Author: Forbidden Texts (Page 2 of 10)

This text was a hard one to get through. Political opinion aside, I think any sane human being sees how excruciatingly horrific this text is. For a moment without any background knowledge, I was afraid that this may had be based on a true story. Thankfully it wasn’t, however, it did inspire other events such as the Oklahoma City bombing. It’s scary to know that such evil lives in the same world as I do, especially like the author of this book, who even went to such great lengths to publish this under an alias name.

Onto the content of the book… I noticed something very interesting about this book that I thought could almost be a parallel to another book: 1984 by George Orwell. George published 1984 in 1949, well before the Turner Diaries had even been written. The parallel that I see is the idea of “Big Brother.” If you’ve ever read 1984 before, you’d know very well that Big Brother is this character in the book that is always watching over you and knows your every move. It’s kind of the same in the Turner Diaries with “The System.” Big Brother is even referenced in chapter 5. It’s said that Big Brother will be introducing a new passport system. In this context, Big Brother is the government, as well as in 1984. There’s so much similarity to this but from the complete opposite of the spectrum. 1984 is arguably so far-left, while the Turner Diaries is so far-right. While they have a lot of opposing views, both overall just don’t want to be controlled by the government. When I started reading this text, that’s what really stood out to me immediately. I instantly went, “That reminds me exactly of 1984!” It really made me sit and wonder if the author of the Turner Diaries had read 1984 and got this idea to do it from a far-right approach.

Moving on from the comparison, this text is also very graphic. I wasn’t expecting to read about detailed killings Turner witnessed or performed. I thought it was solely going to be about the government and trying to take over but in a clean way, but from past readings we had to do for this FSEM, I should’ve known better. This book was very long and detailed and I’m not going to lie I didn’t get through all of it but I think I could understand the main idea behind the story. I honestly would recommend that people read this but see it for what it was and not use it for inspiration.

The film, Midnight Express, was released in 1978 and is based on a true story about Billy Hayes’s experience in a Turkish prison. In October of 1970, Billy Hayes tried to smuggle drugs from Turkey back to the United States; however, he was caught at the airport. It was not till October of 1975 that Hayes escaped the prison and crossed the border into Greece. In 1977, Hayes published the book Midnight Express which is why the film was created. In the movie, it is revealed that the title of the film is prison slang for Hayes’s escape attempt.

When the film was released, it did receive some positive reviews. However, the film was criticized by Billy Hayes and others due to how the Turkish prison men were presented as being extremely violent. Even though there was strong criticism, the film went on to be nominated for Best Picture and Best Director for Parker at the 51^st Academy Awards in 1979. Then the film won Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Score for Stone and Moroder.

I do believe that the acting was amazing. The emotions of what the characters were feeling were well shown and I could see the pain just from gazes. Throughout the movie, the actors were able to portray their characters well. The soundtrack also added so much emotion throughout the movie.

While the film did receive awards, it continued to receive criticism for how it portrayed Turkish people. Mary Lee Settle wrote a book in 1991 called Turkish Reflections: A Biography of Place and said that “The Turks [she] saw in Lawrence of Arabia and Midnight Express were like cartoon caricatures, compared to the people [she] had known and lived among for three of the happiest years of [her] life”. Criticism against the movie was displayed by many other people as well and how the movie was against Turkish people.

In 1978 the novel, The Turner Diaries by William Luther Pierce, was published. The novel is ultimately about how the United States government is taken over which also causes a nuclear war and the extermination of non-whites. The reason these events take place is due to a violent uprising by white supremacists. Throughout the novel, there are extreme acts of violence that also affect other countries such as Israel, Russia, France, the Netherlands, and China.

This novel is a forbidden text for many reasons. According to The New York Times, the book is “explicitly racist and anti-Semitic”, and the FBI stated that it is a “bible of the racist right”. According to The New York Times, The Turner Diaries “has become one of the most influential texts among white nationalists and right-wing extremists”. The novel has inspired multiple violent attacks. The New York Times stated that the book has been the “inspiration in at least 40 terrorist attacks and hate crimes”.

