With Vox Day releasing SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police I dusted off our copy of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 to reread his 1979 essay Coda. Coda is a protest against everyone who would censor or edit his work, including those who would edit for brevity and those who would edit out “offensive” content. But Bradbury reminds us that the censorship in Fahrenheit 451 came from those who would censor content which offended them:
The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist / Unitarian, Irish / Italian / Octogenarian / Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women’s Lib/ Republican, Mattachine/ Four Square Gospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.
Fire-Captain Beatty, in my novel Fahrenheit 451, described how the books were burned first by minorities, each ripping a page or a paragraph from this book, then that, until the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the libraries closed forever.
Ironically, his book about lilliputian censorship was itself censored by editors who couldn’t see the irony of their actions:
Only six weeks ago, I discovered that, over the years, some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine Books, fearful of contaminating the young, had, bit by bit, censored some 75 separate sections from the novel. Students, reading the novel which, after all, deals with censorship and book-burning in the future, wrote to tell me of this exquisite irony.
As Bradbury explains the impulse to censor the offensive exists to some degree with all groups, and he seems to be making an effort to be even handed in his indictment. Yet as we can see all around us, it is the Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) who are truly committed to censoring anything which they find offensive or disturbing. Bradbury’s account of his own experience lines up with this:
In my story, I had described a lighthouse as having, late at night, an illumination coming from it that was a “God-Light.” Looking up at it from the view-point of any sea-creature one would have felt that one was in “the Presence.”
The editors had deleted “God-Light” and “in the Presence.”
…
A final test for old Job II here: I sent a play, Leviathan 99, off to a university theater a month ago…
But, for now, the university wrote back that they hardly dared do my play—it had no women in it! And the ERA ladies on campus would descend with ball-bats if the drama department even tried!
In the real world the firemen don’t show up with kerosene and matches; they show up with trigger warnings and political correctness codes.
When it comes to my books I’m constantly asked why I focus on the print versions first and not the more profitable eBooks that are more accessible. It’s harder to delete or alter the physical copy.
Pingback: Fahrenheit 451: The dystopia Social Justice Warriors are working to create. | Neoreactive
The world is far worse than Orwell’s 1984. It’s a control freaks’ wet dream at this point. Everything we do, see, read and think, is to be controlled by our so called ‘betters’, they know what is good for us after all.
Pingback: Fahrenheit 451: The dystopia Social Justice Warriors are working to create. | Manosphere.com
I have decided the only way to combat these SJW freaks is to “lean in” to their ridiculous name-calling. From now on I intend to embrace the charges of “racist”, “sexist”, “homophobic”, et al. It is the only way to make these terms meaningless. Like “participation trophies” and “Everyone’s a Winner” platitudes, their overuse for non-accomplishments makes their very idea a parody of the Special Olympics! Yet the only reason the Special Olympics “work” is because the participants are all retarded!
Oh, I’m sorry! “Mentally Challenged”.
I believe it was Gilbert & Sullivan who observed, “If everyone is somebody, then no one is anybody.” Which of course, is the goal.
I believe it was Gilbert & Sullivan who observed, “If everyone is somebody, then no one is anybody.”
Yes, in The Gondoliers, another of G&S’s tour de force works parodying certain universal human tendencies. I saw a presentation of it in 2008, right before the stock market crash. When the Duke of Plazatoro declared himself to be essentially an LLC & offered to sell shares in himself, it was a very special moment.
The SJW’s goal isn’t to censor things they find offensive, it’s to find offensive any fact, argument, or thought that disagrees with them, then ban it on that basis. Their technique doesn’t win arguments. It doesn’t have to. It forms opinion in the young and uneducated by becoming ubiquitous. The censorship only accelerates when individuals feel they have a right to because no one they know holds to or uses that argument.
@Rollo
It’s harder to delete or alter the physical copy.
Or pirate them.
