Ever since liberal feminist J.K. Rowling made up her mind to defend women, she hasn’t stopped catching hell from her own liberal allies. Some from the LGBT community, which Rowling publicly defends, have gone so far as to dox her ( reveal her home address to the public) and threaten her life. With allies like that, who needs Nazis? She seems to be constantly trending on social media. It turns out that yesterday was her birthday, so naturally she was trending again. And while so many of the posts were hate-filled, I decided to post one thoughtful defense of the billionaire authoress, which I discovered on Twitter:
Rowling Fights the Fascists
The meme-ist who placed Rowling on the cover of Time Magazine is clearly casting the most financially successful writer of all time as a champion against propaganda and totalitarianism. The famous quote “War is Peace . . .” comes from George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 and is an example of “doublethink,” the presentation of a contradiction as a coherent and rational truth. In the novel, the words are displayed, ironically, on the building of the “Ministry of Truth.” Orwell’s point is that the use of propaganda by dictators is a tool to control popular opinion and attitudes, to bring a population into docile conformity with a regime’s political agenda. One way that propaganda can foster docility is by tricking a population into believing that they agree with the ruling party’s objectives. Language is carefully enforced so as to describe regime policy in the most positive terms. Thus, when Democrats described the anarchy and rioting that they supported during the “summer of love” in 2020, they described it deceptively as “mostly peaceful.” Any honest record shows that the “summer of love” was anything but peaceful.
They Stole My Meme!
What Catholics do not realize is that the liberal heretics of their Church have elevated totalitarian propaganda to an art form. I document progressive Church propaganda in my book Confronting the Pope of Suspicion. And I focus on the expert manipulation demonstrated by Bishop Robert Barron in his deceptive presentation of Amoris Laetitia. He tells us that “Gay inclusion in churches is merciful!” and, thus, Christians ought to accept this modernist apostasy “because science.” Barron made his comments at a family conference whose stated purpose was to explain Amoris Laetitia to the laity. But Barron’s propaganda was not intended to instruct, but, rather, to sell a heretical agenda: As I wrote in my book and in this published excerpt:
Bishop Barron, again, is the key to our understanding. It is clear from his presentation that it was not his primary goal to instruct his audience. He stated that he was assigned to present on chapters seven through nine, but he tells the audience that he wants to just skip chapter eight, the most controversial.38 Barron wasn’t teaching Amoris Laetitia; he was selling it. And like a dishonest used car salesman, his plan was to hide the defects: To tell lies.
But it wasn’t a car he was selling. It was a Trojan horse—stuffed with heretical German bishops and Jesuits. Pay close attention to Barron’s presentation, and you will see that he praised and defended all the same things the German bishops praise, all the same heresies of the seventies that guided Mundelein Seminary. The connection is difficult to see clearly because Barron employs so many evasions and misrepresentations. He tells lies.
How do the fascists get you to conform, to get you to do their will rather than your own? One way they succeed is by telling lies—lies designed to make you believe that their will and your will are the same. And that takes some intellectual acrobatics, as the dystopian authors teach us:
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
Science is infallible.
Homosexuality is Christian.
Jesus wants gays to take over your churches.
Solzhenitsyn teaches us that the best way to fight totalitarianism is to “live not by lies.”39 I hope this little book can serve as a useful resource for doing just that.
Speechless—the Book by Michael Knowles
As in the Time Magazine meme above, I made use of Orwell to characterize the kind of deceptive propaganda that bombards us daily from media institutions and personalities that we trust. What an egregious abuse of that trust! Michael Knowles from Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire recently published a book on this subject—Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds. I hope to write a review of this important book in the near future.