Rip Off the Banned Aide

Censorship has a long and illustrious history in the workplace, civil society, and in the world at large. Yet, oftentimes an unintended effect of the ban is a heightened — or, renewed — awareness of the message and/or Messenger. After all, is there anything that attracts interest more than something we’ve been told not to see, hear, or say?

This article first skims over some historical bans (Sections 1–3) and then carves into the forensics of a once-YouTube-banned video (Case Study). The video juxtaposes a trending news item with a horrific chapter in history. However, according to the review team at YouTube, the video went too far and was (initially) removed.

 Section 1
        

John Heartfield’s High Stakes 'Stop-O-Ganda'

It’s impossible to imagine YouTube taking issue with imagery that boldly confronts a despicably powerful propaganda machine. In 1933, social media such as “The Workers Pictorial Newspaper” (AIZ) and “The Stick” (Der Knüppel) regularly published cover art denouncing the rise of fascism. Its readership even garnered up to a half-million pairs of eyes, which is a pretty good day for any YouTube video.

Then the scourge of Nazism happened and all forms of political opposition were outlawed (vis-à-vis 45’s beef with TikTok, which is deeply critical of him). Therefore, every time one of artist John Heartfield’s covers hit the newsstands, his ranking on the Gestapo’s Most Wanted List was instantly refreshed.

By the skin of his teeth, Heartfield escaped from a Waffen-SS assassination squad in April 1933. He continued to beat the anti-fascist drum loudly, but from Prague. Unwittingly, the Nazi party became a marketing arm for his incredible photomontages by publishing an article denouncing his work, “only to find people buying the magazine because they were intrigued by the photomontages included within…!” (cf. BBC)

Nearly a century later, Heartfield’s artwork eerily foreshadows today’s news beat. Not much has really changed:

SYNOPSIS: (left-to-right) How to use five fingers to cast one vote for change (left), workers whom industry has replaced with robots should not be abandoned (middle), and the futility of a regressive dictators’ vile appetite for war (right). “The message running through his work is that authoritarian ideas can never be a solution.” Heartfield conveyed this message by revealing the truth behind the image, thereby making the lie obvious.

 Section 2
        

Prop Kulture

Fast forward to some less brutal content: music and musicians. Naturally, their public images are tightly fused with today’s pop culture, so they serve handily for naysayers seeking to disparage their ‘unlawful’ improprieties. Here are some famous cases, in a nutshell, each of which backfired because they only boosted notoriety and amplified the banned bands’ favor with their fans, much the same as Heartfield’s magazines got a boost from the Waffen-SS and the Communist Party:

Closing The Doors — A couple years after getting banned from The Ed Sullivan Show for failing to self-censor a “Light My Fire” verse (nbd, Ed even censored the hip-gyrating Elvis in his time), a besotted Jim allegedly revealed himself at a Miami concert. As a result, The Doors were banned from performing there again, Jim was arrested, and then posthumously pardoned in 2010. This incident blithely topped off an earlier concert gaffe whereafter The Doors were banned from entering Arizona. Though fans were justifiably unhappy about paying full price for tickets to the latter two charades, The Doors’ “Light My Fire” performance on Ed went on to become “one of TV’s most historical music moments and it’s often featured on the show’s top performances.” (cf. Pop Expresso)

Sex Pistols’ Sucksess [sic] — With a controversial name to begin with, it was only a matter of time before punk’s original rockers lost favor. The following two sanctimonious kicks to the bollocks are usually cited as the Pistols’ road to banishment. First, there was a live television interview whereby host Bill Grundy was called a “fucker” by guitarist Steve Jones when Grundy began to flirt with then-unknown Siouxsie Sioux, a member of the band’s entourage who'd been invited onto the set. This profanity did not please the stuffy and pretentious UK society. Nor did the band’s poke at QE2 (the song “God Save the Queen”),1 which the BBC and nearly every independent radio station quickly banned, making it “the most heavily censored record in British history”— surely all this controversy helped propel the album to the top of the UK charts and posthumously put the band at #58 on Rolling Stone magazine’s 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.2

Bad Brains Banned — While few (this author included) would refute that The Sex Pistols’ crowning achievements defined punk rock internationally, no one can deny the Washington D.C. band Bad Brains as the originators of “hardcore” punk. That is, except the band themselves, who likely want to distance themselves from the inglorious skinhead sub-genre. Whatever their claim to fame, their reputation as a brawling act in the D.C. clubs quickly earned them a bad rap and they were unofficially blacklisted. Were the Bad Brains the only hardcore band to be blacklisted in D.C. at the time? Yup, pretty much. (Ahem, they were also the only black punk rockers on the scene. Go figure.)

2 Live Crew Cut — This band quickly gained cred for their excessively lewd, misogynistic lyrics and bawdy live shows during the eighties’ hair band era. Chick-loving suburban boyz were vindicated by both styles (which is bad). Speaking of, 2 Live Crew does have one thing in common with The Doors. Both acts were banned from performing in Miami Dade County due to their lascivious behavior and their lyrical content. Though 2 Live Crew may have lowest name recognition of the banned bands highlighted here (perhaps deservedly so), the net result of the controversies is that their albums sold millions of copies and landed them on the Billboard charts. On top of it all, one of the later albums has the dubious honor of being the very first release to bear the RIAA-standard “Parental Advisory” warning sticker.

