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KulakRevolt  10mo ago (anarchonomicon.com)   Edited 10mo ago   4086 thread views

The Anarchonomicon REAL Banned Book List

anarchonomicon.com

Regime-banned books are in school libraries and on indigo bookshelves at eye level for children.

REAL banned books are often decades out of print, going for hundreds of dollars used on eBay, they've been disappeared by publishers and distributors in spite of interest and demand. Others have authors who've died or been imprisoned for their ideas, yet more have been removed from city or university-wide library systems so that their "Misinformation" and "Lies" do not poison impressionable scholars.

Yet more are suppressed algorithmically, not appearing on the author's wikipedia page and not appearing in Google search if you type the author and "book" or "memoirs"... but only appearing when you already know the full title of the work (try this yourself: Type in "Pinochet Memoirs", and then type in "Pinochet: A journey through a life")

Yet others are explicitly banned, some to the point where a mere PDF on your hard drive can result in a decade-long sentence... IN THE UNITED KINGDOM, NEW ZEALAND, and AUSTRIA.

This has been a massive project. over 200 titles on the full list and 10,000 words in my "Cursory" survey.

Let me take you on a journey into the heart of the forbidden

UPDATE: Also Checkout My Addendum to The Real Banned Book list on Holocaust Revisionist Liturature

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Another digression about copyright law.

You may know about it, but it needs repeating that architect of modern extortionary mafia cartel intellectual property business was no one else than one Robert Maxwell.

He was known also for other things than advancing scientific knowledge, you may have heard about him.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science

As Maxwell had predicted, competition didn’t drive down prices. Between 1975 and 1985, the average price of a journal doubled. The New York Times reported that in 1984 it cost $2,500 to subscribe to the journal Brain Research; in 1988, it cost more than $5,000. That same year, Harvard Library overran its research journal budget by half a million dollars.

Scientists occasionally questioned the fairness of this hugely profitable business to which they supplied their work for free, but it was university librarians who first realised the trap in the market Maxwell had created. The librarians used university funds to buy journals on behalf of scientists. Maxwell was well aware of this. “Scientists are not as price-conscious as other professionals, mainly because they are not spending their own money,” he told his publication Global Business in a 1988 interview. And since there was no way to swap one journal for another, cheaper one, the result was, Maxwell continued, “a perpetual financing machine”. Librarians were locked into a series of thousands of tiny monopolies. There were now more than a million scientific articles being published a year, and they had to buy all of them at whatever price the publishers wanted.

UPDATE: Also Checkout My Addendum to The Real Banned Book list on Holocaust Revisionist Liturature

I think this is on the mark, and in some ways it is even more dubious than your "the building collapsed, how would you prove a diabolical mass execution immediately before the collapse." It would be that plus:

You mentioned your interest is piqued, the best overview that gives a fairer representation of both sides you will find anywhere else is a Revisionist work published in 2020 called Debating the Holocaust: A New Look at Both Sides. If you read 1 published Revisionist work to understand the modern position, it should probably be that one although it's a prolific body of work and there are many other works as well.

That's a work geared toward a general audience, but the works which are most demonstrative of the rigor of Revisionist research are mostly done by Carlo Mattogno. Although they are much more specialized and technical they tend to be too dense for a casual reader, i.e. Auschwitz: The Case for Sanity (2010).

These are books that can no longer be found anywhere after the publisher was ejected from all printers and distributors on the heels of the recent UN Resolution.

I’ve always been taken aback by how little Americans know, or read, from the other side of the civil rights era… Indeed trying to come up with this list one could be forgiven for thinking the Pro-Segregation side wrote nothing in defense of Jim Crow, so little comes up when trying to google… You’d be wrong.

This is silly. Most Americans have probably never read anything from either side of the civil rights era. What proportion of the American populace do you think has actually read, say, Foner's Reconstruction or The Strange Career of Jim Crow? What proportion could even have named such books? The Dunning School is definitely not some kind of hidden knowledge, any university class on Reconstruction will cover it; admittedly usually with some prejudice, but not unjustifiably so. Dunning's work is available quite inexpensively online and will be in most university libraries.

Every single American has read noted civil rights propoganda "To Kill a Mockingbird" in school, as well as King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail"

Hell I'm not American and both were assigned texts multiple times in the course of my "Education"

I think this varies regionally. I went to public school in the south during the 2000s and never was assigned those or any other books related to the civil rights movement. Maybe saw the "I have a dream" speech on a TV broadcast.

Sure, but those are both very different kinds of texts to any of the works of the Dunning school, which is why Foner or C. Vann Woodward are the more apt points of comparison. Now admittedly there isn't an anti-civil rights equivalent to To Kill a Mockingbird as prominent as that book, but that is probably quite literally the only book most Americans could name on the subject. So it is 1-0 to civil rights, but that's not a huge discrepancy really.

Do you count Civil War era works like Uncle Tom’s Cabin?

We also had Huck Finn, The Color Purple and miscellaneous poetry a la Maya Angelou. One of my later classes did Invisible Man, too.

Does the Invisible Man even count as civil rights propaganda in any way? Sure, the narrator experiences loads of poverty and racism, but the pro-civil-rights reformists, communists and black nationalists he encounters don't exactly come off in a good light, either.

I was thinking of the general category of civil rights commentary. The bar for kulak to label something propaganda is pretty low.

(note: this post has an aggressive tone, because, well, your posts do too! I'd still love to be corrected if I get any, or especially many, details wrong)

REAL Banned Books are decades out of print with publishers who refuse to rerelease them despite used copies going for hundreds of dollars due to pent-up demand

The actual books you list later 'go for hundreds of dollars' because there's very little volume, demand, or supply, so the 'spread' is extraordinarily wide and the market is very illiquid. Hundreds of dollars is the ask, not the bid. If there were hundreds of bids at hundreds of dollars, independent reprinters - think people like dropshippers - would just print a run of low-quality copies and sell them. The modern economy is quite decentralized for low and medium volume items, anyone can start selling these 'banned books' if there's demand. And, indeed, various far-right individuals have started selling old right-wing books on the internet as that movement has grown! I think it is extremely unreasonable to use 'this book costs hundreds of dollars on amazon' as evidence for a ban, when it's also evidence for 'not many people want to buy this. There are so many out-of-print books that cost hundreds of dollars.

Wikipedia editors, and librarians slowly remove and suppress references to the work that they increasingly become impossible to even be aware of.

As far as I can tell, this straightforwardly does not happen in the present day. Can you please provie a single example of this? I feel like you're just making that up because it fits a narrative. Wikipedia loves talking about things like the Turner Diaries and Mein Kampf (and, yeah, how bad they are). Various leftist academics I follow on twitter just love digging up an old and forgotten far-right thinker to discuss.

and for an even rarer subset, mere possession can result in years if not decades in prison even in countries all the indexes and US diplomats proudly label “Full Liberal Democracies”.

... Yeah, some non-Ameican countries are terrible about free speech. I think these books are the ones it's reasonable to describe is banned. As you say, though that's "an even rarer subset".

If the book is truly effectively banned, if the post-totalitarian state has truly effected its disappearance, it will not appear anywhere one might search for a forbidden work, even in mention. It will have merely disappeared… as if it were never written

I don't think this is slightly true for any of the books you mention!

I remember digging a copy of James Burnham’s The Machiavellians

... . James Burnham "chaired the New York University Department of Philosophy" and "was an editor and a regular contributor to William F. Buckley's conservative magazine National Review on a variety of topics". The Machiavellians is in his wikipedia infobox under 'notable works'.

(you said on twitter) Burnham was $700 on Amazon 8 years ago… the fact he’s back in print now after a major effort does not change the fact he was disapeared

He was not disappeared! People became less interested in him, so his work was printed less. Then people became more interested, so it was printed again.

I glanced at the "full list" image, and the first thing that I spotted was a book by Jimmy Carter - Palestine, Peace not Aparthied. A US President? ... Really? I found some controversy over the book, but was unable to find something that seems to be a "ban" as you'd describe above.

So ya, I’m already trapped like Johnny Depp in this oldest and most dangerous of obsessions

On War, Mein Kampf, Various books by nazis

Not currently banned, widely available for purchase, on reading lists for university history courses, etc. Less popular ones than Mein Kampf are harder to find because they're ... less popular, not becuase they're bannd. It feels like you're mixing "currently banned by our post-totalitarian regime" and "banned in the past right after a war by a state significantly less liberal by current standards than we are" into the same "vibe".