The entire credit must go to W.S.Gilbert. Sullivan (Knighted for his music of a religious nature) merely wrote the music. Despite his fame his stage works are little played except – somewhat surprisingly – in America and the rest hardly ever if at all anywhere. My own teacher was scathing about the fact that the bass in the first measure of his tune Onward Christian Soldiers became the melody in the in the second measure; I thought it just rather clever.
“anything which they find offensive or disturbing”
Or “problematic”. In fact, I suspect this blog post is very problematic.
Pingback: Fahrenheit 451: The dystopia Social Justice Warriors are working to create. | Reaction Times
Lest they be branded “intolerant,” the censors of today often “edit for brevity” and conveniently excise those items they consider “unimportant.” Strange how the unimportant is almost always the most controversial and offensive. But never fear: they have our best interests in mind.
The news works this way. So does most advice to men.
http://www.entertainmentdaily.co.uk/peter-andre-given-strictly-ultimatum-by-wife/?utm_source=Outbrain&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=238579&utm_term=5008423&pub_id=44&w_id=&pd_id=&link_id=238579&r_link_id=238579
“She threatens to leave if he embarrasses her!”
the new standard in divorce , at what point do we agree this is ridiculous ?
Reblogged this on MGTOW 2.0.
Diane Ravitch’s “The Thought Police” is a still-relevant tome on censorship in education generally, from both left and right, and of course literature. On the left is political correctness, anything promoting European culture, and books like Huckleberry Finn. On the right it’s anything to do with evolution, sex, or history that’s not “American Exceptionalism” (i.e., the Civil War was a noble cause having nothing to do with slavery), and books like Huckleberry Finn.
Ravitch quotes Bradbury’s “Coda” essay in her book.
Then there is this 1957 masterpiece from the late Stan Freberg, who saw PC censorship coming 30 years before anyone else. For those not wanting to click the YouTube link, or if the link hangs this up in moderation, the script of it follows.
[D: Extended quote of copyrighted content removed.]
New Zealand censors its first book in two decades.
http://m.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=11509128
“In the real world the firemen don’t show up with kerosene and matches; they show up with trigger warnings and political correctness codes.”
They show up with handcuffs and courts and cages, too.
“Yet as we can see all around us, it is the Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) who are truly committed to censoring anything which they find offensive or disturbing. Bradbury’s account of his own experience lines up with this”
Bradbury was careful to be ‘inclusive’ in his list of censors. But when I began serious reading in the early Sixties, America at the popular level wasn’t censoring much. Overt sexual content on teevee and film, stuff like that. Back then, there actually were a few Baptist groups protesting emergent New America. Which, in hindsight, was proper.
Christian America wasn’t silencing many authors due to political, social, or religious content. We read the early SF authors, and their stories looked pretty wide open.
Now that America is transformed, and under anti-Christian leadership and surface rule of feminism/marxism, the only place where censorship isn’t standard is the internet. Almost everything else is part of the ideo-political gulag. Religious gulag, really. Same old Jezzie.
Bradbury passed on but some of the old guard are still around. They better get off the Fat Fence and figure out who their friends are while they are still allowed to have friends. Or to figure.
@Thomas K.
“From now on I intend to embrace the charges of “racist”, “sexist”, “homophobic”, et al. It is the only way to make these terms meaningless.”
It’s time we all started brainstorming strategies to render these terms meaningless.
1) The first thing we need to do is humanize them. “Look, sexists, racists and homophobes pay taxes too. They have families they love and support. They’re human beings, and you have no right to judge them.”
2) Begin accusing SJW’s of being racist/sexist/homophobic. It’s actually amazingly easy, since these words are so broadly defined that they can be applied to anything. Do it constantly. The more you do it, the more tiresome “racism” “sexism” and “homophobia” become as concepts.
3) Point out the ways liberalism is a white privilege. Point out the ways white guilt is a white privilege.
4) Invent neo-logisms. We have “the soft racism of low expectations,” it’s time for “the soft sexism of shielding women from the microaggressions that men endure every day.” The whole purpose of left-speak is that it’s fashionable: like Mamet said, left-wing discourse isn’t an actual argument, it’s just a collection of recognition symbols, designed to show they belong to the sophisticated class. The discourse itself is a status symbol.
