19
Rome, too, used to do the same
It would be wrong to think that this phenomenon began with television or the internet. Julius Caesar, in his famous * Commentaries on the Gallic War *, describes his campaigns with the cold precision of a military report. The massacred peoples— hundreds of thousands of Gauls, Helvetians, and Germans— appear there as round numbers.“ Five hundred thousand men.” A statistic. Not a face, not a name, not a pain.
Medieval chroniclers glorified knights, kings, and the Crusades. Under military censorship, newspapers during World War I published accounts of“ glory” and“ sacrifice” while millions of young men rotted in the mud of the trenches. In 1944, images of Hiroshima remained classified for years.
The concealment of the human cost of war is as old as war itself. What has changed today is the sophistication of the tools— and perhaps our resignation to accepting it.
The erasure of the human cost as a tool of legitimization
In such times, war is portrayed as necessary, noble, and glorious. By rendering the victims invisible, these narratives facilitate society’ s acceptance of violence. War is already becoming acceptable precisely because its human reality is obscured.
Flashmag! Edition 173 Juin 2026
The 20th Century: Between the Unveiling of Horror and Media Control— An Ambiguous Turning Point
From 1914 to 1918, governments imposed strict censorship: images of mutilated bodies, traumatized soldiers, and destroyed villages were banned. The press spoke of“ glorious death on the field of honor.”
19