There was this absolutely astounding (to me) thread of emails going on yesterday on the Lulu op’s email list… one of the ops, a young German man-boy (he is like eighteen) had discovered, by accident, some content on Lulu that he immediately sent out a notification about, demanding it be removed and the user who had it available be banned. Apparently it was nazi propaganda.It was old WWII photographs and descriptions of the “glories” of the Nazis during that time… pretty stupid, pretty gross, but nothing that I haven’t seen a billion times before. He included some of the chapter titles, that had names like:
At home in the batallion
...
Duell of snipers
...
Night attack
...
Butchering
...
The urn of death
Now let me tell you that this guy was genuinely shocked and horrified by this… so much so, that I believe it was his first time ever seeing something like it. You couldn’t have made him much more upset if he had found a photobook of babies being ripped apart alive. It took me several emails before I understood the depth of is upset, but it was genuine. Not only did he go ahead and reset this author’s account so that the books were no longer available, but he was positively fuming about how we needed to find and ban all the lulu creators who did this sort of thing. He then, later in the morning, went and looked for other inappropriate (nazi) material, and reset all of those he could find, to make them unavailable.
Now, before you (Americans) laugh… he was enthusiastically joined by most of the European ops.
I discovered, to my amazement and equal wonder, that not only did the majority of them think this was right and good, it was, in their opinion, Lulu’s obligation to do so. One of them, and remember, I am NOT kidding, suggested a “witch hunt” their term, not mine, to find other Lulu creators who had any kind of nazi- related stuff in their accounts, even to the point of assigning two reps to go out “hunting”.
At this point, my mouth was hanging open. Literally.
I did not join the discussion, because the couple of Americans who did, kind of joking, like, “yeah that sucks, but what are you going to do”, were pretty much shot to pieces (THIS is what we are going to do- was the answer). However, one of our US reps, C., did join the discussion, calmly trying to explain the United States’s whole “freedom of speech” thing, and saying, yes indeed, she hate the nazi stuff as much as she hated other stuff on Lulu, but she still wouldn’t yank it, anymore than she would yank KKK material, as disgusting as the majority of the public may find it, and especially she herself, as a black woman, did.
But… not only did most non-US ops agree with the german dude, they made disparaging comments at C when she tried explaining, and said things to the effect of, “Oh, KKK and Nazis aren’t the same thing”, and “If it was Al-quaida propaganda, you’d be pretty quick to yank it”… neither of which are true, as I think most Americans would agree.
It was all eye-opening to me, how ingrained the freedom of speech is in me, and probably most of my country people… I mean, I thought the nazi stuff was disgusting, yes, but it never even occurred to me to ban/take it off/start a witch hunt to track down other creators with like minds. I found it startling, and in some way slightly scary, that this is the law in
I was trying to place myself in this young man’s place…. If this sort of thing is against the law, and banned as quickly and violently as it seems, then maybe this was indeed the first time he had ever stumbled across it. People his age have been taught, obviously, that the things that happened in their country during WWII were horrifying, evil, and something to be ashamed of…. He said as much. But other ops are older, perhaps wiser, perhaps not… and they all, almost as one, agreed that people could not be “allowed” to express those kinds of views, even in books, because of what it could lead to… Nazis, I assume.
The debate is dwindling, but I expect lulu will go by its guidelines, not by any one country’s, and “hate” material is not allowed, apparently… so the witch hunt may go on. Ops may spend their coffee break looking for hateful things to ban, and… if this happens, and word ever gets out, well, the European ops will be as amazed by the uproar Americans will start over it as I was by this.
Wow. The entire thing left me feeling in a very “wow” kind of state of mind. And glad I am an American, and grateful for my freedom of speech.
5 comments:
I've been struggling to come up with a response that doesn't sound like babbling. I don't think I've succeeded!
Without my doing some confirming research, I believe that possessing Nazi materials is illegal in Germany and other parts of Europe. Whether it's because they're embarrassed, would like to rewrite history, or (this is what I always thought and seems to be so based on what you heard yesterday) want to keep new "Nazi" attitudes from forming, there it is.
