Paradox No.1 (The Paradox of the Fisks): The most criticised societies in the world will be the least criminal societies.
Let's say one has a planet with free societies, that commit minor crimes, and closed societies, that commit major crimes. Which will get more criticism? The answer, surprisingly, is the free societies.
Why is this?
Explanation
The closed society does not allow criticism of itself. The free society allows criticism of itself and of foreign closed societies. But people write about what they know, and what they are interested in is people like themselves. So the writing about their own society is an order of magnitude larger than about foreign closed societies.
The killing of a dozen protesters in a foreign closed society might rate one paragraph, one time. The killing of a dozen protesters in the free society would completely dominate news and analysis for months, and be strongly covered for years afterwards, even decades. There are all sorts of good reasons for why this is so. But the fact is, it is so. I am simply pointing out that the coverage is not equal.
Of course, in a free society the killing of protesters is a rare event. But even minor crimes - like bribery or lying to parliament - can dominate the news for weeks, even months. While actual massacres in foreign closed societies may be covered in "World News in Brief".
I am simply pointing out the obvious that minor crimes (bribery, embezzlement, lying to parliament) in the free world usually receive more column inches than major crimes (state repression, torture, executions) in the unfree world. There are good reasons for why this is so. But the fact is, it is so. The end result is that in the free press, the column inches given to criticism of free societies will be vastly greater than the column inches given to criticism of closed societies.
The societies singled out to be criticised are by definition those that are best-behaved. What did these societies do to be singled out for criticism? They were not ruthless enough. If they were ruthless, brutal and unfree, they would not be criticised so much. It is because their crimes are modest that they get criticised more.
And so we have a whole generation of journalists and polemicists like Robert Fisk and John Pilger, who write almost entirely about the crimes of the least criminal societies.
Moynihan's Law
This is really Moynihan's Law, which points out that the worst societies have the least domestic criticism. I am just pointing out that a free foreign press does not make up for this. The worst societies still have the least criticism.
Consequence
Finally, what is the effect on people of this imbalance?
In the closed society, the regime (happily) reprints the free society's criticisms of itself. No criticisms are printed of the closed society. Many people in the closed society, not knowing anything else, may even come to believe that the free society is more flawed than the closed society. For example, in the Arab Middle East, most criticism seems to be of Israel and America, rather than of their own societies, which are far more flawed.
And in the free society, naive young people read the criticisms of the free society, and don't read the (small) criticisms of (uninteresting) foreign closed societies. They too may even come to believe that the free societies are the worst societies. And so we see a thousand marches and protests against America, Israel and Britain in the west, while I personally cannot ever remember a single major protest against the Soviet Union, China, Iraq, North Korea, North Vietnam, Serbia, the Sudan or any of recent history's serious criminals.
Similarly, I have seen in my life an endless series of posters, banners, graffiti and cartoons comparing the free countries of America, Israel and Britain to Nazi Germany, and their leaders to Hitler. I'm not sure I have ever seen this about an unfree country.
By definition, the countries people protest about are the best countries. They get this abuse because they are not ruthless enough. If they really were imperialists and mass killers (like the Soviet Union), no one would protest about them.
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