David Irving’s Hitler’s War

When was this banned or suppressed? Note that it has an incredibly long wikipedia article dedicated to it, discussing it and subsequent rebuttals. Remember what you claimed:

Wikipedia editors, and librarians slowly remove and suppress references to the work that they increasingly become impossible to even be aware of.

This is not happening.

... In general, this seems like a quite decent list of "divisive, controversial, taboo, and sometimes banned" books. It is just not a list of banned books. You don't even attempt to justify the "banned" status of most books on the list. I get that wildly exaggerating your claims is your whole "thing", but I think in the very long run it hurts you and your positions more than it helps, by fractionating your potential audience such that the exact people you want to reach - people who are extremely smart and mostly disagree with you but are interested in hearing you out - are put off by your work. And in the 'barberpole model' of culture, this means you're missing out on converting people at the top of the pole, and everything flows down from them. Also, it means you'll end up believing a bunch of incorrect things and developing ideas carelessly, which might end up meaning you focus on things like the aesthetics of historical warfare and romanticizing the idea of looking sexy as a moral value while your progressive enemies keep their eye on the ball and obsess over and gain increasing control over the most powerful technology of the century and maybe all of history. Hypothetically.

I will say, this post is a great window into how those unreliable, huge 4chan political image collage memes are made.

It is rather revealing that the counter to the "banned" books section at the local bookstore (which clearly aren't banned, they're right there!) is the right wing list of REAL banned books... That also aren't banned.

so many out-of-print books that cost hundreds of dollars.

Exactly. Not only that, there are thousands upon thousands of works that you can't buy anywhere online even if you had hundreds of dollars to spend, the vast majority of which are thoroughly anodyne academic works.

Here is the wikipedia page of Augusto Pinochet, a world-historic head of state, it is quite extensive

Please tell me the title of His memoirs from them. Or any of the dozens of works he published.

there have been persistent campaigns to remove Irvings works from libraries and the pressure on used books stores especially is intense (I've spoken with multiple used booksellers who say this)

This was my experience TIME AFTER TIME researching this list. Notably every regime-friendly author had an uncontroversial "Works" section. but as soon as you get into people prominent for holocaust denial, or alleged war crimes... suddenly Wikipedia's very reticent to direct you to further reading... Which is unsurprising given I remember all the campaigns and hand-wringing by "experts on radicalization" that Youtube, Google, and Wikipedia were leading people down rabbit holes of hate... as opposed to what they did after trump won which was scrub all right wing material such that history teachers were complaining, (You struggle to find a single complete speech from Hitler on youtube anymore, let alone revisionist documentaries)

This happened on Amazon at the peak of the trump and post j6 years with Scores of books being pulled from Amazon and removed from kindle, i found a list of such works and included many in my list.

I also I note you don't mention the works later on... which Carry criminal sentences. (Read the piece and skip down to "How-To Guides of Horror"

You see it's like the Iceberg meme it has layers.

One is just "Oh Risque" I'd never heard of that, weird it's somehow buried in all discussion of the matter, and another has gotten people decades in prison in the UK for merely having a pdf

His memoirs

"anarchist" who sees long dead penny ante dictator as divine being? Why not, point of real free speech is the opportunity to hear all voices!

Or any of the dozens of works he published.

If it proves anything, it proves that Pinochet memes are just garbage memes and no one really gives a fuck about El Presidente.

Any shit tier Japanese hentai manga is pirated and put online with fan made English (and Russian and Chinese and Korean) translation in few days after publication, for free, only from pure fannish devotion.

The Marxists had extensive online library of their classics as long as Internet was a thing.

The archive was created in 1990 by a person — known only by their Internet tag, Zodiac — who started archiving Marxist texts by transcribing the works of Marx and Engels into E-text, starting with the Communist Manifesto. In 1993 the accumulated text was posted on a gopher site at csf.colorado.edu. Volunteers joined and helped spread and mirror the main archive.

Where are Pinochet's fans? Why aren't they preserving and spreading gospel of their guru? Either they do not exist, or they are completely useless.

Even Pinochet himself didn't GAF. He could order his collected works to be translated to major world languages and distributed world wide to enlighten all mankind.

ALBANIA did it. No excuse for Chile.

Anyway, in age of internet, all this complaining that "banned books" are not printed by anyone is as obsolete as steam locomotive.

Do you think there is some obscure but important book that should be available to the world?

Put it on libgen.

You personally.

In the worst case, potato phone copy made in library.

Yes, many libraries today do allow photography. And even if they do not, perk of being anarchist is that you do not have to ask for permission.

It is not hard, there are people with nothing than little money and university library card who are doing it in their free time, these people made libgen into what it is.

Information does not want to be free.

Autistic obssessives want information to be free.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

edit: links, links, links linked up properly

"anarchist" who sees long dead penny ante dictator as divine being? Why not, point of real free speech is the opportunity to hear all voices!

This seems extremely petty. There is an underlying principle of free speech, here, and the desire to encounter the speech of another is in no way an endorsement or worship of the other. Come on, really?!

I read him as referring to the use of the capitalized "He", which is generally only done for divine beings. You could also attribute the He to Kulak's intentionally strange writing style.

Your need to make things personal is noted.

For reference, I tried to track down the english translation of Pinochet's memoirs...

Not a single public library or university sytem within 1000miles of me has them... Lots of memoirs by communists about "Living under Pinochete" or "memoirs of a Bicyclist who disapeared in Pinochet's Chile" But somehow not the Memoirs of the Dictator they wring their hands about.

You rage that I'm right about major works by world leaders having been disappeared is revealing. The fact you're offended by me pointing it out and desperately need to grasp that these aren't "real banned books" when you have no problem with the barnes and noble displays of "the handmaid's tale" and "to kill a mockingbird" is doubly revealing.

You're not upset that I haven't personally tracked these down and put them on libgen, you're upset that I've surfaced them to 10s of thousands of people, and now someone with access to UTexas or UPenn library system (the only two places I could find copies) will.

Your need

You rage

you're upset

hey, turn it down a couple notches. This is getting close to personal attack territory, we don't allow those here.

He made it personal first, and implied that if I didn't drive 5000 kms to one of the 5 universities (I've looked into this at great effort) that had copies without credentials of my own and then illegally digitized a book I'd have to break in to access, that I don't believe what I say. (as if that's an optimal use of limited time for illegal activity)

That's personal.

He knows damned well that what he said was an absurd personal attack and escalation. And I'm not going to play the game where I pretend to not notice I've been insulted.

I remained vastly more civil resisting the temptation to swear or level insults as he did. But I'm not going to pretend we're having an abstract 3rd person discussion of Ideas when my interlocutor has already insulted me, imputed disingenuity, and already made it personal and second person.

After mod discussion, we're bumping the original mod harrumphing into an actual warning, which seems entirely appropriate to me. If you think someone is being rude, report them. You've been here long enough to know how this works, sir.

For what it's worth, I'll second @self_made_human below; I think your hostility meter is set a bit light. I can see how you'd read it as an attack, but the solution is to keep your cool and report, not break out the flamethrower.

For what it's worth, @Eetan, you should tone it down too.

Fair...

Ya I overreacted. This discussion is coming at me from 3-4 platforms, and I attributed to @Eetan alot of my frustration from lower effort, more bad faith posters elsewhere.

Apologies for that.

Ok, my apology for being too confrontational. As you may noticed, I am not Pinochet's greatest fan.

Good luck in your hunt for Pinochet's missing books.

My explanation why are they missing from libgen is not because they are censored, but because no one bothered to upload them there.

And my prediction is, once the books are found, they will turn to be boring wooden ghostwritten propaganda, no brilliant insights or important secrets.

On libgen you can find works by George Lincoln Rockwell, Francis Parker Yockey, David Ernest Duke, William Luther Pierce, Matthew Hale, Revilo Pendleton Oliver and rest of the White Nationalist/Neo-Nazi crew. Far more controversial books than anything Pinochet might have to say.