William Luther Pierce grew up in Texas and was radicalized in the 1960s. Pierce also joined the American Nazi Party and formed his own group called the National Alliance. The New York Times stated that this group wanted “an all-white homeland and the genocide of Jews and other groups”. After publishing the novel in 1978 under the name Andrew Macdonald, right-wing organizations said that violence was needed to protect whites.

This novel continues to inspire white nationalists and right-wing extremists. After the United States Capitol attack on January 6, 2021, The Turner Diaries was removed from Amazon. In early 2021, the book began appearing in messages online by far-right groups and has been talked about by groups that wanted to overturn the presidential election. The concern scholars and historians have for the book being available is rising, according to The New York Times.

It’s been a while since we’ve been assigned a reading for our FSEM group, but this week we were assigned to read Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto: Industrial Society and its Future. Upon first glance after downloading the text off of Canvas, I was shocked at how long this text really is. Every page practically has two pages on it and the words are also really tiny, so I’m sure the word count is very high up there.

One thing to point out is that I had heard of the Unabomber before and had some brief knowledge about him, but I had no clue that he had written his own text. I would have to say I feel like he definitely was out there with his ideas and opinions, but I feel like he seemed very smart but not in a normal way. He really thought things through and really dove deep into his ideas, more than the average person would. But unfortunately, he took it too far and didn’t control himself. Just by reading even the first couple of paragraphs, his reasoning behind everything just didn’t seem to make much sense. Like how Leftists promote some movements because they actually have hate for that movement and want to bring light to their hate.

I’ve always been interested in the psychology behind most serial killers and terrorists, but I’m very interested in the psychology behind the Unabomber. Because just by reading some of the text, he talks a lot about psychology himself, so it makes you wonder if he had a background in psychology or if he was so mentally ill that these thoughts were manifesting in his head. What really makes him so interesting was how smart he actually was. He had a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Michigan and went to undergrad at Harvard. He later became a mathematics instructor at UC Berkeley. All of these are really high credentials and I feel like you don’t see that with serial killers or terrorists usually. By doing a little research, I found out that one of Kaczynski’s psychology professors had performed damaging and purposely abusive experiments on his students, which included Kaczynski. It’s said that this might’ve caused certain beliefs that Kaczynski had.

Overall the text was very long and just a lot, but it opened up more knowledge about the Unabomber to me and got me to research more about him.

This week’s reading was Industrial Society and Its Future by Ted Kaczynski. This text is also sometimes referred to as Unabomber Manifesto and that is because of Kaczynski. If you do not know who Ted Kaczynski is, between 1978 and 1995 he killed three people and injured twenty-three in a bombing campaign. Due to his actions, he is also called the Unabomber.

This text, Industrial Society and Its Future is a 35,000-word essay published in 1995. The text is essentially about how Kaczynski believed that the Industrial Revolution began to destroy the environment due to technology. It also talks about how the Industrial Revolution made humans adapt to machinery and that it took away freedom. The essay set the groundwork for Ted Kaczynski’s mail bomb campaign.

The first time the essay was printed was in The Washington Post because Kaczynski said if he got national exposure, he would end his bomb campaign. Printing of the text was authorized because it would help the FBI identify the author. Ted Kaczynski would then be identified by his brother, David Kaczynski.

As I stated before, Ted Kaczynski wrote this essay to blame technology for destroying humans and the environment. The text immediately begins with Kaczynski stating that “The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race” (1). Kaczynski also states that technology is to blame for inhospitable cities. He also says that the progression of technology will not disappear on its own and that this will increase mass media, the promotion of drugs, and police powers. In this essay, he blames large governments and businesses as the result of economic growth.

After the Industrial Society and Its Future publication, it was spread through newspapers, book reprints, and the Internet. However, the essay did not receive the reaction Kaczynski was hoping for due to the responses to the bombings.

