The censors have been coming for Roald
Dahl, Mark Twain, Ian Fleming, Chaucer, and Shakespeare. By the time they finish sanitizing every
politically offensive phrase or character, we will have libraries filed with
books containing nothing but blank pages.
Here are a couple of paragraphs from Peter
Caddle’s report on Breitbart re: Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels:
Ahead of a coming re-release to
mark the 70th anniversary since the release of Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale novel, the first in
the James Bond series, the publication reports that the works have been
“rewritten” to appease woke sensibilities.
The revelation comes after a week
of controversy surrounding recent reprints of Roald Dahl’s books, with it being
revealed that the works of fiction have been edited in order to change or
remove language deemed problematic. . . .
Full report is here.
Here’s Robert Spencer, writing last week at Front Page about Shakespeare and other classic
writers:
A day in the life of destroying a civilization
The UK’s Prevent program, which is
supposed to be protecting the Sceptered Isle from terrorism . . . has kept busy
looking for “far-right extremists” and has now published a helpful guide to
spotting those dangerous right-wingers. It turns out that they’re people who
read Beowulf, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, 1984, and other great
works of English literature.
. . .
Prevent casts a wide net. The
UK’s Daily Mail reported Friday that among the “potential signs of
far-Right extremism” and “key texts” for “white nationalists/supremacists” that
Prevent flagged were the “comedies Yes
Minister and The Thick Of
It, the 1955 epic war film The
Dam Busters, and even The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare.”
And much more: “A report by
Prevent’s Research Information and Communications Unit (RICU) described how
far-Right extremists promoted ‘reading lists’ on online bulletin boards.” These
include “The Lord Of The Rings by
JRR Tolkien, Aldous Huxley’s Brave
New World, Joseph Conrad’s The
Secret Agent, 1984 by
George Orwell and the poems of GK Chesterton. It also referenced films
including The Bridge On The River
Kwai, The Great Escape and Zulu.”
Other books, shows and films on
Prevent’s list included that bane of freshmen literature majors
everywhere, Beowulf, and other monumental works including Geoffrey
Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales and
John Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Historian and broadcaster Andrew Roberts marveled: “This is truly
extraordinary. This is the reading list of anyone who wants a civilised,
liberal, cultured education.”
Yeah. It almost seems as if the
Prevent top dogs don’t want people to get a civilized, liberal, cultured education. . . .
Read the rest here.
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