Reading is Racist

Readers [1]1,022 words

In trying to articulate the white message—I mean primarily the morality of survival, since that is presently so critical—and reach others with it, it is essential to be aware of the differences between orality, print, and electronic media. This is true as well when studying history, for the generalizations one makes and the conclusions one draws about the past are closely related to the centrality of social communication in any given era.

Historically, it seems obvious once you think about it consciously, that societies based upon orality, writing (hand-written manuscripts), the printing press, and today’s electronic media (movies, television, radio-when-it-was-“TV,” pop music, video games, etc.) must necessarily have been vastly different in part because of the medium of social communication dominant at the time.

Thus, transitions from one form of media to another constitute social revolutions themselves [2].

Communications diagram [3]

In Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985), Jewish media critic Neil Postman called this “media as epistemology,” because the dominant form of media in any given age powerfully affects a culture’s ways of thinking, or even knowing. Thus, he referred to the transition from typographic (print-oriented) culture to electronic mass media culture as an “epistemological shift.”

Postman’s primary contention is that typographic culture was superior to electronic media culture. I feel the same way, and agree with most of the reasons he cites for thinking so.

Of course, who controls the media and who censors it is also vital. However, Postman is not forthcoming on that point. This is what motivates his belittling of George Orwell. Careful to emphasize that he is not making a “total assault on television,” Postman cites as socially beneficial features of the medium “not to be taken lightly” its emotional power “so great” as to “arouse sentiment against the Vietnam War or against more virulent forms of racism.”

By this he does not mean Jewish racism or anti-white racism. He means white consciousness. Similarly, the reference to the Vietnam War means television’s power to undermine anti-Communism (he dislikes Joseph McCarthy). Nevertheless, it is obvious that the emotional power of the medium could be used against Jews and other anti-white racists the same way it has been used against whites.

Postman believes it is a delusion that television and print “coexist,” since coexistence implies parity: “There is no parity here. Print is now merely a residual epistemology” (Emphasis added).

This is pretty important. Where do most people get their ideas, values, and beliefs from, even if they are unaware of it? His thesis is that print and television, in and of themselves, provide, facilitate, or impose different ways of knowing.

I suspect that, overwhelmingly, most people drawn to the pro-white or anti-genocidal cause arrive at it through print.

Certainly I arrived at my ideas through print. All my life I have been print-oriented, although I did not think of it that way. If I had had to articulate my limited self-awareness, it would have gone something like: “I love to read [books, mostly nonfiction, especially]. I read a lot. Gee, not many other people do.”

Furthermore, when we think of trying to persuade others, we tend naturally to think of writing—establishing websites for people to read (formerly, journals, magazines, tabloids, or newsletters) and writing books.

We harbor an essentially occult belief, or hope, that this can—somehow—change things.

In other words, we almost always think in terms of utilizing what Postman is convinced (correctly, I believe, as far as public discourse and social control is concerned) is “merely a residual epistemology.”

There are some obvious reasons for this. For example, print is within our means, or potentially within our means. It is also comparatively simple, technically. Electronic media are more capital intensive and require mastery of specialized, ever-changing technology. Their legal, regulatory, and business aspects tend to be complex. They are huge, oligopolistic, and, because of their enormous influence, tightly monitored and censored.

But something more fundamental is at work as well. Reading, compared to television, gives priority to “the objective, rational use of the mind”:

It means to uncover lies, confusions, and overgeneralizations, to detect abuses of logic and common sense. It also means to weigh ideas, to compare and contrast assertions, to connect one generalization to another. In a culture dominated by print, public discourse tends to be characterized by a coherent, orderly arrangement of ideas. (Postman, p. 51)

I always thought of reading, in addition, as fun, a way to learn things—virtually anything, in fact, that might interest me. Reading has always been a voyage of adventure and discovery. I’ve traveled much further, and seen many more wonders sitting in my chair than most people who have never cracked open a book.

People who discover white nationalism are often those who have been actively searching for answers, and who possess a psychology peculiarly suitable to the sort of discourse Postman describes. Without being aware of it, they constitute a print-oriented minority in a culture dominated by and controlled through the electronic mass media.

I would argue a related point Postman does not make, though it is hugely important. Print is virtually the only medium where certain kinds of information can even be found—though, admittedly, it requires exceptional dedication and persistence to discover the scattered pieces of the puzzle even there, and to put them together in a coherent fashion. Not many people, even readers, can do this, or have any interest in doing it.

Nevertheless, precisely because print/reading is residual, it has, until recently, been less heavily censored than primary media. Indeed, where else can you find pro-white information, apart from someone in your life, typically a close friend or family member, who successfully brings the issue to your attention—which almost never happens?

Of course, at some point, as under Communism, society reaches the bottom of the Jewish barrel, and print becomes as valueless as television because the censorship is so heavy-handed, and the prevailing dogmas so hardened.

This is what “hate speech” laws and other forms of suppression are designed to accomplish—complete intellectual constipation, an environment congenial to ideologically prim, narrow-minded, intellectually unadventurous people such as journalists and academics.