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Wolfenstein Being Recalled In Germany
D1gital_Prob3 tips news that Activision's recently-released shooter, Wolfenstein, is being recalled in Germany due to the appearance of swastikas in the game. Such symbols are banned in Germany, and the German version of the game went through heavy editing to remove them. Apparently, they missed some. Activision said, "Although it is not a conspicuous element in the normal game ... we have decided to take this game immediately from the German market." Reader eldavojohn points out a review that has screenshot comparisons between the two versions of the game.
Jean Plantureux, the political cartoonist from France's Le Monde newspaper, came to talk to my college a few years back and explained that due to anti-Nazi laws they couldn't draw any swastikas on anyone. So what they do if they want to say somebody's a Nazi is they draw them with an armband with a white circle on it. Everyone knows exactly what the white circle means.
Immediately after the war, Germany was essentially under military occupation by the victorious powers. In effect, most of the normal liberties that the citizens could have hoped to enjoy (not that they actually had enjoyed said liberties since the Nazi rise to power) were suspended. The logic at the time was they did not want the provisional military government(s) undermined by an aggressive push by remnants of the Nazi party. It was the same justification used by the occupying military government in Japan to terminate all religious rituals and notions of divinity that the Emperor had enjoyed.
In short, for better or for worse (and I think history indicates that in both Germany and Japan, for the better), these were moves to disestablish the regimes in question, not only to remove them (or at least in the case of Japan to castrate) but to discredit them.
You won't find a bigger proponent of free speech than me, but if I was the military governor of, say, the British Sector in 1946, you're damned straight I wouldn't want any Nazis coming out of the woodwork to try to mount some sort of revolution. Six hard and bloody years had been spent toppling these bastards.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Freedom of Expression is guaranteed by the German Constitution. There are Nazi marches in Germany and the corresponding, much larger, counter-marches, just like those KKK marches in the state that you are referring to. Nobody suggested those were forbidden. The only "expression" that is expressively forbidden is denial of the Holocaust, and that law is simply a special, very strict case of legislation against libel.
The German Constitution does not ban National Socialism. It codifies human and civic rights, like those that you mention, and several others (most importantly, the right to dignity). You have clearly never read it, otherwise you wouldn't lecture about it like this.
German law strikes a different balance between Freedom of Expression and the Protection from Intimidation than the Anglo-American system, because of the country's history. Imagine living in what was arguably the world's most industrially advanced, culturally influential, progressive country. Then, one day, the houses of parliament are disbanded by armed paramilitaries. Your intellectual elite is driven into exile or killed. Almost all civic rights are abolished. About eight to ten Million Jews, politicial dissidents, Gays, Roma, mentally ill and others are killed. Finally, your country goes on to unleash the world's deadliest ever war, killing well above 30 Million people in the battlefields. I think you can be forgiven for outlawing the symbols of the movement that caused all this afterward.
Jeez, people, everytime anything related to this law comes up, everyone starts crying censorship. There is one small bloody set of symbols that's forbidden. One stupid verse of a song, and one stupid greeting. That's it! It's not like Germany had a censorship agency. In most of the United States, you can't even take a piss in public! How's that for freedom of expression?