Censorship of Books and Ideas - Essay Example

This essay will briefly analyze how certain countries have historically sought to censor certain books in the hopes that such an action will work to protect the power structure, moral beliefs, religious experience, or other key determinants within the society. Likewise, key examples will be illustrated that show some of the common trends and underlying causes for both past and current censorship that exists in the world. Furthermore, the reader will be able to understand key trends and underlying motives that encourage power structures to take such a drastic approach to seek to stamp out a given idea/set of ideals.

Perhaps one of the most famous examples of censorship is that which surrounded the Soviet Union and the communist party control that dominated nearly every aspect of public and private life. As a means of near total control over such a society, censorship was readily employed to direct and influence how “foreign” ideas were injected into the society (Plamper 528). To accomplish this, the communist party employed a rigid structure whereby incoming literature and books would need to be approved by the relevant authorities before reaching widespread distribution.

This structure of censorship is perhaps the most extreme example that our world has witnessed within the past 100 years; however, it is not the only example of a society that has employed censorship, to а great effect, to mold and direct, the social evolution of its populace.

Similarly, censorship exists currently in several nations; however, the lion’s share of censorship in the current world is derived from a fear of the spread of a foreign religion within a host country and/or region. This is evidenced by strong censorship laws that exist in many Islamic countries. These laws ban everything from the distribution of religious material to “immoral” texts that can include anything from “unislamic” attitudes, styles of dress, forms of music, and a host of other culturally derived points. A few of the countries that exhibit a high degree of censorship of books and literature are Saudi Arabia, Eritrea, and the Islamic Republic of Iran (Information Providers 100).

A similar situation exists within what most readers might consider a highly democratic country – Germany. However, Germany’s case is somewhat different than the other nations that have thus far been listed in this brief analysis. Germany has placed a ban on many of the Nazi-era publications and propaganda pieces including Adolph Hitler’s, Mein Kampf. According to pertinent government institutions and officials, this has been done to allow the populace a reprieve from the painful and harmful vitriol that was common and circulated in Germany a few brief decades ago.

Germany of course is the aberration to the rule in that this is a nation that enjoys a wide array of democratic freedoms, elections, freedom of expression/thought, and a wide range of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. However, as a function of the dangers that Nazism has presented the nation, they have chosen to implement a ban on all such material in the hope that doing so will seek to hasten the healing of many war-era wounds that were caused as a direct effect of the policies and actions implemented by the Nazis government. 

This censorship has primarily been concentric around education in that certain individuals, teachers, parents, and/or government officials have actively sought to ban certain “morally devious” material.  Of course, this action in and of itself opens Pandora’s box because the first question that one must ask when positing such a statement is whose interpretation of morality is “morally devious” based. 

Finally, it should be noted that although censorship can be implemented successfully for some time, as indicated by the reference to the Soviet Union, it inherently fails in discouraging the very behavior it is attempting to guard against due to the inverse proportion between the severity of the ban and the level of intrigue; and thus, censorship only serves to spur human curiosity.  In this way, censorship is a policy that can only be implemented for a determinate amount of time; eventually, the governmental constraints are insufficient to stem the curiosity of the masses about that which is forbidden.

Read More