The War on Insensitivity
CJ Hopkins
You must be new here.
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.
The global-capitalist thoughtpolice are terribly concerned about the feelings of such persons. And the feelings of other sensitive persons who are also concerned about the feelings of such persons. And everybody’s feelings, generally. So they’re purging society of any and all forms of literary content, and every other form of content, that might possibly irreparably offend such persons, and persons concerned about the feelings of such persons, and anyone who might feel offended by anything.
By now, I assume you have seen the news about the “sensitivity editing” of Roald Dahl, the author of books like James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Witches, The Twits, and numerous others. What happened was, Dahl’s publisher, Puffin Books, hired a little clutch of “sensitivity editors” to substantively rewrite his books, purging words like “fat” and “ugly,” and Dahl’s descriptions of characters as “bald” and “female,” and inserting their own ham-handed, “sensitized” language.
What you may not be aware of is that Puffin Books is a children’s imprint of Penguin Random House, a multi-national conglomerate publishing company and a subsidiary of Bertelsmann, a nominally German but in reality global media conglomerate. Penguin Random House is one of the so-called “big five publishers” that control approximately 80% of the retail book market. The other four are Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, Hachette, and HarperCollins.
Together, these five corporate behemoths, with their hundreds of divisions, publishing groups, and imprints (e.g., Puffin Books), control the majority of what everyone reads. Pull a few books off your bookshelves at random and look up the imprints to see how many are owned by one of the “big five” publishers or one of their divisions or publishing groups.
Another thing you may not be aware of is the increasing employment of “sensitivity readers” by these publishing conglomerates and their legions of imprints, and by writers aspiring to be published by these imprints. Writer’s Digest describes their function thus:
Publishers and authors hire them to basically cancel-proof their books before they hit the street, hoping to head off any misspoken messages…hoping to depict peoples in an accurate light when it comes to genre, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and more. Sensitivity edits are a publisher’s or editor’s insurance to protect reputation and ward off profit loss, just in case, and an author’s attempt to depict characters in an accurate light. Entities purchase a sensitivity read when the writing is outside of their expertise or experience, or they are uncertain they depicted details properly.”
Penguin Random House recommends “authenticity readers” to any of its authors who are “writing outside their personal experience” (i.e., using their imaginations), to prevent them from “perpetuating stereotypes,” or exhibiting their “unconscious or internalized bias” and creating “patterns of harmful representation,” and so on.
If this sounds to you like some kind of creepy, Orwellian-Ministry-of-Truth-type mindfuckery, that’s because that’s exactly what it is. It doesn’t really affect old farts like me — I wouldn’t let any of the big corporate publishers or their “sensitivity readers” near my writing, which they would never publish in any event, and which would likely cause them to experience seizures, and then stagger around the office looking for differently-abled-Black-transgender colleagues to kneel down in front of and apologize to — but there’s a whole generation of aspiring writers who are being conditioned to accept this as “normal.”
The Roald-Dahl story is being framed as a “woke/anti-woke” culture-war story. It isn’t. And it isn’t an aberration. It’s part and parcel of the new global-capitalist totalitarianism that I’ve been going on and on about. The entire “Wokeness” phenomenon is. Global-capitalist cultural revolutionaries are hunting down “insensitivity” everywhere. In the arts, schools, TV shows, films, social media, et cetera.
“Insensitivity” being any and all forms of deviation from global-capitalist ideology, regardless of where they fall on the left/right spectrum. I have described the process as a new form of Gleichschaltung, the systematic coordination of every element of society — or every element that matters — in conformity with global-capitalist ideology.
So, what is global-capitalist ideology?
Well, I told you I had a “conspiracy theory” for you. It is not a very sexy “conspiracy theory,” but it’ll have to do, because it’s all I’ve got. And, forgive me, but I’m just getting started on my second “insensitive” dystopian novel, so I’m going to explain this “conspiracy theory” with a lengthy excerpt from the introduction to The War on Populism: Consent Factory Essays, Vol. II (2018-2019), one of my collections of essays, rather than taking the time to reword it badly.
It really is a rather lengthy excerpt, so, if you happen to be reading this at work (i.e., when you are supposed to be working), or if you need to get back to a Twitter-fracas, or if you have the attention span of a gnat, you might want to save it and try to read it later.
Ready? OK, here we go.
‘This conflict (i.e., global capitalism versus a global “populist” insurgency) is at the root of all the madness of the last four years. To understand it, one needs to understand that it is primarily an ideological conflict, a global war for hearts and minds. Trump, Johnson, Corbyn, Sanders, and other so-called “populist” figures, were never a real threat to GloboCap, not in any material sense. They are symbols, figureheads, representations of resistance to global capitalist ideology.
It is this resistance to its ideology (from both the left and the right … it makes no difference), more than any particular political leader or movement, that GloboCap has been trying to crush. It needs to put down this “populist” insurgency, so it can get on with the business of transforming the entire world into one big value-less marketplace … which is what it has been doing for last thirty years.
This is what capitalism was built to do. Ideologically speaking, it is a simple machine, one that strips societies of “despotic” values (e.g., religious, social, cultural values … values established by kings, priests, aristocracies, artists, communities, political parties, families, et cetera) and replaces them all with a single value (i.e., exchange value), rendering everything a commodity. In essence, it is an ideological machine, a values-decoding/recoding machine, which transforms societies into markets.
[I’ve cut a bit here, to make it somewhat less lengthy and get to the global-capitalist ideology part.]
Global capitalism’s ideology (i.e., the territory that comprises our “reality”) is unlike any other ideology in the 5,000-year history of ideology. It is an ideological territory without limits, neither internal nor external boundaries. It is a featureless territory, in which anything is possible, because nothing within it has any value, or meaning, in and of itself.
It is literally a “desert of the real,” an infinite, seamless desert of values, across the lifeless surface of which the ghosts of values eternally wander, in circles, aimlessly, signifying nothing, going nowhere, for they are already there, in the only place there is to be, because the desert is everywhere, and everything.
