High Frontier’s Interaction with Political Correctness on the Web

Last Tuesday’s e-mail discussed Winston Churchill’s “V for victory” sign and several of his speeches during World War II and the conflict Great Britain was having with Hitler and his Nazi followers in Germany. In prepping the e-mail for distribution, we received the following message from our message server:

 

Our message server directed us either to change the Nazi reference or to click to certify message’s accuracy, which we did. Incredibly, they still disapproved our message—and we called to discuss the issue with them. Although the Customer Service representative was very pleasant in his demeanor, he advised that the use of the word “Nazi” was causing the message to be blocked, even though it was historically accurate and High Frontier’s recipients have a grasp of history and would not be offended by the use of a historically accurate word.

He responded that it didn’t matter, that the use of “Nazi” was prohibited, and suggested that if we used “German” instead of “Nazi” then the e-mail would then be distributed. Take a minute to let that sink in.

So we implemented a work around, by posting the article on our webpage and including a link in our abbreviated email that I presume you received. And we requested that the customer service tell their management that their service is banning words that are not only historically accurate, but fit currently active political parties, e.g., the Golden Dawn Party in Greece, which is a Nazi party. In 2009 they carried less than 1 percent of the popular vote; in 2012 they carried 7 percent—over a 700 % increase in three years.

So much for a world-wide web policy that is seriously flawed—evidence of Orwellian thinking???