So, here’s a “conspiracy theory” for you. This one is about the global-capitalist thoughtpolice and their ongoing efforts to purge society of “insensitivity.” Yes, that’s right, insensitivity. If there is anything the global-capitalist thoughtpolice can’t stand, it is insensitivity. You know, like making fun of ethnic or religious minorities, and the physically or cognitively challenged, and alternatively gendered persons, and hideously ugly persons, and monstrously fat persons, and midgets, and so on.
Apparently, I have failed in my previous attempts to discourage creepy, anti-Semitic morons from posting their garbage in my Substack comments, so I'll try this again. If you a creepy, anti-Semitic moron, or any other variety of bigoted moron, and you think that my comments are a forum for your garbage, you are wasting your time. When I see your garbage, I will delete it, and ban you. There are many forums on the Internet where you can freely post your idiotic garbage. This is not one of them.
"Penguin Random House recommends “authenticity readers” to any of its authors who are “writing outside their personal experience” (i.e., using their imaginations),..."
Breaking news: Orwell's classic book 1984 has just been "revised" and "purified" by the sensitivity readers. Here is a brief sneak peak into the new edition. This is the new "revised" scene where Big Brother is holding up fingers and poor Winston is trying to guess how many Big Brother "wants" him to see.
In this new edition Big Brother is totally "Woke" - instead of fingers, Big Brother brings in a trans woman (read - a "woman" with a penis) - and he asks poor "unwoke" Winston - "how many penis's do you see?" Poor Winston knows it's a trick question, but he does his best to answer, he exclaims - "One penis," "no two penis's," "no five," no three!" Finally sobbing and mentally broken "unwoke Winston" simply mutters "I don't know! "I don't know." - at this point in the action "Woke Big Brother" exclaims loudly - "you don't see ANY PENIS'S - THAT'S A VAGINA - YOU FREAKING TRANSPHOBE!"
I could not agree more with your assessment C.J. - any time the entirety of academia, the corporate world, the big NGO's, governments, Media, the military and intelligence services right down to my local YMCA - all start magically singing the same irrational song - and it's a "song" that completely fractures any possibility of solidarity on the so called "left" and really across the entire spectrum of thought - well, it's pretty damn clear that you're being gaslighted big time by the big boys.
None of these endless and dreary arguments about cultural appropriation, whether a white person is allowed to write a novel with black characters and whether it's racist if he doesn't, none of these bull sessions how many LGTBQXYZPDQ can dance on the head of a pin, endless and endlessly performative struggle sessions, none of this changes the power structure of the empire, nor do they change the way the economic pie is sliced.
Put another way - to paraphrase Chris Hedges - elites will gladly discuss race, they will decry gender inequality most piteously, they will demonstrate a touching sensitivity to the rights of sexual and gender minorities so oppressed that they have not been discovered yet. Those same elites will not readily discuss economic class.
“I can’t wait for the new edition of ‘Fahrenheit 451’ in which the firepersons are depicted as heroes for conducting flaming bonfires of far-right–wing extremist racist antivaxxer misinformation.
You’re right, because the proof is in the pudding, and the pudding is being flung in our faces all day long now with a giant metronome to time the flinging perfectly around the world.
You’re also throwing the baby out with the bath water a bit ( ...and I know you know this because you’re extraordinarily perceptive) because commerce is not evil. The perversion of commerce into a tool to control and oppress everybody on the planet is evil. But at the end of the day I can’t argue with your model or the simple elegance of the bad guys’ plot. Even the Communists are not Communists any more. They’re making money. China is not really Communist. It’s a big corporation with a giant armed security and enforcement division. Russia is also about money. And so are the theocracies of the Middle East. Big problem.
I like the concept of global capitalism as a values erasing movement. Although I've always considered these various social campaigns as an outgrowth of cultural marxism, their agenda has indeed melded seamlessly with capitalist corporate interests at this point. The impulse of the cultural marxists to rewire society to maximize government power and the capitalist impulse to reduce the vast majority of humanity to consumer serf are quite compatible and both involve erasing ideas that don't contribute to their totalizing program, just as you say.
Whenever I consider some new campaign of thought rectification like these shameless rewrites, I now try to consider what the newly imposed ideas are intended to be in opposition to. For instance, LGBTQ, etc. is, in part, an attack on the family and population growth. Open society is an attack on nationalism as it enshrines constitutions that guarantee individual rights held in opposition to government power. The defense of obesity is an attack on health. Many of the other initiatives are to sow discord by splitting everyone into warring tribes over trivialities.
What I have more trouble with is deciding what to do about it all. Certainly I can teach my children to see through the illusions and have a less clouded view of what is really going on around them. On the other hand, simply promoting the values that are important to me and protecting my family and checking out from as much of the impeding system as possible isn't going to contribute much to fixing the situation for the future. Organizing attracts the heavy hand of the police state. Public protest is pointless when the media is fully compromised.
I don't see how big, institutional changes can be made without a lot more people realizing how ill served they are by all of this and I don't see how that can happen short of a major economic crisis or war or other situation that imposes mass hardship.
