“Lee Kuan Yew Review, Part Two: “You Are Free to Agree””, 2019-07-23 (; similar):
Are you a fan of free speech? Are you eager for everyone to have a platform? Are you in favor of an open, unconstrained press? Lee Kuan Yew isn’t, and he’s probably poking fun at you.
…Here’s a question. You’re a tiny city-state occupying valuable territory, trying to stay independent. You are watching the cultural revolution sweep across the homeland of three-quarters of your people, and you keep noticing them funding your newspapers. Meanwhile, other superpowers are locked in an all-out ideological struggle with those forces, a struggle that’s shaping policy around the whole world. The country’s dominant English-language newspaper at the time of gaining independence was “owned by the British and actively promoted their interests.”(185)
What’s the right level of freedom of press?…Dystopian information lockdown, or prudent defense against foreign influence and misinformation? LKY is convinced, rightly or not, that it is the latter. Read with modern US politics in mind, it’s easy to compare it to deplatformings from tech websites, concerns about Russian infiltration of social media, or the controversies around fake news. The context changes, the challenges stay the same.