Billy Bragg has called for artistic censorship.

Bragg is a gifted socialist singer from Britain. On a recent TV panel Bragg squared off with Professor Gigi Foster. Foster is liberal, but argued against the current woke insanity of going through old books like those written by Roald Dahl — a devout Christian for most of his life — and removing “offensive language” like the term “fat.” Bragg defended the censorship, arguing that we should ban language “that is abusive” because “abusive language is not free speech.”

When I saw the clip of Bragg, I felt my heart break a little bit. I adored Bragg’s music when I was in college.

[Socialists gonna socialist, though. It’s hard to miss the fact that people who believe in top-down, centrally controlled systems will have to favor censorship, because those systems *absolutely require* it to continue functioning. You don’t have to read “1984” to grasp that; in fact, I’d recommend “The Road to Serfdom” first to explain why socialists inevitably are censors. — Ed]