The Censorship Paradox

Censorship doesn't extinguish dissent. It inflames it.

17 February 2025

In the aftermath of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, the institutions that controlled public discourse declared that Donald Trump—and by extension, the tens of millions that supported him—no longer had a place in the national conversation. His accounts were deleted and his words were erased. He and his movement, they assumed, would wither in silence. However, silencing people does not make them disappear. By 2024, Trump’s return was not just about him—it was about millions rejecting a system that silenced them instead of answering them. The more they were silenced, the more certain they became that they were right.

This is the censorship paradox ¹ : attempts to forcefully control speech and narratives do not make ideas disappear. They force them underground, beyond institutional reach, where they grow in strength. The Hunter Biden laptop story was a textbook case of censorship amplifying controversy. I had seen the leaked screenshots of emails, texts, and photos on Twitter. A few days later, when I went to look it up again, it was gone. I searched online and the only remaining articles were about how the story was “Russian disinformation.” But I had seen it, and now they were telling me it never existed. When censorship is so obvious, it forces people to question everything they have been told. What else is a lie? Is anything we're being told actually true? Nothing fuels conspiracy thinking faster than watching the truth get memory-holed in real time. The more they try to forcefully control the story, the less control they actually have. Censorship is control slipping through clenched fists.

There’s a moment, for those paying attention, when they realize the people in charge aren’t just consistently wrong— they’re lying. It starts small: an account of a news event doesn’t add up, a media narrative shifts overnight, and a law or rule is applied differently to different people. Initially, the assumption is that there’s been some mistake. They must know something the people don’t. But then the pattern repeats. Questions are deflected, inconvenient facts disappear, and those who demand answers are mocked instead of debated. And then the moment of clarity: they aren’t avoiding the truth. They are suppressing it. A system built on lies can only survive by force, and the more force they use, the more fragile it becomes.

Censorship only works if the facade never cracks. When it inevitably does, the censored are forced to reconsider everything they were told was safe to believe. A government that allows dissent can keep its authority. A government that punishes it erodes its legitimacy, pushing opposition into alternative structures of influence.

Defenders of censorship argue that some suppression is necessary to prevent real harm—incitement to violence, dangerous disinformation, and threats to national security. In theory, suppressing these threats seems like a necessary safeguard. But in practice, the line between protecting the public and controlling the narrative is impossibly thin. Who decides what constitutes free speech? Who ensures these decisions are fair? The problem is trust. A censored truth looks like a lie, and a banned lie looks like the truth. The only way to fight misinformation is to expose it to scrutiny, not suppress it. When people see dissent openly debated, they are more likely to believe the actual evidence rather than assume it’s being hidden from them.

Consider China’s Great Firewall, often cited as a “success” in digital authoritarianism. Maintaining this system requires massive technological infrastructure, constant surveillance, and regular adaptation to new circumvention methods. Even then, information leaking through is inevitable. As a result, a separation between official narratives and underground knowledge is created. Each small breach spreads, weakening the legitimacy of the entire control structure. The collapse of this system is inevitable.

COVID proved how censorship breeds distrust. Governments, media, and tech companies worked together for nearly two years to suppress debate. Scientists who questioned lockdown policies were censored. Vaccine skeptics were labeled dangerous. Alternative theories about the origins of the virus were dismissed as “racist.” For a while, the suppression of the truth seemed effective and the public accepted the official narrative. However, reality does not stay buried. The lab leak theory, once banned as misinformation, became mainstream. Vaccine side effects, also banned for being anti-science propaganda, became accepted concerns. One by one, the “conspiracy theories” proved true. Millions of people began to realize not just that the “experts” were wrong, but that the establishment had made it impossible to even discuss the possibility.

Censorship is not a tool for maintaining order. It is an overconfident step down a slippery slope that guarantees disorder. Every time a government, a media organization, or a tech company silences debate, they do not make people forget the issue. They ensure that when the truth comes out, it will not be discussed rationally—it will explode. The greatest driver of opposition is not exposure to new ideas but the suspicion that the official narrative is built on lies.

I saw it for myself in Los Angeles during the BLM riots. I watched businesses board up, streets wrecked, and the aftermath of looting. At the same time, I had seen firsthand how brutal the COVID lockdowns were. People had no problem shutting down small businesses or kicking people off beaches for being outside. I know this because I was one of these people— I was surfing with a friend when police came to force us out of the water for “violating lockdown orders.” And yet, when mass protests erupted, the same authorities who had banned outdoor exercise not only allowed them but encouraged them. The message was clear: some voices would be elevated, others suppressed. When governments selectively enforce rules based on political alignment, they are engaging in a subtler, yet equally dangerous, form of censorship.

Censorship is an admission of weakness. It is the last, desperate tool of a system that no longer trusts itself to win an argument. Some regimes have maintained control through suppression for decades, but even the most tightly controlled societies live with an undercurrent of dissent. The more an idea is forced underground, the more powerful it becomes when it returns to the surface. Every act of suppression creates parallel systems of truth and power beyond institutional reach. Every banned topic becomes a rallying point. A system built on censorship is not a fortress but a dam against an inevitable flood. The censorship dam is permanently cracked. The flood is coming. The pressure only goes one way.