BTW, is there any documented case of libgen censoring content and deleting uploaded books (except pictorial child porn ofc)?

edit: links corrected again

He made it personal first, and implied that if I didn't drive 5000 kms to one of the 5 universities (I've looked into this at great effort) that had copies without credentials of my own and then illegally digitized a book I'd have to break in to access, that I don't believe what I say. (as if that's an optimal use of limited time for illegal activity)

Leaving aside who made what personal, to a mildly curious but not particularly invested bystander like me, it is not at all obvious that @Eetam expected you to have to go to those lengths go find a copy. Sure, he could be a bit more polite about asking you to put your paperbacks where your mouth is, but unless he wishes to clarify otherwise, I don't see that level of hostility in response as warranted Kulak.

You rage that I'm right about major works by world leaders having been disappeared is revealing. The fact you're offended by me pointing it out and desperately need to grasp that these aren't "real banned books" when you have no problem with the barnes and noble displays of "the handmaid's tale" and "to kill a mockingbird" is doubly revealing.

How do you know he doesn't have an aversion to such farcical displays? Where's the rage? He's trying to show you that a lot of the books described as banned are only not available because nobody can be arsed to track them down, not even their nominal supporters.

You're not upset that I haven't personally tracked these down and put them on libgen, you're upset that I've surfaced them to 10s of thousands of people, and now someone with access to UTexas or UPenn library system (the only two places I could find copies) will.

I really don't see a reason to say that, it seems weird that he would complain about you sharing the other books while simultaneously telling you to put them up on the best piracy site for literature. Why make that assumption?

Both of you should a take a breather, please, you're both regulars in good standing, albeit with quirks, and hopefully you can sort the rest of it out yourselves. More politely and with charity.

Please tell me the title of His memoirs from them. Or any of the dozens of works he published.

Okay, here are 'any' of the dozens of works he published:

Pinochet was publicly known as a man with a lack of culture and this image was reinforced by the fact that he also portrayed himself as a common man with simple ideas.[163] He was also known for being reserved, sharing little about his opinions or feelings.[163] Before wresting power from Allende, Pinochet had written two books, Geopolítica (1968) and Campaña de Tarapacá (1972), which established him as a major figure in Chile's military literature.[163] In Geopolítica, Pinochet plagiarized his mentor general Gregorio Rodríguez Tascón by using paragraphs from a 1949 conference presentation of Rodríguez without attributing them to him.[164][165] Rodríguez had previously lectured Pinochet and René Schneider and Carlos Prats in geography and geopolitics. In contrast to the two latter Pinochet was not an outstanding student but his persistence and interest in geopolitics made Rodríguez assume the role as his academic mentor.[165] Rodríguez granted Pinochet a slot as assistant lecturer in geopolitics and in geography. According to Rodríguez, Pinochet would have been particularly impressed by his lectures on The Art of War.[165] Pinochet would later succeed Rodríguez in the geopolitics and geography chair.[165]

I was not immediately able to find the title of his memoir, but I think that's reasonable, given wikipedia is hardly perfect, Pinochet's life has a lot of stuff to cover, and you're able to cherrypick. And, yes, this might be an excessively negative tone (I'm not sure without checking if it's true or not), but as I noted above, there's a difference between writing about something in a biased way and actively suppressing it. I'm claiming the latter isn't happening.

there have been persistent campaigns to remove Irvings works from libraries

There have also been persistent campaigns to remove the fake-banned books about transgender and gay stuff from libraries. I agree that this does not make those books banned, but I apply the same standard for Irving.

and the pressure on used books stores especially is intense (I've spoken with multiple used booksellers who say this)

I mean, it's still available on the used book websites. That's not a ban, that's just the culture war, which we're all aware of.

This was my experience TIME AFTER TIME researching this list. Notably every regime-friendly author had an uncontroversial "Works" section. but as soon as you get into people prominent for holocaust denial, or alleged war crimes... suddenly Wikipedia's very reticent to direct you to further reading

Sure, so a specific example would be nice (other than pinochet, which wasn't super convincing)? My guess is wikipedia's coverage is spotty and random, and you're just not being careful about inferring when people are secretly trying to hide things from you, and it's very easy to choose evidence from randomness to support any point.

This happened on Amazon at the peak of the trump and post j6 years with Scores of books being pulled from Amazon and removed from kindle, i found a list of such works and included many in my list.

I agree that's bad, I don't think it's a "ban" because I can still find those books on google books, abebooks (which is owned by amaon!), etc. Also they're all available for free on various places on the net. And more importantly that's still a small minority of the books on your list.

I also I note you don't mention the works later on... which Carry criminal sentences. (Read the piece and skip down to "How-To Guides of Horror"

I did.

and for an even rarer subset, mere possession can result in years if not decades in prison even in countries all the indexes and US diplomats proudly label “Full Liberal Democracies”.

... Yeah, some non-Ameican countries are terrible about free speech. I think these books are the ones it's reasonable to describe is banned.** As you say, though that's "an even rarer subset".**

You already have some material on this theme, so here's another potential lead. On the basis that owning books was the basis for this spurious imprisonment of a non-terrorist under terrorism offences in the UK, looking up what books he was imprisoned for owning (in addition to the Anarchist Cookbook, which is already listed) should contribute a few new additions.

For LGBT rights and "gay extremism", I suggest something tangentially related in Larry Kramer. Celebrated at the time and yet also wildly controversial, and probably something that LGBT rights groups would rather be forgotten now due to his scathing criticism of gay promiscuity. However, I am not sure if anything he written counts as a banned book. Faggots was alledgedly banned from a gay bookstore, but I haven't been able to follow the source for that.

As for near-future bannings, I wonder if Giorgio Agamben's works will end up on the chopping block after he dared to apply Foucault's ideas of Biopower to the sacred cow of covid restrictions.

I have always wanted to read Bruce Edwards Ivins book in the 2001 anthrax attacks, which has been completely impossible to track down. For this who are unaware, he was probably responsible for them but I would still enjoy reading his defense. I have no idea if the book is actually coherent, he had numerous mental health problems

Possibly an unpopular opinion, but I hope you dive into the censored paedophile books more, because it's the once instance I know of where the left completely wiped their own literature from our collective memory, rather than their opponents'. Der Spiegel has whole issues deleted from their archive because they got ahead of themselves trying to get on the right side of history on the liberation of (sexy) children issue.

It's also topical because a lot of the same logic is now returning to the bleeding edge of leftism under the name of "family abolition," and people should be familiar with it.

Also you really need to read Lolita before you get old. Humbert's vanity and fear of aging and death is fucking hilarious when you read it as a kid, but hits hard once you notice your hair starting to thin...

Will look into both.

This is one of those things where everyone says "You should look into this" But no one says they have a recommendation.

Part of the reason South Africa is so prominent on the full list (the image file) is lots of white Africans are very keen to recommend stuff

Yeah, unfortunately you're not likely to get many people going "as a gay paedophile, here's my essential reading list." Maybe @komm-nach-unteralterbach could help if he's still around?

One of the only ones I'm really aware of is the novel Josephine Mutzenbacher, by the same guy who wrote Bambi of all things. It spent a lot of time on various censorship lists and was the center of decades of court battles over the German index of harmful media. It's now unbanned and celebrated by "gender and sex researchers," indicating some changing attitudes.

But there's a host of other stuff out there you hear whispers of, published by the UK Paedophile Information Exchange, the german Krumme13, and apparently every French philosophy department ever.

I don't really post here much (or even browse, so I guess it's a fortunate coincidence that I happened to click this particular thread and scroll down today as I wasn't even logged in to see any notifications), but since you've shown me the respect of specifically invoking me as someone of interest on this subject, I will respond as best I can.

To be clear, I am by no means an expert in 60s/70s experimentation in "free love" pedophilia, though I am certainly aware that it existed and was reasonably prominent at times in Germany in particular I believe (as though I don't recall the source, I do remember reading about various "free love"-inspired orphanages and nurseries there in which children were encouraged to engage in sexual conduct both with each other and present adults). This is because any sort of "free love" leftism is of course wholly opposed to my genuine ideology which is the full and absolute restoration of masculine dominion over the feminine, and therefore I do vehemently disagree with any variety of left-wing egalitarianism even if it should have a pedophilic bent. Sex of a pedophilic nature is permissible (according to my worldview of course) because of and in circumstances of masculine domination over feminine persons, not because of any hippy dippy free use reduction of sex to mere casual child's play.

