Samizdat

“The intellectual scene always used to have room for great minds from the Right. Today they would be denounced for thought crime by a Left that cannot tolerate dissent.” Norman Stone (1941-2019)

I was unpleasantly surprised when I learned that Stephan Molyneux had been banned from YouTube, a subsidiary of Google. At first I tried to guess what was Molyneux’s sin against the cyber-powers that be. Having listened to him for a while, I could not imagine what could have irked the cyber-masters of the cyber-establishment to that point. I thought that perhaps Molyneux uncanny resemblance to young Benito Mussolini could have been the problem. Other than that, I could not quite put my finger on what part of the cyber-canon law could have been violated.

Then I watched an interview in The Patrick Coffin show, They Came For Stephan Molyneux, and learned what the problem was: a violation of the commandment: “Thou shall speak only evil against Trump.” Molyneux had sympathy for the orange devil. He turned out to be a bad boy. He had to be put in his place.

At some point during the interview, —minutes 36 to 46, roughly– we learn that young Stephan was badly abused by those who should have been taking care of him. At that time, the Christians near him failed to correct the problem. I know that kind of situation by experience. It is rather odd that those who piously attend the Sunday religious service can witness child abuse and shrug their shoulders. But it is perfectly understandable if one thinks that Christ was falsely accused, tortured, and crucified while his own celebrated the Passover, one of the greatest acts of mercy that God ever performed for the benefit of any nation.

Why is it that none of the Christians there present took pity on the plight of young Stephan? I venture to say that perhaps Stephan was trusted with a splinter of the Cross at that tender age so that later, Stephan the grown up could understand the power of powerlessness represented by the mystery of God crucified. The question may have triggered something in the child’s mind; something that stimulated his intelligence to grow in search of an answer. We search for light more eagerly when we are surrounded by darkness. I dare to predict that one day, Molyneux will come full circle to the foot of the Cross to thank God for that fruitful pain that made him what he is. It takes time. Again, I know that by personal experience.

Now, Molyneux has joined the ranks of those who are censored and persecuted for perpetrating common sense. Like so many others, he will have to move to a friendlier, kinder platform such as Chute or Locals.

The phenomenon of censorship is a reaction of the powerful against something they cannot overcome by reason. False doctrines can only be imposed or defended by lies and when those falsehoods are exposed, what follows is a show of force. The cycle of Christ conforms to that pattern. The actions of Christ and his pristine doctrine exposed the failure of the religious leaders of his time. At first the powers that be tried to deny Christ’s doctrine by commanding him to be silent. When that failed, they ridiculed and defamed him. Later they persecuted those who benefited from Christ’s miraculous cures. A perfect example of that is the man born blind. Please forgive the long scriptural quote I include here. (John 9, my notes in blue between brackets) This is quite useful to understand how the enemies of truth are also enemies of goodness. In this passage, the expression “the Jews” does not refer to people of the Jewish race (the writer and the followers of Jesus –and Jesus himself– were also Jews, of course) but it is a theological construct to identify the adversaries of Jesus within his own nation.

The man born blind is healed

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”  Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him. [Notice here that Jesus explains the necessity for the illness] We must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day; night comes, when no one can work. [Notice the forces of darkness will temporarily succeed in denying the truth] As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” As he said this, he spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle and anointed the man’s eyes with the clay, saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means “sent”). So he went and washed and came back seeing. The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar, said, “Is not this the man who used to sit and beg?” Some said, “It is he”; others said, “No, but he is like him.” He said, “I am the man.”  They said to him, “Then how were your eyes opened?”  He answered, “The man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash’; so I went and washed and received my sight.” They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”

The religious leaders inquire about the miracle

They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes. The Pharisees again asked him how he had received his sight. And he said to them, “He put clay on my eyes, and I washed, and I see.” [The healed man declares the obvious facts] Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the sabbath.” [Flimsy legal argument] But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?”[The blind man appeals to common sense] There was a division among them. So they again said to the blind man, “What do you say about him, since he has opened your eyes?” He said, “He is a prophet.”

The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight, until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight,  and asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?”  His parents answered, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind;  but how he now sees we do not know, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age, he will speak for himself.”  His parents said this because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if any one should confess him to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue.  Therefore his parents said, “He is of age, ask him.” [Social brute force was used against the undeniable, thus the parents feared unjust punishment]

So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and said to him, “Give God the praise; we know that this man is a sinner.”  He answered, “Whether he is a sinner, I do not know; one thing I know, that though I was blind, now I see.” They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you too want to become his disciples?”  And they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses.  We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.” [Argumentum ab auctoritate, the religious leaders assert their authority because the facts are exposing their weak position] The man answered, “Why, this is a marvel! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes.  We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if any one is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him. Never since the world began has it been heard that any one opened the eyes of a man born blind.  If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” [Common sense destroys the false ‘argument by authority’] They answered him, “You were born in utter sin, and would you teach us?” And they cast him out. [Force and accusation are applied to expel the truth-holder from society]

Spiritual Blindness

[Now the true judgment comes] Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of man?” He answered, “And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and it is he who speaks to you.” [The Logos unfolds the truth, the experience becomes knowledge and knowledge begets faith] He said, “Lord, I believe”; and he worshiped him.  Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.” Some of the Pharisees near him heard this, and they said to him, “Are we also blind?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains. [The false light is in reality a form of darkness. Denial in the face of Truth is a sin.]