 Section 3
        

Don’t Menschen the New ‘Nermal’

Fast forward, today’s self-anointed Big Tech “Content Police” are playing catch-up after decades of Internet mayhem that makes the latter pop acts look like Vanilla Ice cream. Unfortunately, Big Tech has never been ‘smart’ enough to control its own behemoth and has proven time and again to be woefully slow to react and take action. Some examples of Big Tech’s censorship inertia include these colossal failures:

• Recent presidential (2016, 2020) and mid-term (2018) elections. And Brexit. And, …well, ANYTHING involving scalable human expression and communication.?
• Also in 2020, political campaigners uncovered how they could spread all the disinformation their feverish hearts desired — escríbelo en espa?ol…! Naturally, the social media review teams were clueless and the party with greater spanish literacy nabbed Florida’s hispanic vote.?

• Myanmar, ISIL, et al.?
• The guise of ‘free speech’ has enabled many evil and seditious groups to push out negative content without consequence (way too many examples to list here).?
• Millions of rampant bots and feral (fictitious) accounts continue to run amuck. Everywhere. Every day. In every way.

The list scrolls on, largely unchecked — and relentless. Unrepentant. Reckless by nature…

Which, at long last, brings us to the substance of this article — a YouTube video that was recently banned and subsequently removed from the platform. The evaluative forensics in the Case Study (below) seek to validate the YouTube review team’s decision to remove the video and to expose the video’s alleged Hate Speech for what it is, at face value.

However, upon closer inspection, it appears that banning the video may have had more to do with the sensitivity regarding its posting date (just prior to the November 2020 U.S. election) than with the content or people portrayed. YouTube.com cannot be faulted for trying To Serve and To Protect. Yet, paradoxically, several renowned Hate Speech practitioners star in the video’s cast of characters ...

... discluding Rosie the Riveter, whose aim is true.

YouTube’s censorship process: First, a video is reviewed and, if considered to be in violation, it is removed. Next, an email is sent to the account holder, affording them a chance to refute the claim. Here’s that generic email, annotated with intentional irony:

YouTube’s complete list of policies is posted here. The email above broadly brushes the definition of Hate Speech, which is one subgroup (of six) in the "Violent or Dangerous Content" section of its Community Guidelines. Writ large, it is anything with violent or hateful undertones that targets certain groups of people.

NB: Sadly, the policies appear to have deemed flora & fauna to be unworthy of a protectionist stance. A general query for the YouTube team: Amend the latter omission so people stop extinguishing species and obliterating nature?

?DISCLAIMER: The author contends YouTube’s policies are a feasible baby step in the right direction. To that end, the Appendix of this article offers an anecdotal happy ending for aspiring content creators who hit the wall.

 Case Study
        

The “SS Swamp Thing II” Video

SUMMARY:

An uncanny resemblance plays out between two aides-de-camp on the opposite ends of history from one another — each of whom is directly responsible for separating children from their parents by virtue of their hateful public rhetoric. The synergy between these two public servants foments an outdoor rally, wherein vestiges of the past conspire to infect the minions of the now-evicted occupant of Das Weiss Haus.

CAST:

In order of appearance — German Reichsminister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda3 and Assistant to the Chancellor (1933–1945); Name Witheld, one-time Assistant to, and Director of Speechwriting for, POTUS45; attendees at a Super Spreader event; and Rosie the Riveter, of course.

CONTENT:

• The soundtrack is a prescient excerpt of Love And Rockets' “Kundalini Express”.

“This is an announcement / For the transcendental run / The train now standing / Leaves for higher planes / Due to a derailment / There will be no other train / So why not hop on this one?”

• The titles, in order of appearance:

“SS Swamp Thing II” ? “SS Reunion 2020” ? “The Return of the SuperSpreadator” ? “Wish you* weren’t here” ? “Want More Swamp? Visit bit.ly/beReel” ? [appearing in the Director’s Cut only] “Coming 2024: Swamp Thing II bit.ly/beReel”

VIDEO:

https://youtu.be/c3Rm5U

 Appendix
        

Censorship Avoidance (How to Dodge a Silver Bullet)

Step 1 — Wait until the election results are in (for this example).

Step 2 — Upload the video to your YouTube channel.

Step 3 — Preemptively fire a shot across the bow in the Comments section of your video by ameliorating YouTube’s boilerplate language, as shown here:

(Ameliorations are formatted in bold.)

Hello YouTube Team,

Kindly note the content of this video does not in any way, shape, or form glorify or incite violence against another person or group of people.

The video also does not encourage hatred of another person or group of people based on their membership in a protected group (in NO WAY does the Third Reich qualify as the latter). The video's content has sufficient and appropriate context and the purpose of posting is clearly meant to call attention to the past atrocities of "Waffen-SS" troops, recent WHS Super Spreader events, and to the agents of immigrant suppression at present.

Thank you.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

1 In a twist of fate, a canceled appearance by Queen (the band, not the monarch) was the reason the Pistols were booked for the show.

2 Also, the Sex Pistols’ four original members, plus Sid Vicious, were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2006. Naturally, they refused to attend the ceremony, calling the museum “a piss stain” — lol probably theirs!

3 Peace of mind: “Preceded by [office established], succeed by [office abolished]”

* The pronoun "you" may be misconstrued as an antagonistic affront. In fact, it refers to COVID19. As in, “We wish COVID19 wasn’t here.”

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::