Censorship

[shubla]

So after a long break I was playing HOI4 again, after some hours into the session I got bored of the same song repeating, and started seeking some moody background music.
Quite soon it appeared to me that its impossible to find any WW2 german music from youtube. I'm pretty sure that not too long ago one could find all kinds of compilations for easy listening. But now its impossible!

What is this?
Censorship?

In school at history lessons I remember that it was told that in the Soviet Union people sometimes just ceased to exist, completely disappeared, even from all photographs, books, news articles they just suddenly vanished!! From archives and new publications, at least.
Ironically in nazi germany books that were deemed against their ideology were burned

Very dangerous to attempt to make historical information/culture/art disappear, whats the harm of them existing?

From history, lessons should be learnt, instead of trying to pretend that nothing ever happened or hide it and make people forget.

Maybe its a slippery slope but what prevents from censoring other things, maybe communism is bad also? Stalin killed a lot of people. How about history of cambodia? Lots of dark things, better to not allow any references to them either. How about trump? Well he was an asshole, why not censor him as well. Its not good, its not good... Can't lead to anything good. I'm not even joking, when I think of it I feel truly a bit distressed.

Internet and social media may very well be the death of democracy.(another discussion, very interesting one)

What do you think? Will we live in dystopia full of censorship in 10 years? After all, we've already taken the first step.
Or is this good? Should this thread be censored because it talks about nazis? Time to implement swastika censorship algorithms to HnH?

[MadNomad]

tell us something we don't know

[MagicManICT]

Even worse than censorship is education via disinformation. The US school system has used standards for "information" about the US Civil War of the 1860s developed by educators of the losing side, and it's dictated policy and social standards for 150 years.

Who said history was written by the victors? (Or maybe the history used determines the victors rather than who actually won the fight? Victory via subversion?)

Conclusion: no matter where you live, something ain't right.

Afterthought: Must be that Finnish youtube, as we don't have that issue in the US. (Just don't try looking up Former President Donald Trump up on Twitter or Facebook. He got censored.)

[AntiBlitz]

Even worse than censorship is education via disinformation. The US school system has used standards for "information" about the US Civil War of the 1860s developed by educators of the losing side, and it's dictated policy and social standards for 150 years.

ah, you mean the war over rights

[shubla]

Must be that Finnish youtube, as we don't have that issue in the US.

You can search for ww2 german/nazi music/marches etc. and find actual marches instead of just random news videos or single german songs not related to ww2 in any way?

Even worse than censorship is education via disinformation. The US school system has used standards for "information" about the US Civil War of the 1860s developed by educators of the losing side, and it's dictated policy and social standards for 150 years.

Well yes there are many ways to change how the past is viewed. Just recently I read of some article in which they had a quiz for french people about who was the major contributor in ww2 among the winners, after ww2 in 1945 majority said that definitely the soviets, and only 10-20% US. Same quiz was done in more recent years, in which majority thought that US was main contributor and that soviets had little to do with it. Basically result of decades of propaganda in the form of movies etc. from USA.

Stuff like that happens little by little I'd say, and main focus is not to censor/manipulate but to make a great movie perhaps.

But with censoring non-harmful content based on it representing some ideologies that are not accepted (not even in lyrics or melody, but just the general association with them) ... It is very different, you cannot justify it with something like just making a funny movie or something, its straight out censorship in its primary and only purpose, and very similar to nazis burning books. Dangerous path indeed, especially as its difficult to see what kind of harm do they cause. If there is risk of some people turning into nazis and start killing jews or something, shouldn't we censor many many other things as well that minorities may take bad influence from?

[ivka]

In school at history lessons I remember that it was told that in the Soviet Union people sometimes just ceased to exist, completely disappeared, even from all photographs, books, news articles they just suddenly vanished!!

Whoever told you THAT nonsence should be censored for propaganda, disinformation and hate speeches. Soviet Union has committed a long list of crimes against humanity, no need to invent new ones. But even with that, Soviet Union was times more humane than its enemies, would it be from initial anti-comintern alliance (Axis) or the second iteration of anti-comintern alliance (NATO).

So, I've just found a lot of german marching songs, even outright NSDAP anthems on youtube without effort. You just need to know what you're looking for and understand a bit how search engines work

[ivka]

Well yes there are many ways to change how the past is viewed. Just recently I read of some article in which they had a quiz for french people about who was the major contributor in ww2 among the winners, after ww2 in 1945 majority said that definitely the soviets, and only 10-20% US. Same quiz was done in more recent years, in which majority thought that US was main contributor and that soviets had little to do with it. Basically result of decades of propaganda in the form of movies etc. from USA.

I'd say it's not a propaganda but a simple ignorance.

