Censorship of the collective, written in 2020, could be renamed to the collective memetic field rejections in 2025. The mechanisms behind the peculiar cases presented here are becoming easier to understand if we consider the interactions between individual and collective memetic fields. Suppose a collective memetic field shapes the perception of reality in such a way that it repels memes trying to enter the field. In that case, it is similar to when a particle with a particular vector repels from a field that cannot be integrated by it. The theory is elaborated in the forthcoming treatise Memes beyond Genes, to be published shortly.

Definitions evolve

Everything evolves. After Lee Smolin introduced a logical consequence that not only matter and mind (memes) evolve, but the laws of physics as well, it would be an unlikely coincidence that censorship, as apparently well-defined human activity, would not.

Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or “inconvenient.” Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies.

Wikipedia

A significantly different definition is not found in the Encyclopedia Britannica. According to both definitions, it was initially a person and later an institution that conducted censorship. In both cases, a centralised institution in power bans the speech of individuals. 

Let me challenge such a definition of censorship with clear examples of our times.

The silence and reason behind

What is the mechanism behind the fact that one cannot say aloud in a public sphere that a specific activity of Donald Trump or Viktor Orban is positive? While it is possible to discuss specific mistakes of Barack Obama or Angela Merkel, it is shameful to express any positive attitude towards politicians like Trump or Orban.

(A comment in 2025: I left Obama and Merkel intentionally, even though they are both out of a current perspective; Trump and Orban are still here, with the persistence of being hated. The argument presented below holds even though today Starmer and Merz would replace Obama and Merkel perfectly.)

Many follow the old definition of censorship and would find George Soros, Bill Gates, or even Zuckerberg as agents behind the mentioned censorship. But while one can still observe acts of traditional censorship when particular Facebook or Twitter accounts are deleted by an easily recognisable institution, namely Facebook and Twitter, the comparable censorship activity happens all the time outside social media and among those that don’t use social media, don’t even know about George Soros and are so far from Bill gates that his activity has no chance to influence their memetic activity.

(A comment in 2025: I left Twitter in my argumentation despite Elon Musk renaming it to X and despite his expelling Twitter censorship right after he acquired it. Why? For fun and to keep the historical track.)

No need for outside authority anymore

There is no outside authority, in the form of an institution, that bans me from expressing my views on specific topics; however, I still feel as if I am being banned. It is my personal experience, so I know that I am.

And it is visible from the 2020 US elections that there is only one possible explanation for why pre-election polls diverged from final results by up to 20%. It was that 20% of voters, if I simplify a bit, who were socially banned from discussing their preference for Trump, but were still allowed to vote in silence according to their preference. 

Specific topics are socially unacceptable. If this is not censorship, what is?

However, in this case, we are not banned by a centralized authority, but by our social or, more accurately, memetic environment. It is as disgraceful to talk positively about Trump or Orban as to pee in the public park. Peeing in the park is understood as taboo, in our culture at least, and so is talking positively about tabooed personalities.

We used to name such censorship as auto-censorship. However, such a categorization is flawed, as it blames an individual as an agent of censorship, rather than attributing it to some external agency. We are thus really talking about social censorship.

Other examples of social censorship

If there were only about Trump and Orban, it would not make sense to bother about this new, evolved, decentralised, purely memetic censorship. But there are many more examples. So many, in fact, that I will only mention a few of them.

Man-caused climate change is the prime example. Expressing an opinion that there are phenomena in our lives that are beyond the scope of any science or scientific method is not socially acceptable. Expressing an argument that state-governed health and education systems are shameful apparently shows egotistic immorality. Opening the question of gender biological inequalities or race biological differences is so very much “wrong” that even the expression “gay is good” is unacceptable because it opens a possibility of the opposite statement.

All the mentioned topics are taboo in the public sphere and are confined to being discussed in safely guarded private places. All those who wish to feel free in their discussions are compelled to conduct their activities in the Catacombs, just as Christians did in the late Roman Empire. 

Let me give you another example. I was allowed to present a topic on truth and fake news at the highly respected Bledcom conference, which brings together public relations academics from around the world. The paper is presented in a shorter version here. I was tollerated, but not appreciated. I was funny, as I always tend to be, refreshing so to say, but taken as less substantial as a digestive after dinner. It was inappropriate not to conform with the prevailing ideology of hate against fake news.

The only possible way out of such a situation, where I could be seen as a disgraceful person is a silence. Silence helped me to stay inside the conference group. 

(The comment in 2025: There was another option: to publish the paper on a non-peer review platforms like PhilPapers and Academia. What does this mean for my thesis? Nothing really, but that such open platforms still (for how long) avoid pitfalls of social censorship.)

Censorship, a memetic activity

It should be clear that I do not want to imply either that Trump is perfect or that humans do not cause climate change or that my paper for Bledcom was excellent. What happens in all mentioned situations is that it is prohibited in principle even to open the issue. And such a ban is not induced by any discernable institution, but by our memetic environment only. Memetic filelds that are socially amplified prevent memes that do not conform from being expressed. To be precise: one can shoput aloud, however the meaning is unacceptable. Material memes are perceived, however the vector of meaning that comes in a bundle with a strategic meme, misses the option to be conceived even as being criticized.

This post should be read together with Memetic Korona Virus for they both help us understand the co-evolution of genes and memes.