The SCUM Manifesto was written in 1967 by the radical feminist Valerie Solanas. It was self-published a year later in 1968, the same year Solanas shot Andy Warhol. This manifesto is beyond radical and is filled with content about the psychology behind males, how to decrease the population of males, and the feminist future of society. She starts with the biology of men stating that “the male is a biological accident” (Solonas 1).The woman is defined by the X chromosome while men have the Y chromosome. To Solonas, the Y gene is an incomplete X gene making men “a walking abortion aborted at the gene stage” (Solonas 1). She goes into the effect of fatherhood on males and females saying that fathers forbid their sons from the mothers love to make them more manly, when actually the father himself is fully attached to his mothers. For females, the father wants them sexually, wants them not fully responsive, and wants them to accept the male definition of men that males are superior. Solonas also takes a jab at the females who comply with the world of men, calling them “Daddy’s Girls”. She explains how the future will consist of the abolition of men and Daddy’s Girls letting only SCUM women and males who go along with the new era live. The SCUM Manifesto was written with a hatred so intense, one could feel her words through the paper. Solanas does not hold back, saying things like “Men are a machine, a walking dildo”, “Every man, deep down, knows he is a worthless piece of shit”, and women have a prior right to existence over men.” The SCUM Manifesto should not be categorized as “feminism,” however I would say it is a part of the feminist movement as a whole.

WOW. Just wow. I had expected this text to possibly be a powerful feminist movement, but what I got was sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. There was so much to take in with this. But I guess it was kind of obvious with the acronym of the “Society of Cutting Up Men.” But there was even some sexism towards females as well in this. The author was almost putting men and women into their own little boxes and saying this is exactly how society is. While I do agree with some parts of her reasoning behind that, I just still didn’t understand why the author was so aggressive with her opinions.

I would honestly like to know what kind of trauma she has or what her relationship with her father is because it sounds like it isn’t positive. She talks about ‘approval-seeking Daddy’s girls’, which I think a lot of women would find that offensive but also pretty accurate. It makes me wonder if maybe the author has some sort of background in Psychology because I feel like she’s pretty spot on with some things, as well as wrong on some other. After reading this I wanted to do some research on her because I wanted to know what her background was like and how this text came about. Firstly, it was written in 1967 and published in 1968. That was also the same year that she shot and wounded Andy Warhol and attempted to shoot his manager, which I found to be a crazy piece of information. Apparently she was known as a radical feminist, but I would honestly argue that. In my eyes, feminism doesn’t try to destroy men and make them lesser than females, we just want to be equal, if that’s even possible. She did eventually turn herself into the police and was charged with multiple charges, including attempted murder. According to psychologists, it was later brought up that she may have been sexually abused by her alcoholic father in her early childhood. This caused a troubling adolescence for her, attacking a nun at her Catholic middle school, getting pregnant twice by the age of 15- which reportedly one pregnancy was by a relative. So she has a lot of trauma happening in her early years of life. I could really see how this would affect a person mentally and cause them to act out against men because it sounds like she was traumatized by a lot of male figures in her life. Of course this doesn’t excuse any actions acted out by her. I later read she did work in a psychology animal lab at the University of Maryland, so this could explain her background in psychology.

Overall I don’t know whether to sympathize for her or be scared of her because of this text. A lot of it is just too much and then learning about her past makes it worse.

Sources: https://www.biography.com/news/andy-warhol-valerie-solanas-shot Author: Tim Ott Date Published: March 1, 2019

S.C.U.M. Manifesto was written by Valerie Solanas and was published in 1967. The word S.C.U.M. stands for Society for Cutting Up Men. This declaration is a radical feminist publication as it argues that men destroyed the world. In the publication, it claims that women have to fix the problem that men have brought upon the world and to do this, an organization, called SCUM, needs to be formed. The goal for the organization would be to conquer over society and eradicate men.

It was not until 1968 that the novel became well known because Valerie Solanas attempted to murder Andy Warhol. Due to this attempt, a significant amount of attention was turned towards Solanas and S.C.U.M. Manifesto. There were people that supported Solanas’ views, but there were many others that saw the views to be extremely radical.

