Tuesday 23 January 2007

3:2 Should the Inquisition and Media Censorship be re-introduced?

All this is a good start, but much more is needed. When we faced the terrorism of the witches we had a much more tightly controlled situation. The Holy Office of the Inquisition had to licence every book or article that was published in the Christian World. There was a list of banned books. Anyone found with such a book in their house could be imprisoned and tortured. Writers and publishers were imprisoned and spies observed what was being said in drinking places and universities.

Some people think that this was just a medieval system. But when the philosopher the Baron de Montesquieu wrote his works in the middle of the eighteenth century, he had to publish them outside France to avoid the censor, and he recounts how he had nightmares at the thought that Inquisition spies might pounce on him. If it was a good enough system to last four hundred years, until a couple of centuries ago, it is good enough for today.

Indeed, the techniques never really ceased. These were the methods renewed and refined by Joseph Stalin in his iron control and elimination of millions of his citizens. In this current menace of your times, we would strongly recommend that you set up a ‘Czar’ (we believe this is the fashionable term in Britain, a ‘Chief’ in America perhaps), something similar to the Inquisitor General. They should have almost unbounded power in the areas of thought and media. They should co-ordinate the battle against contrary messages being aired. They should head a new bureau of thought police, the successor to the Holy Office of the Inquisition. They could monitor universities, schools, the media.

This was always done in conventional wars in the past in some way or another, and now that you are at war again, it is an urgent necessity. The papers are particularly to be scrutinized and their sources should not be protected, nor their editors have independence, for who knows what their links with the Evil One is.

After all, who do these critics and questioners think that they are? You are appointed by Heaven, not by your population. The people should trust and revere you. Their doubts, inspired by the Devil, are not only treasonable but sacrilegious. This is beginning to be realized. We heard a Russian minister rightly remark of some foreign diplomat who dared to question his government’s annihilation of the people’s of one of its satellites and the predictable backlash, that to discuss this policy was ‘blasphemous’. The State had spoken, God’s will was revealed, and you should bow down.

1 comment:

Gabriel Andrade said...

The "Patriot Act", one of Bush's enduring legacy, is perhaps the most emblematic example of XXI Cent. Inquisition