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Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds
a book by Michael Knowles
(our site's book review)
The Amazon blurb says that “Every single American needs to read Michael Knowles’s Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds. I don’t mean ‘read it eventually.’ I mean: stop what you’re doing and pick up this book.”—CANDACE OWENS
"The most important book on free speech in decades—read it!” —SENATOR TED CRUZ
A New Strategy: We Win, They Lose
The Culture War is over, and the culture lost.
The Left’s assault on liberty, virtue, decency, the Republic of the Founders, and Western civilization has succeeded.
The Left’s assault on liberty, virtue, decency, and the Republic of the Founders has succeeded
You can no longer keep your social media account—or your job—and acknowledge truths such as: Washington, Jefferson, and Columbus were great men. Schools and libraries should not coach children in sexual deviance. Men don’t have uteruses.
How did we get to this point?
In the groundbreaking Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, Knowles reveals:
- How the “free speech absolutists” gave away the store
- The First Amendment does not require a value-neutral public square
The Communists figured out that their revolution could never succeed as long as the common man was attached to his own culture and would resist - How the Communists figured out that their revolution could never succeed as long as the common man was attached to his own culture
- Where political correctness came from
- How, comply or resist, political correctness is a win-win game for the bad guys
- Why taking our stand on “freedom of speech” helps put atheism, decadence, and nonsense on the same plane with faith, virtue, and reality
- The real question: Will we shut down drag queen story hour, or cancel Abraham Lincoln?
- For 170 years the First Amendment was compatible with prayer in public school
- How the atheists got the Warren Court to rule their way
- To this day, there’s a First Amendment exception for obscenity. What exactly is the argument that perverts’ teaching toddlers to twerk is not obscene?
Ben Shapiro takes on the leftist bullies, exposes their hypocrisy, and offers conservatives a reality check in the face of what has become the gravest threat to American liberty: the left’s single-minded focus on ending political debate through bully tactics
Read Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds if you want to learn how to take the fight to the enemy.
“Michael Knowles is a rare combination: the conservative who understands the roots of his opponents’ thought, and the fighter who understands the necessity for tactical aggression.” —BEN SHAPIRO, #1 bestselling author and host of The Ben Shapiro Show
“This book is a howitzer in the fight against the totalitarians. . ..” —DAN BONGINO, bestselling author and host of The Dan Bongino Show
This book is a howitzer in the fight against the totalitarians
“Magnificent. . .. like nothing you’ve ever read. . .. Tough love for hapless right-wingers forfeiting our culture to the radical Left.” —ANN COULTER, political commentator and bestselling author of ¡Adios, America!
“Michael Knowles is a national treasure.” —CHARLIE KIRK, bestselling author and host of The Charlie Kirk Show
“This book is a must-read for anyone wanting a diagnosis on how American culture and politics became so ill.” —ANDY NGÔ, journalist and bestselling author of Unmasked
“Knowles has written an insightful and gripping deconstruction of the mind-prison called political correctness. . .. This is a must-read.” —ANDREW KLAVAN, Edgar Award-winning and bestselling author and host of The Andrew Klavan Show
Socialism is nothing but Communism on a slow train
In an 1843 letter to the German philosopher Arnold Ruge, Karl Marx called for "the ruthless criticism of all that exists." Marx wanted to watch the world burn, much like today's "peaceful protesters" who use arson, looting, rioting and hurting police officers as their definition of "peaceful." Our culture has actually degenerated to the point that the media and leftists and academics and Hollyweird all agree with this insanity!
Marx wanted to watch the world burn, much like today's 'peaceful protesters' who use arson, looting, rioting and hurting police officers as their definition of 'peaceful'
Both the Antifa anarchists and Black Lives Matter Marxists in the protests are also looking to burn down the system
Both the Antifa anarchists and Black Lives Matter Marxists in the protests are also looking to burn down the system, since it is all hopelessly racist and white supremacist anyway (one of their biggest lies). Marx (as well as Black Lives Matter activists) actively pressed for the implementation of communism (starting with socialism, but slowly changing to communism), arguing that the working class should carry out organized proletarian revolutionary action to topple capitalism and bring about socio-economic emancipation.