If we had gone through something as terrifying as WWII, we'd probably have what would seem to outsiders quite an attitude too. Sept. 11 was terrifying, but it hasn't been all day every day for years as WWII was for Europeans. We still get to go to the mall, watch our stupid TV shows, go bowling, blab on the computer. They had to live with their trauma, freshly, every day for years. Their experience with Hitler has not been quite the same as our experience with al-Qaeda. And I fervently hope it never is.
I have a German student, and I'm going to get his thoughts on all this -- what he learned at home, and how it might differ from what he's learned here. I don't know if he is just here attending school or if he and his family live here. I don't know how long he's been here.
And I would argue that not all American speech is free, although only a small part of it is officially, legally banned. Don Imus learned that this week. There's a difference between legal pressure not to "speak" and social pressure. In Europe I suspect that even without the legal pressure, the social pressure would exist because you sure saw that social pressure for yourself.
All done babbling now.
I want you to babble. Lots. :)
Don Imus has experienced the gigantic politically correct boot in the ass that many celebrities, etc. have. The mystery is how it is decided- who and when and why- the boot will be applied and then who, when, and why in opposite- others can say "worse" things and be either ignored or applauded.
I don't get the rules at all and I am sure few others do.
But as you said, this was social pressure, not legal... and Don Imus is now more famous than he was before... I didn't know who he was, for sure, before his nappyheaded comment brought forth the deluge.
But I never really considered the fact that I can say, do, and own what I want (with the idiotic exceptions, of course ... LEGALIZE IT!) without ever even thinking about it... it made me consider our mindset as Americans, and how we differ, or don't, from others. I would be very interested to hear if your german student says this young op is "normal" or not.
Can I say something? Please? I'm German- okay, half-German, but at least I live there so I guess that counts...
A big, head-nodding "yes" to bitty's statement. Possession, let alone publication of anything Nazi-related (up to and including Swastika images) is forbidden in Germany and legislated on pretty darn strictly in most of Europe. Heck, we even had a court case recently involving a guy selling anti-Nazi stickers that showed crossed-out swastikas, simply because he'd used the symbol...
And "yes" oh-so-emphatically to how we re-live the pain of our peoples' mistakes in that horrible war over and over again until today. My family is still affected until today by my grandfather's death in WWII (it'd take too long to explain here, but ask me if you want to know more). Plus, we still have the remnants of concentration camps and the like dotted all over the landscape. Those places are real and they're horrific, and every German schoolkid goes and visits at least one of them during their education. It is drilled into our heads that Patriotism Is Evil and nazis are about as bad as the Antichrist...
Us current-gen Germans were trained to be rabidly and blindly against anything and everything associated with nazism, antisemitism, racism and/or patriotism, in that order. That's why you'll never see a German flag on a car bumper, or a flagpole in a German garden, or any sticker/slogan claiming "proud to be German" ANYWHERE in this little country. Which is tragic, because there are plenty of reasons to take pride in ourselves, and because patriotism in itself isn't a bad thing...
The whole issue also goes quite a ways towards explaining why we have such an issue with your current president. He's blatantly and openly patriotic (to the point of declaring war on other countries, another huuuuge German no-no), which makes us fear and hate him. Does that figure? We're simply afraid he might turn out to be the next "Fuhrer" type, and we never,ever want to see another one of those...
Thanks, so much for your comment. And by the way, I would love to hear about your grandfather, if you don't want to post it all here, feel free to email me at meowkaat at hotmail.
This has been an eye-opening experience for me,and I value your input from a german perspective. I love your explanation- makes it so simple and straightforward and easy to understand... I think the op I was talking about was way too emotional to be coherent about it. I am going to have a different outlook from now on, I guess I am guilty of blindly assuming all cultures are like my culture- how embarrassing but true- a fault of too many.
As far as our prez, yes, a lot of americans would agree with you as well. But he's outta here in less than a year and there is no changing that!
eddyquette -- how wonderful that you have shown up here at just the right time to say just the right thing. You've added to my understanding, too. I didn't know about the "no patriotism" angle, and I'm with you. That is sad. Things that can be good can also be distorted, as patriotism was in the Nazi days. As it is being distorted by many people in our country now. (Hating on other countries because they don't disagree with us = patriotism? For example, the freedom fries nonsense.)
(As for the prez, sadly no, he's outta here in 638 days, which is a lot longer than less than a year. The election is at the end of 2008. Transfer of power doesn't occur until early 2009.)
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