5) Never defend oneself from accusations of racism, sexism or homophobia. Shrug them off with indifference.
First, apologies for any potential copyright issue on the Freberg thing. The link, if you click on it, has the script appended beneath if you don’t have time to listen to the bit, which you should.
Second @ray: in the early sixties book censorship issues still were very much alive. Catcher In The Rye was and is still a burr in the sides of bluenoses. Naked Lunch was still getting sorted out in Boston. Harlan Ellison’s explicit sci-fi took awhile to be published (his characters swore, screwed and drugged-up). Lolita was rejected by three publishers who feared it would be prosecuted.
Third @Tingler: your ideas 2 and 3 are doable, for the simple reason SJW’s do that stuff to each other all the time. Yes the hivemind there can round on and derail the unsuspecting. But it’s nothing compared to the trolling, false-flagging and “tone policing” they do among themselves if someone is accused of being insufficiently Socially Just.
Fourth: as Vox says, never apologize. Those who do are not forgiven, their apology becomes an confession and a condemnation, a la the Holy Inquisition and the Witch trials. Those who do not may take the occasional hit but plow on. Like him or not, Howard Stern never apologizes, and he is still standing.
The only celebrities I know of who broke the cycle – though they are old (and one is dead) – were John Lennon and David Bowie. Lennon inoculated himself in his interviews, especially towards the end, admitting he had been sexually beastly throughout his career before anyone besides his first wife Cynthia came forward. Bowie stupidly (and druggedly) once said in the 70’s that Britain could use some fascist rule. It took him years to overcome it, and at that time there were no SJW brigades to finish him.
@Fred
I just heard about tone policing the other day too. The latest feminist term du jour. That’s going to be a great one, something to use on them when they complain that you’re being too aggressive.
It amazes me that these people can go through life oblivious to the fact that every tool they use can also be used against them.
The totalitarian nanny state envisioned by 20th century cultural Marxists is blooming: https://youtu.be/VggFao85vTs
Second @ray: in the early sixties book censorship issues still were very much alive. Catcher In The Rye was and is still a burr in the sides of bluenoses. Naked Lunch was still getting sorted out in Boston. Harlan Ellison’s explicit sci-fi took awhile to be published (his characters swore, screwed and drugged-up). Lolita was rejected by three publishers who feared it would be prosecuted.
“Christian America wasn’t silencing many authors due to political, social, or religious content” is what I wrote, and in the same comment mentioned that sexual material was under limited censorship. Political, social, religious.
All the works you cite have sexual themes, sexually explicit language, etc.
Did you have a point?
As Philip Larkin put it ‘…between lady Chatterly and the Beatles first L.P’: Penguin Books were prosecuted for obscenity for turning Lawrence into a best-selling paperback-writer. The great and the good gave evidence in its defence that it was art not tart. From what I have read of it (not much) if ever there was a book not to be made a cause celebre of that was it: Stalin would have banned it on the grounds that it was too boring, but in England because it used a few rude words – I know because my father’s copy (my father being a man who had never otherwise been known to open a book) falls open at page 222 – publication was halted – temporarily. Then the gates of hell opened and everything was permitted. Those were great days. Actually not everything was permitted for it was and surely still remains illegal to import through customs Euro-Porn magazines – though would anyone bother?
Everything was going well until the Muslims (who so enrich us) began to burn their copies of The Satanic Verses, after which things got worse, yet amazingly I am still in a position to say whether I think the Holocaust is a real historical event or a hoax: of course I have had to destroy my old copies of The Sun; the ones that featured the extremely busty sixteen-year-old Samantha Fox, because every time I looked at her photo she suffered all over again: the experience was clearly too much for her as she has since gone Lesbian.
My sister says I am Sexist; my local Town Clerk says I am offensive: they say it like Sexist or being offensive was a bad thing. ?????