But if you want to talk about modern authors being put under pressure, consider the case of Bruce Rind, who, for writing "A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples" (known most commonly as "Rind et al.") (linked from the official site of Ipce, which describes itself as "a forum for people who are engaged in scholarly discussion about the understanding and emancipation of mutual relationships between children or adolescents and adults.", and thus likely has much other information you are seeking), which simply collated evidence from other studies that significantly contradicts the "lifelong trauma" myth, had his article condemned in a concurrent resolution by the Congress of the United States itself (in a 355-0-13-66 (yea/nay/present/no vote) vote in the House (which is a somewhat rare occasion in a house of Congress I imagine, to have zero nay votes against something more substantive than naming a Post Office) and unanimous consent (which means that nobody asked to take a tally of votes for or against, presumably because the measure was considered so unfit to contest, not the same as an explicit unanimous vote) in the Senate). As suppressed as HBD often is, I don't think a single HBD advocate can claim that distinction. (Though Congress's resolution in particular doesn't attempt to allege any actual methodological flaws in the meta-analysis itself, one of the funniest criticisms of it that's been thrown around is that Rind was deceptively trying to bias the results away from finding harm and towards positive life outcomes by basing his analysis on... as the title mentions, College Samples.)

In any case, I will update this post in a bit with some sources that were sent to me by another individual at some point.

Edit: Okay, here they are. The following is a collection of mostly PDFs (along with some EPUBs and other random file formats) sent to me in the past by a self-identified gay pedophile communist. I cannot attest to the intellectual value of them as I haven't actually looked through all of them and felt some of the ones I did look at seemed a bit frivolous given how they don't reflect any perspective I personally subscribe to at all (being left-wing as they are), but as far being uncommon information goes they may certainly fit the bill.

https://a.cockfile.com/QNvaER.7z

https://web.archive.org/web/20240109085205/https://a.cockfile.com/QNvaER.7z

PW: motte

After seeing my post, you gave The South During Reconstruction an archive.org link. The link doesn't show most of the pages inside the book--you have to "borrow" the book. I wasn't counting those.

(Borrowing books this way is still questionable from a copyright point of view but at any rate, you can't just get the book without some effort.)

And this is the link for Fanny Hill and this is for Ars Amatoria. This is for Red Network..

you can't just get the book without some effort

I don't think signing in with a google account and clicking 'borrow' really counts as 'some effort'. It's certainly much easier than any method of getting physical books.

Good catch!

Sorry you're right that one they only have the borrow option for

Those links I've added to the piece Thankyou so much!

On further look

at your image "The Israel Lobby and American Foreign Policy" by Mearsheimer probably shouldn't be on there. Mearsheimer is a thoroughly mainstream author. Anyone studying International Relations will have to contend with the Realist school of thought and Mearhsheimer is pretty unavoidable.

Likewise putting "On War" by Carl von Clausewitz on there is a bit like saying Sun Tzu's "Art of War" is a banned book. It's not just "Not Banned" it's prominent and pushed. The casual reader will like Sun Tzu's small chapters writing style far more than Clausewitz's "let us consider War from Idealism first principles and also here's 200 pages on Napoleonic era reconnaissance" (skip the Napoleonic stuff, but don't ignore the Idealism. It actually important to his argument) But On War is still literally the first book that will be presented to anyone studying the Europe & it's descendants Way of War.

At most there is a vague sense of "Clausewitz is outdated because he deal with states and not non-state actors". But On War is the elephant in the room at any given time. No one gets a masters by saying "ehhh clausewitz is basically still correct". That doens't indicate any intellectual development. So while there is a bevy of people criticizing Clausewitz that certainly doesn't rise to the level of Banned Book.

On War was prominently banned during Denazification.

I wouldn't have included it, but researching the period I encountered multiple quotes from American censors GLOATING that the Germans wouldn't be reading Clausewitz anymore.

Actually I might edit in a comment on that.

They also banned tons of Little Red Riding Hood stuff... Allegedly the Nazis often depicted the wolf as a jew, so the allies destroyed countless rare and beautiful Pre-war Collectors illustrated editions...

It is very likely some printings and original art for Clausewitz and little Red Riding hood and thousands of others are now lost forever.

I tried not to include "This was once banned in a foreign country 80 years ago" type stuff... But when it was the American army doing the banning, that warrants inclusion.

I quibble but it's a reasonable argument. We've definitely largely forgotten the degree to which defeating the Nazi's was rhetorically presented as Smashing Junker Prussian Militarism and stopping the Germans from reading On War is consistent with that.

All the more absurd that then a few years later the US would be so taken in by the histories of Halder and Melenthin.

Would love to see a list of texts banned by US occupation forces in Japan. My impression is that there was a strange combination of renaissance of writings from the simultaneous abolishing of Japanese censorship while also starting American censorship of militarist/expansionist texts. But I'm far less exposed to the Pacific Theater and could be wildly off base.

I quibble but it's a reasonable argument.

It's not a reasonable argument at all. Kulak is basically going "this is an actually banned book", while citing as evidence that it was suppressed in the past. That's not a banned book, then, because today it is not just not suppressed, but widely discussed (as you correctly pointed out).

It was actually banned, by the current regime, as opposed to "The Handmaid's Tale" and "To kill a Mockingbird" which populates "Banned books" displays around the country and the regime has been desperate to get people to read.

I'm fascinated by the Issolated demand for rigour. The Regime labels every piece of their propaganda "banned" and narry a quibble... I come up with a counter list of works the regime has actively sought to suppress at various points, and suddenly if it doesn't burn your eyes out of your socket or provoke preemptive strikes, it has never been "Really" banned

Yeah, Mearsheimer is more of a subversive author than a banned author. Reading his books is eye-opening though, they have a certain punch factor that Ebbridge Colby lacks, even when they talk about the same kind of things and have a similar worldview. It's the difference between 'How to fix this specific problem with Windows' and 'A complete guide to Operating Systems: Strengths, Weaknesses and which is best for you'.

Also surprised you didn't add in Hitler's Table Talks by 'The Brown Eminence' Martin Bormann. There are translations available but the translations are flawed and unreliable. Which means that unless you speak German you are restricted from one of the top 5 key books to getting a window into Hitler's Worldview. Decades of the topic being done to death and yet here we are still waiting for a reputable translation of one of the key books.

Weirdly enough some of the critiquing of the translation by the book was done by one of the New Atheist minor figures, Richard Carrier. Once you get into the weeds these things really do become a small world.

Which means that unless you speak German you are restricted from one of the top 5 key books to getting a window into Hitler's Worldview

I mean there's probably not much point dedicating time to studying a historical period in anything more than a casual fashion unless you can read the relevant language to some degree. There's not much market for the translation of books which are of mostly academic interest in relation to German history since almost every historian of Germany can read German.

Weirdly enough some of the critiquing of the translation by the book was done by one of the New Atheist minor figures, Richard Carrier. Once you get into the weeds these things really do become a small world.

Critiquing not only the translation, but the whole thing as completely fradulent.

Hitler’s Table Talk: The Definitive Account

By the conclusion, you start to get the clear picture, as did Nilsson, that a lot of what went wrong had to do with what one single con artist—the unrepentant Swiss Nazi banker François Genoud—did to manipulate decades of historians into doing his bidding by replicating and validating his own myths and fabrications. A single man behind it all; mostly invisible to the public, as his involvement was barely if ever even mentioned in historical treatments and third-party publications of the Table Talk, and thus all his devices and manipulations went unnoticed until Nilsson uncovered them all. I was among the first to signal this might be the case, as it was my article in GSR that exposed the first evidence of Genoud being the actual fraud behind it, when I uncovered how he doctored his own French translation, and that the English translation was based on that—for reasons I then did not know and could not explain; Nilsson uncovers the hidden truth: Genoud had forced by secret contract everyone involved in producing the English edition—publishers, translators, and its editor and endorser, the renowned Hitler historian Hugh Trevor-Roper—to only use his French as their base text. Nilsson explores various reasons why Genoud did that, though certainty may never be ours, as his motives Genoud took with him to the grave…along with the original manuscript, apparently—no version of which survives (apart from a few pages recovered by the U.S. Army after the war, which I was also for some reason the first to publicly reference beyond merely mentioning they exist; it appears Nilsson may have also located three other notes from it copied from Genoud’s archive that have still never been published, p. 241). In fact, apart from those few sheets (and a mere handful of some photocopied pages reproduced in various places), no person still living has even seen the original notes forming the Table Talk. So really getting to the bottom of things here may be forever impossible now.

