Popular culture is often a field upon which political issues manifest and play out. In Germany and several other countries historiographic activity on certain events that may shed light on or contradict official narratives is verboten and can result in imprisonment. The purview of today’s censors using outrage to suppress utterances with which they disagree or take offense knows no limits.
If not for the First Amendment the United States such authoritarian maneuvers to silence debate on a host of issues and events would have already come to pass. Major corporations are only too happy to appease and abet such efforts, as the report below suggests. Internet behemoths such as Google, YouTube, and Amazon have already exhibited their censorial prowess to silence sociopolitical and cultural exchange.
As reported in The Guardian:
Big businesses have joined growing criticism in Germany over the awarding of an annual music prize to a pair of rappers accused of antisemitic lyrics, with Airbus chief executive Tom Enders adding his condemnation of the decision.
German executive Enders told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper he was shocked by what he considered widespread ambivalence about the Echo award given to rappers Kollegah and Farid Bang on Thursday, which coincided with HolocaustRemembrance Day. The rappers deny they are antisemitic.
“That hurts Germany’s international reputation. Is antisemitism becoming acceptable in Germany?” Enders told the newspaper, adding it was his belief that an anti-Muslim text would have generated far more outrage.
The BVMI German music industry association had drawn increasing criticism in recent days for honouring the rappers’ album, which sold more than 200,000 copies despite lyrics considered offensive by many Jewish groups and others because of lyrics that refer to the Auschwitz Nazi death camp.
In the song “0815“, the rappers talk about their bodies being “more defined than Auschwitz prisoners” while another says, “I’m doing another Holocaust, coming with a Molotov.”
