Censorship

=Censorship=



Censorship is the control of the information and ideas circulated within a society, under the title of protecting three basic social institutions: the family, the church, and the state. In another word, censorship is hiding the truth of parts of the truth from the public. It has been a symbol of dictatorships throughout history. This report will be mainly focused on state censorship relating to the novel 'Anthem' by Ayn Rand.

The picture above well illustrated the key feature of censorship - the most important part is unclear.

//Censorship exist in various areas such as://
>
 * Moral censorship, which is the removal of materials that are obscene or otherwise considered morally questionable. for example, pornography is often censored, especially child pornography, which is illegal and censored in most countries around the world.
 * Military censorship is the process of keeping military intelligence and tactics confidential and away from the enemy. Necessary for national security.
 * Political censorship occurs when governments hold back information from their citizens. This is often done to prevent political rivalries and free expression that might lead to riots.
 * Religious censorship, which often involves a dominant religion forcing limitations on less popular ones.
 * Corporate censorship is the process by which editors in corporate media outlets intervene to disrupt the publishing of information that portrays their business or business partners in a negative light.

//The following countries had both been famous for extreme dictatorship and used all types of censorship in order to control their people and secure their power.//

 * 1) The Nazi Germany- Joseph Goebbels who was the minister of the Nazis censorship and propaganda had complete control of information that circulated in Germany during the Third Reich. All books and any other forms of media had to be examined by him before publishing, making sure that none of them contained anti-Nazi messages or gave signs of decadence.
 * 2) The USSR-Stalin was also incredibly strict on controlling what was said to the public. The same technique was used, pressure was put on News papers and film companies. Good news only was the key to everything, if there were not any, make them up.

//Pros and Cons of censorship//
Pros: - People do not lose faith towards their government easily as they will not get bad news. - There are less to worry about if you can only see and hear the good side of things. - Less doubt /questions about rules or laws. - Prevent political rivalries as the same ideology will be spread across the country.

Cons: -Withholding of information can lead to ignorance in the society. For example, most youngsters that grew up in Nazi Germany actually believed that Hitler was the greatest man on Earth and what he did was right. - People will not be able to have free choices, as their minds are limited by censored information which will only give them one choice. - Lack of motivation to improve. If there are only good news available, people will feel no need to improve or change things.

//**Censorship in 'Anthem'**//
The novel is set thousands of years in the future where everything that existed now was destroyed, our capitalist democracy society was replaced by a society that promotes total conformity and unity, the process of ending our ways of live is given the name 'the Great Rebirth' in the novel. Everything has gone back to basic, candles and glass were their newest invention. 'All for one and one for all' was what every men should follow. If a society wants to enforce total conformity and unity, it needs to be in total control of its people's mind and action, therefore censorship was required as a way to gain control.

Like the USSR and the Nazi Germany, every piece of information in Equality's society were carefully selected by the councils. The councils are the top rankings who controlled everything, from assigning jobs to approving new inventions. As they are in such strict control of everything, people loses the right to choose or have desire. Books from the 'unmentionable time' which meant our time were burned by the councils, making sure that no one would ever knew anything about the 'Unmentionable time'. This was similar to the book burning event happened in Germany Jan 1933, both representing a big and open act of censorship.

Love was also censored in the novel, communication between men and women was forbidden, the idea was to prevent people from becoming too emotional and selfish, as those kind of feelings would encourage individuality not collectivism. Most important of all, there was the unspeakable word 'I', which was the biggest censorship used in the novel, and was the only crime in Equality's society that would result in capital punishment. By censoring the word I, the leaders of the society wiped out the existence of self/ego, which meant that people has lost the ability or chance to think and choose for themselves. However, the word 'I' was restored by Equality at the end of the novel.

For more related information, please read: @Ayn Rand Origins of Soviet Union Socialism

Information from: @http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship @http://gilc.org/speech/osistudy/censorship/