‘It’s no good Montag. We’ve all got to be alike.’

Thus spoke Montag’s fire captain in Francois Truffaut’s 1966 movie adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451, a treatment Bradbury was reported to have been generally happy with. Truffaut presents a story about a dystopian future where as a means of social control people have been heavily drug addled, deliberately dumbed down, and are functionally illiterate, where ‘reading’ as a rule consists of at most interpreting the pictures of comics, and many cannot keep a simple line of thought without forgetting what it was they were speaking about in mid-sentence. And to, as quoted below, an extreme and destructive level of ‘tolerance’ is continuously preached by Cousin Claudette to ‘the family’ (as the overall population is referred to in this society) from the large flat screen TV’s people have in their living rooms, this too being a matter of social control, and not of right and wrong as people might mistakenly presume.

‘Finally, do remember to tolerate your friends’ friends, However alien and peculiar they may seem to you. Don’t despise minorities.
Smother malice. Strangle violence. Suppress prejudice. Hate hate. Be tolerant today...’

Sounds depressingly all too familiar, and 1966 was not that long ago. One has to wonder if the surviving actors of that film sense a touch of irony as they remember their rolls then in Truffaut’s ‘Farenheit 451’, and then look at the very Multi-Cultural world of today.

I would have included this you-tube video and this one of clips from the film, which I invite you to watch, but the embedding feature was disabled. The excerpts from the fascinating dialogue of the movie are taken from this transcript. A well done movie, it was filmed in and around the London of the mid 1960’s, a product of the Pinewood Studios. I highly recommend watching it, not so much as it once was, a warning about the future, but rather now as a warning about the present. It provides a glimpse of the English, a physically handsome people, before the ravages of the Multi-cult had been fully brought against them.

‘Two cells of anti-socials were located earlier today in the Western Metropolitan Zone. The police have declined to comment so far...’

‘Tell me, that number
you all wear, what’s it mean?

Oh, Fahrenheit 451

Why rather than
or ?

Fahrenheit 451 is the
temperature at which…

book paper catches fire
and starts to burn.

I’d like to ask you something
else, only I don’t really dare.

Go ahead.

Is it true…

that a long time ago…

firemen used to put out fires
and not burn books?

Really, your uncle is right.
You are light in the head.

“Put fires out”?
Who told you that?

- I don’t know. Someone. But is it true?
- What a strange idea.

- Houses have always been fireproof.
- Ours isn’t.

Well, then, it should be
condemned one of these days.

It has to be destroyed,
and you will have to move…

to a house that is fireproof.

Too bad.

Tell me,
why do you burn books?

What?

Well, it’s a job
like any other.

Good work with lots
of variety.

Monday, we burn Miller; Tuesday,
Tolstoy; Wednesday, Walt Whitman;

Friday, Faulkner; and Saturday
and Sunday, Schopenhauer and Sartre.

“We burn them to ashes
and then burn the ashes.”

That’s our official motto.
You don’t like books then?

- Do you like the rain?
- Yes, I adore it.

Books are just
so much… rubbish.

They have no interest.

Then why do some people still read
them although it’s so dangerous?

Precisely because
it is forbidden.

Why is it forbidden?

Because it makes
people unhappy.

Do you really
believe that?

Oh, yes. Books
disturb people.

They make them
antisocial.

Do you think
I’m antisocial?

Why do you ask?

Well…
I’m a teacher.

Well, not quite.
I’m still on probation.

This afternoon
the analyst called me in,

And I don’t think
I said the right things.

I’m not at all happy
about my answers.

That’s probably why I’ve been so
rude to you. Have I been annoying you?

Oh, no,
not at all.

In fact, I was questioned
this afternoon as well.

I didn’t do
too well either.

This is where I live.

You see?
This is my house.

- One more question.
- Another one?

- Just a tiny one.
- What is it?

Do you ever read
the books you burn?

Why should I? First,
I’m not interested.

