Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information that may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions.
The Nazi book burnings were a campaign conducted by the German Student Union to ceremonially burn books viewed as being subversive or representing ideologies opposed to Nazism. These included books written by Jewish, pacifists, religious, classical liberal, anarchist, and communist authors. The first books burned were those of Karl Marx and Karl Kautsky.
Strict censorship existed in the Eastern Communist Bloc. Various ministries of culture controlled all forms of media and art. In the Stalinist period, even weather forecasts would be changed if they suggested that the sun might not shine on the communists International Worker’s Day.
In the People’s Republic of China, during the Culture Revolution, books were burned and artifacts, paintings, and statues were ruined because they were reminiscent of the pre-revolution past. Today, the Golden Shield Project monitors and tightly censors the internet.
Freedom of speech and freedom of expression must not be taken for granted. These are the first freedoms stripped during the rise of a dictator. We must be vigilant of who use violence to suppress ideas, those who seek to silence those they disagree with, those who seek to control speech.
