[mcv]

I don't think it's something that has always been universally common. Erasing people like that is something that mostly the Soviet Union was known for. And possibly China or other dictatorships, but it's something you mostly see in propaganda from dictatorships. It's quite unusual to see it from the UK.

[AstixAndBelix]

My problem is with people using nazis and communists for cheap rethoric effect towards people who don't know history and eat it all up. If you knew that people have been erased since the time of the babylonians you wouldn't immediately compared what's happened to nazi Germany.

It's bad that he got deleted from the photo, but that's not indicative of any particular 20th century dictatorship

[mcv]

Are you telling me you did not immediately think of how people kept disappearing from Soviet photos? I think that's easily the most well-known modern example of this. It's blatantly similar.

And if your argument that dictatorships outside the 20th century did it too, that still doesn't mean it's not something associated primarily with dictatorships. Can you name a modern democracy where people were erased like that?

[mcv]

I stand corrected. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4984364/How-Hitler-... includes one example where Churchill's cigar was removed, and one where British King George VI was removed from a photo with the Canadian PM.

Still, the majority of examples, and the most famous ones, are Stalin, followed by various other dictatorships. But this example is apparently not a first for the UK.