>Fake tabloid obituary for James Williamson of Creation Books, lovingly made in the press’s own unique sick-joke spirit. Creation Books was a controversial and hugely influential British underground press in the 90s and 2000s, that published a whole slew of extremely unique fringe literature. Sadly, his legacy ended up being badly tainted by long-running financial disputes with a large number of the authors he published.

Full text of the post:

>Anonymous asked:

>As per your last post:
> [including a wide assortment of scumbags (ie. neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, Communists,]
WHAT. I AM SORRY. WHAT.
THINK COMMUNISTS ARE SCUMBAGS?
YOU
DO
WHAT.

Babe, wake up. I'm about to lose like half of my followers 👇 💀

So. Let me put it this way:

No, I do not think every random person who calls themself a communist is a "scumbag." A lot of them are reacting to very real, very serious issues in our society: grotesque inequality, exploitation, war, rise of demagogues, the failures of capitalism, etc. Those are the same sorts of things I'm concerned about.

But yes, I also have very serious problems with Marxist-Leninist politics in particular - and they are not just superficial ones.

The simple fact is that Marxist-Leninist systems have historically been profoundly hostile to everything I stand for: pluralism, democracy, human rights, civil liberties - and especially freedom of speech. They do not generally treat those things as sacred protections. They treat them as expendable bourgeois obstacles that may be discarded if they interfere with the revolution.

But once you decide that speech is only good when it furthers the government's ideological goals, then dissent stops being dissent and becomes "counterrevolution." Criticism becomes sabotage. Opposition becomes treason.

It never stops at purely political speech either. Religious media, erotic material, foreign music (like jazz), art that was too avant-garde or experimental, and often queer content - all of it was denounced as bourgeois, decadent, feudal, formalist, reactionary, or otherwise ideologically unhealthy and censored accordingly. Even very "inoffensive" media could find itself suppressed if it failed to actively promote the values the regime wanted art to promote.

And because these censorship systems were often broad, preventive, and opaque, works could also be banned for reasons that were vague, inconsistent, opportunistic, or simply hard to pin down from the outside. And this was true in the Soviet Union, Maoist China, Cuba, Albania, East Germany, and much of the Soviet-controlled Eastern Bloc more broadly.

So my objection is not "wanting a fairer society makes you evil." Obviously not.

My objection is that many people are drawn to communist ideology for understandable moral reasons without fully reckoning with how easily, and how often, its logic curdles into tyranny and repression.

[...]

You know, it's strange. I normally just spout off my opinions about any topic I'm passionate about, not worrying too much about what others think.

But today I really hope people understand what I'm trying to say.

Full text of the post:

>Anonymous asked:

>As per your last post:
> [including a wide assortment of scumbags (ie. neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, Communists,]
WHAT. I AM SORRY. WHAT.
THINK COMMUNISTS ARE SCUMBAGS?
YOU
DO
WHAT.

Babe, wake up. I'm about to lose like half of my followers 👇 💀

So. Let me put it this way:

No, I do not think every random person who calls themself a communist is a "scumbag." A lot of them are reacting to very real, very serious issues in our society: grotesque inequality, exploitation, war, rise of demagogues, the failures of capitalism, etc. Those are the same sorts of things I'm concerned about.

But yes, I also have very serious problems with Marxist-Leninist politics in particular - and they are not just superficial ones.

The simple fact is that Marxist-Leninist systems have historically been profoundly hostile to everything I stand for: pluralism, democracy, human rights, civil liberties - and especially freedom of speech. They do not generally treat those things as sacred protections. They treat them as expendable bourgeois obstacles that may be discarded if they interfere with the revolution.

But once you decide that speech is only good when it furthers the government's ideological goals, then dissent stops being dissent and becomes "counterrevolution." Criticism becomes sabotage. Opposition becomes treason.

It never stops at purely political speech either. Religious media, erotic material, foreign music (like jazz), art that was too avant-garde or experimental, and often queer content - all of it was denounced as bourgeois, decadent, feudal, formalist, reactionary, or otherwise ideologically unhealthy and censored accordingly. Even very "inoffensive" media could find itself suppressed if it failed to actively promote the values the regime wanted art to promote.

And because these censorship systems were often broad, preventive, and opaque, works could also be banned for reasons that were vague, inconsistent, opportunistic, or simply hard to pin down from the outside. And this was true in the Soviet Union, Maoist China, Cuba, Albania, East Germany, and much of the Soviet-controlled Eastern Bloc more broadly.

So my objection is not "wanting a fairer society makes you evil." Obviously not.

My objection is that many people are drawn to communist ideology for understandable moral reasons without fully reckoning with how easily, and how often, its logic curdles into tyranny and repression.

[...]

You know, it's strange. I normally just spout off my opinions about any topic I'm passionate about, not worrying too much about what others think.

But today I really hope people understand what I'm trying to say.