Imagine being one of the most combed over subjects of all time, to the point where people use your field as an example of ground so well trodden there is nothing left to say, and then someone unrelated walks in an discredits a major source all because he got super into early 00's internet religion fights.

What this really just reminds me of is that we really are, de facto, still living in the greatest time of free speech and free exchange of ideas ever. One could make a list of obscure and out-of-prints books like this with the expectation that someone who desires will find at least the great majority of these books with a bit of searching and an ability to look into the right places (like the Internet Archive for the older ones); in the pre-Internet times, even knowing about this stuff would require a huge physical effort. Sure, some of the books might get one punished for mere ownership in certain places, but I would guess that even in those cases the authorities finding out would require you committing some other crime of sufficient valence to get your hard drive examined, so the punishment for owning the PDF would be extra punishment on top of the one you'd get for committing a more concrete variety of a crime.

What this really just reminds me of is that we really are, de facto, still living in the greatest time of free speech and free exchange of ideas ever.

Greatest time of free speech in history? In US, it was the sixties/seventies. Anything went at the time.

Porn of any kind? Go ahead.

Racism, fascism, antisemitism and bigotry in general? All fine.

Anti government and anti military propaganda, up to open incitement to desertion and mutiny in wartime? No problem.

Stolen top secret documents? No internet yet, you have to print them in newspaper to get them to the public. Nothing will happen to you.

I'm pretty sure literal fascism is more popular now with the internet than it was in the sixties and seventies.

You mean time when KKK was still a thing, time when American Nazi Party was founded (and defended by ACLU), time when third party pro-segregation candidate won 13% of vote?

I couldn't quickly find polls. I agree America was much more racist back then, but iirc the lingering effect of the recent world war made america very much against the term 'fascism'

I meant in the sense of not only legality or cultural acceptance but the sheer ease of availing yourself to this material, thanks to the Internet.

If one wanted to be specific it might be that the greatest time was 90s or the early 00s, but in a sense we are still living in the same era.

REAL Banned Books are decades out of print with publishers who refuse to rerelease them despite used copies going for hundreds of dollars due to pent-up demand.

The null hypothesis is that very few people care about these books, not that there's a government conspiracy to stop you from reading dangerous ideas and tend to their happy flock of sheeple. The fact that someone is willing to spend 200$ on a rare book does not mean that the market will bear the printing of tens of thousands of new copies of said book.

I can find a bunch of books that fit your methodology, but unfortunately didn't make your list; do you think Fast Times at Ridgemont High: A True Story being out of print means that TPTB are terrified you'll start rioting if you read about the sex lives of teenagers in the 80s? Birds of Britain has some pretty women I guess. Maybe if you read Promise me tomorrow you'd think poorly of Nora Roberts, and we can't have that. Here's a couple dozen more you can add.

Then of course there’s Nabarkov’s Lolita (1955)… Which yes, is a Barnes and Noble “Banned book” but 1) It is actually banned in several countries and 2) It will still make you squirm, its the story of a man sexually abusing an underaged girl told in 1st person, it has been on my to-read list forever, ever since Christopher Hitchen’s praised its black humor in an essay I read years ago, but I’ve yet to get around to it.

Not to pile on other people saying the same thing, but I literally borrowed this from my library a year ago for a book club a decade ago. You aren't missing much.

Yet, I don’t know about you, but the Siren song of forbidden knowledge is too much to resist. I dug through too many dusty rare book libraries looking for lost or evil works…

I'm genuinely curious - broadly speaking, what do you think you've learned? If you were trying to sell me on your favorite book or two from your list, what would they be and what do you think I'd gain from reading them?

most of what I see on the list is ignorable drek. And most manifesto's make for awful reading. At best useful to seeing the difference between their literal words vs how the media represents them.

That said On War is pretty much essential reading for anyone who wants to understand war beyond a peasants sense of "Who are the Goodies & Who are the Baddies/Why don't we just nuke everyone as a first resort?" The Michael Howard translation is fine.

Democracy The God that Failed has awful prose and relies a lot on buying in to Austrian Economics but is useful as self-refinement for exactly why one ought to support our current end of history style of government. Either walk away from with a real sense of the unavoidable flaws in democracy, convinced that there must be a better way. Or alternatively confront it's arguments and be made tall by fully understanding the steel man motte for democratic governance.

Or if you want something more readable just go with Caplan's little discussed "Myth of the Rational Voter". People always bring up his education book and his open borders book but his 'Democracy barely works in practice and the academic theory for how it works is hilariously unrealistic' just sits there quietly.

Thanks for the recommendations!

I would point out that the Ian Smith book you mentioned is still widely available. The 2008 edition was retitled Bitter Harvest: Zimbabwe and the Aftermath of its Independence and while print copies are still hard to find, you can get a Kindle version on Amazon for $7.99. I don't think most of the books you mentioned are difficult to find due to any concerted effort to censor them; I think it's more that these were books that didn't sell well to begin with and don't have enough of a market for anyone to keep them in print. The authors of a lot of them are also dead, so there's no one left with the motivation to do something like buy the rights back from the publisher and make it available for free. This explains the huge cliff you see on availability between 1940 and 1980. The old copyright system required renewal for certain works and a lot of stuff published before 1940 is likely to have a lapsed copyright, so making it available online is easy. Books published after 1980 have authors who are more likely to be alive and there's someone with obvious motive to advocate for the work to be published. But stuff in that valley you talk about is likely to still be under copyright and have an author who is dead. This isn't much of a problem for most books, because there isn't much call for diet books from 1966 and the like (I personally collect old outdoors books and they're usually pretty cheap). But the kinds of thing you're talking about have collector value, so the few copies available are going to go for top dollar. This would probably still be true even if the text itself were reprinted in a new edition that's easily available, a la the Smith book.

Interesting post! I have several of those on my shelves and in my Kindle already. I actually just finished reading Turner Diaries - quick summary, it's fun as an action-adventure story, but the politics are pretty unsophisticated and not discussed in much detail. I've been trying to find more books on Irish Loyalism as well, maybe I'll try and find a copy of Paisley's book next (though I have read from some Loyalist militiamen post-Troubles that they were rather annoyed at his tendency to swoop in to a volatile situation, stir everyone up with a firebrand speech, then be whisked away before any actual violence happens).

The meta questions are what this really gets into though. All regimes in history have banned books that they considered threatening to the Powers That Be. What's curious is how the current regime is obsessed with promoting the reading of "banned" books while simultaneously actually banning other books. It seems critical to the identify of the current power structure that they were formerly out of power and had their core ideologies banned, so it's both a dunk on the former Powers That Be which they overcame and a sop to the idea of Free Speech to promote them, but they're at least as totalitarian as those former powers, so of course they continue to ban things that threaten their new ideology, while of course paying no attention to the contradiction.

It's also interesting how we all seem to seek the authenticity of these types of books. Whatever they think, at least they actually meant it! Even the wildest-eyed radicals tend to become dull if they ever do manage to become the Powers That Be, only sometimes returning to authenticity once they're out of power but still alive and not in some terrible prison, and inclined to write more about what they really did and why.

The meta questions are what this really gets into though. All regimes in history have banned books that they considered threatening to the Powers That Be. What's curious is how the current regime is obsessed with promoting the reading of "banned" books while simultaneously actually banning other books.

These books aren't samizdat you obtain from a guy who stapled it together in his garage after photocopying it over at work(or I guess which come in a word document on a flash drive today). They're freely available if you want to spend the purchase price(which is often high). Some of them are banned in parts of Europe, but I don't think it's enforced particularly strictly and they're definitely not banned in the US.

It seems critical to the identify of the current power structure that they were formerly out of power and had their core ideologies banned, so it's both a dunk on the former Powers That Be which they overcame and a sop to the idea of Free Speech to promote them

This is more of a blindspot from the regime/cathedral/progressive-industrial complex, which takes for granted, sometimes with truly fallacious explicit justifications, that prejudice/oppression/authoritarianism only runs in one direction. Like the term "authoritarianism" literally is not used in the social sciences; instead it's "right-wing authoritarianism", and of course this is only measured in ways which make right wingers look more authoritarian.

