It wasn’t merely marginalized, it was almost entirely outlawed after the Revolution.
Yes, and that outlawing worked. Orthodoxy fell from holding near-universal adherence and being a pillar of state power to a fragmented, hated patchwork, which was re-allowed to exist during World War II as a submissive state organ.
While the state lasted, Russians really did become atheists and Marxists, though as Bertrand Russell footnotes his History of Western Philosophy, this practically meant replacing Tsar-worship with Stalin-worship. Criminalization led to marginalization. Similar things happened to “infantile leftist” communists and “factionalists,” and with the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, militant anti-fascism.
These are just particularly dramatic examples. Unfortunately, not all censorship and oppression has the Streisand Effect. I think regimes would act at least a little differently if it did.
I thought you were going to bring up examples of how the law can marginalize something without making it illegal. Instead this is an example of the law marginalizing something by making it illegal. It seems we misunderstood one another.
I originally said that the law couldn’t (merely) marginalize something, it could only outlaw it entirely (and then it might be marginalized or disappear entirely). So, if the German politicians want to marginalize Holocaust denial, the only legal tool they have is to outlaw it entirely.
Ah, we were talking about different things, then. But yes, I think it can do that too. I think that Supreme Court rulings helped to make racism taboo. Returning to the labor movement, passing laws that prohibit forming closed-shop contracts are a great indirect means of marginalizing labor, or simply the non-enforcement of laws against firing labor organizers.
Yes, and that outlawing worked. Orthodoxy fell from holding near-universal adherence and being a pillar of state power to a fragmented, hated patchwork, which was re-allowed to exist during World War II as a submissive state organ.
While the state lasted, Russians really did become atheists and Marxists, though as Bertrand Russell footnotes his History of Western Philosophy, this practically meant replacing Tsar-worship with Stalin-worship. Criminalization led to marginalization. Similar things happened to “infantile leftist” communists and “factionalists,” and with the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, militant anti-fascism.
These are just particularly dramatic examples. Unfortunately, not all censorship and oppression has the Streisand Effect. I think regimes would act at least a little differently if it did.
I thought you were going to bring up examples of how the law can marginalize something without making it illegal. Instead this is an example of the law marginalizing something by making it illegal. It seems we misunderstood one another.
I originally said that the law couldn’t (merely) marginalize something, it could only outlaw it entirely (and then it might be marginalized or disappear entirely). So, if the German politicians want to marginalize Holocaust denial, the only legal tool they have is to outlaw it entirely.
Ah, we were talking about different things, then. But yes, I think it can do that too. I think that Supreme Court rulings helped to make racism taboo. Returning to the labor movement, passing laws that prohibit forming closed-shop contracts are a great indirect means of marginalizing labor, or simply the non-enforcement of laws against firing labor organizers.