Black Lives Matter Marxists in the 'peaceful' protests are, like Marx, looking to burn down the system, since it is all hopelessly racist and white supremacist anyway (one of their biggest lies)
Karl Marx—unfortunately, many people took this bozo seriously
"Today, a similar dilemma faces young people: conform to an established order that is crumbling and incapable of reproducing itself, or oppose it, at considerable personal cost, in search of new ways of working, playing and living together? Even though communist parties have disappeared almost entirely from the political scene, the spirit of communism driving the manifesto [The Communist Manefesto] is proving hard to silence. . . . While celebrating how globalisation has shifted billions from abject poverty to relative poverty, venerable western newspapers, Hollywood personalities, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, bishops and even multibillionaire financiers all lament some of its less desirable ramifications: unbearable inequality, brazen greed, climate change, and the hijacking of our parliamentary democracies by bankers and the ultra-rich." (Source: Yanis Varoufakis: Marx predicted our present crisis – and points the way out, Yanis Varoufakis, the Guardian)
In the 1950s, Joseph McCarthy went on a witch hunt for commies which he found under every rock; all the way through Trump's term, he experienced witch hunts constantly—the elites wanted him gone as he exposed their corruptness
"The author of the number-one Amazon bestselling book with no words, Reasons to Vote for Democrats, has written his second book on the corruption of political language. Michael Knowles’s Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds is an unrelenting assault on politically correct pieties. . . . While Knowles inveighs daily against the cultural Left, his book reserves its harshest criticism for the intellectual Right, which “through decades of incompetence has permitted political correctness to invert our culture.” . . . Knowles displays his reverence for the good, the true, and the beautiful through irreverent mockery of the bad, the false, and the ugly." (Source: Review of "Speechless" by Michael Knowles | City Journal, Max Eden, City Journal)
Knowles goes completely off the rails, however, when he states Conservatives should “not only articulate a moral and political vision but also suppress ideologies and organizations that would subvert that vision.” Perhaps he hasn't heard: the cure for wrong or hate or ugly speech is more speech, not censorship, repression, or cancellation. This is how democracy works—perhaps he should look it up!
Knowles goes completely off the rails when he states Conservatives should suppress ideologies and organizations that would subvert a good moral/political vision. But that copies the left's censorship craze!
"Politically correct reformers undermined the old standards by appealing to 'free speech' and inveighing against 'censorship,' but no sooner had the radicals cracked the old moral order than they began to enforce a new standard of speech with all the force and rigidity they once claimed to oppose. Political correctness reached its apotheosis during the early weeks of 2021, when corporate enforcers of the new standards took the liberty of censoring a duly elected president of the United States. . . . Conservatives have failed to thwart political correctness because they mistake it for a campaign of 'censorship' against 'free speech' rather than a contest between two competing standards of speech and behavior. But even this description does not do justice to the cleverness of political correctness, which aims less to erect new standards than to destroy the old ones. . . . the insistence on mutually contradictory rationales actually furthers the radicals' ends by rendering people, in George Orwell's words, 'unwilling and unable to think too deeply on any subject whatsoever.' Orwell called this tactic 'doublethink,' and he credited it with enabling regimes to 'arrest the course of history.'" (Source: Conservatives Must Change Course on Free Speech | Opinion, Michael Knowles, Newsweek)
In Orwell's 1984, 'Big Brother is watching you' was an omnipresent warning and the population dared not think politically incorrect thoughts (much less say them) or they'd be sent to reindoctrination centers (like in 21st century colleges)
" . . . in his futuristic novel 1984, the English political novelist George Orwell gave a tragic illustration of what the world would be without the freedom to think. Orwell had the intention to call his book ''The Last Man in Europe,'' as a tribute to the essential quality that distinguished man from the world around him, namely his ability to think for himself. . . . Winston, the main character of the novel, lives in a country where individual thought is banned, where only the leader, Big Brother, is allowed to reason and to decide. . . . His fellow intellectuals have sold their inalienable right to think freely for security and a semblance of physical well-being. . . . [Orwell] often proclaimed that 1984 could happen if man did not become aware of the assaults on his personal freedom and did not defend his most precious right, the right to have his own thoughts." (Source: THE MESSAGE FOR TODAY IN ORWELL'S '1984', Edmond van Den Bossche, NY Times, 1984)
Big Brother is listening
British author and essayist George Orwell wrote of a future where a global despotic power controlled the people of Oceania with surveillance and propaganda. ... It was called 1984 and it depicted a dark future where technology exists in the public realm only as a tool for the elite to control society. In 2020, elites at Facebook and Twitter censored vital content that could have changed the election result, thereby beginning a campaign of controlling America via technology. Beware—this dystopia is our dystopia. Winston was arrested by Thought Police for his dissent, just as you'll be canceled for dissent, or your words or videos will be canceled for dissent. It's way past 1984. OR IS IT?!!!
In 2020, elites at Facebook and Twitter censored vital content that could have changed the election result, showing us their desire to control the USA
In the novel, the ruling English Socialist Party (Ingsoc) created Newspeak to meet the ideological requirements of English Socialism in Oceania. Newspeak is a controlled language of simplified grammar and restricted vocabulary designed to limit the individual's ability to think and articulate "subversive" concepts such as personal identity, self-expression and free will. Such concepts are criminalized as thoughtcrime since they contradict the prevailing Ingsoc orthodoxy. (Source: Newspeak, Wikipedia)
There are breathtaking parallels between Orwell's masterpiece's depressing dystopia and the current elite leaders and their rewriting history, destroying historic statues, canceling whatever disagrees with them, etc.
If you're noticing the breathtaking parallels between Orwell's masterpiece's dystopia [1984] and the current elite leaders and their rewriting history, destroying historic statues, and their nasty woke cancel culture mobs, their hatred of freedom, democracy, and individualism, and their love of socialism and statist levels of government power, you are not alone. Orwell warned of perverting language for political power, and that is the modus operandi of 1984.
