Guest Post by Kit Knightly
The first shocking censorship of 2023 dropped last week. As covered by CJ Hopkins in his most recent column, Roald Dahl’s publishers have hired a team of “sensitivity readers”, in order to edit the next edition of Dahl’s books to remove outdated language.
According to this piece in The New Statesman:
The changes range from the removal of outright racist stereotypes to the deletion of the word “fat”, gendered phrases (be it “chambermaid”, “females” or “hag”) and references to “pink” or “white” skin. In some cases, these are minor tweaks to one or two words in a sentence. Others are far more interventionist, including entire songs rewritten in James and the Giant Peach, or new sentences added in The Witches which explain that there are myriad reasons why people might wear wigs.
While that may read like a PC nightmare, it’s more insidious than that. This is not about being woke or unwoke, it’s about the normalisation of post hoc censorship that should concern everyone.
Some have described the edits as a natural by-product of capitalism.
It’s been noted that the edits come in the wake of the Dahl estate closing a huge deal with Netflix for exclusive rights to all of Dahl’s work. So some are framing this as Netflix seeking to protect their investment by making sure Dahl remains profitable in the age of cancel culture.
But even that is a simplification – after all, Netflix is more than just an entertainment company, they have noted political ties and have relentlessly pushed state-backed propaganda in the past.
Even the choice of Dahl as the man to lead a forlorn hope down the memory hole is carefully calculated. His known racist attitudes make him controversial enough that some will be hesitant to defend his work. While the fact he was a children’s author means anyone who does raise concerns can be dismissed with either indifference (“it’s just a kids books, it doesn’t matter”) or false-moralising (“we need to protect children!”).
He’s the perfect choice to be laid down on the wire.
And if they set a precedent that it’s now ok to go back and “revise language”…what’s next? who’s next? Dickens? Twain?
What about the news. That’s the big ticket item after all, right?
What words will no longer be acceptable next year? “Inside job”? “Guantanamo bay”?
What history will be deemed “offensive”? What facts will be “potentially harmful”?
We’ve already had a little taste of this with Covid, when the death rate of the 1918 Spanish Flu was suddenly revised down in February 2020, to literally physically impossible numbers, just to make covid appear more dangerous.
Mainstream precedents would allow this process to switch from small covert examples to much larger overt ones.
In other book-related news, this week it was widely reported, that the UK government’s anti- terror program, “PREVENT” had placed (among others) Shakespeare, Tolkien and George Orwell on their list of “key texts” that could “radicalise right-wing extremists”.
Somewhat ironically, this practice of retroactive censorship is a tactic straight out of 1984.
No wonder they don’t want us to read it. It doesn’t “create extremists”, but it does give away their plans.
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The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar- Roald Dahl
My favorite story of all time!!
Who doesn’t like a kids version of Russian Extended Remote Viewing?
Doing the Card trick is an awesome Party Trick!
Charlie And The Censorship Factory
The Great Glass Obfuscator
James And The Giant Book-Burning
[Redacted] Tales Of The Unexpected
James Bond books edited to remove racist references
Reissued versions of Ian Fleming’s classic works will feature a disclaimer following a review by sensitivity readers
James Bond novels have been rewritten to remove a number of racial references from Ian Fleming’s work, The Telegraph can reveal.
https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fnews%2F2023%2F02%2F25%2Fjames-bond-books-edited-remove-racist-references%2F
This is why you need to have as many hard copies of books as you can reasonably keep. I’ve moved so many times in the last 27 years and downsized. So I’ve had to cull some of my books, unfortunately.
However, I might start perusing old book stores and choosing a few important books just to have. I can’t guarantee my kids will keep them but maybe I can find someone who will.
If all of us did this, maybe we can preserve things as they were. I fear a Fahrenheit 451 could be in the near future.
And you could always sell them for a fortune on eBay to limolibs like Scott Adams, as they waken from their woke slumber.
The utility of e-books on tablets is hard to deny but I have always had a lurking distrust for the digital and so have worked hard (heavy boxes!) to also keep up my library. The last few years, as censorship in all forms has move to the overt and explicit lockstep with the hegemony of leftist “morality”, I have often thought of Fahrenheit 451.
Not just for the book burning, but for the entire concept of stewardship of culture, the story of my people, who we are and what defines a well-lived life that reflects our values and traditions.