At the beginning of S.C.U.M. Manifesto, Solanas states that “the male is an incomplete female” due to having a Y chromosome. Solanas then goes onto saying that since men have a Y chromosome, this makes them “to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples”. From the start, I could tell that this publication was going to be an interesting read. Based on it being a forbidden text, I knew that Solanas was going to make claims that many see as controversial. After reading the publication, I understand why this publication caused chaos.

After I first read the title, S.C.U.M. Manifesto, and read the acronym, I immediately had a feeling about what the publication would be about. However, what did catch me off guard from this reading, was the end. I was not expecting SCUM to be an organization that Valerie Solanas wanted to be formed. At the end of the reading, after stating her thoughts on why men destroyed the world, Solanas talks about SCUM. The organization, like I said at the beginning, is about taking over society and getting rid of men.

This reading was definitely different from others that I have read. I also completely understand why there is so much controversy about this text. However, it was interesting to read a forbidden text that is by a female author since most of the ones I have read so far have been by men.

From reading the very first sentence of the SCUM Manifesto, you can tell this text is meant to be aggressive, and blatantly goes after every single man who has existed, and will exist. It was written by Valarie Solanas in 1965 and was first self-published in mimeograph form and was sold to women for $1 and men for $2.

The writing opens with Solanas stating that men are genetically deficient  this causes them to be emotionally limited, egocentric. and incapable of passion or genuine interaction. They obviously lack empathy, and are unable to relate to anything apart from their own physical sensations. One of the points she makes further in the text is that men spend their entire lives envying women and attempting to be female, which is the reasoning behind the constant fraternization and infatuation with women. Which in my mind goes against todays idea of feminism against the standards of toxic masculinity and the idea of femininity being weak that is seen throughout society. 

Some people have stated and analyzed the text as a parody or a satire, as a result of the exploration of Valerie Solanas’ mental state. She was close with Andy Warhol in the 60s and in a fear that he would’ve taken her work as his own shot him and a gallery assistant, nearly killing Warhol. At trial she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia but still stood trial to plead guilty and spend 3 years in prison for assault.

Theodore John Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber is a homegrown terrorist with an IQ of 167, who in an attempt to bring about a different society against an industrial revolution, conducted a campaign of bombings that killed 3 and wounded 23 for 17 years. 

Throughout his childhood researchers have taken note of a couple of events that might have contributed to the worsening of his mental state and ultimately the bombings. He was extremely smart and showed that when he was younger, but then was forced into hospital isolation as a child which psychologists think impacted his emotional development, and later in life is a part of an unethical experiment at Harvard at age 17 by Henry Murray, that is often described as abusive and extremely unethical by today’s standards. Kaczynski spent 200 hours in the study, lasting a total of three years and as a result, he has said that he didn’t think Murray’s experiments had a result on his life.

However, just looking at the experiment on a superficial level we can see how future actions mirror those of the experiment. at the time 17-year-old Kaczynski was told he was to write essays of his detailed beliefs and aspirations, these were then read by another student who would confront and belittle the author about their personal beliefs, in an extremely abusive psychological attack that continued for three years, and is now rumored to have been used as a part of the CIA’s Project MKUltra. 

In 1995 Kaczynski demanded the publishing of his 35,000-word essay titled “Industrial Society and Its Future”. Many psychologists have studied the work in connection to his mental state and have tried to break down the science behind human behavior and how our childhood and crucial moments of young adulthood form what we value as adults.

The Anarchist’s Cookbook was written by a 19 year old William Powell in the height of the counterculture era and the concern for the Vietnam war.  He saw himself and others like him as a part of the ‘silent majority’, being the group of people not in power but wanted societal/political change. He took it upon himself to expedite change for the silent majority and began to educate himself more and more after there was a rise in violence in the pacifist movements of the 60s, and over four years finished writing The Anarchist’s Cookbook.

