Before I start let me make something clear. I DO NOT CONDONE OR SUPPORT THE POSTING OF HATEFUL OR RACIST MATERIAL ONLINE.

I ran across a few articles online the other day along with a Tweet about something going on in Germany and it got me thinking. Apparently now police or Polizei if you speak German are making raids on people making “hateful” posts online. The story takes place in Northwest Germany where armed state police did a search on someone suspected of posting a racist cartoon online. About fifty more of these raids happened at that same time in Germany. Cellphones/ computers were confiscated on the base of being used in a crime. The crime in question was the use of certain words. Most of these people were under the impression that these were covered as free speech protected under the German constitution but Freedom of speech does objectively come with limitations. In this case these posts had “incited hatred” or were “deemed insulting. So why is it that this is happening? More on that later.

This reminded me of a controversy that happened in recent video game history with the rerelease of the games Doom and Doom 2. These rereleases saw the removal of all references to or direct symbols related to Nazis. This means that the Swastika was removed from the flags in two levels of Doom 2, one of which is called ‘Wolfenstein’ and the other ‘Grosse.’ This fist level was in reference to the game of the same name by ID software. They also removed the mustaches from the posters of Hitler. They did this so they could sell the game in a few countries where such imagery has been banned, specifically Germany. But why has this imagery been banned? The answer most people assume to be correct is that these symbols are offensive. People shouldn’t promote such material and most of us wouldn’t but suppressing certain words or symbols is a part of our tendency to erase our messy history. No one wants to think about the past mistakes their country has made and Germany has one of the messiest in the history of all the world.

The same thing happens here where we replace certain words with soft ones. After World War 2 some soldiers would suffer from what was known as “Shell Shock” but the name changed over the years and is now known as PTSD. Or how about how employers use the words “laid off” as opposed to “fired”. In both cases the words used may be softer for the sake of not hurting someone’s feelings but in reality something else is happening. What is really happening is that the pain of the situation or reality in general is being swept under the rug. They used to used the words “Master” and “Slave” to describe a separate connections on a ribbon cable. The master would be the hard drive controller and the slave would be used for a floppy drive or DVD drive. To be fair Controller and Node are more fitting and appropriate but I digress. The point is that words are replaced for a specific reason.

Now that I’ve given the reasoning assumed for why the powers that be implement this censorship its time we get into the nitty gritty of the real reasons why. The truth is something like this. The powers that be don’t like being reminded of their failures in not only history but also in todays reality.

To put it a different way, I’ll reference another story from today. The story is about the lead singer from the band Placebo Brian Molko being indicted and ultimately fined for calling Italy’s Prime Minister a Nazi. One commenter was right on the money when they said “Nazis don’t like being called Nazis.” That’s exactly what’s going on here. The powers that be in Germany or the UK don’t like being reminded of what they are or in some cases what they have caused. Since their behavior points to them being just like how WW2 Germany acted; they don’t like words that remind them of it. The monopoly men and women feel as though they should define what we should be, and that’s the real reason they don’t want people using words like slave to describe for example a computer device that controls another one. Its like the movie Full Metal Jacket when Joker closes his ears after him the other trainees beat Pile in the blanket party. He does it because he, as one of the perps of the hazing, cannot bear to hear the cries of anguish from his victim. For a real world example I point to the trial of school mass shooter Nikolas Cruz. During the trial they played audio clips of him committing the shootings and he lowered his head, closed his eyes and covered his ears.

We here in America have a Bill of Rights and of course the First Amendment protects our free speech. Sure you shouldn’t say certain things and you can’t harass or threaten people but we must work preserve this right. In the Novel 1984 by George Orwell the “party” created a new language called ‘Newspeak’ to control the people of Oceania. The more we allow censorship to control the words we use or can or cannot speak the close we get to creating what Orwell wrote about. Our constitution allows the people to abolish our government if it becomes too oppressive and disregards our rights. Watching things like this happening in countries like Germany and the U.K should serve as a warning for the direction the world seems to be going in.