There is nowhere and nothing outside of this territory. There is no “outside” where anything could exist. It is one big global capitalist world, one unitary, omnipresent, capitalist “reality” … one big global marketplace, or it will be, once GloboCap finishes destabilizing and restructuring what remains of the post-Cold-War world.
This is the story of the last thirty years. Beneath the distractions of the day, the manufactured mass hysteria, the propaganda, the fabricated outrage, the scandals, the wars, rumors of wars, the deafening roar of millions of voices shrieking gibberish on social media, conspiracy theories, real and imagined, the cheap charade of electoral politics, and so on, right out there in the open, because no one has been paying much attention, GloboCap has been mopping up, cleansing societies of their outmoded values, absorbing them into the global market … implementing ideological conformity.
You’re familiar with this ideological conformity. We all are. You’re probably in favor of many of the “values” it purports to want to promote, anti-racism, equal rights, separation of church and state, et cetera, the traditional liberal agenda. Remember, capitalist ideology is what finally freed us from the rule of despots, kings, aristocracies, priests. (Personally, I’m extremely grateful for that.)
As I explained above, capitalism did this by eradicating “despotic” values and replacing them all with a single value, exchange value, rendering everything a commodity. That doesn’t sound very appealing, however. No one wants to see themselves as just a commodity, or live in a world without any real values. So capitalism marketed itself as “democracy,” and that went over much better with the masses.
Here we are, a few hundred years later, and “democracy” (i.e., capitalism) is running out of “despotic” values to eradicate and “liberate” us from. Sure, it still has some work to do secularizing the Middle East, and there are still a few countries that aren’t playing ball, but most of the planet has gotten with the program. Most of the values-eradicating work that remains to be done is right here at home.
There are still a lot of Western consumers who haven’t completely embraced “democracy,” and who are clinging to old “despotic” values … racist values, religious values, nativist values, xenophobic values, homophobic values, transphobic values, cultural and artistic values, ableist values, alloist values, shadeism, lookism, ethnocentrism, cisgenderism, anti-Semitism, jingoism, sexism, sizeism, saneism … the list goes on and on, and on.
Democracy (i.e., global capitalism) will not rest until it has cleansed society (i.e., the global marketplace) of these ugly, destructive, despotic values, and implemented a worldwide “code of conduct” (like the ones that most global corporations have) with universal “anti-hate-speech rules,” and “appropriate vocabulary” lists, and has erased any visible symbol of such despotic values from public view, and any references to them from school curricula, and has otherwise transformed humanity into a mass of hyper-conformist consumers who all look like models in a Benetton commercial and talk like customer service representatives.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m in favor of democracy, and I’m not a fan of racism or any other type of discrimination or bigotry. I’m just trying to shed a little light on the forces behind the identity-politics zealotry that has been raging recently, and the “populist” backlash against such zealotry.
This zealotry, this crusade for ideological conformity, is described by many leftists as a movement to establish “social justice,” and by many right-wing types as “cultural Marxism.” It is neither. Or … OK, it contains elements of both, but fundamentally it is global capitalism purifying society of despotic values, establishing that infinite, value-free, meaningless “desert of the real” I described above.’
That’s it. I warned you that it was rather lengthy. It was written in September of 2020, so about six months into the roll-out of the New Normal.
As for the Roald-Dahl dust-up, what will happen now (and what is currently happening) is that A-list authors, journalists, and other official mouthpieces of the global-capitalist Simulation of Culture will make a big stink for a couple days, and then Penguin Random House and the other “big-five” publishers will go on “sensitivity-editing,” and “authenticity-editing,” and otherwise aggressively homogenizing mainstream literature until it won’t really matter which books you read because they will all be minor variations of each other that will resemble nothing so much in their utterly soul-deadening, interchangeable blandness as the lobbies of corporate offices.
Of course, if you are into the literature thing, you can always seek out and read other books by disreputable and “insensitive” authors like me who are unaffiliated with any global publishing behemoths, that is, assuming they haven’t been hidden from you behind these fake “sensitive content” warnings.
Thanks again, @elonmusk, for damaging my reputation and income as an author by hiding images of my books behind these new fake "sensitive content" warnings … being visibility-filtered and defamed by the new "free-speech Twitter" feels so much "freer" than the old, bad Twitter! pic.twitter.com/9gRMRTS2Z7
— CJ Hopkins (@CJHopkins_Z23) February 4, 2023
CJ Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing and Broadway Play Publishing, Inc. His dystopian novel, Zone 23, is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. Volumes I and II of his Consent Factory Essays are published by Consent Factory Publishing, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amalgamated Content, Inc. He can be reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org.
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The earthquake that rocked Syria devastated millions already ravaged by war. Their dictator Bashar al-Assad saw an opportunity – ABC News This crap in the ABC reads like an essay written by a 12 year old based on propaganda sheets direct from the USA state department. This is peddled by the same media who saw a sitting MP of Australia demonised and brutalised because he was in hospital with pancreatitis and couldn’t visit Indonesia during a tsunami.
I did not think the essay was too long, Mr. Hopkins. I enjoyed this article very much. Sadly, it makes so much sense.
When we’re not having our two minutes hate, round the clock, we’ve got sensitivity sessions from the ministry of truth. There’s always someone it seems who’s going to bully us into the way things are. But finding ways to fight back, if only by monkeywrenching the works, is always worth it.
Wokeness? More like Jokeness.
Many years ago, before the advent of e-commerce, a rather irreverend Sales Manager in a business using door-to-door calling as its sales model opened a training meeting for our group of new recruits with the words “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit F-All” That he used the real word for a co-ed audience was almost as shocking as the phrase itself. Now, it seems like he was on the right track.
Gotta laugh at “sensitivity” training. Seems most victims are about as sensitive as a fence post. My humble apologies to identity injured fence posts…
Fence post?
There’s a reason “snowflake” came into use: they’re specially unique, and oh so delicate.