Second, I’ve better things
to do. Third, it is forbidden.

Of course.

- You happy?
- What?

Of course I’m happy.’

‘You’re nothing
but zombies, all of you...’

‘Finally, do remember to
tolerate your friends’ friends,

However alien and peculiar
they may seem to you.

- Don’t despise minorities.
- Doesn’t cousin Midge’s face look swollen?

- That’s because she’s pregnant.
- Is that why?

I think it’s irresponsible
to have children.

Somebody’s got to have children,
Jackie. They can’t let the race die out.

Babies grow up to look
like you. That must be fun.

- Smother malice. Strangle violence. Suppress prejudice. Hate hate.
- Here’s Montag.

Be tolerant today.

Being just pretty
is not enough.

The wife who uses translusives
knows better than that.

Try some today, but watch out
for your friends’ husbands.

They’ll be around you
like flies.

No one will ever notice
that your chairs don’t match,

And you’ll be
as popular as ever.

Would you excuse me?

Yes, I like her hair
like this.

Come on, Montag,
be good now.

Come on over and sit with us. You haven’t
seen Jackie and Doris and Helen for ages.

- It’s very rude, you know.
- Leave me alone.

Aren’t you well?

All right,
but it’s very naughty.

...are being reclassified.

Two cells of antisocials
were located earlier today…

In the western
metropolitan area.

The police have declined
to comment so far.

Meanwhile, the “report those
who threaten you” campaign…

- met with particular success today…
- When an old woman, cousins,

chose to be burned with her books
rather than being separated from them.

If that’s a joke,
it’s not in very good taste.

- You’d like to think that, wouldn’t you?
- Don’t be silly, Montag.

Things like that
don’t happen.

You mean, you don’t want
to hear about it. I saw it!

- My husband says…
- Oh, your husband! You don’t even know where he is!

- Montag!
- Of course I know.

- He’s been called on reserve for some field training.
- Or to fight a little war.

You never know, do you?
Why do you call it that?

Even if he was,
what about it?

He’s not allowed to call
me until it’s all over.

- It’ll only be about a week or two.
- He’ll be all right.

The point about wars is, if
you want to call them that,

it’s only other women’s husbands
who get killed. That’s true.

I never knew anyone
who got killed in a…

Not anyone whose husband
died like that.

Getting run over, jumping
out of a window, yes.

Like Gloria’s husband
a few nights ago.

But never
that other way.

Anyway, that’s life,
isn’t it?

That’s what you call it.

You’re nothing
but zombies, all of you.

Just like those husbands of
yours you don’t even know anymore.

You’re not living,
you’re just killing time!

Well, I think it’s time to go. Yes, I…

Thank you. It was a lovely afternoon.

Really fun. Yes. Sit down!

- Come on, sit down. It’ll only take a minute.
- Whatever is that?

- Darling.
- It’s not a book?

That’s what it is.
It’s a novel.

Oh, it’s a book! Oh, you
mustn’t! It’s against the law!

- Quiet. Sit down and listen.
- Since Montag really insists.

But when he’s through,
I hope we can do as we please.

“There can be no disparity
in marriage…

“like unsuitability
of mind and purpose.

“I had endeavoured to adapt Dora to
myself and found it impracticable.

“It remained for me to adapt myself to Dora,
to share with her what I could and be happy.

“It made my second year
much happier than my first,

“and, what was better still,
made Dora’s life all sunshine.

“But as that year wore on,
Dora was not strong.

“I had hoped that lighter hands than
mine would help to mould her character…

“and that a baby’s smile upon her breast
might change my child-wife to a woman.

“It was not to be.
My pretty Dora.

“We thought she would be running
about as she used to do in a few days.

“But they said wait a few days
more, and then wait a few days more,

“and still she neither
ran nor walked.

“I began to carry her downstairs
every morning and upstairs every night.

“But sometimes when I took her up, I
felt that she was lighter in my arms.

