Censorship: waging war on free speech
HistoryExtra podcast
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Censorship and the Idea of a Thought Crime
The notion of a thought crime has always been lurking behind any effort at censorship. Censorship itself can be a spectacle of power, but it's also an effort to address the ideas behind them. The treason statute that you just talked about in henry the eighth, whas remarkable about i as they sort of come out with it. This is a statute from the fourteenth century which defined treason as anything that they call e compassing, or imagining the death of the king. That is, you know, clearly, word for word, a thought crime to imagine something.
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