In what some might call despicable compliance, The Walt Disney Company has removed a Simpsons episode from Hong Kong Disney+ subscribers. The episode features the Simpsons arriving at Tiananmen Square where they find a placard that reads “On this site, in 1989, nothing happened.” For Hong Kong residents, it would seem that when they arrive at Season 16 Episode 12 (which is now just vanished), it should most appropriately say “In this episode from 2005, nothing happened.”
The censorship that The Simpsons decried has now been used against The Simpsons. Our overlords have arrived, and they appear to be communists.
The Hollywood Reporter on The Simpsons Censored for China
Everyone who works for The Walt Disney Company should be ashamed today. If censorship for the state — especially a communist oligarchical state that condones slave labor and concentration camps — is enforced by American corporations, those corporations deserve the loss of freedom and wealth they will incur should such totalitarianism take over.
For shame, for shame…
An episode of “The Simpsons” that ridicules Chinese government censorship appears to have been censored on Disney+ in Hong Kong.
The episode sees the family travel to Beijing, where they visit the body of Mao Zedong and pass through Tiananmen Square. https://t.co/MfU0rJidzb
— The New York Times (@nytimes) November 29, 2021
Disney+ has erased an episode of The Simpsons that mentioned the Tiananmen Square massacre in order to avoid upsetting the Chinese regime. This is spineless, snivelling behaviour, says Brendan O’Neillhttps://t.co/WVVVadgYd7
— spiked (@spikedonline) November 29, 2021
The idea that his company would censor criticism of Mao Zedong, whose rule killed tens of millions (at least), for a communist party, would revolt Walt Disney. This action is against everything free people should stand for. This is absolutely unacceptable behavior from The Walt Disney Company. Strike the man’s name from your company if you are going to disgrace his legacy in this way.
Disgusting…
