The Null Device

Battle of the books

There is now debate in Australia about banning militant jihadist literature. Am I the only person who finds it odd that a country which bans computer games unsuitable for children, "immoral" literature (such as 18th-century erotic novel Fanny Hill) and controversial art-house films such as Baise-Moi is agonising so much over whether banning incendiary literature calling for holy war would be too illiberal?

There are 4 comments on "Battle of the books":

Posted by: Alex Gibson http://polyopticon.ath.cx Tue Aug 9 17:55:07 2005

Perhaps banning literature is treating a symptom rather than the cause; ie:/ economic and military expansion by the west in muslim terrotories since the richest oil fields in the world were discovered there in the 1920's.

Maybe if we want to prevent ecsculation of jihad we should consider our (the wests) involvemnet in it (jihad).

But I suspect that is not our intention, that is we do not want to prevent jihad because it permits us to continue what we begun 80, or so, years ago. Better to just ban literature, or even better... just threaten to.

Posted by: gjw http://the-fix.org Tue Aug 9 19:36:25 2005

Aah, but censorship of violence and/or ideology has always been a different thing than censorship of (gasp) sex. Complains about violent video games, for instance, have actually been quite muffled. On the other hand, when GTA's "Hot Coffee" hack turned up, censorship was immediate and undebated.

Posted by: datakid http:// Wed Aug 10 04:25:56 2005

I'm banning the term illiberal from now on.

Posted by: p1x3l http:// Mon Aug 15 05:07:57 2005

note: the government and its agencies ban things. the people sit back and winge and do nothing about it. of course you will still be able to read plenty of right wing mags and papers (hi rupert) that will tell you it was good to a-bomb the japanese, it will be good to a-bomb the iranians, theres nothing immoral in a good war - as long as we don't have to understand our opponents to the point they become "human".