Downfall parody controversies

Famous for its internet meme status, the Downfall Parodies have their share of controversial media, both in the eyes of public and corporate interests. Aside from the blocking and removal of Downfall Parodies, some people have express their dislike for the parodies with claims of offensive content, lack of humor, or goals to disrupt productions.

Despite the opposition, many individuals who are considered to be associated with groups in opposition to the parodies (i.e. Jewish and/or German people), are supportive to the internet meme. Some of these individuals are known to produce Downfall Parodies themselves, as in the case of an Israeli Unterganger who made a rather controversial parody concerning parking fees in Tel Aviv, as well as in the case of other Untergangers like Shomronon and Staedty86, who are of Israeli and German descent, respectively. It should also be noted that at least some satirical and/or comedic films depicting Hitler or Nazism in general were, in fact, written and/or produced by Jewish filmmakers, i.e. Mein Fuhrer: The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler, which was directed by Dani Levy.

This page will not only deal with the opposition towards the parodies, but also the infighting within the Unterganger community that has occured several times, in a case of what TVTropes.org called "We ARE Struggling Together".

Opposition to the parodies
In accordance to its popularity, there are individuals and groups who have expressed dislike for the Hitler parodies. As such, in one YouTube video, a comment about disliking Downfall parodies received a high rating. Possible reasons that groups express opposition may include:
 * Absolutely no sense of humor. Or no sense of a good joke at times.
 * Considered a mockery/insult towards the war's veterans, especially if said parodies involved the Allied forces or an actual battle of the war (excluding the Battle of Berlin, which was the film's time period). For example, a parody of the critically acclaimed Saving Private Ryan may receive a significant number of dislikes, due to the sensitive issues facing the characters in the movie.
 * Some (neo-Nazis included) have mistaken it for promoting Nazism. In this case, opposition groups slandered Mrforthoseabout2rock, now known as SSHimmlerHeinrich. This may cause a problem regarding the disclaimer. On the contrary, by changing the projection of Hitler from god-like leader to a Fegel-hating imbecile, positive social results may come to fruition.
 * This has occasionally been the case in Hitler Rants Parodies' Facebook group, where users from certain countries, who are either the aforementioned neo-Nazis or are just plain oblivious about Hitler's atrocities, would join in and mistake the group for a pro-Hitler club.
 * People view the parodies in a more serious point of view.
 * "Offensive" and "antagonistic" content: Hitler and the Nazi swastika.
 * People thought that an anti-war film like Downfall shouldn't be parodied. This is rather unlikely, since there are several YouTube poops using the Nicolas Cage-starring anti-war film, Lord of War. All of them, so far, has yet to receive major negative perception.
 * As Hitler was infamous for being one of the key people behind the Holocaust, some users, especially those of Jewish heritage, would dislike the video for involving the dictator in a parody as they find them inappropriate, such as in a video by GewSaints where a user who had relatives from Germany criticized the video for being derogatory. Another instance was that of Scottish politician Tom Harris who made a Downfall parody depicting First Minister Alex Salmond as Adolf Hitler - not only that he was forced to resign from his role as an Internet advisor over the parodies, some of the comments on the video and on his profile were less than savoury, citing distastefulness in regards to the Holocaust victims. Some detractors went as far as declaring that the Untergangers are worse than the Nazis.
 * For German speakers (or people), the parodies are stupid because they understand German language and the dialogs have "mangled translations", and because they feel the parodies are "butchering" their language and thus should be treated harhsly. It has been repeatedly recommended that German speakers should turn off the sound when they are watching parodies, such as in the case when Downfall director Oliver Hirschbiegel made some positive statements about the parodies in a New York Times interview:

ADL claims
The ADL (Anti-Defamation League) found the parodies offensive because, according to them, it "trivialized the Holocaust". In fact, the ADL made attempts to eliminate as many parodies as possible that involve Adolf Hitler, which they consider giving a positive aspect of the Nazi leader. Consequently, the actions of the ADL are likely to return in the favor of the parody makers.

Controversies and disputes involving the Untergang Community
Following the mid-2010 DMCA Crisis, there are growing disputes between Untergangers within the Downfall Parodies Community. Demonstrations of these disputes present Untergangers confronting other Untergangers, such as the incident when MrTNeumann created a renegade channel expressing deep concerns and dissent against Hitler Rants Parodies.

Another situation involved TheDownfallParodies harassing discovery781isaBitch, which occurred when discovery781IsABitch announced his retirement.

Another controversy occurred in November, 2010. DXFan619GotSuspended uploaded a video expressing his thoughts and opinions in Modern Day Downfall Parody Making, which is followed by many other videos. The latter video was quickly misinterpreted by discovery781IsABitch who believed the Untergang Community has conspired against him. The video's intention was to criticize the Pokemon parody maker for his subscription campaign, something d781IAB did not realize. According to DXFan619, it was merely because of "over-sensitiveness" and lack of ability to overcome small disputes. For the same reasons of the November turmoil, XenosParodies "committed suicide", by closing TheXenomoph1 account and reappeared as MHXDownfall, permanently changing Xeno's production base.