Sure enough – Queen Camilla speaks out for Dahl. A synthetic controversy to distract people.
I had noticed that many publishers re-issuing fiction books, which have become popular and profitable, insert a disclaimer disassociating themselves from any objectionable language in said book. I remember your previous article about use of sensitivity editors by publishers with regards to new authors. Starting with the actual “sensitization” of past children’s books is an obvious first step in dealing with past offending authors. Here is a novel idea—make a choice– do not read the book. To change the words, the language, of an author, and to assume you are making it better, is an insult to the author; it is beyond the pale. Sensitivity editors and publishers– Write your own damn milksop books. I read all Dahl’s books (any many other books most likely unacceptable) to my children and my granddaughters many times over. Children are not stupid. We had great fun, but then, of course, we are a… Read more »
Is there anything more hilarious than the cabal introducing a ‘war on sensitivity’ while they are deceiving us with the intention to enslave, maim and kill us?
A wise man has to laugh at a fool’s errand. To let their antics cause you fear betrays your faith in God. It says you believe in darkness than in light. Which is a choice, is it not?
The path of the righteous is like the morning sun,
shining ever brighter till the full light of day.
But the way of the wicked is like deep darkness;
they do not know what makes them stumble.
Proverbs 4:18-19
I would think anyone still believing in ‘god as the light’ after the last 1000 years of mankind’s unspeakable barbarity has a fairly large degree of insensitivity to reality …
Why didn’t you quote Huang Po? He says the same thing only much better …
People are not as fucking stupid as they seem to be. If they tried to get them on board with the shit by telling the truth, that is by telling them that the (Western) world is overseen by unscrupulous fascist fucks with no qualms to put anybody in the grave, most wouldn’t go along with that. So, they went around and serve the fascist crap (or whatever word you wanna use for the bullshit) to people as an untouchable virtue. And most people are stupid enough to swallow that. Hook, line, and fucking sinker in fact. All the wrongdoing is disguised as kindness, considerateness, concern for the fellow human being, act of love, shit like that. The ultimate mindfuckery. Whoever sees through the crap and tries to resist is branded as an inconsiderate grandma killer. Self-reliance, self-sufficiency, strength, resolve, individuality, all of that is demonized, while mental and physical cripples… Read more »
Eh… Kurt. How do you really feel about it?
Well, in the interest of full disclosure …
Actually this Sasha Baron-Cohen character is very much in line with the bad humor and politics of globo-cap. As long as we perpetuate horrible myths of our supposed enemies, we all can laugh and feel better about ourselves. Except Borat and these characters are painfully cringe. These are Cohen “laughing at you” the audience. As he is completely acceptable to globocap in his “audacity” because its postmodern meaninglessness. Its when someone might care about their lives or values that we get stomped it pieces by power.
Empire Historical buffoonery periods.
The descent can be worse than the climb up.
Belief being a boom for the US psychiatric profession.
I don’t give a fuck about that guy. I was trying to respond to Paul’s question about how I feel. I thought that the episode in question was sufficiently descriptive in that regard. As to what I laugh about, let me be the fucking judge of that, please. Frankly, I’ve watched this movie and I think that the message is pretty clear – you twits are all up in arms about alleged dictators somewhere way the fuck out there, while your “democracy” is nothing more that dictatorship or slavery itself. Wake up, you stupid fucks. And I don’t give two shits about this being in or out of line with the politics of globocap. People like you are hard to please, lemme tell you. You’ll find something objectionable, not conforming to your rigorous standards of righteousness about everything. I wonder whether you are as principled as you ask of others… Read more »
Kurt, you remind me of another no nonsense motherfucker called Kurt who I know, who I haven’t seen for fucking ages, a big tough Kiwi fella. It’s a good thing. I like Kurt a lot, you know exactly where you stand with him, he doesn’t fuck about.
‘People are not as fucking stupid as they seem to be.’ – Jordan Peterson said something similar talking to Bill Mahar a few days ago, to which Mahar replied ‘I see you haven’t spent much time in America!’ – quite good … and from all available evidence, quite applicable to most English speaking countries totally under the control of the mainstream media and their incessant lies …
Fuckin’ hell, Kurt! It’s great to hear you say “Fuck you, you fucking fucks”!
Can’t be far off. Penis and vagina both become just ‘sexual organs’ and Love becomes ‘mutual attraction’ Sad’ ain’t it?
“Penis” and “vagina” are oppressive words used to minimize non-binary persons. Please stop.
Maybe we should all try putting sarcasm and ironic remarks in italics or something like that — so as not to confuse the easily confused, and lead the discussion down a path to nowhere. I love sarcasm…so long as I’m sure it is sarcasm!! Just a thought…
I want to be clear and say I completely understand your point, but the success of irony is in its delivery! I personally laughed out loud! God (or whatever you want to insert) knows we need some humour round here, otherwise we all end up “sensitivity editing” ourselves…even in places we could assume we are amongst those who are not easily confused! Just another thought :))
When I was filling in the phoney consultation paper on the UK Digital Pond
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/paper/2023/the-digital-pound-consultation-paper
The last question was about people with protected characteristics.
My answer was
We all have to pay our dues.
But be careful how you say that or you might offend someone with protected characteristics.
I hope they like malaprops or are they hate speech now?
Is it that nasty Globocap again CJ? Fantastic word. Places blame and names names for this perfected evil exactly nowhere.
Bingo! Let’s not name the names. Let’s take “Globocap” to court. >
“Yes, your honor. This imaginary group of imaginary individuals, robbed me of my freedoms and terrorized me. Please send this “Globocap” to some imaginary prison, please.”
Globocap is an enforcer, not a creator. Someone, like a Yuval Harari, comes up with the crazy ideas.
And, if the ideas are crazy enough, the various CEOs of the various corporations making up Globocap give their approval and begin at once implementing the crazy ideas – though not on their shareholders, of course.
