So what if I were wrong. What if there was no US-supported coup in Ukraine in 2014? What if the Ukraine war is not a proxy war waged by the USA against Russia? Does that mean that such suspicions, such suggestions, such ideas should be banned from all mainstream and social media on the grounds that they are the product of Russian propaganda, i.e. that they are ideas spawned by the “enemy”?

Almost all my compatriots believe that Putin is “evil”, and that this entire war has to do with his personal megalomanic ideas regarding a land of innocent farmers minding their own business. It’s not that my compatriots are stupid: I put to you that the mainstream media can be compared to the Catholic Church during the Spanish Inquisition. Even Jews and Moslems converted, what else could they do?

There are undoubtedly very many innocent farmers in the ravaged land of Ukraine. Quite many of them, however – true, a minority – speak Russian, think and feel Russian. That part of the story has basically been forgotten by mainstream media.

Now the interesting thing about the Spanish inquisition is not that people were burnt at the stake, but that the Inquisition lasted much longer in Spain than elsewhere, until 1834, in fact. The last person to be executed on charges of heresy in Spain, was a Caetano Ripoli in 1826 – he was a teacher inspired by Enlightenment ideas. Nowadays, we all bow to those ideas, those of the Enlightenment. But the powerful Spanish clergy and the nobility – neither the one nor the other paid any taxes at the time, and between them they bled their peasants to the bone – would have none of such ideas, naturally.

All of Europe executed heretics, by the way, also Protestant nations. In Protestant Norway, for instance, more than 300 people (mostly women) were found guilty of witchcraft and executed. These people were considered the Devil’s tools, so the wealth of extant court records of the trials, which by the way are extremely detailed, make no secret of the use of torture. Torture was deemed a perfectly reasonable tool, not only to combat the Devil, but also to salvage the women’s souls: Only if they confessed would they stand a chance of not burning in Hell till Kingdom come.

I add for the record that between 1400 and 1782, some 40,000–60,000 were killed, mostly in Europe, on charges of witchcraft. (Source: Wikipedia as at 2023.01.04)

So my point is not that the Spanish Inquisition executed large numbers of people, on the contrary, but that it was so tremendously efficient. Basically a network of courts, it held the entire population in thrall for nearly five centuries; people feared God, feared each other, feared being denounced or accused by their neighbours, feared life itself.

The Inquisition’s crusade was against freedom of information, freedom of thought. In short, it aimed to arrest the exchange of ideas. Its success was undeniable, in that it basically halted all progress.

Many countries practised censorship. The Spanish Crown did not need to. With the gold and silver from their colonies, Royalty, the Church and the nobility built extravagant palaces to which they invited foreign artists, but look at the paintings of the great Golden Age Spanish painters (e.g. Murillo, Zurbaran, Ribera and El Greco. Apart from Velasquez and, later, Goya, they painted mainly “the Virgin”, Christ, Cupids, Angels, saints and clouds.

So what did Inquisition censorship do for Spain?

Spain was a total flop, economically, politically and socially, until very recently. That is censorship for you.

With God on its side, to quote Bob Dylan, the Inquisition throttled growth. Whereas England, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, even Poland, prospered, Spain did not. People were terrified of offending God even after the Inquisition; in fact, way into the 1970s. In a fabulously fertile country, most people lived in abject poverty.

So what if I’m wrong. What if there was no US-supported coup in Ukraine in 2014? What if the Ukraine war is not a proxy war waged by the USA against Russia? Let them – those who deny what some of us maintain are facts – counter those facts with other observable facts. Let us calmly and coolly analyse what happened.

Instead, the US Inquisition ( cf. for instance the Twitter Files) has cancelled us, not only in the US but in all of NATO, suppressing freedom of information and even throttling freedom of thought – since without information no real freedom of thought.

Much good that will do us all.