Public: Politics: Protest
Folk songs against censorship   (+2)  [vote for, against]

When the media, especially online, is censored, it may be difficult to raise awareness of said censorship, due to communication about the censorship being censored.

A folk song can be used to communicate deliberately to people who aren't known to the originator [1], and it is hard to censor [2]. Therefore, if such censorship occurs, folk songs could be used to raise awareness of and opposition to it. Folk songs could be used to promote adoption of specific anti-censorship measures as well.

Folk songs have the advantage of being hard to control using copyright law, which is not likely to be the case for other methods of verbatim-repeatable communication. (This idea was inspired by Articles 11 & 13 being passed.) They also have the advantage that they're primarily spread on a one-to-one, face-to-face basis, which presumably would help them avoid being detected by online monitoring of potential dissidents.

N/A [2019-03-26]
-- notexactly, Mar 31 2019

Bob got there first, in the 1940s. https://en.wikipedi...hine_kills_fascists
[Sgt Teacup, Mar 31 2019]

[2] The Hanging Tree (The Hunger Games song) https://en.wikipedi..._Hunger_Games_song)
[notexactly, Mar 31 2019]

Somebody please add link [1] if you can find it, because I can't. It's the idea to genetically engineer cats to glow or change color in the presence of ionizing radiation, and promulgate a folk song teaching that people should not live in areas where the cats so indicate, even though they don't necessarily know what the cats' indication means.

Re "This machine kills fascists": The article doesn't go into much depth, so I'm not sure how that's prior art for this, let alone an earlier full description or embodiment of the whole idea I described.
-- notexactly, Mar 31 2019


Not exactly prior art, more of a precursor, [notexactly]. Your idea builds on the idea of folk music as an empowering response and call to action. Censorship seems to go in and out of vogue. Presently, we seem to think that everyone has the right to be undisturbed by difficult issues and thoughts, so it's time for folk music to make a comeback in the way that you describe.
-- Sgt Teacup, Mar 31 2019



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