The man who wrote the novel about censorship, Fahrenheit 451, has died at age 91.
Nowadays the really dangerous book-burners are not those who torch an occasional copy of the Qur’an, a futile symbolic act against an oppressive ideology that is everywhere advancing today. No, the censors of note today are the Leftists and Islamic supremacists who want to shut down any truthful speech about how Islamic jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and the oppression of non-Muslims and women.
Not only is the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) working to compel Western governments to criminalize criticism of Islam (under the guise of “defamation of religion,” but those who would judge what constitutes that are on record as considering anti-terror analysis that examines the Islamic motives and goals of the jihadis to be such defamation), but also Leftists and Islamic supremacists in the West today are doing everything they can to demonize and silence those who tell the truth about the jihad and Islamic supremacism. A case in point is Reza Aslan’s gunsel Nathan Lean, a creepy thug who has threatened me also; he is not in the least an original thinker, any more than Aslan himself is, but he is indicative of the Left’s totalitarian, anti-free speech mindset:
By this Lean means freedom fighters, whom he wants people to think are telling the truth about Islam and jihad for money and/or fame (not for veiled death threats from brownshirts like him, although they come in more frequently than do either money or fame). “Silenced.” How? By the state? With rubber truncheons? Re-education camps? Firing squad?
Whatever the case may be, Lean’s anti-free speech stance is clear, and he is not remotely close to being singular in this. Nowadays the Left and the Islamic supremacists, including those who work in the mainstream media, almost never engage the ideas of their opponents; instead, they traffic entirely in smears and ad hominem attacks, trying to portray the defenders of freedom as “racists” and “bigots,” beyond the bounds of acceptable public discourse -- an Orwellian tactic that presents as “bigotry” the defense of free speech and equality of rights for all people.
They’ve met great success: the Obama Administration, spurred on by Leftist pseudo-journalists like Spencer Ackerman and Eli Clifton, is purging military and intelligence training materials of all mention of Islamic jihad and supremacism, without any regard for whether or not it is true. The mainstream media won’t touch the jihad issue with any accuracy, and even cowardly “conservative” media figures shun anti-jihadists for fear of incurring the Leftist establishment’s wrath. Anti-jihadists are routinely defamed with guilt-by-association smears and misrepresentations of their views.
It is a cowardly tactic, and a chilling one, recalling the run-ups to the gulag and the Nazi concentration camp; apparently those are the models of society that today’s Left and its Islamic supremacist allies favor.
May Ray Bradbury’s memory be eternal. It is perhaps a mercy to him that he did not live to see the worst.
