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.

Comments

Re:Differences between versions

[harks]

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.

Re:censorship

[DancesWithBlowTorch]

Sorry, but you are ignorant.

By quashing political dissent, you are becoming like the Nazis. Let the right wingers openly glorify the nazis, so reasonable moderate people can see just how awful they are. Here in the states we let the KKK march freely, and usually the protests over the march are bigger than the klan march itself. If you do not trust your populace to make the right choice when fully informed, how can you even pretend to be democratic?

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.

If you really want to prevent Nazis from gaining power again, don't outright ban them in your constitution. Codify principles incompatible with Naziism in your constitution. Freedom of religion, Freedom of Expression, etc. As long as Freedom of Expression is not protected by your constitution, it can be taken away from you. When (not if) that happens, do you really care if it was the Nazis or some other group?

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?