The elites don't actually care about democracy OR socialism; but if they push us into socialism, they will soon be living like this (and we'll all be starving); what they crave is wealth and power
Each dictatorship possesses an all-pervading control of collective behavior and of thought itself. The past is a pawn in the hands of present policy—he who controls the past controls the present and future. When the rulers want to change history, they destroy all old books and periodicals and replace them with new ones. The power elite are indifferent to truth. This dystopian scenario is our dystopian reality, except the dictatorship aspect, which the liberal elites won't launch for a decade or so.
In Orwell's 1984, the population dared not think politically incorrect thoughts (much less say them) or they'd be sent to reindoctrination centers (like in 21st century colleges)
Winston worked for the Ministry of Truth in 1984, rewriting history. In 2021, the rewriting of history and replacing of books is already occuring—as in 1984. In 2021 when one has a nonconforming thought, he doesn't get canceled until he communicates it. Upon cancellation, he ceases to exist just like Winston's self was murdered in 1984 so he merely welcomed real death. This was a Big Brother success story—conformity—capitulation to Big Brother, just as fearful conformity to the lying, sick, racist liberal narrative is a success story to liberal elites.
There's a leftist movement to intentionally hit the self-destruct button on civil society and principles we conservatives hold dear—it's time to stand up to these Marxists
As Knowles says, "No matter how hard conservatives fight against political correctness, we always lose ground… The reason for this is that PC lays a trap whereby however the conservatives respond, the radicals’ agenda is advanced. . . . conservatives misunderstand what political correctness is, which is a campaign to destroy traditional standards. PC replaces old moral codes with speech codes. . . . [there's a] leftist movement to intentionally hit the self-destruct button on civil society and principles we hold dear . . . conservatives are only willing to defend free speech in the abstract, but they’re not willing to make actual substantive claims, moral claims. They’re not allowed to hold a substantive political vision. . . . Knowles sees the cancel culture and political correctness problem in modern society as the product of a brewing culture war" (Source: Michael Knowles Discusses His New Book, 'Speechless', Gabe Kaminsky, The Federalist)
PC lays a trap whereby however the conservatives respond, the radicals’ agenda is advanced
Conservatives misunderstand what political correctness is, which is a campaign to destroy traditional standards. PC replaces old moral codes with speech codes, and since conservatives' context is morals, PC speech codes effectively silence conservatives
Below is an example of controlling words to control minds. The leftist strategy to increase power and wealth pushed them to perpetuate false race wars so that it can covertly fund its socialist agenda via fake reform programs such as reparations. Then invent a term like "systemic racism" that they blame on the right and white supremacy, even though it is conservatives who are antiracist and who have proven remedies for bad schools and bad education, remedies which the left demonize in all ways possible, showing that they have no desire to help minorities when keeping them down is so profitable for them and for BLM groups. By forcing their systemic racism lie on the media and academia they've "controlled words to control minds."
Leftists have no desire to help minorities when keeping them down is so profitable for them and for BLM groups—the blacks are being used and cynically manipulated by leftists feigning compassion
"Critics [of the critical race theory lies like those in the 1619 Project] have decried the movement’s shoddy scholarship and warned parents that the leftist ideology is little more than warmed-over Marxism filled with anti-American propaganda."—James Varney in Washington Times
"The Left is desperately trying to perpetuate false race wars so that it can covertly fund its socialist agenda via fake reform programs such as reparations. But its cover has been blown. To see the real systemic racism that they claim needs to be dismantled, all liberals have to do is look in the mirror." (Source: A ‘Reparations’ Plan Designed to Help the Activist Left, Not Minorities, Mike Stenhouse, National Review)
- Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt: Toward a Secular Theocracy
- The Victims' Revolution: The Rise of Identity Studies and the Closing of the Liberal Mind
- The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics
- Morality Wars: How Empires, the Born Again, and the Politically Correct Do Evil in the Name of Good
- Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment
- The Rise of Victimhood Culture: Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and the New Culture Wars
- The Shadow University: The Betrayal Of Liberty On America's Campuses
- The Plot to Change America: How Identity Politics is Dividing the Land of the Free
- Universities Should Be Unsafe For Political Correctness
- The Assault On Freedom In America
- Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us
- HATE: Why We Should Resist it with Free Speech, Not Censorship
- The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech
- The Intimidation Game: How the Left Is Silencing Free Speech
- Cancel Culture: The Latest Attack on Free Speech and Due Process
- Campus Battlefield: How Conservatives Can WIN the Battle on Campus and Why It Matters
- The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture
- Leftist Fascism
- The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics
- Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus
- The Coming Civil War
- Erasing America: Losing Our Future by Destroying Our Past
- Death of a Nation: Plantation Politics and the Making of the Democratic Party
- The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture
- Making Sense Of Multiculturalism
- Barbarians: How The Baby Boomers, Immigration, and Islam Screwed My Generation
- The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School
- Black Skin Privilege and the American Dream
- 'Don't Make the Black Kids Angry': The hoax of black victimization and those who enable it
- Hating Whitey and Other Progressive Causes
- Antifa: What Americans Need to Know about the Alt-Left