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Towards the beginning of World War I, most citizens of nations supported the war. They expected their military to emerge from the war victorious, and bring home honor and wealth. Common people often danced on the streets when hearing news of their country officially declaring war, and scholars would dream about the benefits that could be gained from the war. Quickly, as the war progressed, the people of various nations saw that this would not be the case, as World War I was the first war in history to use weapons and tactics that were meant to kill many of the enemy forces. Citizens quickly became disillusioned, after seeing millions of their soldiers die, along with millions of enemy soldiers, with seemingly no victory. People lost faith in the war, and their government. This led to the creation of various literary pieces, such as Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, and All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, in which its authors yearned for a swift end to the war. At this point, many governments knew that in order to keep morale high, and gain support of the people, they must tell the people that their own nation was succeeding in the war, and to spread lies about the deeds of enemy nations. Also, these nations needed to severely limit the amount of information of foreign affairs coming into the country, and not let information of internal affairs out. The reason for this was for the people to support their troops, and for their state to emerge victorious from the war. In World War I, these ideas, of controlling what information is presented to the people, became what are thought of today as censorship.

So, what exactly is censorship today? In essence, censorship is the hiding, or preventing access of certain information to a subject group of people, that is often done for not the benefit of the people, but rather for the benefit of the group imposing the censorship. Today, there are more forms of censorship than the original political censorship, such as moral censorship, religious censorship, military censorship, and corporate censorship, to name a few. As with political censorship, the main purpose of these types of censorship is to prevent information from reaching a certain group of people.

Supporters of censorship will argue that censorship is “good for the people”, and “prevents the public from seeing things they should not see”. It is important to consider whether censorship benefits any group of people, for any reason. First, let’s consider political censorship. As stated before, citizens of a nation are prevented from seeing certain information with political censorship. Is it fair to the residents of a nation, to be lied to about the doings and misdoings of their government? If a person lives in a country, is it not wrong to feed the public biased information to gain their support? Also, does censored information not tamper with the citizens’ ability to reason, and make rational decisions for themselves? Progress cannot be achieved in a nation without the unbiased input of the public, and without officials who are willing to cooperate. Without the voice of the people, a nation simply becomes a vehicle to fuel the wishes of corrupt officials. As has been proved in the past, a nation without the voice of the people will eventually lead itself to its own demise, by slowly shifting away from concentrating on the needs and desires of the public. Another common type of censorship commonly seen is Internet censorship. Here, a government will filter the Internet content that enters the country. Often, this content consists of political ideas, world news, and writing that a nation does not want its public to see, for whatever reason. The Internet was originally created for unrestricted travelling of information, past cultural, ethnic, and national boundaries. It was intended for people to share their ideas on a common platform, at a very fast speed, in order to benefit every society. It is sad to see many people, who have their own ideas that can be shared with everyone else, be cut off from the rest of the world. These people could contribute greatly to society, improving and benefiting us all, but they are stopped, simply by a few officials scattered through various countries, who want the benefit only for themselves, and who do not want the people to see past their regime of misinformation and lies.

Over the last century, censorship has grown from simply being an idea to large-scale adoption by many groups. This growth of censorship has caused harm to many people who are subject to censorship. There is hope, however. In the last decade, many nations who previously had strong censorship are slowly opening up to the world, letting in ideas and beliefs previously not known to the public, and letting out the ideas and beliefs of their own people. This opening up leads to many more people not only being able to contribute their ideas, but also benefiting from the work of others. It is this open mentality that is crucial to the progress of not just one nation, but of mankind as a whole.