The New York Times finally realizes that censorship and socialism are bad ideas in an emergency

The coronavirus crisis has forced some on the left to confront the danger of authoritarianism

The New York Times took a break from flogging the impeachment circus to recently committing a true act of journalism, making the point that people become angry when a government of the authoritarian left suppresses important information.

The national socialist media normally champions the authoritarianism of China exemplified by their being impressed that they can build a hospital in six days.

“China has a record of getting things done fast even for monumental projects like this,” says Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.
…

“This authoritarian country relies on this top down mobilisation approach. They can overcome bureaucratic nature and financial constraints and are able to mobilise all of the resources.”

However, the New York Times recently noted a downside to systems of centralized control: As Virus Spreads, Anger Floods Chinese Social Media.

The government usually keeps a tight grip on what is said, seen and heard about it. But the sheer amount of criticism — and the often clever ways in which critics dodge censors, such as by referring to Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, as “Trump” or by comparing the outbreak to the Chernobyl catastrophe — have made it difficult for Beijing to control the message.

The condemnations stand as a rare direct challenge to the Communist Party, which brooks no dissent in the way it runs China. In some cases, Chinese leaders appear to be acknowledging people’s fear, anger and other all-too-human reactions to the crisis, showing how the party can move dramatically, if sometimes belatedly, to mollify the public.

The Bottom Line

The left is based on authoritarianism, but it cannot admit this basic truth. The authoritarian socialists in China cannot be honest with their people in normal, everyday matters. This destroys any trust the people have in their government, so even when it may tell the truth in an emergency, no one will accept this as the truth.

Thus, they are already behind the eight ball when it comes to these situations, making them far worse. There are times when government has an important role in society, but when it aggressively asserts control and is deceptive, this negates that role. They can’t very well admit that they lied before, but they are being trustworthy now.

While they can use brute force to get things done, the same doesn’t hold true for intellectual endeavors. Those take a meritocracy of sorts, the kind of thing authoritarianism tends to suppress.

While leftists secretly love authoritarianism, the stark reality of an emergency shows that freedom based societies are better prepared to deal with them. They can be honest with people because they had to do that in the past. They can also solve the problem faster because they are intellectually equipped to do so.

Originally published on the NOQ Report