Dominik Cardinal Duka, the Archbishop of Prague, fell victim to Twitter censors.
(Prague) First, the social networks as Facebook, Twitter et al. praised as “the” forms of communication appropriate to democracy. As soon as the masses were attracted, but no longer ticked their boxes as requested during elections, the trap then snapped shut. The communication giants have become censors who are carrying out more and more systematic orgies of deletion in order to silence undesirable opinions. The Czech Cardinal Dominik Duka, Archbishop of Prague and Primate of Bohemia, also fell victim to this censorship.
As his press spokesman Jirí Prinz announced, the cardinal's access to his Twitter channel was blocked. A reason for the blocking was not given by Twitter. Nor did anyone approach the cardinal to draw his attention to this. At the end of last week, a meeting was held in the archdiocan ordinariate to discuss possible steps to solve the problem.
The Czech news site Echo24 speculated that the blocking with a product of the Czech Internet newspaper Konzervativní noviny (Conservative newspaper) might have something to do with it. Cardinal Duka had linked an article this past October 1st. This article welcomed Amy Coney Barett's nomination as a US Supreme Court Justice. Apparently, Twitter wanted to "curb" the spread of this article, as is concluded from the overall behavior of the microblogging service. The cardinal's spokesman did not want to speculate about it, as Twitter did not officially give a reason. The fact is, however, censorship was exercized.
The example illustrates the extent of censorship that was established within a few years. The specific reason for this was the election victory of Donald Trump in the presidential election in November 2016. The day after, the New York Times blamed social networks for the victory of Trump, the political left and Washington's establishment were shocked. The social networks had made unfiltered news distribution possible. This characteristic of democracy and the fundamental right to freedom of expression was suddenly no longer “in fashion.” Conversely, the left-liberal world leading medium had declared that public opinion had to be controlled, which had previously been done through the published opinion of the mainstream media. This control is endangered by the establishment of new media with the help of social networks and must urgently be regained.
A cardinal of the Catholic Church has now also fallen victim to this censorship, which has since become more and more intensive, because he linked to an article whose opinion the establishment obviously does not like. The cardinal writes in Czech and sits in Prague, far from the USA. However, the internet giants' censorship algorithms don't seem to notice any difference.
Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed just a week ago as a judge and sworn in on the same day by US President Donald Trump. The censorship process against Cardinal Duka is all the more obvious and raises questions that require answers.
The new censorship doesn't even require the push of a button. It is largely dehumanized and left to computers.
Text: Giuseppe Nardi
Image: Wikicommons / Twitter (screenshot)
Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.com
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