So the names you’re looking for are the likes of Bayer, Cargill, Dupont, Syngenta (aka ChemChina). And since behind every good CEO stands a loving bankster, you may add the names Bank of England, House of Rothchild, Chase Manhattan, Deutsche Bank. And since every good banker needs an ally, please add in Black Rock, Vangard, State Street.
Or you could simply save time and space and say Globocap.
True. But actual persons have vested “interests”. >
This item defines the roles of various Bilderberg players in the Covid agenda.
: > Bilderberg_2021-Wikispooks.pdf (expose-news.com)
These personal “interests” need to be prosecuted for genocide and multiple acts of terrorism… You can’t escort a company into a prison cell or toward a gallows…
A more effective approach to naming names: >
The article is basically a copy of a wikispooks.pdf file, defining the roles of various Bilderberg players in the Covid agenda.
A link to the copy is provide here: > Bilderberg_2021-Wikispooks.pdf (expose-news.com)
The article is interesting.
Names & Faces of 150 Bilderbergers who controlled COVID Pandemic response
February 21, 2023
Names & Faces of 150 Bilderbergers who controlled COVID Pandemic response – The Expose (expose-news.com)
The ABC in Australia is peddling endless pro Zelensky propaganda and hate for Putin, a man who is not our enemy and a war that is nothing to do with us. The same ABC supported the illegal invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria based on USA and UK propaganda and the irony and hypocrisy escapes their small brains.
I guess Iraqis throwing babies out of incubators in 1991, the bay of Tonkin propaganda, the WMD and Afghans being involved in the CIA downing of the towers weren’t propaganda.
” … the illegal invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria based on USA and UK.” I think you also left out Libya, Yemen, and Serbia. But, hey, these are just easy targets for the Anglo-Zionist war machine
Well the US has invaded 81 nations in one form or the other since 1946 – so I listed the worst ones.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs from CCP may be helpful
https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjbxw/202302/t20230220_11027664.html
The Guardian seems to be campaigning for another American war again. On the rare occasions forums are open, any reader who says anything off message gets moderated or trolled by the government ‘types’. So much for the Guardian’s drivel about campaigning journalism and the climate.
This is a letter I have sent to the AGE newspaper in Australia the same rag that was rampantly pro killing IRaqis, Afghans and Syrians – we can bet it won’t be published, but the one sided anti Russian campaign is so childish it drives me nuts. “I admit I am anti war and have been since the 1960’s when I protested against us being involved in Nam to appease the USA. We helped the USA slaughter millions of people in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam over more than a decade and the USA slunk out like cowards in the end while the world watched. Since then we have helped the USA not win ”wars” in Iraq x 2, Afghanistan, Syria and many others slaughtering millions on the way and destroying one country after the other then watching the USA slink out in the middle of the night leaving the destruction… Read more »
Oh, and just by coincidence, head honcho Burgess of ASIO fear-porned in a speech on February 24 (just by coincidence):
A highly active “hive” of Russian spies posing as diplomats operated in Australia for more than 18 months before it was dismantled as part of a sweeping and aggressive counter-espionage offensive by ASIO.
https://www.theage.com.au/national/fake-russian-diplomats-revealed-as-heart-of-hive-spy-ring-in-australia-20230223-p5cmxz.html
They are desparately stupid people panting for a new war
Ah yes, the Austrawya Bullshatt Creeporayshun (ABC). The fetid penal colony’s slouching, lurid fear porn peddler. Operating relentlessly 24/7/365. Here’s perhaps a more comprehensive compendium of the Anglo-Empire’s extreme prejudice atrocities. The USA has an ongoing history that includes more than just interference…. as clearly evidenced in the book below…and that only takes into account post-WWII ‘endeavors’. Killing Hope: US and CIA Interventions since WWII/ William Blum/2004 Published by Common Courage Press;. MNE: ISBN: 9781567512526 LC JK468.I6 B59 An A-Z of the countries that the USA has interfered with in the name of “freedom” by bombing, staging coups, meddling in internal politics, in supporting dictators, jihadis, terrorists or just plain straight out invasion… Afghanistan 1979-1992: 2003- Africa, 22 countries Ongoing Australia 1973-1975 and still meddling Albania 1949-1953, 1991 Angola 1975 to 1980s Bolivia 1964-1975 Brazil 1961-1964 British Guiana 1953-1964 Bulgaria 1990 Cambodia 1955-1973 Chile 1964-1973 China 1945 & Ongoing Congo… Read more »
If you consider political, economic, subversive and military imperialism, U$ has affected every country.
Yes. Excellent point. It’s also in and has been in the process of pillaging the entire planet and close outer space environs.
Nurse: “Just a small prick, Mr Daley”
Terry: “Yeah, but he’s got a lovely smile”
Will we ever see the like again.
You will, out and about in the real world.
Secularism
I found the sentence on the desirability of the bankers “secularising” the middle east a bit sinister. I presume the author is not referring to the state which bars people of other religions from becoming citizens and which bars inter religious marrage.of a certain kind.
Despots
The banksters are the despots. They rule from behind the scenes with an iron hand as the events of the last three years have shown.It was the banksters that brought us slavery. Karl Marx , a bankster cousin, wrote a letter in 1847 strongly defending the institution of slavery. The banksters also brought us toxic ideologies such as feminism. If someone was trying to make the world a kinder place they would take the Scum Manifesto and other “radical feminist” devilry off the market.
Oh, so Marx was ‘strongly defending the institution of slavery was he.’ A new one on me! Although he and his sidekick Engels were hostile to slavery as carried out in India and other parts of empire. Writing of the Indian/Sepoy mutiny and the British suppression (1857) Marx wrote: ”The profound hypocrisy and inherent barbarism of bourgeois ‘civilization’ lies unveiled before our eyes, turning from its home where it assumes respectable forms, to the colonies, where it goes naked.’ And here’s something from Engels. ”The fact is their is there is no army in Europe or America with so much brutality as the British. Plundering, violence, massacre things, that everywhere else are strictly and completely banished are a time-honoured privilege, a vested right of the British soldier … For 12 days and nights there was no British army at Lucknow – nothing but a lawless, drunken, brutal rabble, dissolved into… Read more »
Letter
The 1847 letter exists and I have often linked to it. Marx had to change his tune later. While admitting the monstrosity of the British rape of India he said something to the effect that the railways and other innovations the British brought would compensate. Marx was after all Rothschild’s cousin. The British empire was the creation of the banksters.