“A dead, blank feeling
came upon me,

“as if I were approaching
some frozen region…

“yet unseen
that numbed my life.

“I avoided direct recognition of this feeling
by any name, over any communing with myself.

“Until one night when it was
very strong upon me…

“and my aunt had left her
with her parting cry,

“‘Oh, good-bye,
little blossom.’

“I sat down at my desk,
alone, and tried to think.

“oh, what a fatal name
it was.

“and how the blossom…

withered in its bloom
up in the tree.”

I knew that’s what would happen.
It’s what I’ve always said.

Life isn’t like novels, novels
and tears, novels and suicide.

Novels are sick.
That was sheer cruelty, Montag.

You’re a cruel man. All
those words; idiotic words.

Evil words
that hurt people.

Isn’t there enough
trouble as it is?

Why disturb people with that
sort of filth? Poor Doris.

Bye, Linda. We were
having such a nice party.

- Such a shame.
- I can’t bear to know those feelings.

I’d forgotten
all about those things.

Oh, I’m sorry, Doris.

They won’t come back.
I’ll be all alone.

I won’t be popular anymore.

They won’t use me
in the family anymore.

And you made Doris cry!

She cried because
it is true.

What are you going to do now?
Haven’t you done enough harm?

Leave me alone, Linda. I’ve
got reading to do. Quite a lot.

- What’s the matter with you? Aren’t you well?
- It’s nothing.

I’ve got to read.

I’ve got to catch up with
the remembrance of the past!’

Posted by Alex on Friday, December 18, 2009 at 06:05 PM in
Comments (9) | Tell a friend

Comments:

Posted by Guessedworker on December 19, 2009, 02:55 PM | #

I agree that the film is interesting and also touching, albeit in that naive way that visions of the future, being bounded by their present, especially emotionally, so often are. The fact that Truffaut unwittingly shows us a time-capsule interesting to us, today, because of what it tells us about our past is also rather touching.

Bradbury wrote about the totalitarian hatred of knowledge only as a ground against which he could display his own love of books. He did not , I think, write about politics. So the carry-over into the racial totalitarianism practised against Europeans today is somewhat incidental.

As far as I am aware, no writer of the post-war era accurately predicted or postulated the notion that Europeans might be genocided by their own elites via unlimited Third World replacement. I wonder how some predictively accurate fiction, couched in dramatic terms and moralising the European victim, would have been received by the critical world. Probably, since publishers are so Jewish - and where they are not Jewish, so liberal - it would never have seen the light of day.

Posted by Matra on December 19, 2009, 05:22 PM | #

I haven’t seen the movie but I’ve read the book. What stood out for me was that unlike other books on the subject of censorship and totalitarianism in Fahrenheit 451 it is not so much the government but the Balkanised dumbed down people themselves who are responsible for the situation:

Now let’s take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don’t step on the toes of the dog lovers, the cat lovers, doctors, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comic books survive. and the three-dimensional sex magazines, of course. There you have it, Montag. It didn’t come from the government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no. Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals.

Of course, in our world governments have been anything but innocent in creating these conditions.

Posted by jamesUK on December 19, 2009, 07:44 PM | #

I hear you will be interviewing Dugin or one of his acolytes in a future Majority Rights Radio broadcast that’s great news.

Actually the worst thing is that they reinterpret things to put them in context to suit there political agenda like the bible, history, economics, anthropology, etc.

It shows you how weak and corrupt Western society is especially academia.