It's typical for people to be interested in their own history and not look outside their borders. USA did help to liberate France indeed, while the Soviets were fighting Third Reich elsewhere (which is not France). I have recently watched a movie about decyphering Mayan language, it was done by russian scientist Knorozov, who is well known in Mexico, practically a celebrity, but who knows about him in Russia, where he lived and worked?

Yes, of course Hollywood movies do make an impression that country which participation in WWII was practically negligible played a pivotal role - but again, because they tell about their own history. Should we blame Hollywood in that?

One sided views hurt actual worldviews, study only little trees you like and you won't see the whole forest. I think the situation is even worse with the Pacific war which is typically represented completely from the US side, and even people outside of France (who are ignorant in world history) would tell that it were US who defeated the Japan just because of media coverage. Which fight was the largest against the Imperial Japan? Manchuria offensive, again same Soviets defeated largest Imperial Kwantung army while Americans were too busy with their terror acts, bombing civilians with nukes or firebombing Tokyo. There is just no coverage of it in the media at all, people just don't know it happened and how actually the Japan that was so huge stretching not just into the Pacific, but into Asian continent has contracted to several tiny islands before they surrendered.

I've been watching a lot of documentaries lately, historical movies are just plays in these settings and usually are terribly inaccurate, learning history from movies like Alexander or Gladiator (oh and these... 300... omg...) can greatly damage people's understanding of what was actually happening and where, though there's a good side in them as well - they can inspire interest in history so we will look up details what was happening there.

[MagicManICT]

Must be that Finnish youtube, as we don't have that issue in the US.

You can search for ww2 german/nazi music/marches etc. and find actual marches instead of just random news videos or single german songs not related to ww2 in any way?

I haven't directly tried. TOR is terrible about handling YouTube, and not that I want to diminish what happened in the past or censor anything, but too much of the Internet follows you around after digging for some of this stuff, and I'll just say that, as a 3rd generation American with a German last name being of an age where my grandfather was a WWII vet, I have a love/hate relationship with the term "nazi."

Well yes there are many ways to change how the past is viewed. Just recently I read of some article in which they had a quiz for french people about who was the major contributor in ww2 among the winners, after ww2 in 1945 majority said that definitely the soviets, and only 10-20% US. Same quiz was done in more recent years, in which majority thought that US was main contributor and that soviets had little to do with it. Basically result of decades of propaganda in the form of movies etc. from USA.

I'm not going to say what I've read on the matter is hard fact and what isn't as I'm not an educator or historian, but there were definitely concerted efforts made by former Confederates to sway public education and how the US Civil War was viewed. Conversely, post-war Germany took a very hard stance against the whole Nazi party and still does to this day as I understand. As you pointed out with France, sometimes it is social and cultural influence without any overt manipulation*, and sometimes it is deliberate intervention by a government or other agency with the ability to shape and control what the public learns. Censorship and propaganda are comrades-in-arms in the disinformation war.

*What I learned in my American History classes was that it was as much the lack of foresight on the part of Hitler and those that were planning invasions as it was on US or Soviet involvement. You can't fight a war on two fronts like that. There is a lot of that "America the Hero" going around in WWII movies since... the end of that war. (Who doesn't want to be the hero in their own movie?)

[bewilderforce]

In school at history lessons I remember that it was told that in the Soviet Union people sometimes just ceased to exist, completely disappeared, even from all photographs, books, news articles they just suddenly vanished!!

Whoever told you THAT nonsence should be censored for propaganda, disinformation and hate speeches. Soviet Union has committed a long list of crimes against humanity, no need to invent new ones.

While it didn't happen to common people if you were in Stalin's inner circle and were later found to be an Enemy Of The People then you absolutely were erased. One particular photo is of Stalin standing with 3 men, I mean 2 men, I mean another man, I mean alone.

Soviet Union was times more humane than its enemies, would it be from initial anti-comintern alliance (Axis) or the second iteration of anti-comintern alliance (NATO).

What I learned in my American History classes was that it was as much the lack of foresight on the part of Hitler and those that were planning invasions as it was on US or Soviet involvement. You can't fight a war on two fronts like that.

It's interesting how much of war also comes down to economics. Germany was in a damned if you do damned if you don't situation. Their currency was hyperinflated, so the Nazi party stepped in and based a new currency Rentenmark on the old Papiermark. 1 Rentenmark was worth 1 trillion Papiermarks. The issue is that's just a shell game, the economy is still enormously inflated and that move just temporarily hid the damage. Conquest and the war machine is what kept Germany's economy above water and it would have probably crashed and burned immediately if they stopped.

[vatas]

I'm also under the impression that much of the Nazi Germany's economic growth and almost zero unemployment was based mostly on the massive re-armament program that wasn't going to pay itself off without massive conquests.