Here we go again. I’ve already responded to this at length and won’t do it again. I’ll just say this: Marx, Engels and others didn’t “defend” slavery, free trade, colonialism at the time these world events were going on; they understood them as necessary stages in the advance of History. There is a difference between understanding something that is ongoing or has already happened as a necessary consequence of previous actions/events and a precursor to future events in a chain of rationally related events towards human emancipation (you’ve got here to acquaint yourself with Marx’s understanding of History and the purpose it seeks to manifest through its advance) and defending that something, that is, agreeing with it as the desired status quo. Understanding and agreeing are two different mindsets. Here is a concrete example: if I had a painful infection, I certainly want to get over with and heal; I… Read more »
Oh, I forgot. Marx is a bourgeois whose father was a rabbi, whose cousin a bankster, who was an agent of Lord Palmerston, and who let his children starve, blah blah blah. WTH, even if that’s true, why do I have to waste my time gossiping about the man’s private, family or social life, he’s dead anyway; I’m better off acquainting myself with the man’s thoughts. The two aspects don’t have to necessarily agree. Do they for most of us?
Thank you, TCR. Well done.
A bit of Marx’ legacy
The Unspeakable Things The Bolsheviks Did During Their Reign – YouTube
Could you link to it again for the slow learners like me?
Victor G., I think PM was referring to Poverty of the Philosophy (1847), written by Marx to Proudhon. The following is part of the text discussing slavery. I added some comments to the text (within brackets). Slavery is an economic category like any other. [That’s obvious, the slave being the property of his master and from whom labour is extracted.] Thus it also has its two sides. [As an economic category, the slave doesn’t work for his or her own reproduction but for that of others; in that respect, it alienates and causes suffering; that’s the bad side. Slavery however, retrospectively thought about as Marx did, was the mode of production that produced industrialisation of countries like the US which, as a negative feedback loop caused the abolition of the condition of the slave and its replacement by a slightly better condition, that of a serf and later by that of a… Read more »
[Continues] Caught thus in a blind alley, from which it is difficult to escape by legal means, M. Proudhon takes a real flying leap which transports him at one bound into a new category. Then it is that, to his astonished gaze, is revealed the serial relation in the understanding. He takes the first category that comes handy and attributes to it arbitrarily the quality of supplying a remedy for the drawbacks of the category to be purified. Thus, if we are to believe M. Proudhon, taxes remedy the drawbacks of monopoly; the balance of trade, the drawbacks of taxes; landed property, the drawbacks of credit. By taking the economic categories thus successively, one by one, and making one the antidote to the other, M. Proudhon manages to make with this mixture of contradictions and antidotes to contradictions, two volumes of contradictions, which he rightly entitles: Le Système des contradictions économiques. [The System of Economic… Read more »
https://www.rt.com/news/571952-artificial-intelligence-art-copyright/
rt reports the copyright office has denied images presumably art work developed by Artificial Intelligence copyright protection. Reason the output of the AI cannot be predicted.. I believe this ruling has a global impact and everyone interested in controlled publications should look carefully at it. Probably this will be reported at other URLs as well. please let me know if you find it is not true..
eman thanks, it’s grown to major original artistic issue worth separate news articles. imo.
It’s close to the time of year when something big has often kicked off. What’s on the cards? A useful place to look is always him: https://institute.global/policy/new-national-purpose-innovation-can-power-future-britain “Innovation” = AI, it could not be clearer. How to get the public to love AI? Construct narratives where AI is the hero! Albert Pike wrote “We always give the public their heroes. We give the heroes to every faction, and then people once they hear this person say all the right things, we give releases to them because he or she speaks for ‘me’. That’s how we rationalize it and we sit back and re-guide it again. We say go here go do that and they do it. We give our power to the authorized heroes”. AI to save the world from nuclear annihilation (Skynet in reverse*)?…. AI to halt a cyberattack?… AI to find a cure for cancer?… This is a… Read more »
irreparably offend..socio-physio-politico sensitivities Penguin Random House is one of the so-called “big five publishers” that control approximately 80% of the retail book market. The other four are Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, Hachette, and HarperCollins. Can you describe in a, b, and c for us the ethnicity of the five non human organizations (WHOs) you mention? a) the owners of these establishments ? b) the managing executives of these establishments ? c) the boards of directors of these establishments ? Not one human name identified in your article yet five Non Human publishers (like the Main Stream media, five) control >80% of the global book market. I want to see if the ownership between the MSM group and MSBP group [Mainstream Book Publishers] are one in the same. I think proving the cross control and ownership is a missing fact needed to prove your hypothesis that sensitivity cancellation is an ideological… Read more »
Random House
Random House once incinerated 14,000 hardcover copies of a book on the execution of RKF. Book burning physically occurs in the modern world. The publication industry to a large extent makes it unneccessary by not publishing what is displeasing to the world government.
In Australia we have zionist Morry Schwartz running half the media, and an anti zionist jewish woman running the other.
Now the zionist wants two Palestinian authors banned from writers week and the anti zionist sacked for inviting them. 2023 Australia.
The murderous Zio’s out of Tel Aviv run the show down under.
Yep, and woebetide anyone who dares to state that Israel is a criminal ‘state”
https://unlimitedhangout.com/author/john-klyczek/
That all is not new at all, but a development since many decades, beginning with education at school.
Just reading School World Order from John Klyczek and his add-ons on Unlimited Hangout, I’ve learnt a lot about coordinating first education worldwide before lockstepping media and all books. There are such names as Hegel, Wundt, Skinner, Dewey and John B. Watson and their funktionalism.
