Dive into the tragedy of tyranny in the Americas and you often find, long before the consolidation of power, insidious support from public intellectuals for controlling thought and speech.
The cautionary tale of the "Postscripts" forcibly inserted into Cuban opinion writing and news in the earliest days of the Cuban revolution, with support from journalists, is worth revisiting.
In 1974, during Peru's military dictatorship, something similar happened when leftist journalists helped take over the newspaper La Prensa.
Decades later Venezuela's Hugo Chávez also strangled free speech with help from public intellectuals.
A combination of broad and arbitrary economic and regulatory powers beyond the scope of government in a true democracy were used to force compliance with the regime's agenda.
In dictator Daniel Ortega's Nicaragua, where the media is now mostly controlled by the state or the businesses of the Ortega family and friends, the regime is set to approve new cyber legislation that will criminalize whatever the state decides is fake news on the internet.
Journalists working for the regime are defending the gag law.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-free-speech-dies-11603658971?mod=hp_opin_pos_1
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