They’ve taken a different attack only by a little. They make it impossible to have any non-conforming opinion and exist in the public, run a mid-size company, go to professional conferences, etc. Once it is wrong to think differently in public, it’s impossible to support those who they censor without being destroyed for thought crimes.
Off topic (sorry) but someone just wrote a short piece on the benefits of marrying young, and it’s pretty good. Want to give credit where it’s due
http://www.popsugar.com/love/Benefits-Getting-Married-Young-37707351
In Canada 1989, some of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s books were banned. I don’t know the titles or if they are still banned. Under the Progressive party led by Brian Mulroney (aka Brian Baloney) I am not surprised. They were even talking about banning “The Satanic Verses”. I had a Muslim landlord who had a copy of this book in his library as he believed in freedom of speech.
In hindsight, Montag’s wife was an obvious slutphone addict. Bradbury was way ahead of his time.
Dalrock, I am reading an old 1960’s science book to my Elementary Aged son. It claims that the numbers we use are “Hindu-Arabic” numbers. NOT invented by Arabs but invented by Hindus and later expanded by the Arabs.
I was taught in the 1980’s all about “Arabic” numerals and how Arabs invented our numbering system, how Arabs invented the 0. I was NEVER taught that this originated in India or the common earlier term (“Hindu-Arabic”) which is completely excised from modern educational textbooks.
That would be right about the time U.S. Policy shifted to the Arabs and away from India which fell under Soviet influence.
Interesting how they rewrite history even as we watch.
Remember that the new trope among SJW censors is to suppress something not because it DID offend, but because of the FEAR it MIGHT offend SOMEONE somewhere. This is the reason given for not inviting some comedians to campus, college paper columnists being fired for criticizing intersectionality, college DJ’s thrown off the air for playing a particular song. Sounds all comforting at first: we just don’t want to do anything that MIGHT upset someone, we don’t know how, better to not allow it. We’re just being “compassionate” here.
Give us commissars enough vodka and we will tell you this “freedom from speech” notion is a Stalinist Soviet-era invention. Keep unpleasant speech or points of view from the masses, they will be distracted and upset, then not work as enthusiastically for the Motherland and the Party.
Putin has put this policy to good use: not only to stifle criticism of himself, but to imprison the feminist band Pussy Riot. (Note the irony: SJW strategy used to silence SJW’s). Their crime was they shouted anti-religious slogans for 20 seconds in a cathedral before being arrested; at their trial weepy old simkas testified that their faith had been shaken and they were deeply depressed by a juvenile stunt that anywhere else in the West would have been a trespassing/disturbing the peace disorderly persons charge. In Moscow, prison terms were mandated lest other possibly offended faithful give up all hope and swallow samovars or something.
I have to respectfully disagree with Fred’s points about conservatives and censorship:
“On the right it’s anything to do with evolution, sex, or history that’s not “American Exceptionalism” (i.e., the Civil War was a noble cause having nothing to do with slavery), and books like Huckleberry Finn.”
The right would love for comprehensive information to be taught about evolution – why it is scientifically improbable, the lack of evidence, the censorship of facts that weaken its validity, etc. But many of those concepts are not only extremely complex for a high school level biology course, but very time-consuming as well. While I don’t profess to know the best solution, I’m pretty sure it is not “teach evolution as 100% fact, neglect all other possible origins of the universe”. I don’t think it’s fair to equate “don’t teach evolution as 100% fact” with censorship, if anything the right wants LESS information to be censored about this subject.
As for sex, how has hypersexualizing the nation’s girls been working out so far? Do you think single 12-year-old mothers are more or less likely to raise well-adjusted children and be productive members of society compared to others? If a parent doesn’t let their 3 year-old be exposed to extremely graphic violence and gore that doesn’t mean they are unfairly ‘censoring’ content – it’s that parents have a moral and civic responsibility not to exposure children to things that will interfere with their mental development. I realize this is a bit of a slippery slope as one could argue that many different things interfere with proper development in children, but the fact is that when given the choice, the left will ALWAYS promote promiscuity over chastity, and we have seen the evidence enough times to know that is simply not a healthy choice to be made for developing children. At what point does the clearly demonstrable wise choice turn into undue censorship?
