Old Books Are Proof Of Truths That Can No Longer Be Spoken
Like many people my age, I’ve acquired an awful lot of possessions in my house over the years. And having been a voracious reader prior to the internet, a good portion of those possessions are books. I have watched my son and others of his age get rid of all their movie and music collections because — after all — everything is available online nowadays. And it sounds like wisdom except for the fact that I’m not as trusting as most people.
I can foresee a day when Fahrenheit 451 comes to pass, when the possession of books becomes illegal, or at least discouraged. You see, the danger of books lies in the fact that they are unalterable. What was written in books 50 years ago does not change. What is recorded in physical form cannot be changed to fit the current narrative. Books can easily provide evidence that what is now deemed eternally true was not always so.
All that is digital, however, can be altered to fit with whatever the current narrative is. Our leaders can tell us that what they say now is what they’ve said yesterday, just as in 1984 the rulers could say “We have always been at war with Oceania” and nobody could contradict the assertion. Digital movies, digital books, and digital journalism can be changed or deleted, and unless you or someone else had the foresight to grab a screen shot of the original, you will be left scratching your head and wondering if you’d imagined what you thought you had read. Those opposing the official narrative will be left with gnawing doubts about their own ability to think or to remember, which by itself would cause many to remain silent against the propaganda machine.
I’ve been reading a lot of books lately from the period before 9/11, a crucial date for the ramping up of censorship, government spying on its citizens, and the growth of technologies that makes spying and censorship simple and broad-reaching. I don’t think any of us then could have imagined how easily we would relinquish our privacy and our First Amendment rights, but the technological wonders we were offered blinded us to the real cost we were paying. Perhaps more than anything, it was the convenience we were given that made us never stop and think about what we were doing. We were all too eager to rush onto the next platform or watch the next video to read the agreements we were signing. Just as cattle take the most convenient route and so end up on the killing floor, it has long been proven that humans can be lulled by convenience from their own best interests.
If 2001 was the first dire warning, the election of Donald Trump was the one that should have frightened everybody and awakened us. It did for many, for sure, but not the majority. As bad as you may feel Trump was, I never for a moment took my eye off the larger and far greater danger of intelligence agencies willing to firmly take control over the flow of information to the masses. It was then that many of us realized that the technological marvels of search engines, video platforms, social media — all those things that promised us an unprecedented freedom to information and communication — could so easily be used as a means of control. It was then that the typical divisions between left and right — between those who thought Trump was a savior and those who thought he was the symptom of a sick system — disappeared.
The world is not anything like we thought it was prior to the 2016 Election. In 2016, many on the Left viewed the campaign of Bernie Sanders as a real hope. Today, few of us have any hope left in electoral politics. Jaded as we are, it’s difficult to have much enthusiasm even for the candidacies of RFK Jr. or Cornell West. We know that the controllers of information will be relentless in their narrative control, lying and manipulating perception with impunity to whatever degree is necessary to remove any opposition to the status quo. ANYBODY WHO IS A LEGITIMATE THREAT TO THE SYSTEM WILL NEVER BE ELECTED.
As I said, I’ve been reading physical books from the time leading up to what I deem to be the first critical change. To give you an example of what I’ve been talking about, I recently finished reading Fascism Past, Present, And Future, published in 1996. I’ll leave you a few quotes from it so that you can hear some perspective you will never be permitted to hear today:
“The OUN, the main force among the Ukranian (sic) emigres in Poland and Germany before World War II, was strongly influenced by Nazism, but it changed its orientation when it appeared that the Germans would be defeated. Their successors in the Ukraine…have always been much stronger in the western regions of Ukraine than in the industrial east, which is heavily Russian. …a swing toward fascism took place in the western Ukraine. This refers to the UNA (one of the successors of the OUN) and its paramilitary arm, the UNSO. This movement declared itself the only incorruptible force in the country, became the proponent of a bellicose line vis-a-vis Russia, and published anti-American, antiliberal, anti-democratic, and anti-Semitic propaganda: Minorities were to be deported from Ukraine, and the Ukranian army (equipped with nuclear weapons) was to be strengthened.
“Although paramilitary formations were banned by government decree, this was not enforced in practice…The UNSO’s banner is black and red; its slogans are “War is our future” and ‘Provocation, revolt, revolution.’”
“Given the almost insurmountable problems that any Ukrainian government is likely to face, a victory of extremist, confrontational forces would inevitably lead to civil war and possibly to the disintegration of the country.”
The pictures I include are from the protests in the lead-up to the 2014 overthrow of the Ukrainian government. Zoom in and you will see plenty of black and red flags. Perhaps this is impolitic to mention in light of the 2022 Russian invasion, but I feel the past should have its say, and the rewriters of history should not be permitted to go unquestioned. Better inconvenient truths than convenient lies of omission.
