Isn't this subject to survivorship bias? If, 1000 years ago some movement was censored by the "good guys", if they've done a half-competent job, would we even Know they tried censoring things in the first place?
Not to mention how the "good guys" are usually just whomever manages to last/survive
In the 50's-70's, the US tried it's hardest to censor/hide/destroy Marxism, it's ideals, and derivatives (Socialism) - yet it still exists today.
You cannot disappear ideas by silencing the individuals that believe them. Instead of trying to hide them away, the ideas need to be exposed publicly and discussed openly. If one side truly is righteous, it will prevail through open discussion and logic.
Just like in the 50's - what we have today is a weaponized notion of censorship to destroy our political enemies and those who do not think the same way we do. That's certainly not what "Good Guys" do.
> If one side truly is righteous, it will prevail through open discussion and logic.
Unfortunately that is not always how it works out.
In Germany in the 1930s the idea that Jews/non-Arians have conspired against Germany and should be retaliated against was discussed openly - and accepted. Obviously it was not righteous.
In several US states in the 1980s the idea that homo sapiens was created by God and creationism should replace evolution in school textbooks was discussed openly - and accepted. Was it righteous?
These are two very different examples, but both ask the same question: What do we do in the case where truly righteous ideas do not prevail?
The righteous ideals prevailed in the end, in both examples you provided - no?
Nobody pretends Nazism never happened - that would be Censorship. Instead, you can buy, find, read about Nazism - including Mein Kumpf and more.
Creationism is not a dominating idea in the US either - nobody censored Creationism (even to this day you can find private schools that teach it!). Instead, Creationism was defeated by questioning it's teachings, and exposing it's logical flaws.
I do believe you have very eloquently proven my point. Censorship never works.
So what you are saying is that it may take a lot of time, bloodshed or decline before the righteous ideas prevail.
Now, let me ask you this - are you okay to sacrifice your life for a righteous idea? So why should 10 million Jews, Polish, Czechs, Russians, gays, disabled etc.?
Unless you are willing to do so, there is no point to be proven here. History has shown again and again that the righteous ideas do not always prevail (you could even argue that it's a defining human quality).
Every single democratic society is built upon common beliefs of what should/should not be censored. Claiming "censorship never works" is running away from a difficult conversation and not face human reality.
"the US Army continued its efforts to denazify Germany through control of German media. The Information Control Division of the US Army had by July 1946 taken control of 37 German newspapers, six radio stations, 314 theaters, 642 cinemas, 101 magazines, 237 book publishers, and 7,384 book dealers and printers."
That of course leave the question, was it that that solved the issue or was it the end of the war, or the exposing of the camps (one might not like the local jew, not trust them in general, but still not want to mass murder them) or something else?
Propaganda isn't the same as censorship. It does not appear any of the Allies made it illegal to believe in Nazism, or to write about it, or even dare to own something from the Nazi era.
Nonetheless, it's arguable these efforts were futile, likely misguided, and likely drove some to extremism as a result. You cannot simply compel a population to think a certain way.
Instead, you must allow the "bad" ideas to be exposed in the public forum, and win over the population through logical arguments. Hiding them away does nothing to disappear them.
Regardless, it's pretty well established the average German citizen didn't believe in the extremes the Nazi party had gone to anyway.
Oh, but the Allies did make Naziism illegal (the Soviets of course went further and made most other political speech illegal in their half of Germany)
Not only did West Germany have denazification programmes, but things like denying the holocaust are still illegal in Germany today, as the article discusses.
It's a bold claim to argue this was "futile" or "likely drove some to extremism" when the context was a reaction to the last war so extreme that it resulted in mass public support for a guy who blamed the Jews and geared up for a second war. Failing to defeat those arguments with logic drove an entire country to extremism, and there were a lot more people who still believed in those extremes in 1946 (even after suffering for them) than express sympathy for Germany's much watered down far right today. I doubt that would radically alter if they relaxed holocaust denial laws today, but there was certainly a time when public debate about whether the Holocaust was real or a big lie would have been useful to anyone wanting to follow in Hitler's footsteps and cast Germany as the victim.
Of course, on the other side the GDR absolutely failed in its attempts to force people to love its state and not realise their friends and family in the West were richer and free-er than them. There were limits to the effectiveness of censorship in achieving those goals, even when the censorship itself was almost unparalleled in its pervasiveness and harshness.
But sometimes not facilitating the discussion terrible niche ideas is much more effective at preventing them from going mainstream than debating them
You can be a Nazi in the US, UK and I'm sure pretty much anywhere in the world (except Germany) - and not go to jail, etc. So no, the Allies did not make Nazism illegal. Instead, they attempted to squash Nazism through propaganda (both domestic and foreign), and through spreading the truth about what Nazism had accomplished (Holocaust, among other atrocities). There's Holocaust Deniers roaming the streets of the US today - although they are in the extreme minority due overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
In the end, the evils of Nazism led to it's demise, and the free trade of that information championed over censorship.
As an aside, making Holocaust Denial illegal has accomplished nothing - we have Genocide occurring around the world today, including openly in China - the very same country US companies like the NBA and Disney are falling over each other to do business in. China, of course, denies it's a Genocide...
With all the relevant criticism against German denazification, the policies and laws worked. Not just in Germany, but also in the other countries in Europe wih similar laws. That German laws failed to prevent genozid in other continents is to be expected, I guess.
I can buy Nazi paraphernalia today, read about Nazism on Wikipedia, purchase newly printed copies of Mein Kumpf, watch Hitler's speeches on Youtube, and more.
The ideals of Nazism were defeated by openly exposing, and combating them with freely available information.
Censorship would have been to pretend Nazism never happened, and banning of anything that might encroach upon "Right Think".
And think what would happen if someone made Nazism illegal? What would that mean? What about some new group that calls themselves Izan's, but shares all the same ideas of Nazism? Would that be illegal too?
You cannot ban ideas - someone else, at some point in time, will have the very same idea even if they do not know someone else had it first.
Instead, you must fight with logic and exposure - expose bad ideas for what they are, and prove them wrong with logic.
Modern day Germany is censoring Nazism as far as I'm aware (it's illegal to call yourself a Nazi in Germany, no?).
The parent post asserted the Allies propaganda campaign after the war was censorship - it's flatly not, particularly since everywhere else in the world you can freely call yourself a Nazi with no repercussions. At no point was it illegal anywhere outside Germany to possess a copy of Mein Kumpf, even if it was signed by Hitler himself.
I don't think outlawing Nazism in Germany was a good thing, nor productive. Nazism could be (and very successfully was) destroyed through exposing it's ideals for what they were.
We often forget there was a Nazi movement here in the US leading up to the war - that was also stamped out not by censorship, but through exposing the evils of the Nazi regime.
It's not a political ideology or political speech. The reason we came up with freedom of speech is primarily so you can criticize the people in power. I know that people for whatever reason got this weird idea that pornography is somehow free speech, presumably because of lobbying, but historically free speech always coexisted with obscenity laws. If you want to silence your political enemy, it's going to be hard to do on the basis of pornography, but it's rather easy to do on a basis of 'hate speech'.
I don't really consider that censorship. We made it illegal to exploit minors that are unable to make decisions for themselves (both legally and maturely).
Then, at the arbitrary age of 18, we (the US, other countries differ) decided they can participate in, create, and distribute as much self-pornographic material as they want.
The entire LEO world dedicated to combating child pornography revolves around the exploitation of children and how wrong that is.
That's not quite the same as banning ideas, books, etc, simply because some find the words objectionable.
