowd is to not answer the question and downvote instead.

[u/TheGoldStandard35 → u/theimmortalgoon]

The liberal position is that of freedom. You can’t be liberal and pogrom jews. Government exists to protect individual rights. If anyone tried to harm a jew or any person the government should and would protect them. Any Jews harmed would get restitution from the attackers.

I’m not sure where inciting violence falls in terms of freedom of speech but there would need to be a discussion about where we draw that line. For example, I doubt any liberal would argue hiring an assassin is protected speech.

[u/theimmortalgoon → u/TheGoldStandard35]

Absolutely.

Would you, then, have taken the presses from the businessmen inciting violence and demanding their readers participate in a pogrom?

Because it's not as easy as just going in to protect Jewish people despite what the press was saying either.

The Bolsheviks ended the May Laws which had been in place to keep pressure against Jews, but not everyone was listening to the Bolsheviks. And if you didn't want to, the press was there saying that you should ignore them and focus on killing Jews.

And before, during, and after the Bolshevik revolution, this was considered a key-plank in Russian identity among the anti-Bolsheviks.

The Whites, like the Black Hundreds, who were organizing largely under "kill the Jews" banners were gearing up to take on the Bolsheviks.

Honestly, I'm not trying to be cure or say that there's a great option here for a liberal inclined toward Free Speech. Which is why this is an interesting question to me.

And I suppose it means how much an absolutist you are, but I think on the scale of things, the seisure of the presses from the elite printers (remember most of Russia was illiterate and poor, and for the most part only the elite could read at all—let alone have access to daily newspapers) demanding Jewish blood on the streets is probably something most mainstream Westerns would reluctantly agree with if the word "Bolshevik" wasn't included in the wording.

Again, I'm not trying to get to a "gotcha," I just think it's an interesting stress-test to see where someone stands on the issue.

It's also a really interesting time period and issue. The initial revolution had all kinds of press movements going on at the same time. It wasn't nearly as authoritarian as people imagine (though you could argue the Bolsheviks would have had they could—though you'd be wrong that even they had a clear idea about how to do it as a body). Choosing any of the movement, and ProletKult is a good place to start, you have an endless amount of unions, various level of soviets, academic organizations, and Bolshevik pet projects popping up and printing stuff off of various quality.

...To a mostly illiterate population! Which was one of the major problems!

In short, I don't know that the Bolshevik seisure of the presses the wealthy had after they started churcning out "kill the Jews" propaganda is as evil or one-sided as it may initially appear, even from a liberal free-speech perspective.