I'm having some difficulty understanding how Penguin Random House (or any other publisher, for that matter) can make non-editorial changes to someone's originally published work, and then sell it as simply a new printing of the original work, with the original author's name on the cover as the writer.
Regarding "censored" books, I like Issac Asimov's saying: "Any book worth banning is a book worth reading." I find lots of good stuff to read using that yardstick!
Well good luck to the sensitivity editors because language is continually evolving so it will be a never ending task. For example, the words 'Gay' and 'Queer' used to be highly offensive and have now been totally appropriated by the community. Good luck with that.
It's getting like Orwell's 1984 where everything is rewritten all the time and eventually nothing is a true account, so long as it fits the current narrative. They even swapped the name of their enemy during Hate Week, just like the USA, with Russia and China taking turns as the biggest Baddie.
I can't wait to see what they make of The Bible! I doubt they'll get past Genesis chapter one where God made man and woman...
When I was a kid and Tipper Gore put the adult content warning stickers on records, it did two things. One, it was the death knell of record stores that complied because kids knew they got sold out. Next, it made you want to buy the record more. Then came the manipulation by the subversive forces in the entertainment industry and the rise of gangster rap. This was more devastating than prohibition and killed our inner cities and millions of american kids in gang wars. Censorship is not benign.
This can only go so far before it all implodes. I think we're coming near that point. The revival in Kentucky, in my mind, is a sign. Humans like meaning, we make meaning, and so a desert of the real can't sustain.
Ultimately, Globocap are hiring Thought Police to censor "insensitive criticism" of their own despotic agenda. Since they cannot divulge that, they hide their intentions behind a wall of wokism instead. It seeks to appeal to as many sections of society as possible as the more disgruntled people they "empower" with this stick with which to beat others, the more prevalent their manufactured consent.
They are replicating the trick they used with "anti-semitism" which was used, for example, to silence all criticism of Israel's incremental genocide of the Palestinian people... But also to silence criticism of central banksters and their rapacious corruption.
Silencing criticism of globocap is the poisonous needle in the fascistic wokism haystack.
"...the deafening roar of millions of voices shrieking gibberish on social media..."
(BenKenobiMeme.png)
That is exactly what I've thought of social media years now, which is why I've quit it years ago. In fact, the most exemplary of that description is Twitter which coincidentally is what people have begun to (inexplicably) declare as "the town square" and essential for "democracy" or something. It's absolute madness.
Apparently, I have failed in my previous attempts to discourage creepy, anti-Semitic morons from posting their garbage in my Substack comments, so I'll try this again. If you a creepy, anti-Semitic moron, or any other variety of bigoted moron, and you think that my comments are a forum for your garbage, you are wasting your time. When I see your garbage, I will delete it, and ban you. There are many forums on the Internet where you can freely post your idiotic garbage. This is not one of them.
I particularly liked this observation:
"Penguin Random House recommends “authenticity readers” to any of its authors who are “writing outside their personal experience” (i.e., using their imaginations),..."
Utter madness!!!
Breaking news: Orwell's classic book 1984 has just been "revised" and "purified" by the sensitivity readers. Here is a brief sneak peak into the new edition. This is the new "revised" scene where Big Brother is holding up fingers and poor Winston is trying to guess how many Big Brother "wants" him to see.
In this new edition Big Brother is totally "Woke" - instead of fingers, Big Brother brings in a trans woman (read - a "woman" with a penis) - and he asks poor "unwoke" Winston - "how many penis's do you see?" Poor Winston knows it's a trick question, but he does his best to answer, he exclaims - "One penis," "no two penis's," "no five," no three!" Finally sobbing and mentally broken "unwoke Winston" simply mutters "I don't know! "I don't know." - at this point in the action "Woke Big Brother" exclaims loudly - "you don't see ANY PENIS'S - THAT'S A VAGINA - YOU FREAKING TRANSPHOBE!"
I could not agree more with your assessment C.J. - any time the entirety of academia, the corporate world, the big NGO's, governments, Media, the military and intelligence services right down to my local YMCA - all start magically singing the same irrational song - and it's a "song" that completely fractures any possibility of solidarity on the so called "left" and really across the entire spectrum of thought - well, it's pretty damn clear that you're being gaslighted big time by the big boys.
You and George Carlin are the only two that make me laugh and think at the same time! thanks for that
None of these endless and dreary arguments about cultural appropriation, whether a white person is allowed to write a novel with black characters and whether it's racist if he doesn't, none of these bull sessions how many LGTBQXYZPDQ can dance on the head of a pin, endless and endlessly performative struggle sessions, none of this changes the power structure of the empire, nor do they change the way the economic pie is sliced.
Put another way - to paraphrase Chris Hedges - elites will gladly discuss race, they will decry gender inequality most piteously, they will demonstrate a touching sensitivity to the rights of sexual and gender minorities so oppressed that they have not been discovered yet. Those same elites will not readily discuss economic class.
Under Communism man exploits man. Under Capitalism the reverse is true. Old Polish Proverb.