The contents of the book cover his original intentions of the information, which includes drugs, electronics, and weapons. The foreword goes into Powell’s thoughts on why this text might be useful to the people which is a result of his view of the US declining into communism at the time period, so he saw the text as a necessary step needed to guide the people to their revolution, and to bring America back to where she was 200 years ago. 

One of the most interesting things about the book for me has to be the legal battles it has been through. At the time of publication an FBI memo described it as “one of the crudest, low-brow, paranoiac writing efforts ever attempted”, but later concluded it couldn’t be regulated due to an issue with limiting free speech and publication. However they do keep tabs on the book, in 2010 they released the information they had under the Freedom of Information Act, although it was mostly complaints as well as crimes that could have possibly been committed after reading but not even proven. 

This book was written by William Powell when he was only nineteen years old, also during the peak of anti-Vietnam War protests. I would like to start out with the meaning of anarchism, the idea about abolition of government and organization of society through a nonviolent approach. Although, within this book it contains many recipes or concepts that one may find extremely violent in nature. For example, there were heavy mentions of explosives and how to go about in making them if one ever wanted to do so. While this part is extremely alarming, I would like to go into the technology segment and talk about point in which the author may have had some validity within. One of them being the possibility of WWIII being fought over technology. This is highly plausible due to the fact that society is skyrocketing within this area, and it is seemingly only a matter of time before something goes awry. Something that really struck me as odd is the clear listing of drug recipes or even just the way in which they were talked about within this writing. Something that was brought up is the way in which drugs allow for someone to see the world freely, maybe without the lense of reality. It even talks about no more arrests for drugs, which is almost the complete opposite from today’s day and age in my opinion.

For my research paper, I would like to focus on literature post World War II. I am currently still debating on my question because of how broad it seems right now. The current research question I have right now: How was literature effected by World War II? Of course, I will need to become more specific by diving into the type of literature or literature in specific places. Wars that have occurred throughout the world’s existence have been one of the many sources for literature. During World War II, it was a struggle for literature to be published due to resources, but there was still a prominent amount of research published mainly for propaganda. However, the type of literature published after World War II varied.

Currently, I am working on basic research to gain some knowledge on my research question. Not all sources for this basic research are reliable sources such as Britannica and the Encyclopedia, but it is primarily used right now, as I said, to gain some knowledge. One way I aim to get my sources for this paper is using Google Scholar as it will provide me with credible sources. I also will be going to the library to get sources as well. For example, one source that I plan to use is The American Literature of War: The Civil War, World War I, and World War II by David Lundberg.  Another source I may potentially use is The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of World War II.

Currently, as shown above, I do not have an extensive list of sources to use, which is why I plan to gain knowledge of my topic first and then do more research using credible sources. So, to complete this paper, I will do more research online using Google Scholar and go to the library to find reliable and credible sources to use for this paper. After that, I will break down the sources to get the information I need while also analyzing so I can state my analysis in the paper. Then, an outline will be made on how I want to approach the order of this paper.

My potential conclusion for this paper (of course this is extremely broad) is that World War II had a significant impact on literature as it lead to an increase in discussing religion, impacted the type of literature that was published, and impacted the amount of literature completed in different countries.

I had only heard so much about this text before. For all I thought, it was just a step-by-step book. But upon even at first glance of the table of contents, it was much more than just a simple how-to. The introduction alone is a lot to take in. It gives us a glimpse of what anarchy is to the preface author. I would say it’s a pretty good introduction, in means of I think a summary. It talks a lot about nihilism which is the same as anarchism, according to the author.

I don’t really know what I expected, but this was not it. As college students, I think some people may use the information harmfully. But I really hope not. It’s a lot of recipes for disaster and illegal things. I again just really don’t know what to take from this text at all. I may end up coming back to this post after our class discussion to update.