Posted by Desmond Jones on December 19, 2009, 09:04 PM | #

“Finally perish!” That is the exact alternative
which confronts the white race. For white civilization
is to-day conterminous with the white race. The civili-
zations of the past were local. They were confined
to a particular people or group of peoples. If they
failed, there were always some unspoiled, well-endowed
barbarians to step forward and “carry on.” But to-
day there are no more white barbarians. The earth has
grown small, and men are everywhere in close touch.
If white civilization goes down, the white race is irre-
trievably ruined. It will be swamped by the trium-
phant colored races, who will obliterate the white man
by elimination or absorption. What has taken place
in Central Asia, once a white and now a brown or yellow
land, will take place in Australasia, Europe, and Amer-
ica. Not to-day, nor yet to-morrow; perhaps not for generations;
but surely in the end. If the present drift be not changed, we whites are all ultimately
doomed. Unless we set our house in order, the doom
will sooner or later overtake us all.

The Rising Tide of Color against White World-Supremacy

Book by Lothrop Stoddard; Scribner, 1920. p.303-304

Posted by Guessedworker on December 19, 2009, 09:17 PM | #

Lothrop-Stoddard? Oh boy ... no, I mean a work of fiction by a known author, Desmond? Lothrop and his sort of fearless scientific racism probably explains why no regular fiction-writers have let their imaginations run in the direction of the true future!

Unless you can dig one up.

Posted by Desmond Jones on December 20, 2009, 06:10 AM | #

Recently, No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy and Coetzee’s Disgrace and the movie District 9, apparently. And no, I have neither read the books nor viewed the movie.

Posted by fellist on January 17, 2010, 02:43 PM | #

I saw the film again this weekend and would recommend it. I can’t think of a ‘mainstream’ movie made more recently that explicitly identifies the accomodation of non-euros into our societies as a problem, nor one that explicitly links that accomodation to the cultural destruction we’re suffering: Nietzsche, we’re told, had to be banned because the Jews didn’t like him, ‘Robinson Crusoe’ is banned because the ‘negroes’ didn’t like the portrayal of Man Friday. Books generally are considered a problem because they inspire ambition and imagination and so thwart the state’s desire to make us all the same. I liked the way television was identified as a tool of the hostile state, isolating and controlling its addicted viewers. The television matrix is called the ‘family’, and we hear the hero’s wife complaining that the ‘kitchen family’ needs fixing. In the early sixties few households had more than one TV, but Truffaut (or Bradbury) spotted the trend that would see people unable to function without a TV in every room. Having ‘Cousin’ the robot-like TV announcer constantly admonish the viewer to be tolerant of minorities and not be prejudiced really drives home the point that our totalitarians are liberal multiculturalists, making the film a nice antidote to ‘V for Vendetta’ (great film, but absolutely ass-backwards politically).

Posted by Alex on January 17, 2010, 10:44 PM | #

Great comments, Guessedworker. I was not thinking so much in terms of ethnicity or race with my post, but rather I was struck by the means of social control displayed in the film...ie the dumbing down, the accepted drug use, the extreme ‘tolerance’ promoted in relation with today. I suppose to answer my own question, that probably not many of the then likely confirmed liberal actors in the film (and now likely confirmed Multi-Culturalists) sense much of an irony with what Truffaut’s film presented then and what today’s Multi-cult world is presenting today, though I suspect that here and there some are wondering what is going on. Probably something similar with the even more stark John Hurt and Suzanna Hamilton version of 1984 and its cast and crew.

I don’t think it’s impossible that we might some day see Truffaut’s film (and more likely) Orwell’s 1984 and its associated films banned as ‘hate’ for the associations people might make between them and Multi-Culturalism.

Posted by fellist on May 28, 2010, 09:54 AM | #

In the film there are also the lines, talking about why books have to be burned:

Ah, Robinson Crusoe. The negroes didn’t
like that because of his man, Friday.

And Nietzsche. Ah, Nietzsche.
The Jews didn’t like Nietzsche.

The original novel, which I think generally prescient for 1953, fudged this element:

“Coloured people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it.”

Whites wanting books offensive to them burned? Doesn’t ring true. Truffaut, who made the film is half-Jewish I think, so his making the film and making that change is a little unexpected. Did he once express tolerance for Rassinier or holo-revisionism generally, too?

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