I recommend it strongly to anyone, also for answering the question, why so many people are happy victims of mass hypnosis. The answer is: they were for a long time and since long ago trained by school to think like machines. Do you know dreambox?
It is a thing, even the elder ones have to investigate by themselves, because the reeducation of the world is no new phenomen.
Recommend also to have a closer look on the role of Julian Huxleys UNESCO in educating the world
50 Years UNESCO Institute for Education: towards an open learning world
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000126240
… and on Julian Huxley
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4366572/
It is a great article. After reading it, you will understand the development.
‘Trump, Johnson, Corbyn, Sanders, and other so-called “populist” figures, were never a real threat to GloboCap,’ – poor ol CJ never got over the Trump Derangement Syndrome he gobbled up with most of the masses a few years back. Trump is clearly a serious threat to ‘globocop’ or whaver you want to call the deep state – he’s not perfect (few people are), but he has a much fairer view of how capitalism should operate, kind of the American mythology of how it should work. He thinks wars are bad and people should get along, which is total anathema to the deep state people. This is why they continue to fear and hate and demonize and try to stop him from running in 2024, where he could easily win again if the Republicans manage to control the massive cheating that cost him the 2020 election.
The Republicans won’t even investigate the cheating that cost them the election. They’re in on it. It’s all a show.
doesn’t change what I said about Trump – most longterm repubs are part of the deep state and opposed Trump, and still do – there are a few new repubs still investigating the stolen election. you can’t go from a completely corrupt deep state controlled federal bureuacracy to a non-corrupt system overnight, there’s massive inertia – Trump is doing what he can, one small step at a time, against massive resistance. To lump him in with the other corrupt politicians is just another deep state propaganda move to try to reduce his support. there seem to be a lot of useful idiots out there parroting the ‘he’s just the same as the rest’ BS
stolen election. 😂
deep state opposing trump 😂
Wow! I’m trying to imagine “fair” capitalism but I just can’t seem to get there …
https://i.postimg.cc/RVTr9Hjy/71d422c8-aa71-409a-982c-a621a5cfb9a1-467×348.webp
that first one is soooooooooooo true, been amazing me for decades …..
I love being called “insensitive “ while there is a jackboot stomping on my face.
Dang.
I wonder how many of my favourite authors have been sanitised?
It would be hard to “sensitize” the likes of PKD & Orwell without butchering the piece, but if they can do it to Dahl (and all the fun is about the political incorrectness)..
One of the most obvious examples is LotR.
The millennial generation is less likely to trudge through the trilogy, so for most of them, their exposure to Tolkien will be through either Peter Jackson’s works, or the latest blasphemies.
Same for the Star Wars franchise, and well, anything that Disney has fiddled with.
If you want your newborn to get a head start in the dog-eat-dog world it’ll grow up in, from day one develop its psychopathic tendencies with insensitivity training.
Let the little bugger lie alone in its cot, screaming its little heart out until its so exhausted it’ll fall asleep.
Later teach it that its “No !” dont matter, that “because i say so !” is all that matters.
Success Guaranteed !
Mission Accomplished !
you’ve got to teach it that its a cruel, heatless world –
full of politicians, leaders. prime ministers, corporate CEOs.
mengele-clone doctors and fauci-clone scientist.
Isolating babies has been the modern way for over 60 years..
After the East Palestine train incident, woman is SENSITIVE to presence of tankers.
woman posted a video on Twitter on Wednesday, wondering if the dozens of rail tankers parked on sidings in Stanislaus County near San Francisco would be the next “environmental accident”. The county is another major agricultural area and near Interstate 5 and the California Aqueduct. The presence of the tankers was reported to be very unusual.
😄
Long ago, a woman (that I almost married) told me that I was “insensitive”
I replied, “Yeah… So?”
Perhaps we both dodged a bullet.
There are many beautiful evil people in literature – does that need to be looked at too? I mean, if you are bald and ugly and that needs to be addressed for the sake of those people, what about if beautiful people are being unfairly dealt with? Or anyone at all – perhaps we can’t say anything about anyone next? Not sure these current ideas have been thought through – cos it depends on the lens – the idea that ugly is bad is a lens, the idea that beauty or charisma can be bad likewise. This is a very interesting discussion to me. As no sensitivity checker could know that – right? Oh – they’ve been told/ And they’ll be told another thing too when it seems right. Like if beautiful people feel offended by the Sleeping Beauty story, they could make it about – um – power? I… Read more »
I prefer propaganda that i dont notice,
I dont like propaganda that’s shoved in my face.
Weirdly, I started noticing this ‘editing’ happening in 2020 – for the first time. YT, films, quotes, books etc. So the power that the internet and freedom of information gave people in general has not been liked by certain groups. The obvious move back was to muddy the water – and to create debate about our ‘truths’ or knowledge. The current moves are excellent at keeping people in the dark once again. The internet cannot be trusted without fact-checkers but the fact checkers are paid by corporations so we can’t trust that either. No access to knowledge = powerlessness. I wonder how long FOI requests will last. In fact, although I despise the idea of changing past written works etc., I do have some sympathy with the reasons for this RD move. People should not be demonised in fiction in a child’s mind because they are bald, fat or ugly.… Read more »
‘The internet cannot be trusted without fact-checkers’ – you do NOT want to go there – any compos mentis adult with some years of wandering through all kinds of places where conversations happen and opinions spring forth needs to have their own built-in BS detector. A ‘fact-checker’ is nothing more than some form of witch doctor selling poison brew for someone.
“The internet cannot be trusted without fact-checkers.”
Ultimately, we the readers are the ‘fact checkers.’
How about just don’t read the book?
The Woke Brigade are now focussing their attention on the Bible and the Almighty.
God is nowhere near sufficiently Gender Neutral, according to Justin Welby and his Merry Men and Merry Women (and Merry Non Binaries.)
We really have to put a stop to this God the Father and God the Son Business.
The Almighty really has to get on board with the programme and move with the times.
