Challenge: Alternate History banned

Your challenge is to have the whole genre of AH specifically banned somewhere and someplace in the last century--along with other genres if need be. Points if it's somewhere you wouldn't expect.
 

Thande

Donor
Obvious would be totalitarian dictatorships that hate the idea of people being able to imagine a world where the other side in the civil war lost.

Non-obvious...how about Germany or Israel due to the preponderance of Nazis in the genre?
 

Sachyriel

Banned
China gets overboard and bans all video games that are Non-historical or non-realistic after getting a taste of Command and Conquer Generals. Alternate History books are deemed subversive and there won't be any alternate history movies in Chinese theatres anymore either.
 
I would suggest North Korea, but didn't they ban real history in order to conform with the Kim Dynasty's version of the past?
 
The Battle of Dorking

http://www.magick7.com/1/MoonlightStories/1/1789.htm
The Battle of Dorking by George Chesney
( Care: May be sloooow loading... )

Something like HG Wells' 'WOTW' was tolerable because it had a fairly logical, up-beat ending. And, besides, the antagonists were 'Invaders from Mars', hence an out-of-context problem...

BoD, an invasion dystopia, could have sparked an opportunist politician to do a 'Joe McCarthy', label it 'Un-British', bordering on treason, and foment a backlash against the genre...
 
I guess this is a rather large bump, but I've been thinking: maybe an extremist Calvinist theocracy would ban alternate history based on the doctrine of predestination?
 

Hoist40

Banned
We have two examples of “official history’ in the news lately, the Turkish official history that there was no Armenian massacre and the French official history that there was an Armenian massacre. In both cases you can get fined and possibly go to jail for not following that official history. So you are banned from making alternate history in Turkey or France about an Armenian massacre.
 

Tovarich

Banned
We have two examples of “official history’ in the news lately, the Turkish official history that there was no Armenian massacre and the French official history that there was an Armenian massacre. In both cases you can get fined and possibly go to jail for not following that official history. So you are banned from making alternate history in Turkey or France about an Armenian massacre.

I don't know the details of either French or Turkish law here, but I'd imagine AH, if presented as AH, is exempt precisely because by definition that is saying "this did not happen".
Even if, eg, a Turkish prosecution were sought on an AH with no Armenian massacre (because that would be saying there was such a massacre in RL) then the author may claim their POD as defence, so long as "no massacre" isn't the POD itself.

Where does the dividing point lie between Alternate History and Revisionist History, I wonder?

Come to that, the division between AH as a specific form and all fiction: Even contemporary fiction like soap operas are set in the past (albeit very recent) and concern characters who do not exist in events which did not happen.
 
China has banned HOI paradox games, as the history disagrees with the official description of history in that period. So that's alternate history being banned, innit?

yours,
Sam R.
 
China has banned HOI paradox games, as the history disagrees with the official description of history in that period. So that's alternate history being banned, innit?

yours,
Sam R.

China's ban on time travel drama covers alternate history. In fact, it was because time travel as a plot device opens the door to alternate history scenarios that the Chinese government banned it.

Can't have people thinking about the past in a way that everything was not a completely inevitable result of vast dialectical forces, could we?
 
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