Yet another controversy occured in April 2011, this time between MHXDownfall against Nietzscheprime and BBxTerra, who called them a troll for not understanding such humor; though MHXDownfall did understand the humor in the first place. The whole thing begins when BBxTerra criticized Gaddafi parodies, saying it will have no future. He becomes heavily enraged, believing that the Community was a company of traitors before being convinced that he was wrong; and that he shouldn't take the dispute seriously. He closed his account shortly, followed a month later with a statement that "YouTube's no place for me".

In March 2012, another controversy occurred yet again. Meowjar, or 2091riveraisrael, was banned from this (Hitler Parody) wiki as per consensus by the Downfall Parodies Forum members, as well as similar concerns on his editing behaviour; this ultimately resulted with the removal of his United Nazi War series; though it was eventually reuploaded and "revived".

An issue also occurred in May 2012 when Hanif837 was suspected and caught by Hitler Rants Parodies and a few other members for vote-rigging and sockpuppetry at the Downfall Parodies Forum. The user has also been criticised for his apparent immaturity and disregard for following the community rules, which earned him a permanent ban in the wiki, adding to the fact that users below 13 years of age are theoretically barred from Wikia services due to child privacy guidelines.

Slainender has also attracted some controversy throughout the Unterganger community, mostly for his poor grammar and indifferent behaviour to other users as well as flaming and threatening others.He's also attracted attention in the Untergangers chat for derailing the topic deliberately and disliking for him developed within the community this way.

By October 2012 conflicts worsened as untergangers increasingly split off into factions, and debates/flame-wars escalated. This got worse to the extent that sparx476 suicided his account after a strongly-worded debate regarding the Downfall Parody Awards and PiretBCN, satirical videos were published which mocked a variety of individuals and events relating to this, and so on. The differences became so pronounced that some untergangers xpressed concern that the formerly-homogeneous community was breaking up. Even Hitler Rants Parodies became worried about this, and made a post on the Downfall Parodies Forum outlining his concerns. More information here.

These suspicions, and the cynicism of some untergangers towards the community at large (such as Benad361, Johnomonster and WonkyTonkBotty). Seemed to be confirmed from October 2012-onwards, as flame wars increased on the Downfall Parodies Forum, to the extent that Hitler Rants Parodies was forced to close several topics to end them.

In 2013, formerly well-liked unterganger Shomronon fell out of yet more favor with the community, after it had emerged that he had made racist remarks in Private Messages, regarding the deaths of children at the hands of Israeli forces, causing revulsion among many untergangers, and another flame-war in the comments section of his wikia article.

In March 2013, another flame war was ignited in a thread started by Trapped Antics (to announce that Fegaltube was thankfully still alive). Robert Tolhurst, Shomronon, and others derailed the topic with 'butthurt' cynicism, prompting critical responses by Benad361, Johnomonster, and others. In turn, Smoglessbutton4 chipped in, venting his rage at the community, which he believed had been returning to 'harmony' before the incident. He announced that he would definitely not be returning as a result; however, he later apologized for his overreaction.

In February 2015, the creation of the fourth-generation Untergangers ignited a debate among the community on whether a next generation is unnecessary or not. The debate ended as soon as it began. More information here.

Plagiarism
Plagiarizing a Downfall parody is considered a serious offense by all means. It is heavily looked down upon and a plagiarizing Unterganger or regular YouTube user loses significant respect. The Untergang Community usually takes action when a major Unterganger's parody has been plagiarized, This occurrence does not happen to minor Untergangers, who unfortunately have to deal with the problem themselves.

An example of Untergang plagiarism involved HeyItsPiplup and an amateur YouTube user when Piplup's "Hitler phones the Farting Preacher" was stolen and Piplup was not given any credit. The user who has stolen that parody has denied that he has stolen Piplup's parody though it is obvious.

HitlerRantsTV decided to use HRP's outro uncredited on his video that wishes HRP's birthday. While his intentions may be good, his failure to give credits raised questions among the Unterganging community. He later closed his YouTube account.

Lbrione also used HRP's second outro, albeit it was speeded up. As of 11 July 2012, he no longer uses it and instead placed a message stating "What happened to the stolen outro? Find out later". He later apologised.

