F-451

FAHRENHEIT 451

Original novel Fahrenheit 451 by author Ray Bradbury &

Original film Fahrenheit 451 by Director: François Truffaut

Ray Bradbury ‘s prescient story Fahrenheit 451 is of a future dystopian, or more appropriately named Fascistic society.

That occurs not immediately as in a coup but by a gradual and developing erosion, of all of societies social considerations and values. Not necessarily as an overtly creeping fascism but paradoxically, by way of an apparent appreciation of other peoples fears and prejudices. It may emanate from a consideration that a publication, could cause offence to a particular community or social group. The ultimate consequence of 'Societal Pressure', is when the book is considered offensive. And it is then declared that it "should be banned, by any right minded individual and/or society."

It's oft declared by liberal minded folks that, "That kind of thing can never happen here. That our society is a long way from degenerating to such a nadir, after all we would never let it happen" It could after all only happen somewhere else in a less developed society, and under somebody else’s religion "certainly not our own".

But Ray Bradbury did not have to look to some unimagined future planet, or race to picture such a possibility. Our own small blue planet's history is replete with all too many, horrific examples of man's inhumanity to humanity and animal kind in general.

The perpetrators though certainly not exclusively, being all to frequently of the Judeo/ Christian persuasion. To such an extent that Book Burning, has become something of a religious tradition.

When it becomes embeded into a religion's Holy Book, then bigots have not simply an excuse to enact their bigotry. But they are able to declare their actions as, "their God given right".

Book Burning

A True Christian Tradition

Saint Dominic and the Albigenses (1480).

A painting by Pedro Berruguete depicting Dominic, founder of the Inquisition, checking books for heresy with a trial by fire.

The Sermon of Saint Paul at Ephesus (1649). This painting by Eustache Le Sueur depicts Paul’s conversion of Turkish sorcerers.

“A Bookseller Burnt at Avignon in France, for selling Bibles in the French Tongue, with some of them tied round his Neck.”

The Christian Bible in its King James edition enshrines
Book Burning into its canon,

The Acts of the Apostles

19:19; Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them before all men: and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver.

19:20; So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed.

Such doggerel is not accidental as the Christian Bible, and ALL such religious Holy Books. Are not Holy Manifestation’s bearing the words of Holy Deities, but of wholly human origin authored by man. They are written by political apologists, to spread the creed of human society.

Earthly examples of Book Burning Societies including of 20^th & 21^st Century origin

Depiction of Emperor Qin Shi Huang and the Burning of books and burying of scholars.

In 1642, the Puritan Parliament voted that The Book of Sports ‘Should be burnt at the site of the Cheapside Cross’
The Book Of Sports laid down the pastimes permitted on the Sabbath, during the reigns of James I and Charles I: they included archery, dancing, ‘leaping, vaulting, or other such harmless recreation’ together with ‘May-games, Whitsun-ales and Morris dances and the setting up of May-Poles’.

NAZI GERMANY

Cultural incineration: 80 years since
Nazi book burnings

NAZI Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels (at podium) Praises students and members of the SA for their efforts to destroy books deemed
"Un-German" during the book burning at Berlin's Opernplatz. Germany, 10^th May 1933.

Students and members of the SA unload books deemed "Un-German" during the book burning in Berlin. The banner reads: "German students march against the un-German spirit." Berlin, Germany, 10 May 1933.

Books and writings deemed "Un-German" are burned at the Opernplatz. Berlin, Germany, 10th May 1933. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Md.

Books were collected for weeks ahead of the burnings. On the evening of 10th May 1933, some 70,000 people gathered at the Opernplatz in Berlin. Students had carted over 20,000 books to the public square, including works by famous German authors like Heinrich Mann, Erich Maria Remarque and Joachim Ringelnatz. The Nazi student leader Herbert Gutjahr held a contemptuous speech. "We have turned our actions

against the un-German spirit. I turn everything un-German over to the fire," he cried. The seething bonfire below him was already

swallowing up thousands of books as the 23-year-old threw another handful of volumes into the flames.

{Erich Kästner}

1933 marked the beginning of a mass exodus among Germany's intellectuals and artists. The nation that had often been admired abroad as the land of poets and thinkers had made it clear to its most talented minds that they were no longer welcome. Writers Thomas Mann, Erich Maria Remarque and Lion Feuchtwanger were a few of the many intellectuals who fled Nazi Germany early.

Mann, whose books landed in the bonfires on May 10, spoke to his fellow Germans on English radio broadcaster BBC later during the war.

"It's a voice of warning - warning you is the only service that a German like me can do for you today," he said.

Authors who didn't emigrate, like Erich Kästner, were banned from publishing their works in Germany. By 1934, more than 3,000 publications had already been censored.

The Horrible, Oppressive History of Book Burning in America

President James Madison ordered the invasion of Canada.

An American army reached Toronto and burnt the Parliament

and its legislative library.

Britain responded by advancing on Washington, from where the President had fled. On 24th August 1814 British troops set fire to the US Capitol and the embryonic Library of Congress, which had at that time 3,000 volumes and 53 maps 700 of which had been bought in London.

When the British-American War broke out in 1812, USA

Insignia for the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, founded by Anthony Comstock in 1873 and disbanded in 1950. The group championed the Banning and Burning of literary works on moral grounds.

Catholic school students burn thousands of comic books in Binghamton, New York (1948)

In 1948 the County of Los Angeles outlawed the sale of crime comics to minors, and in Spencer, West Virginia, schoolchildren collected 2,000 comics and set fire to them using a burning Superman comic. Other schools soon followed suit. In 1954, Dr Frederic Wertham, a psychiatrist, published a book arguing that Superman promoted fascism. Batman and Robin homosexuality and Wonder Woman sadomasochism. There was another wave of comic burning. The result was a publishers’ code restricting comics.