That's not an unprecedented blindspot; except for a small minority of libertarians, everyone everywhere tends to define freedom as "freedom to do things I want". Conservatives are just explicit about it instead of redefining a half dozen other words to reify unfalsifiable boo outgrouping.

These books aren't samizdat you obtain from a guy who stapled it together in his garage after photocopying it over at work(or I guess which come in a word document on a flash drive today). They're freely available if you want to spend the purchase price(which is often high). Some of them are banned in parts of Europe, but I don't think it's enforced particularly strictly and they're definitely not banned in the US.

It's true that the majority of these books aren't really all that banned, at least in the US. It's hard to consider something to be banned when you can mail-order a copy off of Amazon. The Turner Diaries is a pretty good case for about as banned as you can effectively get though.

In the way of modern cancel culture, it's not technically banned in the sense that the Government will explicitly send you to jail specifically for possessing it. But Amazon and GoodReads removed the page for it entirely. I don't see it on any other online book sellers. I actually found a few paper copies on eBay, running around $100, apparently published by a Barricade Books, which according to Wikipedia went bankrupt in 1997. I would expect dire consequences if any publisher dared to do a new run now - in the form of every other author refusing to do business with them, credit card processors, shippers, and banks dropping them, etc. If you wanted a paper copy, something like printing it at home would in fact be pretty reasonable. PDFs over the internet are easier though - a DuckDuckGo search for it finds a downloadable PDF on the first page, so you don't have to work too super hard to find a free copy if you really want it.

While it's not explicitly illegal to have it, if it ever comes to the attention of the wrong people that you do, I would expect you risk getting busted for something made up or trivial that everyone else normally wouldn't be prosecuted for and some kind of sentencing enhancement citing the fact that you possessed it to document how dangerous you are.

The hell of it is, I don't see it being that great or dangerous. The ideology is pretty racist and anti-Semitic, but no part of the book actually advocates for it, it's just taken as a given that it's correct. The terrorism tactics seems to me like grade-school level stuff, the kind of thing where if you couldn't figure that out already, you really have no business conducting any sort of insurgent activity. It's kind of fun as an adventure story, and a circle-jerk if you actually believe in that ideology, but otherwise pretty meaningless.

This is more of a blindspot from the regime/cathedral/progressive-industrial complex, which takes for granted, sometimes with truly fallacious explicit justifications, that prejudice/oppression/authoritarianism only runs in one direction. Like the term "authoritarianism" literally is not used in the social sciences; instead it's "right-wing authoritarianism", and of course this is only measured in ways which make right wingers look more authoritarian.

I pretty much agree. I don't really follow social sciences much though, it seems pretty remarkable if they actually pay no attention to left-wing authoritarianism.

While it's not explicitly illegal to have it, if it ever comes to the attention of the wrong people that you do, I would expect you risk getting busted for something made up or trivial that everyone else normally wouldn't be prosecuted for and some kind of sentencing enhancement citing the fact that you possessed it to document how dangerous you are.

I'm really extraordinarily confident this isn't true. One, there are, like, several hundred thousand Americans who actively consume far-right online content as bad as anything in those books at this point, and at least tens of thousands who actively produce it. They are just not prosecuted, even the ones who are explicitly calling for the gassing of various ethnicities online. Two, merely possessing a book isn't actually a strong signal of believing in its ideology - one of the significant consumers of old far-right books are left-leaning (often far left) historians, political theorists, and writers.

Potential counterarguments: 1 is 'ricky vaughn', but that's one of many and the political motive there would be 'trump + election interference' and not 'far-right'. I think he was probably genuinely antisemitic, but I think he'd still have been prosecuted if he was merely MAGA. 2 is that far-right organizations that do things 'in real life' are targeted by the feds, but I think that's very different from 'owning a book' and they do that to far-left orgs too.

Perhaps that was a bit over-stated. I think it has a little truth, but more qualified, like that something that vaguely resembles that may happen to like a single-digit number of people, not anywhere near even a whole number percentage of everyone who's ever possessed such content. And "coming to the attention" would look more like far-left activists being majorly annoyed at you for some reason and digging up things you've wrote or sold somewhere to make a case about how bad you are. It may not be super common, but such things occasionally do end up becoming prosecutions, often including an extra step passing through a "mainstream" activist group.

If you're looking for an actual case, the best example that comes to my mind is Paul Miller. His prosecution was on weapons charges, for laws that are pretty commonly flouted and rarely prosecuted on their own, reportedly at least partly thanks to the prompting of the ADL (though he wasn't exactly doing himself any favors either). None of the documentation mentions any particular radical literature, though it would be a little surprising if he didn't actually possess any.

The social sciences literally define authoritarianism so it can't be left wing. It's actually quite funny the chutzpah.

Are there similar books by Soviet, Maoist, Khmer rouge, etc torturers and murderers?

You mean revisionist works? Large number in post-Soviet sphere, in Western world most prominent is Grover Furr whose prodigious output shows how Stalin did absolutely nothing wrong.

His books are available on Amazon and generally more obscure than banned, because few people today really care one way or another.

https://www.amazon.com/Khrushchev-Lied-Revelation-Khrushchevs-Communist/dp/061544105X

https://www.amazon.com/Trotskys-Lies-Grover-Furr/dp/0578521040

https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Lies-Evidence-Accusation-Bloodlands/dp/0692200991

I was thinking more first hand accounts.

I was thinking more first hand accounts.

Memoirs of actual torturers and executioners? No idea if there are any.

Memoirs of Soviet leaders? Only uncensored one I can recall is Molotov's published in 1993.

Molotov Remembers: Inside Kremlin Politics

Not banned at all, available on Amazon.

Well, the editorial abridgement of English version could be considered as ban, if you are paranoid enough...

https://www.marxists.org/archive/molotov/1991/remembers-abs.htm

These abstracts were taken from the English version, which is an abridged form of the Russian version. The English version has 437 pages, while the Russian version is 735 pages. No explaination nor notice is given for why the English version has been so thoroughly abridged.

Anything to do with communism winds up being heavily censored whenever it comes to mentions of Jewish representation in the party.

Solzhenitsyn was maybe the most important Russian writer of the 20th century... And his 200 Years Together (on the list) is not translated despite considerable demand you have to track down samizdat fan translations.

Your mention of Solzhenitsyn peaked my interest a little, but after having looked at it for a bit as far as I'm concerned it's not difficult to acces at all all. It has a pretty big wikipedia article. It's been translated to German and French. In German it looks like you have to get it second hand (although you can find offerings easily) and in French you can just buy it on amazon. And apparently they're working on an English translation due next year.

There are also other works by Solzhenitsyn which haven't been translated to English yet by the way, not just the one that's about Jews.

Anything to do with communism winds up being heavily censored whenever it comes to mentions of Jewish representation in the party.

Maybe some conspiratory rants how all Communism was nothing than Jewish 666d clever chess move.

As for Jewish role in the revolution and early Soviet History, Yuri Slezkine and Mikhail Zygar wrote about it extensively and are as respectable mainstream academic authors as you can be.

Zygar is also the first person who opened (at least in the West) the Old Believer question. Yes, the non-Jewish Russian Bolsheviks way disproportionately originated from this small and persecuted religious group.

Mikhail Zygar: The Empire Must Die

His book actually opens and has a significant focus on the literary world of Russia, starting with the excommunication of Tolstoy for his Christian Anarchist Millenarianism and his over support for the Socialist Revolutionaries’ peasant platform. From there we get into his late friendship of Gorky, who donates most of his book money and family fortune to the Russian Social Democratic Party while cucking the theatre director Konstantin Stanislavsky of theatre kid fame. Gorky and his new girlfriend, Maria Andreyevna make acquaintances with the millionaire actress Vera Komissarzhevskaya and one of the richest industrialists in Russia, Savva Morozov and his nephew Nikolai Schmidt. These last three were the largest domestic contributors specifically to the Bolshevik party in the underground phase, and they all have connection to one another in a very specific minority religious sect that were renowned for being niggardly merchants.

That’s right, the Old Believers. Now, the Old Believer Question had been in the back of my mind as a lost factor in the Russian Revolution, especially since when I started to dig, I found quite a bit of crossover in the “disaffected sub elite” strata of Moscovite and Petersburg society. But no historian names the Raskol quite as explicitly as Zygar has done in his map of money and connections specifically to the underground Bolsheviks. While there were self financing activities in the Caucasus on the Party’s part, and still other contributors, Zygar makes the case that the unimportant lesser branch of social democracy got its greates pre March 1917 mindfalls from profligate Old Believers who had made up the “native” merchant burger artificially maintained ethno-religious group, which was so novel a take I found it worth writing these series of reviews to get to it.

You could have tried a little harder to find links to some of the PD ones.

Fanny Hill and Ars Amatoria are on Project Gutenberg.

Reconstruction Political and Economic 1865-1877 (you should link to one of the better scans, Google Books has problems with images) and Red Network are on archive dot org.

Yes, I don't quite get the reason for including those in the list, unless it's all just rambling about "and they used to censor SEX, can you believe that? but of course, they're still doing it today".

Fanny Hill is not really anything more than a bawdy book, and you can buy it on Amazon; it's a rollicking read but it's not pretending to be anything more elevated than softcore porn.

Ars Amatoria has somewhat higher pretensions, but it allegedly got Ovid in trouble even at the time of its production, and yep you can get it on Amazon too. It's a cynical/realist look at 'how to succeed with the ladies'.

It's so easy to find these that I can't take it seriously to include them in a list of BANNED BOOKS unless a wider point is being made (e.g. "my kinks are perfectly okay and should be legal and what do you mean it's obscene? Yeah the prudes and Puritans banned great literature for flimsy reasons like that, my Japanese hentai is just the same as Ovid!")

Yes, list of banned books should contain books that are actually banned now and here, not in 18th century.

Maybe the books should be sorted by tiers.

Brass: Not found on Amazon

Bronze: Not found in large university library

Silver: Not found in Library of Congress

Gold: Not found on libgen and similar pirate sites

Diamond: Possession will send you to prison in Western country

Diamond tier would be "literal child porn, and a small amount of actual literal Nazi literature in a minority of countries".

For non-Western perspective, see Russian official list of "extremist material".

It is grab bag of various stuff, mostly videos, that were found by Russian courts to be "extreme". Unlike western democracies, Russia still does things in old formal state-bureaucratic ways (when these methods fails, other, less formal like exotic teas or unsafe windows are applied).

As of January 2024, list is 5408 entries long, growing every day and behind every entry is long prison term for "extremism" and "hate".

To add context, on a cursory skim of that list (without looking the actual texts and videos up, which are likely to be blocked/deleted anyway), it appears to mostly consist of, in rought order of prevalence:

  • white, pro-Russian/Slavic nationalism (including antisemitic remarks)
  • derision of Russia as a state, including its current actions
  • white, anti-Slavic nationalism (including antisemitic remarks)
  • pro-Ukrainian content (in Ukrainian)
  • content favoring non-Slavic non-Middle East Russian ethnicities (Tatars etc)
  • mixed generic anti-social content (school shootings, thug violence, organized crime culture, etc)
  • Islamic content presumably considered extreme (including antisemitic remarks)
  • Orthodox content presumably considered extreme

Excellent list.

Some genres of banned books you missed:

Criminal literature/art - writings/memoirs by unreformed, unrepentant, non-ideological criminals extolling and celebrating life of crime.

Pro final exit writings - not philosophical defenses of the act, but how-to manuals for effective final exit. This content is also strongly censored, because TPTB deeply care about every human life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctioned_Suicide

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peaceful_Pill_Handbook

In 2008, the Society for Promotion of Community Standards objected to the book's publication. This led to its banning in New Zealand on the grounds that it was an objectionable publication.[5] A short time later, the book was republished in redacted form and is available only if sealed, and an indication of the censorship classification is displayed.[6][7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctioned_Suicide

Technically, that's a website :P

Some big music YouTuber made a video on it, and there's a Kiwi Farms thread refuting several blatant lies in said video. Shame that the thread hasn't spread much, but that's likely owed to the YTer's influence and generally positive reputation and KF's generally negative reputation.

Technically, that's a website :P

Website with large library of pro final exit material. According to OP, PDFs do count as books :P

Some big music YouTuber made a video on it, and there's a Kiwi Farms thread refuting several blatant lies in said video. Shame that the thread hasn't spread much, but that's likely owed to the YTer's influence and generally positive reputation and KF's generally negative reputation.

This thread?

Sanctioned Suicide - "Kill yourself" but unironically with sodium nitrite. Higher death count than the Farms. Targeted by parents, legislators, and journalists looking to alter Section 230.

Website with large library of pro final exit material. According to OP, PDFs do count as books :P

The site is controversial mostly for frequent accusations that it facilitates suicides; the standard formula is a suicidal person seeking methods joins the forum, posts a few times getting help, and then successfully carries out their suicide, then their family goes to the news media and an article is written about their plight blaming it on the forum. Arguably if it was just a library of suicide method PDFs it would get less heat because there's no interactivity (with other humans) with PDFs. At least, that's the way I see it, but it's entirely possible that people would still dislike the site just as much even if it only contained PDFs and had no interaction. Then again, I don't see this level of controversy over sites like LostAllHope (although there was a Change.org petition to shut down LAH that, surprisingly enough for a Change.org petition, resulted in the host terminating services, although the site just moved hosts), so I could be right.

This thread?

Yes.

I'd be interested to see also a list of effectively banned videos related to these books. Extremist groups often create video's arguing their worldview and these video's often veered into the mixing together seemingly unrelated ideologies. It's a combination of fascinating and hilarious. Imagine, for example, seeing a video on Northern Irish Loyalist extremism and then suddenly the video starts explaining the necessity of a Land Value Tax. Incredible.

Or if in the midst of a Kahanist speech there was some side ramble against the Israeli government because of the importance of environmental regulations on water usage for sustained economic use.

If anyone else remembers, there was a time in early ISIS when they spooked the world by virtue of having a good media game instead of Al Qaeda style grainy shaky cam in the mountains. They produced a video explaining how after ISIS will fix the economy by brining back the Gold (Dinar) Standard in resistance the Federal Reserve. It is inadvertently hilarious/voyeuristically fascinating as they go back and forth between ancient history lessons, quotes from the Quran about weights & measures, and Free State Project tier screeds against the Federal Reserve. All in English.

You can still find it on Internet Archive (views: 150) but it's otherwise effectively scrubbed from the internet.

I can't help but find such absurdities to be interesting to collect.

There is a BBC-Produced documentary called "How to Start a Sex Cult" which I find intriguing as it was not actually ever released by BBC, considered "Too Extreme." Mostly it gets taken down from Youtube for similar reasons. The guy in it was arrested in Darlington for Sex Abuse. The whole episode is fascinating, bordering on Errol Morris docu reality. I reached out to the documentarian who filmed it once, even hired a PI in England to find the subject (and learned that PIs are often scam-artists). The documentarian also made some lovely photographs of the subjects of the docu.

I wonder just how many other crazy films there are out there which no one will ever get to watch. There's a movie called "The Punk Syndrome" about a Punk Rock band of guys with Autism in Sweden. Not banned, totally PC, but hard to find because no one funds it anymore? I saw it at a film fest in Taiwan, where it got a standing ovation (because no one knows Punk Rock like a bunch of documentary film fest attendees at a University in Taichung, right?).

Such beautiful and true pieces of art, just slipping into memory holes (albeit for different reasons). Makes me sad.

For that matter, Natgeo no longer puts "To Hell and Back" on their own website, you have to go to Author's Website to get it. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0603/features/peru.html. It was the most linked article they had at one time, and then it was ungooglable for awhile. Kira Selak reposted it in her self site and you would find it with a google search again. So easy for even mainstream things to disappear nowadays.

There's a movie called "The Punk Syndrome" about a Punk Rock band of guys with Autism in Sweden. Not banned, totally PC, but hard to find because no one funds it anymore? I saw it at a film fest in Taiwan, where it got a standing ovation (because no one knows Punk Rock like a bunch of documentary film fest attendees at a University in Taichung, right?).

A demonstration of the power of the internet for information retrieval and social aggregation: The production company has put the documentary film on Vimeo (and true punks they are, charge 4.70€ for rental streaming. Trailer is free.) Brought to you by information superhighway.

You just made me happier than you might realize. May your day have some sort of Magikal Punk Rock blessing of happiness and prosperity upon it.

I know @KulakRevolt gives a headnod to Holocaust Revisionist literature in his article without specifically including it. But given that Holocaust Denial was basically the first class of political content to be banned from YouTube, and the first class of book political content to be banned from Amazon books, I would be remiss if I did not specifically mention banned Revisionist materials that are responsive to your interest.

This is especially the case because the long-time publisher of the Revisionist written literature recently declared it was suspending operations and restructuring the business. This is on the heels of some extraordinary suppression efforts of Revisionist written material, including growing censorship laws in the Western world and very recent UN Declarations demanding member states actively combat this material.

So, one example of a banned video related to a banned book is a video on the Majdanek Gas Chamber Myth released by the same publisher of a banned book on the same study. Any reasonable person who is willing to spend a few hours can see that this is a clear case where the banned book provides a more truthful interpretation of history than what passed as official history of an alleged gas chamber extermination camp. This is only one such case of dozens of volumes from the same publisher, which are all more banned in the real sense of the word than anything else Kulak has on that list.

THe Full list is the Image file.

And it includes EXTENSIVE Holocaust revisionist literature

My family was employed by the son of a Holocaust victim. Multiple friends of mine have their entire extended family tree snuffed out and all that remains is a small nucleus that moved to America during the golden age of European migration.

So no. While I don't agree with government suppression of such materials I assure you you will find no fertile grounds for conversion here.

It was a war in which 70 million people died, mostly civilians. That fact doesn't really help us answer the question of whether this bathing and disinfestation facility in Majdanek really was used to gas Jews, or if Revisionists are correct that it was used to disinfest prisoners and delouse clothing. Revisionists are obviously correct given the incredible amount of physical and documentary evidence they have procurred in their study.

I've read stories about entire family trees snuffed out in Gaza. If I accused Israel of gassing Gazans inside gas chambers disguised as shower rooms, you refuted that claim, and then I replied "I know people who have had family die in Gaza" what would you think of me? Probably that I have an irrational attachment to an implausible narrative.

I know @KulakRevolt gives a headnod to Holocaust Revisionist literature in his article without specifically including it.

What? He included an entire section about it.

Yes, he discussed the literature and linked to a 1981 bibliography. There is a very large volume of newer published works which precipitated the large-scale Amazon book bans of hundreds of volumes. He explained why he did not include them, it's too large a category and much of it is too technical for a casual audience. I am suggesting a banned Revisionist technical study on Majdanek, which has an accompanying Banned video.

It's a great list, I'm certainly not complaining he didn't just list a bunch of Revisionist books, I just think it's an interesting addendum given this recent work directly caused widespread censorship reforms on Amazon, YouTube, Facebook, etc.

The full list is the image file I link to whenever I reference "THE FULL LIST"

And it Includes maybe 30+ Pieces of revisionist literature

The 10,000 word Article you just read is the Cursory survey of the list, when I go through 10% of the list just to talk about the different type of banned books

If I covered all 200+ banned books in the article format, It'd be a book in itself

I'll take a closer look at the full list. Great piece by the way, I'm sure I'll be coming back to it more than once.

I found the tone of the "banned video" very off-putting. From the parody "20th Century HOAX" intro to the incessant claim that Zyklon B was exclusively used as a "LIFESAVING measure to keep the prisoners HEALTHY and FREE of typhus." My guess is that the intended audience is not a reasonable person seeking the truth, but those who already deny the holocaust and are searching for arguments.

In a narrow sense, the death-toll of 78,000 is more truthful than the 1946 Soviet estimate of 1.5 million, but the overall message of the video is extremely dishonest.

Because Zyklon B was a life-saving measure. Even the non-Revisionist Jean-Claude Pressac estimated that 97% of all Zyklon B at Auschwitz was used for delousing clothing to prevent the spread of epidemic typhus. Of course Revisionists contest the idea that 3% of that supply was used to murder millions of people inside gas chambers disguised as shower rooms, but the point is that even non-revisionists accept that the vast majority of the use of Zyklon B was for the purpose of disinfestation to prevent the spread of epidemic typhus. Zyklon B was used across the entire Reich at nearly all concentration camps, not just the 4 "extermination camps."

The Soviets investigators, Nuremberg reports submitted as evidence in trials, and Majdanek museum all identified the Bath and Disinfestation building as the center of gas chamber extermination, but after the Revisionist technical study they admit that the rooms in question were used to delouse clothing with Zyklon B, not gas prisoners, indeed as a lifesaving measure.

You do realize that when a house gets fumigated the inhabitants have to leave don't you?

Yes the question is whether they did that or not, or whether the facilities could support a mass execution via gassing campaign.

Every prison and concentration camp the US ever ran did some form of delousing. The import of a delousing agent doesn't prove anything on its own aside from the fact that they deloused their prisoners

Not taking aside on the Revisionist claim, aside to state I think it's inherently plausible...

40 million people died in the east, and 8 million Germans died in the war, many of starvation... Mass Deaths of Jews are an overdetermined event, we'd expect them to die in vast numbers as prisoners in a regime that can't keep it's elite and upper-middle class alive.

Proving the holocaust is actually a difficult proposition. You're going into a ship that lost life support and where everyone turned on each other and trying to argue that "No No No... Aside from the catastrophic unsurvivable war in which millions died and the ship itself losing the ability to feed or sustain life... the people in charge of the ship also ran a methodical machinelike campaign of organized perfectly run extermination BEFORE they lost power and everything went to hell and millions died anyway"

That's inherently hard to prove... It's like proving a mass shooting happened on 9/11 on floor 50 of Tower Two between the time when the first plane hit and the time the tower fell... no one was paying attention, and it'd be a heroic effort to disentangle the bodies.

And yet you don't delouse clothes while people are wearing them. Even if we accept the apologetics of guys like you and SS at face value it only begs the question of; if this wasn't a progrom why did the camps exist in the first place?

Why did the Camps for the boer in south africa exist, the ones for Japanese Americans exist, or the Ones for Ukrainian americans exist?

Why did the gulags exist?

This was the great era of slave labour camps from the US to Canada to the UK to the Soviet union.

Litterally everyone had camps. The difference is the Nazis lost, lost the ability to feed their own poeple, let alone prisoners, and suffered 8 million germans dead, in addition to another 2 million ethnically cleansed from the east.

It's not clear the Japanese Americans or Ukrainian Canadians would have fared better if they lost and were invaded. Thus why it is so difficult to prove that in addition to everything that was going on that we'd expect to kill the Jews in the camps from lack of life support, there was ALSO a deliberate plan of mass extermination.

TommyLeeJonesNewspaper.gif

You do realize that when a house gets fumigated the inhabitants have to leave don't you?

I remember hanging out in a fraternity basement with a bunch of fellow engineering interns. Several were gathered surreptitiously round one guy with his laptop. They were excitedly discussing the latest newsletter from ISIS.

It was incredibly professional. Clean graphic design, good typesetting, tasteful imagery. This wasn’t shock content, but the more refined propaganda of a well-funded movement. No sketchy scans and OCR here. The articles were multi-page tracts on Islamic principles, two columns, twelve point font. Each ended, naturally, with the conclusion that this particular group would be the one to bring down the West.

Fascinating indeed.

When ISIS first started doing propaganda video's I recall a real sense of "wait these people are actually serious. they are actually trying" as opposed to a sense of pathetic LARPer's who'd have Dog Catching the Car syndrome if they ever actually took power.

Similarly I recall reading of Al Qaeda lifers basically complaining that the only people they can recruit are violent young men and the mentally ill and so they were desperate for more bureaucrats/judges to oversee the territory they've briefly overrun.

Credit where credit is due, the IRGC and ISIL's production values were always top shelf.

Out of idle curiosity, were they Muslim interns?

Nope. Well, I guess I can’t prove it, but they were white, college-age, rocket scientists in training, which is really stacking the odds against religiosity.

Being white makes it unlikely they were muslims but there's a lot of religious people becoming engineers.

I’ve gotten several similar responses. Do you have any stats on it? I get the impression it’s a Chinese cardiologist situation, one where the prevalence doesn’t necessarily match.

Maybe it's just local selection pressures but anecdotally aerospace and defense seem to be where most of the more religiously inclined "techy" types end up.

Hmm.. Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis are all fans of amateur rocketry and even space flight, so it's not as big a knock against that thesis as it sounds!

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