Tag: fahrenheit 451

Burning Books In A Brave New 1984 World

“Those who don’t build must burn.” ― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.” ― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.” ― George Orwell, 1984

The Venn diagram above perfectly captures the zeitgeist of our current dystopian world better than any academic drivel disguised as a scientific study or any regime media produced propaganda disguised as journalism. In fact, these three novels capture everything that has gone terribly wrong in our world, and I put the blame at the feet of totalitarian governments and an apathetic fearful populace who went along because it was the easiest path to follow.

These three novels, considered among the top 100 novels ever written, were penned between 1931 and 1953, during three distinct periods, which are reflected in the themes and story lines of their dystopian worlds. They were supposed to be works of fiction, providing warnings of what could happen if we made the wrong choices and trusted the wrong people. Sadly, they became user manuals for today’s authoritarian dictators in how to control, condition and cow a population of indoctrinated sheep, as displayed during the covid pandemic exercise.

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Tennessee Librarian Fired for Burning City-Owned Books by Conservative Authors – on Instagram

The library: It’s a hallowed hall of gamut-running ideas. It’s a shrine to diversity of thought. It’s the ultimate First Amendment center.

Sometimes.

Other times, as it turns out, it’s a place in Chattanooga.

As reported by The Associated Press, Cameron Williams is a subscriber to social consciousness.

He’s organized protests against police brutality.

He’s also ignited books by Ann Coulter — ones, by the way, belonging to townspeople in Tennessee.

Call it a viral video: Back in December, Cameron posted a clip to Instagram that was really…hot.

Star of the show: The fires he was starting in order to destroy copies of New York Times best-selling How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must).

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The Mobbing of a Portland Bookstore Reminds Us Why Fahrenheit 451 Was Written

For three days and counting, protesters in Portland, Oregon have gathered at a local bookstore to demand that it stop selling a new book critical of Antifa.

“Far-left activists surrounded Powell’s Books in Portland on Monday and demanded the store stop selling Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy, a book about antifa written by Andy Ngo,” Reason’s Robby Soave reports. “The protests forced the store to close early.”

Ngo, the editor-at-large of The Post Millennial, a Canadian conservative news site, has documented the activities of Antifa, a leftist group that advocates violence in the name of fighting fascism. The journalist was beaten by Antifa activists at a rally in 2019, leaving him with a serious brain injury.

Left-wing activists say that because Ngo documents and criticizes the activities of Antifa, which claims to simply be “anti-fascist,” he is therefore a fascist. Saying his work is too dangerous to be allowed to be aired, Antifa members have called for Ngo to be banned from social media. Now they are trying to get his book banned from bookstores.

“We have to show up every day until they stop selling that f—king book,” one activist said. She claimed it was like “stopping the historical publication of Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf.'”

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Fahrenheit 451 Predicted People Would Demand Tyranny

Even if it has been a while since you read Fahrenheit 451, you might remember Ray Bradbury’s classic for its portrayal of a dystopian future in which an authoritarian government burns books.

Read Fahrenheit 451 again to discover why people wanted their tyrannical government to burn books. Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 in 1953, yet the parallels to today’s social climate for censorship are haunting.

Bradbury’s protagonist is Guy Montag, who, like all firemen in Bradbury’s future, burns books. 

In Bradbury’s dystopia, firemen became “custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior; official censors, judges, and executors.”  

Today’s mainstream and social media are “custodians of our peace of mind” as they filter out “conflicting theory and thought.” Captain Beatty is Montag’s boss. Beatty explained, “If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one.” 

If you don’t want people debating questions such as Covid-19 policy, Beatty has the ticket:

“Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely `brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving.” 

Today, millions listen daily to reports of case counts of Covid-19. Like Bradbury predicted, listeners can recite the numbers but have no context to make sense of the numbers. Many have little idea that important scientists and doctors have advocated alternatives to lockdowns that could save lives and abate catastrophic impacts on economies. As in Bradbury’s world, many are working tirelessly to disparage and censor alternative views. 

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