The indifference of the religious leaders for the sufferings of their blind brother turns into animosity when the poor man is healed. What should have been an occasion of joy is turned into a bitter dispute that ends in the casting out of the healed man. Light enters the man that was blind but the religious leaders remain in darkness, prisoners of a blindness deeper than the mere physical impairment. The light they are refusing to see is the light of Logos: logic, love, compassion, peace, and life. The source of that light was the very blindness that the man endured until he obeyed and went to wash off the mud covering his eyes That mud aptly symbolizes our broken humanity inherited from Adam, the man God made from mud. The water is our baptism, the first step to a life in the light of faith that will eventually lead us to live with Christ and to be just like Christ is.

Samizdat

According to Wikipedia:

Samizdat (Russian: самизда́т, lit. “self-publishing”) was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the documents from reader to reader. The practice of manual reproduction was widespread, due to the fact that most typewriters and printing devices were [inventoried] and required permission to access. This grassroots practice to evade official Soviet censorship was fraught with danger, as harsh punishments were meted out to people caught possessing or copying censored materials.

It is quite evident by now that the spiritual forces of darkness have been working to enslave and eventually destroy mankind from the very beginning. We live at  the end of a period of gradual infiltration that is likely to succeed in controlling the commanding institutions of the Western World, formerly known as Christendom. The Great Crescendo began in earnest when the Protestant Reformation took over the resources of the Catholic Church in various parts of Europe. The process gave birth to the movement ironically called “Illuminism” that later resulted in the French Revolution and further along in Socialism, most recently in its Marxist form. Arguably, that process obtained its most important victory when it captured the Russian Empire and China during the first half of the 20th century.

We can recognize the same process that we analyzed in the case of the man born blind in the particular case of the Western World. At the time of Christ’s arrival in this world, the Roman Empire controlled the West. It was a time dominated by the crassest kind of Paganism. In spite of the Greek philosophers, the great thinkers of the age, most of  the population of the Roman world had taken possession of a large territory but lived in ignorance of many things we now take for granted. The wisest of the Romans did not fathom the concepts of atom, cell, galaxy, gravity, radioactivity, magnetism, microbes, DNA, etc. The Empire was ruled mostly by force. The legions enforced the will of the Emperor by terror. Read John 11.

“If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place.” (John 11:48)

Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, came to that world and transformed it completely. Within three and a half centuries of Christ’s death on the Cross, Roman Paganism was dying fast, there were Christian Emperors, Roman Law fell under the sway of the Christian commandments, and the number of Christians grew exponentially. When the Empire fell, men like Gregory the Great and Benedict of Nursia (both Catholic saints today) reshaped the life of the European realm. Their successors advanced civil organization and the sciences. Religious men like Copernicus, Galileo, and Mendel — among many others — increased a knowledge base that had been stagnant for centuries. In a way, one can say that Christ opened the eyes of the blind Roman Empire allowing the light of truth to transform it into something new: Christendom.

But the forces of darkness quickly reacted to this enormous miracle and produced countermeasures. In time, Christian heresies, strange ideologies, pseudo-religions, foggy pseudo-philosophies, all took advantage of the fertile soil of Christendom to grow the weeds of darkness. That was to be expected.

“He put before them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well.” (Matthew 13:24-26)

By the time the Marxist Soviet Union appeared, –one of the great weeds planted by the enemy of light– it ruled a huge part of mankind. Of course, there were many who observed the fallacies and utter nonsense that the Soviets used to subject their populations. Marxism used a form of acid criticism to distract the world from observing the obvious fracas of Socialism-Communism. Many fell for it but not everyone was willing to deny the facts with nonsensical arguments. In the territory of the Soviet Union, there was a reaction against the unnatural oppression of the system over the citizens. That resulted in social ostracism for the dissidents at first, then in brutal repression and imprisonment, and all throughout in a tight censorship. Samizdat, literally self-publishing, was the way the people used to communicate free ideas in that age of total darkness. Again from the same article in Wikipedia that I quoted previously:

The first full-length book to be distributed as samizdat was Boris Pasternak’s 1957 novel Doctor Zhivago. Although the literary magazine Novy Mir had published ten poems from the book in 1954, a year later the full text was judged unsuitable for publication and entered samizdat circulation. Certain works, though published legally by the State-controlled media, were practically impossible to find in bookshops and libraries, and found their way into samizdat: for example Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was widely distributed via samizdat.

As the Communist infiltration of the Western World continued, the modern equivalent of the religious leaders of Christ’s time emerged. The political Left has now completely colonized the Mainstream Media, Academic Institutions such as Colleges and Universities, even shaping the curriculae of primary education with all sorts of ideological propaganda. Now those forces have the power to deny publication, criticize unilaterally, and eventually censor any voice that is not instrumental to their ultimate cause which is to dominate the world down to the last nation be it weak or powerful.

In those nations there are many that can still tell light from darkness. Those voices confront the infiltrated powers with the same invincible common sense that the formerly blind man used with the religious leaders of his time. Whenever those agents of darkness have to retreat in the presence of light, they appeal to the use of force to suppress the voices of light and reason.

Now, a new form of samizdat is emerging. Alternative platforms in the Internet are being created to host the likes of Stephan Molyneux, E. Michael Jones, Jordan Peterson, the Conservative movement, the Traditionalist Catholic media outlets, and so many others. This is a game of cat and mouse where the clumsy monolithic elephantosity of the mainstream media will eventually lose the battle. The nimble forces of light have a million tricks up their sleeves. The years to come will be to the mainstream media what Afghanistan was to the Soviets.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:5)

“All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.” (St. Francis Of Assisi, The Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi)