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
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
(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)
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.
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.
... 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".
I don't think this is slightly true for any of the books you mention!
... . 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'.
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.
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".
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:
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.
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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.
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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
"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!
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.
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
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.
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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.
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
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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.
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.
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.
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Okay, here are 'any' of the dozens of works he published:
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 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.
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.
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.
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 did.
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