The push for American Exceptionalism is probably the most valid criticism of the bunch, but it is likely blowback for all the left’s white guilt-pushes for American Unexceptionalism. The left has tried very frequently to miss-attribute discoveries and contributions to whatever culture is the least American: credit for India’s mathematic work gets shifted to Muslim culture, etc. The left would love for nothing more than more self-flagellating, self-loathing, white-guilt filled puppets, and the right is likely trying to fight too many different battles at once by trying to haphazardly promote more examples of why White Americans should feel proud of their exceptionalism and not guilty because of it.
For Huckleberry Finn, lol what? It’s the left PC police that get up in arms about derogative terms toward any non-white group.
Dr Torch linked an article enumerating the benefits of youthful marriage which was very positive in tone . I recently read an article about a two-career couple who found living on their dual incomes extremely difficult due in large part to the high cost of childcare and medical coverage. After tiring of being bailed out by their parents they both quit their careers and each took a twenty hour per week minimum wage job. After having done this they and their two children were immediately eligible for a cornucopia of government benefits and their standard of living and financial stability increased. They got a housing voucher food stamps Medicaid free childcare etc. Presumably they also saved money by not needing a career wardrobe Etc.
If people chose this sort of Bohemian life, especially giving up on private schools or a “good school district” in favor of homeschooling, they could avoid working full time until their children were teenagers.
The rationale behind marrying later started off as a way to put yourself in a stronger financial position before taking on the responsibilities of marriage. If postponing marriage no longer helps you get ahead in life then a lot of people may revert to the life patterns of yesteryear
@original Laura: Though off-topic, I would mention that here in Southern Nevada/Northern Arizona, it is quite common for fundamentalist Mormons practicing polygamy to set each wife up in a separate house and have her apply for all the goodies Uncle Sugar offers. Although these seemed to me to contradict the plain teaching of Scripture, I was told they justified the practice because they were “bleeding the Beast”. By sucking up social welfare benefits they claim to be hurrying the decline and fall of the Beast. Ah, it is not only feminists who have hampsters at their beck and call!
But your point is well made and I believe more and more young people (and older) will see it as a viable option. Which, by the way, is the “benevolent” goal of the leftist. When Obamacare was criticized because companies would no longer hire people for 40 hours a week (no more than 32 under the constraints of Obamacare), Obama’s minions replied with a straight face, “Well, that’s not necessarily bad. It will give them more time to spend with their families.” When I worked a second job delivering pizza after Obamacare became law I was amazed at how many of the employees were both on food stamps AND not looking for another job for more hours. There were single guys in their late 20s/early 30s sharing apartments with other bachelors, with girlfriends on the side and no intention of getting educated, married or better jobs! And yes, video games and porn were prevalent diversions.
Read Bertrand Russell’s 1934(?) essay, “In Praise of Leisure” to understand this long-standing goal of socialism.
“It’s harder to delete or alter the physical copy. ”
It’s actually easier to alter a physical copy. It’s just a lot harder to do it without leaving traces that it was done.
@Thomas K – agreed. I’ve come to the conclusion that the proper response to being called a bad name is to agree, and amplify or turn it around.
You’re a racist. Unashamedly, so what?
You’re a misogynist. Damned skippy. I’m busily working overtime trying to get women barefoot, pregnant, and back into the kitchen
@Thomas K
Bleeding the Beast = Mormon Cloward-Piven
Also when people suggest I’m sounding like a racist, I reply “There is nothing wrong with a little racism. You nor I would even exist without a little racism helping our ancestors to recognize the enemy tribe.”
I read Vox Day’s SJW’s Always Lie this weekend – it was an excellent read. He advises flinging their insults back at them, since they don’t understand logic.
