“Why was this deleted” is staple at CiF Watch, as it often demonstrates CiF’s biased moderation process, and so anyone who reads this blog is all too familiar with the images along the lines of the following:

But, sometimes, the Guardians are evidently so infuriated by a comment that it disappears completely, without any visual trace whatsoever that the heterodox thought was ever expressed. 

Here’s a cheeky comment by HushedSilence in the thread beneath the CiF piece (Bahrain will not digress from reform, Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, the King of Bahrain, June 1):

And, then:

Well, this is where we’d typically place a snapshot of the “this comment was removed…”, except that, well, all traces of the comment completely disappeared.  Even CW can’t take a snapshot of empty space.

However, the episode led me to thinking:

The Soviet government used to use crude techniques to change many of the photographs which had been taken after the October 1917 revolution to give the illusion that Trotsky had only a minimal role and did not share a close relationship with Lenin.  As you can see in the photo below, Trotsky is clearly standing next to Lenin in the first photograph, but is then removed in the second (and replaced by a hazy dark patch where nothing is clearly visible, giving an indication of the poor quality of Soviet alteration techniques)

Not that we’re comparing the Guardian to the Soviet Union (cough…Seumas…cough….Milne).