Let me preface this by saying that knowledge is power and education is a fundamental right.
It’s not without reason that in a fascist regime, banning books is normalised. US imperialism imported anti-intellectualism to Ba Sing Se, where truth was forbidden, and Suharto pushed it further by co-opting religion.
Stupid people don’t question power. They’re too busy hoarding resources. In a capitalist system, resources mean money, and money means power. Your knowledge and intelligence are only worthwhile if they generate wealth. That’s the cycle.
The moment you question power, the cycle halts.
Humanity under capitalism can’t even imagine a life without this cycle of evil. Capitalist ideology colonises your psyche until you can only measure your worth by productivity and utility.
As a result, people in power hate ideas.
But ideas can’t be killed. Forming an idea requires learning, reading books, discussion, communication. That’s why so much energy is spent on propaganda — manipulating language, banning books, revising history, flooding people with distractions and culture wars to keep them docile.
They don’t even hesitate to co-opt religion and Indigenous cultures worldwide to make sure women can only measure their worth by their ability to produce future workers.
Women are a commodity under capitalism.
I’ve argued with Muslim misogynists enough to see the results of decades of propaganda. Aside from conflating capitalism with democracy, anti-intellectuals in Ba Sing Se speak with conviction that everything is preordained, that having faith is enough, that questioning authority is sinful — to the point where child abuse and domestic violence are swept under the rug, because suffering is holy, martyrdom is glorious, and your depression is because you are ungrateful.
When ideas are crushed and dissenters are criminalised or even pathologised, the harm doesn’t stay abstract. It shows up as hunger, as homelessness, as lives cut short.
Violence isn’t always soaked in blood. Poverty, homelessness, famine; these are violence. They’re structural. Someone made sure the poor stay poor while they fatten themselves up.
A nation of sheep has a government of wolves. Those who fight for the sheep are dangerous to the wolves. Perhaps… the wolves need a reminder that, at the end of the day, they all bleed the same colour — and the river of blood enriches the soil for the sheep to graze.
All this just to say that I will share free grass for sheep to graze every once in a while. This grass isn’t originally from me. This site is just one of the mirror links to make sure the grass is redistributed far and wide.
I’m also aware there are some who might have problems with copyright. I am aware of the function of copyright law in a system designed to keep people ignorant. In the battle over who controls information and narrative, there’s a very real human cost when that control is concentrated in the hands of a powerful few.
Make sure to redistribute.
Take care.