I got this from Instapundit Dalrock and you may have seen it there or elsewhere, but here it is in case not:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/07/why-college-educated-women-can-t-find-love.html
The Bible is being SJW -burned, Dalrock. The new NIV, 2011 with its’ “gender inclusive language” is ruining Scripture. Since when did Jesus Christ EVER say, “Come with me, and I will make you Fishers of Persons”? When did the Psalmist say at the end of the First Psalm “But THEIR delight…is the law of God Almighty”?
Scripture is written in the singular masculine in order to personalise and convict the reader, as it should. The new NIV pluralises the text and bends over backwards to avoid saying the word, “Man”, as if it were an abomination. In doing so, it blunts the Word down to something that…women accustomed to Feminism can easily read – without any conviction, I might add.
I think that the NIV Committee must have taken leave of their senses, or must have been collectively possessed by Satan to allow this.
One of your commentators once said that, “with the rise of Islam in the Western world, Western men won’t fight for civilisation since they don’t see anything worth fighting for”.
I was shocked when I read this. Now, I think he’s right.
@BradA
That’s just what I was saying last week. Guttentag-Secord Theory is the great unspoken phenomenon of our time. But books like that’ll popularize it soon enough.
@Spike:
The NIV editing board is a good example of how to damn your soul while seeming Christian.
Also, I believe it was in the early 90s when they actually started going that way. It’s really been going on for a while.
@Fred, in all his Manifestations.
Nobody does a Racist Rant like Eric Clapton, though. See Slowhand at his most eloquent.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eric_Clapton
‘outspoken’ gay friend
Is there any other kind?
@GxCx:-
“The
fivesix most “offensive” things you can say to an SJW, in ascending order of magnitude:…
6) ” .. not another penny from me, sunshine!” (if you want to see what amydala-shorted personality-disorder looks like)
amyg etc. Carry on..
Rollo and Toad:-
There’s always samiszdat.
I don’t know where to get the fluid and stencils though. And the dog-rough (recycled?) paper which worked best (less smearing). Still got a golfball Olivetti somewhere, so that’s origination sorted (manual really effs up your fingers after a while pounding on those waxed sheet things, RSI).
BluePP:
What about good ole American Zero, then?
It’s the shell, not the Morse code.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-origin-of-zer/
BradA,
that was a good read, thanks. It has just that kernel of reality necessary to make it interesting. So many criticisms and corrections could be made that it deserves its own post. Foremost, by not making marriage and marriageability its focus, it misses its own point and the solution therefore. Practically all of the criticisms of this type from both sexes, nearly regardless of politics, is socially and culturally regulated courtship in the classical sense, one featuring responsibilities, compromises, and rewards for the individuals, offspring, and thence back to society. Any of what we might call “lawless” courtship styles is purely a gamble, so how much pity am I supposed to have for those who belatedly realize their victimhood in the face of obvious evidence, the very people who promulgate it with PC sacred cows and equality myths? Well, some pity, I suppose, but only a little, and only for everyone, and only on this basis: Marriage 2.0 is as lawless as any, insofar as society doesn’t guarantee it to be a refuge, just an extended hookup cum potential miserable entanglement. Why is it so hard for society to hold people to their own standards?
If the world were rational, some of these people would be compelled to practice and perfect the steady life, and reap the dividends only achievable in time.
>Should read “Practically all of the criticisms of this type from both sexes, nearly regardless of politics, could be resolved with socially and culturally regulated courtship…”
“The push for American Exceptionalism is probably the most valid criticism of the bunch, but it is likely blowback for all the left’s white guilt-pushes for American Unexceptionalism. The left has tried very frequently to miss-attribute discoveries and contributions to whatever culture is the least American: credit for India’s mathematic work gets shifted to Muslim culture, etc.”
I’m under the impression that Muslims are closer to American culture being they are members of an Abrahamic tradition whereas Indians are not and most Americans still identify as some sort of Christian. But wiki says India has a sizable muslim population as well.
I could be more sympathetic to this if Vox hadn’t censored me himself.
Reblogged this on perfectlyfadeddelusions.
Pingback: Dear Edmonds School District: Regressive Education Must Stop | Arguments Worth Having
Pingback: Regressive Education Must Stop | Arguments Worth Having