Anarchism is the belief that the government should be abolished and that society should be based on voluntary cooperation without the use of violence. It is similar to Marxism, however there is a key difference between the two; Marxism focuses on the class struggle of the working-class against the capitalist means of production. On the other hand, Anarchism wants abolition of the state out of hand, since neither economic change nor the working-class seem to guarantee freedom and humanity. Both of these political philosophies can be found under the umbrella of Nihilism; the rejection of all moral and religious principles. Anarchism is less violent than the nihilistic people. The main aspect of anarchism is to draw attention more to the existence of the movement than to its ideas. In other words, they want the government to give in and be forced to recognize the movement. The term Anarchism has been sculpted throughout the years. Anarchy today is more about the state of mind and can be expressed as doing one’s own thing. The “Anarchist Cookbook” was written in 1971 by 19-year-old William Powell. This book can become more dangerous than it already is if placed in the wrong hands. Powell divides this 160 paged book into four chapters; the first one is titled Drugs, the second one is called Electronics, Sabotage, and Surveillance, the third chapter is titled Natural, Nonlethal, and Lethal Weapons, and the last chapter is called Explosives and Booby Traps. It is very obvious this book was written by an angsty teenager who did not do his fact checks. In the first chapter, he makes the mistake of adding in a false fact about how to get high off of a banana. The ill informed teenagers may believe this, try it out, and become disappointed while educated people know this does not work. Powell tries to inform people by writing this book, however he feeds them invalid instructions. Chapter two is all about strategy and tactics. He says here “Revolution must employ the maximum amount of planning and the minimum amount of violence and destruction.” (Powell 62). By saying this, it becomes clear that Powell does not associate with Nihilism. He makes another jab at nihilism in chapter three, “Nihilism is a childish answer to adult problems.” (Powell 78). This is ironic considering his last two chapters are about how to participate in combat and how to make explosives. Powell explains that chapter 3 is about weapons available for the individual and weapons that are used by the Military and police force. The reason for this is to inform the individual on the use of weapons if captured and to inform them on what they will be up against. He goes into detail about ways to use a knife and how to succeed in hand-to-hand combat. Chapter four, in my opinion, is what most people think about when they think about the “Anarchist Cookbook”. This is where he gives instructions on how to make explosives and bombs. Most of the research I have done about this book always includes this part in the first couple of sentences describing the book. 

The topic that I chose to research for my paper is Facebook and Instagram being banned in countries including North Korea, China, Iran, Russia, and many other countries. Some ideas I have for research questions are “How does not having social media affect the people of these countries that it is banned in?” or “Do all countries that have banned social media ban it for the same reason?” I’ve been looking into different websites on this topic and there are many to choose from. One that I found to be very informational consists of a long list of ten countries that have banned Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms. My research will also include the effects of social media on people in the United States and how millions of people depend on it in their everyday lives. I also will compare all these countries and find out if their governments are run in a similar way. The only prior knowledge I have on this topic is the banning of Instagram in Russia, but I do not know a lot of the details. Some potential conclusions that I could come to when researching and writing about this topic could be that these countries ban social media platforms to avoid sharing information and data with other countries. Another reason could be for governments to demonstrate their absolute control over their citizens. Overall, I am very interested to do further research on this topic and understand the reasoning behind banning certain social media platforms.

Reading Mein Kampf a couple of specific things surprised me, one of the major things being the number of times Hitler lied throughout the book. I never had thought he would have been truthful but just lies about history and his upbringing that were proven later and put in the footnotes was not what I had expected. The reference to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was also not something I expected, but that passage was definitely interesting to me, he brought up the situation of Esperanto as a language and referenced the head of the snake from the protocols several times.

Things that remind me of today goes back to the same passage where he mentions Esperanto and while what he says in the book was not a main point or a popular one at that, it echos a certain political argument of today about immigration and the issue of the US not having an official language and immigrants coming to the US and not speaking english. “as long as the jew has not become the master of others he speaks their language” 

Major themes that are presented through almost every chapter in his book are ones of Social Darwinism, stating the how the Aryan race is deserving of survival while the jewish are lucky to get what they have because they are just naturally inferior. National-Socialism is brought up a lot when Hitler refers to the german political structure as well as the political parties. He words it as socialism for us and only us, which feeds in to the further separation of the jewish people in the community.