In mid-2012, Antoni Pieter was discovered to have copied many parodies from Untergangers like Hitlerrantsparodies, Soalric, Kitrantsparodies, DictatorAntics and many more. apparently he had begun his dirty work on or around 28 May 2012. He places Indonesian subtitles on them, although the old ones are still visible. He also dubbed some parodies with other voices. However, in early October that year, his account was terminated by YouTube because of multiple third-party claims of copyright infringement regarding material that he had stolen, and then posted on his channel. This however hasn't stopped him, as he also has an account on Dailymotion (DaveDaysParodies) and other video-sharing sites, where he continues to upload stolen and butchered videos from Hitler Rants Parodies and other Untergangers. He has recently created a new YouTube account, newantoniepeter, too. Pieter made the fatal mistake of posting his password publicly in one of his vlogs on 24 January 2013, resulting in the inevitable counter-offensive being swiftly and mercilessly executed. His account was immediately taken over.

However, the resulting backlash from Antoni's hacking caused yet more splits within the community: a strongly-worded disagreement with Evilrobottolhurst resulted in the retirement of Mfaizsyahmi at short-notice, many untergangers came under fire from other untergangers for "feeding the trolls" and filling the forum with posts about Antoni, and so on (more information here).

On 4 November 2012, the YouTube channel SlenderManArmy downloaded a video uploaded by Soalric, "Slender Man Invades the Bunker ", and re-uploaded it as "SlenderMan VS Adolf Hitler ". While Soalric attempted to address the issue in a civil manner, SlenderManArmy refused to even acknowledge Soalric's creation of the video. As a result, several community members, such as mfaizsyahmi, Trapped Antics, smoglessbutton4, TheFreakyDolfyFuher, TheSilverUniverse and shomronon, came to his aid. Eventually, SMA ended up deleting his copy of the video on November 9, resulting in a great victory for the Unterganging community.

In order to counter plagiarisms, some Untergangers such as FegelStationChannel, Shomronon, and TheSilverUniverse added watermarks in some (in case of FegelStationChannel, all) of their parodies.

From DPA's favouritism to the division of the community
Around August 2012,  the Downfall Parody Awards began to come under fire from many untergangers for a variety of reasons. Criticism has ranged from notoriousrob01's lack of any democratic voting outlet through which he can give his viewers a chance to have a say (unlike the Unterganger of the Month and Parody of the Month awards), to his perceived susceptibility to favouritism in giving out awards. This can particularly be seen by the fact that many untergangers have become increasingly disillusioned by the fact that notoriousrob constantly awards the Unterganger of the Month category to PiretBCN for months at a time, without her seemingly earning it on any sort of merit (her parodies and views are often criticised for being racist, biased and offering little innovative or funny content).

The conflict grew into those who are actually symphatising or even supports PiretBCN and those who didn't. Those who earlier reject notoriousrob01's undemocratic and favouritism-prone approach of running the DPA came to be convinced that he is one of few who are supporting PiretBCN. They can be found having long exchanges in Piret's YouTube video's comments. This include DPA's organizer notoriousrob01 himself, Robert Tolhurst and Sparx476, the latter two being First-generation Untergangers. Saying that they are symphatizing against an Estonian who was formerly oppressed by the Soviet regime only partially justifies it, as no similar support is given to another, more aspiring non-emigrating Estonian unterganger TheSilverUniverse. Her bland parodies with a sprinkle of Soviet hate propaganda only brings into question the real reason of the two's support.

Sparx476 even went one step further by closing his YouTube account. Prior to doing that he posted two comments on one of Piret's videos:

The new, democratic Unterganger Awards, were been created jointly by Benad361, Master Studios, and TheSilverUniverse, as a remedy to this, and many believed that their arrival marked the end of this controversy. It seems many have dropped this particular subject in attempts to heal the community. However, such attempts only seem to have put a temporary halt on such conflicts.

Beginning in the Downfall Parodies Forum and Untergangers Chat, heated political debates started between several Untergangers have caused significant tensions in the community. The most notable cases were those which involved Shomronon and Benad361 regarding politics in the Middle East; after a long period of time, the community decided to 'divide' due to differing opinions causing hate and tension.

Shomronon had also spread claims of "Elite Untergangers", which was used mostly to describe those who sided with Benad361. This term was often used by him to insult those who hold opinions differing to his own, even in non-poltical context (for example, during the DPA controversy). Political debate was later banned in the Untergangers Chat. He eventually want to labelling the moderators of the Untergangers Chat as "Unterganger Elitists" as he disagreed with the way the rules were determined and describing the Hitler Parody Wiki as "filth" when a racist private message that he sent to a YouTube user was publicly posted by the recipient. Later on, when KnightTemplar1453 was banned for breaking a rule forbidding discussion of politics, Shomronon continously requested him be unbanned despite being in clear violation of the rules.

In late 2013, Hitler Rants Parodies created a chat room (which is now inactive) of which Shomronon was given moderator privelleges to. The overall discussion within that chat was criticism of the Untergangers Chat and rumors were fabricated it was dying and decaying, despite being an active chat. The term is still used today by a few who are close to Shomronon and hold hate towards certain users.