Already I often feel like one of the Book People, for having long resisted the transition to the online hivemind and natural contrarianism and skepticism of the prog creep.
Walking among so many who have literally no memory of the before times, no bearing on the Truth, no mooring to the culture that delivered their ancestors to the bounty within the frontier, no concept of how we came to be here in current year.
350 million people here and yet so often it comes down to me and a friend walking in the woods talking about any one of the growing lists of forbidden topics and thoughts while we struggle to keep the light for the next generations.
If there are to be men of the West again, the kindling of that spark indeed comes down to the few who live the stories every day, apart from the others.
“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past,” repeated Winston obediently. “Who controls the present controls the past,” said O’Brien, nodding his head with slow approval. ~ “1984”
“History is written by the victors.” ~ variously attributed
variant,
that was a good comment,you could turn that into an article —
Digital Versions of Roald Dahl’s Books Already Updated to Include “Sensitivity” Changes
After a strong backlash, with infinitely more people being offended over the Orwellian deforming of Dahl’s books than those upset over mean words, Puffin Books said they had “listened to the debate” and would be publishing uncensored versions of Dahl’s works alongside the sanitized versions….
However, it has now been revealed that downloadable digital versions of Dahl’s books have already received the “sensitivity” treatment, according to a report by The Times.
Matthew Dennison, Dahl’s biographer, slammed the development, criticizing the publisher for “strong-arming readers into accepting a new orthodoxy in which Dahl himself has played no part.”
https://yournews.com/2023/02/27/2523403/digital-versions-of-roald-dahls-books-already-updated-to-include/
Like you, I’ve moved literally a couple of dozen times over the years … and, in the past 12-15 years I’ve shed well over 2,500 books and 1,400 vinyl albums (about 2/3 classical) — and I share your regret. Given my current living situation (I’m nearing 76 years old and living in a house with the handicapped woman for whom I’ve been caretaker for about 12 years), I’m looking to get rid of most of the remaining 200+ books that I own as well as the 350 CDs.
Question, though: just which books would you purchase now ‘just to have’?
Well whatever I found in the used book store that looked like it needed to be kept.
Did you know they are rewriting/censoring some Dr Suess books?
Admin has long list of books in the right side of the website. That’s a good place to start.
Dr Suess was, however, the first victim in this ongoing “cleansing” of Wrongthink from kid’s literature, no?
This was thee best take on Pestilence medikill testing:
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/035/981/3c9
Finally,before it also get banned am off to see “The Bear”!
An important article on Free Speech in the Daily Telegraph by Simon Heffer… (You can hear a ‘but’ coming…)
Only a day or so ago we learned that these forces of oppression now include the government (Home Office/MI5) organised security outfit Prevent, set up to steer young people away from terrorist activities. Prevent has issued to its agents lists of books, films, TV programmes, journalists and the like which only a few years ago were part of Britain’s mainstream cultural fabric. Interest in any of them nowadays must be regarded as an indicator of terrorist proclivities. Reports must be made to the authorities.
I wonder if Simon Heffer is on that list?…
Heffer and his kind of ‘right wing’ Tory believe that mass Coloured Immigration has been not been good for our country. But he and they have never revealed the cause of what I regard as a disaster — who was behind it — nor did they campaign with their might and main to halt and reverse it…
What did Heffer and his kind do to oppose the imposition of the Race Relations Act and its subsequent increasingly oppressive anti-free speech amendments? Nothing. That Act was the start of the post-WW2 slide towards the suppression of rights and liberties hard-won by our ancestors over centuries.
The first draft of Race Relations Act was devised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews in the 1950s under the working title ‘Group Libel Bill’. All subsequent amendments were drafted by Jewish lawyers connected with the Board and pushed on to the legislative agenda of whichever party was in office, not only by Jewry’s massive media power but also by senior Home Office civil servants such as Neville Nagler who, on retirement, became CEO of — yes! — the Board of Deputies of British Jews.
Did we ever hear about any of this from Heffer and his kind, who must have known? No. To speak up against the anti-free speech iniquities of the Race Relations Act legislation would have been deemed to be “anti-semitic” simply because organised Jewry was so hugely associated with its promotion — another essential fact it was crucial for careerists not to mention!
Lol! Zerohedge thumbnail asks “Octokitty?”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/james-bond-books-reportedly-being-rewritten-remove-racist-and-sexist-remarks