V for vendetta has depicted our society

The graphic novel by Alan Moore, V for Vendetta is set in Britain, when liberal democracy has given way to a fascist totalitarian society led by Adam Sutler of the ‘Norsefire’ regime.

The Norsefire is reflection of the Nazi regime, oppressing people and forcing them to do what they wanted; torturing and killing people they considered unfit or undesirable. V is the only person who dares take them on, to say that they're wrong, and to free an entire populace that has been enslaved. We must remember that the Nazis' radicalized persecution thousands of homosexuals were sent to forced labor camps. There, in an explicit campaign of "extermination through work," homosexuals and other so-called security suspects were assigned to grueling work in ceaselessly dangerous conditions. There was also  a persecutiuons against  the Catholic Church in Germany and Jewish people. In V for vendetta we see that the story is not so different from what the Nazi regim and other totalitarian systems were. What‘s more in V for vendetta, there was also a persecution against, homosexuals, beatniks (bohemians), and people against the political system.

 V for Vendetta is a reaction against the Thatcherism. As you all know in 1980s was the era of Margaret Thatcher's Government, which brought large-scale social changes. One of them, was a policy enacted on 24 May 1988. The amendment stated that a local authority "shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality" or "promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship". As a result, a number of lesbian, gay and bisexual student support groups in schools and colleges across Britain were closed owing to fears by council legal staff.

In V for Vendetta we also see that the regime controls information. Actually, in the first chapter when V detonates the bomb, the radio announces that the explosion was previously arranged in order to demolish old buildings. Similarly, during the Nazi regime newspapers and other media were controlled by the state. The Reich Press Chamber bought and shut newspapers and publishing houses. By 1939 over two-thirds of the newspapers and magazines were directly owned by the Propaganda Ministry.

As well as in the Nazi regime, in V for Vendetta we are told that music, and great works of art are forbidden. If we look back in history, we will find the Nazi book burning. the campaign conducted by the German Student Union to ceremonially burned books in Nazi Germany and Austria by classical liberal, anarchist, socialist, pacifist, Communist, Jewish, and other authors whose writings were viewed as subversive or whose ideologies undermined the National Socialist administration.

Later in the novel we are told the history of what atrocities occurred at Larkhill Detention Centre. This is where we learned more about V’s history and character. We get to know how V was tortured for several years, and how all the prisoners at the centre were abused and treated like less than human beings. What’s more, experimentations on humans were carried out. In history we can finds ‘’the experiments by Mengele’’, and similar cruel Japanese experiments in Manchuria in the 1930s and 40s.

And finally, just like in Larkhill detention centre, prisoners were tortured just for being different, or for not fitting the standards of the regime, similar concentratrion camps existed in Germany, Arbeitsdorf, Bergen-Belsen, are few examples. More interestingly, Tejas verdes, Estadio Nacional, Campamento Ritoque are one of the examples of the Chilean experience.

references

Moore, Alan, and David Lloyd. "Vfor vendetta." (1989).

	Warburg, Gustav Otto. Six years of Hitler: the Jews under the nazi regime. G. Allen & Unwin, Limited, 1939.