Double-plus bad.
As I wrote on Gerald Posner’s post about this:
“I can’t wait for the new edition of ‘Fahrenheit 451’ in which the firepersons are depicted as heroes for conducting flaming bonfires of far-right–wing extremist racist antivaxxer misinformation.
“And then we can enjoy a romp through Room 101 with the beloved O’Brien graciously instructing Winston in New Normal Math.” (https://geraldposner.substack.com/p/ugly-and-fat-no-longer/comment/12927697
You’re right, because the proof is in the pudding, and the pudding is being flung in our faces all day long now with a giant metronome to time the flinging perfectly around the world.
You’re also throwing the baby out with the bath water a bit ( ...and I know you know this because you’re extraordinarily perceptive) because commerce is not evil. The perversion of commerce into a tool to control and oppress everybody on the planet is evil. But at the end of the day I can’t argue with your model or the simple elegance of the bad guys’ plot. Even the Communists are not Communists any more. They’re making money. China is not really Communist. It’s a big corporation with a giant armed security and enforcement division. Russia is also about money. And so are the theocracies of the Middle East. Big problem.
I like the concept of global capitalism as a values erasing movement. Although I've always considered these various social campaigns as an outgrowth of cultural marxism, their agenda has indeed melded seamlessly with capitalist corporate interests at this point. The impulse of the cultural marxists to rewire society to maximize government power and the capitalist impulse to reduce the vast majority of humanity to consumer serf are quite compatible and both involve erasing ideas that don't contribute to their totalizing program, just as you say.
Whenever I consider some new campaign of thought rectification like these shameless rewrites, I now try to consider what the newly imposed ideas are intended to be in opposition to. For instance, LGBTQ, etc. is, in part, an attack on the family and population growth. Open society is an attack on nationalism as it enshrines constitutions that guarantee individual rights held in opposition to government power. The defense of obesity is an attack on health. Many of the other initiatives are to sow discord by splitting everyone into warring tribes over trivialities.
What I have more trouble with is deciding what to do about it all. Certainly I can teach my children to see through the illusions and have a less clouded view of what is really going on around them. On the other hand, simply promoting the values that are important to me and protecting my family and checking out from as much of the impeding system as possible isn't going to contribute much to fixing the situation for the future. Organizing attracts the heavy hand of the police state. Public protest is pointless when the media is fully compromised.
I don't see how big, institutional changes can be made without a lot more people realizing how ill served they are by all of this and I don't see how that can happen short of a major economic crisis or war or other situation that imposes mass hardship.
I'm having some difficulty understanding how Penguin Random House (or any other publisher, for that matter) can make non-editorial changes to someone's originally published work, and then sell it as simply a new printing of the original work, with the original author's name on the cover as the writer.
Regarding "censored" books, I like Issac Asimov's saying: "Any book worth banning is a book worth reading." I find lots of good stuff to read using that yardstick!
Well good luck to the sensitivity editors because language is continually evolving so it will be a never ending task. For example, the words 'Gay' and 'Queer' used to be highly offensive and have now been totally appropriated by the community. Good luck with that.
It's getting like Orwell's 1984 where everything is rewritten all the time and eventually nothing is a true account, so long as it fits the current narrative. They even swapped the name of their enemy during Hate Week, just like the USA, with Russia and China taking turns as the biggest Baddie.
I can't wait to see what they make of The Bible! I doubt they'll get past Genesis chapter one where God made man and woman...
When I was a kid and Tipper Gore put the adult content warning stickers on records, it did two things. One, it was the death knell of record stores that complied because kids knew they got sold out. Next, it made you want to buy the record more. Then came the manipulation by the subversive forces in the entertainment industry and the rise of gangster rap. This was more devastating than prohibition and killed our inner cities and millions of american kids in gang wars. Censorship is not benign.
This can only go so far before it all implodes. I think we're coming near that point. The revival in Kentucky, in my mind, is a sign. Humans like meaning, we make meaning, and so a desert of the real can't sustain.
There seems to be a substantial number of people around these days who wish to undo The Enlightenment.
Ultimately, Globocap are hiring Thought Police to censor "insensitive criticism" of their own despotic agenda. Since they cannot divulge that, they hide their intentions behind a wall of wokism instead. It seeks to appeal to as many sections of society as possible as the more disgruntled people they "empower" with this stick with which to beat others, the more prevalent their manufactured consent.
They are replicating the trick they used with "anti-semitism" which was used, for example, to silence all criticism of Israel's incremental genocide of the Palestinian people... But also to silence criticism of central banksters and their rapacious corruption.
Silencing criticism of globocap is the poisonous needle in the fascistic wokism haystack.
"...the deafening roar of millions of voices shrieking gibberish on social media..."
(BenKenobiMeme.png)
That is exactly what I've thought of social media years now, which is why I've quit it years ago. In fact, the most exemplary of that description is Twitter which coincidentally is what people have begun to (inexplicably) declare as "the town square" and essential for "democracy" or something. It's absolute madness.