From now on, it’s God the Androgynous, and God the Demiboy, and God the Gender Fluid, and God the Trannie, God the Trigender, and God of the 81 (or is it 181?) Genders.
Sounds like a really fun gay old time at the Church of England from now on.
Rainbow coloured dildos all round.
Tree of Liberty eagerly awaits its refreshing..
“I Care.”
“?”
“Honestly ! I do !”
“?”
“You dont believe me !
You bastard !”
Without bothering to search for references, the Return of Thomas Bowdler With a Vengeance– “This time, it’s personal!”– prompts a tangential thought: It’s bad enough that print publishers superciliously sanitize classic (and not so classic) works of literature as Hopkins describes. Even if older “unsanitized” original texts aren’t affirmatively rooted out and destroyed, the introduction of neo-bowdlerized editions will have a “Gresham’s Law” effect: mush-and-milk bad editions will gradually drive out the unspoiled good editions. So I’m wondering whether this pseudo-moral censorship will be silently applied en masse to e-books. I admit that I’m fuzzy on the nature of e-books; I think they’re actually stored on the seller’s “cloud”, as opposed to being stored on one’s hard drive(s) after purchase. I’m not sure about free PDF e-books from sources like Gutenberg. I guess I’ll find out if I decide to dust off an “old” e-book, and discover that it’s been tidied up… Read more »
I wonder if we can now eliminate war given how “socially disruptive” it tends to get.
“the deafening roar of millions of voices shrieking gibberish on social media”
Re book censorship and rewrites, what I have noticed is that my once beloved Harry Bosch books (Michael Connelly) now have ample Covid-korrekt instructions to Harry by one of the other key characters. It’s sickening and adds nothing to the story.
YES!!!! I noticed that. I LOVE Michael Connelly books. Recently started reading them all again. He is not the only author that I have recently wondered “Hmmm, are they asked/cajoled by TPTB, or is this just their sincere opinion?”
This is hardly new or surprising. Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini 600 years ago was doing the same thing on behalf of the Catholic Church. He was a book hunter commissioned by Popes to scour Europe. These books were then passed on to fastidious monks who rewrote them under the pretence of preservation.
Check out a video on YouTube called The Book Hunters.
https://youtu.be/OxzDO5q0Ao4
Bizarre that Charlie From “Willy Wonka” Quit Acting After That One Role. even more strange, that everyone in alt media as in this new concept calling itself alt media, which I believe is aimed at keeping people in a level of stupidity. I would suggest go over to the real alt media called the truth movement to be educated in matters like this, so you dont even up even more retarded than the authors/hosts. CJ likes satire to get his low IQ message across. So do the elites actually like ridicule the people who haven’t educated themselves to there level of concept of talk. Roald-Dahl was one of them, I also believe Roald-Dahl was trying to get the message out,. What message is this your thinking…… Theses books there re writing are written in different levels. You got the story level which i no is aimed at the useless eaters… Read more »
Possibly. Roald Dahl was kind of based.
Look – this is a bit off topic but …. Of course, we have a one-party state. But the differentiations presented through the script tell a lot. For the punters stranded in the 70s, Tories are Evil Bastards but Labour are the Great Hope i.e. the ones more likely to listen to the stamping placard bearing workers of the world. The Covid-mobile has capitalised on this carefully nurtured and preserved Groundhog decade. But you’d think the increasingly obvious betrayals of Labour might have wised the gaping voters up a bit. Wasn’t Tony Blair a giveaway? Hint: Margaret Thatcher called him her greatest success! No? Well how about Corbyn as The Resurrection? Or, to be more precise, the reaction to him from the Labour Party itself? Adolph reborn in England’s Green and Pleasant etc. No? Well how about this?: https://twitter.com/ripx4nutmeg/status/1442783035389325313 Yes, Labour as the Covid screaming, transgender worshipping, climate crapping, battering… Read more »
1910 it’s your language problem not anyone else’s your not speaking for other Europeans Canadians South Americans, even though US is a part of Two American Continents.
What are you talking about when you never talk to your own neighbouring People, South Americans & Canadians!
You think that justifies you spewing out Generalisations.
Your merely acting as an over sea International investor, in City Districts.
Your alternative update on #COVID19 for 2023-02-20. Jabs damage brain, heart, liver, bone marrow, fetus, causing harm, injury, death. Moderna’s 2016 patent (blog, gab, tweet).
I doubt the publishers could do anything without the permission of the copyright holders, presumably the Dahl family. Quite likely it’s a publicity stunt to boost sales of both the original and amended versions.
Ray Bradbury wrote something a little like this with red fire trucks and a fireman named Guy Montag. “Fahrenheit 451 was written by Bradbury during the Second Red Scare and the McCarthy era, who was inspired by the book burnings in Nazi Germany, and by ideological repression in the Soviet Union. In a 1956 radio interview, Bradbury said that he wrote the book because of his concerns about the threat of burning books in the United States. In later years, he described the book as a commentary on how mass media reduces interest in reading literature. In a 1994 interview, Bradbury cited political correctness as an allegory for the censorship in the book, calling it “the real enemy these days” and labeling it as “thought control and freedom of speech control.” Funny, when I went to search for “Fahrenheit 451”, all that came up was stuff about the movies, the original and remakes. It wasn’t until I searched for “Fahrenheit 451 BOOK”, that it came up… Read more »
today the school board removed 24 books from the grammar school shelves and complained that it needed to review between now and June 30th another 100 books.. This activity is not just capitalism.. its capturism.. slavery When the slaves were freed they asked to be returned to slavery for they knew no other life..
I think you’re wrong to assume that capitalism has freed us from the rule of kings, despots, autocrats and what-have-you. That’s a misreading of history, in particular the history of the American Revolution. This is taught here — drummed into everyone — that it was like the movie ‘The Patriot’ — down to earth (Australian) patriots in blue fighting against toffee nosed aristocratic Brits in red. The actual events, and by that I mean the machinations and geopolitics rather than this battle or that battle, are well documented. The truth is that capitalism is truly agnostic in that it seeks profit anywhere and anyhow and will use any tool to aid that search. If a despot is business friendly, fine (although we’ll probably commission a puff piece or two to show the ‘human’ side). If they’re not business friendly, or worse, think that business should be suborned to society’s needs,… Read more »
You make good points here.
