1) Give a brief summary of your article, the type of
censorship that it's addressing, and the different positions presented.
The article “Mein Kampf to be re-released with notes
countering Hilter’s arguments” is simply what the title refers to. Mein Kampf
(My struggles) is a recount of Hilter’s Memoirs when he was in jail and the
Bavarian state finance ministry owns right over publications, which are soon to
expire. The article explains this and also includes the fact that the book will
be republished with added annotations, as the German authorities believe that
it will be sending the wrong message to the international community. Also the
authors/historians working on the project as the article states wish to, “which
will include commentaries on the text that will seek to dissect and rubbish
Hilter’s argument.”
The type of censorship that this article is censoring is
falls under the category of political as Hilter is a very world known political
figure. The article mainly suggests that the censoring of Hilter’s memoirs is
going to be a step forward to censor the past and change the mindset of the
future.
2) What is your opinion on the censorship issue raised in
the article? Explain your position.
The censorship issue was how Hitler’s views should be
presented. The book was banned in Germany ever since 1945 because of the
extreme view Hitler was revealing. This article wants to censor what Hilter
meant by “Watering it down” and making the reader confused because they are
looking at two different extreme points of view. We believe that censoring can
be seen both beneficial and damaging depending on what is being censored. But
both extreme sides of censoring and not can lead to a catastrophe and therefore
there always needs to be a middle platform where the harmful things towards the
majority of the community are censored and the others that don’t affect society
aren’t.
3) As we saw in the debate, policies on censorship range
widely in different countries. Several
fundamental questions about censorship came up such as:
Is free speech a
human right?
Yes, it is a god given right but the speaker must suffer the
consequences if he/she/it affects a certain factor of society which takes it in
a negative matter. This is because in addition to having the rights to speak
you also have the rights to defend your views and take matters to court if necessary
and that’s is the extent to which it is harming you in anyway, so yes it is
considered a right.
Who has the right
to determine what information is available to the public and how are those determinations
made?
In our modern day societies the government seems to be the
one controlling all the information going in and out if it decides to censor. This
is not always the case, as extreme forms of censorship are not known in a lot
of countries, so what determines the decisions usually are the majority people
themselves. For example if something is harmful towards a religion or culture
the people will all agree that this is something they do not want to see again
and therefore should be censored. If these decisions were ever to be carried
out then the government would provide the role of control and set out the boundaries
censoring everything that needs to be censored.
What is the role
of the media and to what extent is it obligated to provide information to the
public?
Media is the working mind behind censorship with the ability
to change/control people’s mind and opinions. In some countries there is no
need for it to be censored as it is controlled by the government itself, but in
other cases it doesn’t have attachments with the government therefore in order
for the government system to remain in power whilst satisfying the people it
enforces boundaries which the media agencies can still send information to the
public without overstepping these boundaries laid out before them.
What fundamental issues do you see raised by your article
about free speech and censorship?
Since the article is focusing on political censorship free
speech is not really discussing the right of free speech as it is more or less
trying to control the thoughts of people over something that has already been
said decades ago.
4) Why do you think censorship is such a controversial
issue?
The reason why nowadays censorship is such an issue is
because the world has never seen such large banks of information stored in
these forms. These storages contain so much information that not all of it do
good and some of it may do a lot of damage over good. Also the increasing of
this knowledge may impact the way humans think and can control them in a way. Oppositely,
many people believe that is a divine right to be able to view everything, and
not have anything become censored off as it can impact ones knowledge. These two
extreme sides make censorship such a controversial issue especially because no
one can decide where the middle ground is on this huge spectrum.
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