Quote: The change over the last few decades is not as new as it looks.
But as Ernst Wolff says, the money supply, the level of debt and the concentration of wealth are now all at historical highs, and have you checked global yield curves lately?
The rulers hate a sense of humour. It is their biggest fear. Humour generates a dreaded lack of the “proper respect” and is the beginning of a critical outlook. That is why the rulers insist on dourness, sanctimonious piety, the adoring gaze upwards, the passionate grovelers in the dirt, the weeping ones forever clasping their hands in prayer before the massed gravestones of all the horror shows and desperately praying for a miracle from above which of course never comes unless it has been pre-packaged by the rulers themselves.
In fact, all bullies hate a sense of humour, as does the devil.
It’s part of the psychopath’s identity.
And they all hate it for the very reason you state: It generates a lack of “proper respect”.
The good news is that this makes a lack of humour a useful geiger counter for detecting and identifying these sociopathic little tools of oblivion.
Speaking of lack of humour, I just caught the end of the ITV News in which a blue screen with deeply concerned voiceover spoke in hushed horror of some ordeal involving a “hate letter” sent to India Willoughby who is apparently “Britain’s first transgender national television newsreader and the first transgender co-host of an all-women talk show, Loose Women on ITV.” The quoted passage is from Wiki who seem extremely coy about releasing any details of Willoughby’s past. Here is their complete account of it: “Willoughby was born and grew up in Carlisle, Cumbria.” I had to go to a site called Europesurgery.co.uk to find out that, “She was born as Jonathon Willoughby, in a body she didn’t feel she belonged in.” (“Europesurgery.co.uk”? What’s that about then? Gender-U-Like?) So Jonathan is “co-host of an all-women talk show”? That’s clever. You don’t suppose Jonathan/India/Whatever is entirely some kind of psy-op creation… Read more »
Ah now it makes sense:
https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/india-willoughby
“India Willoughby is a 56-year-old trans-identified male who calls himself a ‘cis woman’, and believes that trans people in the UK today face the same persecution as Jews did during the Holocaust. He’s now hoping to run as an MP for Labour at the next general election.”
It’s a roller coaster ride of manufactured outrage which, nevertheless, looks to me to be a “cheapskate” operation i.e. drummed up by one out of that moronic goo whipped up by the media who look out precisely for opportunities to capitalise on “natural propagandists”. Jonathan/India is clearly a publicity junky willing to do anything to get into the limelight. An excellent useful idiot.
Sounds like an ideal candidate for Starmer’s shiny new Corbyn-free Labour Party.
Everyone is welcomed into Labour Parties – except the working class…
UK Labour – The Go Woke, Go Broke Party.
Otherwise known as ‘the joke party’.
Note how the eurosurge site doesn’t actually say if Jonathan had his knob and nuts sawn off.
George,
Surgeons use saws only to saw off limbs,
Sorry I should have said drill.
You have to use spanners for nuts, Knobs on doors secured by screws.
Knobs on doors secured by screws. India Willoughby screws are very loose, so may be removed by hand – but I’m not volunteering!!
There was a police constable in Kent who turned trannie and had his knob and nuts sawn off. All the local yobs called him “the No-Nobby Bobby” and “the AC/DC PC.”
A very precise post Mr Mc. The most salient messages come from the dying and uneducated… Rulers. Six inch pricks thinking they’re yard sticks…
Next week I’m going to self identify as a lamp post. Everybody has to respect this and celebrate it, unless they’re lamppostphobic.
Best of luck Paul. Watch out for those dogs.
“Authenticity readers” to protect against authenticity. From CJH’s link above: “Authenticity readers are experienced beta readers ….” Experienced what? From Wiki: “A beta reader is a test reader of an unreleased work of literature or other writing (similar to beta testing in software), who gives feedback from the point of view of an average reader to the author. A beta reader provides advice and comments in the opinions of an average reader. This feedback can be used by the writer to fix remaining issues with plot, pacing, and consistency. The beta reader also serves as a sounding board to see if the book has had the intended intellectual and/or emotional impact on the target market.” Yes, the “average reader” is what we are interested in. What the fuck is the “average reader”? Has there ever been an “average reader”? And really – is there any reason to pursue this steaming… Read more »
An alternative solution to book censorship is to keep all your old books and read them. Buy your kids books from second hand shops. Unless you’re suggesting all old books will be burnt, this is always an option or have I missed a memo?
I’ve got an old Biggles book which explains that, “Any Englishman is worth two Huns, three Frenchmen, and a dozen Darkies.”
Or half a Scotsman, as a Jock mate tells me.
They don’t make ’em like that any more.
The subtext is that speech is violence – this idea cannot coexist with free speech. Furthermore as an avid reader of crime/noir fiction this trend also makes for uninteresting characters. Just finished a so called “noir” that featured a protagonist with 0 negative character traits and a happy ending. The best fiction speaks truth to power as Dellilo says – this type of novel is all but dead if subjected to “sensitivity” readers.
Having to wade through and learn to deal with the derision and “insensitivity” of others towards us, is how character is built. Life shouldn’t be all sugar plums and roses.
Right – I’m trying to imagine like a James Ellroy novel subjected to sensitivity readers lol.
Exactly. Who wants to read that!
You go a bit too far — it is one way “character is built.” But not the only thing we need to learn. If you are subjected to too much intentional cruelty you can let yourself become cruel, or else emotionally cold, neither of which is a good result.
True, cruelty can go too far at times, but you can’t just send everyone to a safe space either.
Indeed. It’s called growing up and learning how to deal with adversity in life. But once we’re all chipped, tracked, and finally fully dehumanized, we will all live happily ever after. Fairy tale? You betcha. You’ll own nothing and be happy….