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“Fahrenheit 451” Predicted People Would Demand Tyranny

Even if it has been a while since you read Fahrenheit 451, you might remember Ray Bradbury’s classic for its portrayal of a dystopian future in which an authoritarian government burns books.
Read Fahrenheit 451 again to discover why people wanted their tyrannical government to burn books. Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 in 1953, yet the parallels to today’s social climate for censorship are haunting.
Bradbury’s protagonist is Guy Montag, who, like all firemen in Bradbury’s future, burns books.
In Bradbury’s dystopia, firemen became “custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior; official censors, judges, and executors.”

Today’s mainstream and social media are “custodians of our peace of mind” as they filter out “conflicting theory and thought.” Captain Beatty is Montag’s boss. Beatty explained, “If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one.”
If you don’t want people debating questions such as Covid-19 policy, Beatty has the ticket: “Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving.”
Today, millions listen daily to reports of case counts of Covid-19. Like Bradbury predicted, listeners can recite the numbers but have no context to make sense of the numbers. Many have little idea that important scientists and doctors have advocated alternatives to lockdowns that could save lives and abate catastrophic impacts on economies. As in Bradbury’s world, many are working tirelessly to disparage and censor alternative views.
After Montag questions his role as a book burner, he recites Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold to neighbors. His neighbors were shocked at the feelings the poem provoked. One cries out, “Silly words, silly words, silly awful hurting words… Why do people want to hurt people? Not enough hurt in the world, you’ve got to tease people with stuff like that!”
Incredibly, Bradbury anticipated today’s social climate where people claim censorship is justified because someone hurt their feelings.
Beatty explains a dominant social norm justifying censorship: Do not offend minorities. Bradbury is clear; “minorities” meant practically everyone:

Don’t step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico.

Pretending you can “stay happy all the time” was another social norm driving popular demand for censorship in Fahrenheit 451. Beatty explains,

[Censorship] 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.

In Bradbury’s dystopia, to consider conflicting theories makes for unhappiness, so Beatty lauds the fireman’s mission and justifies censorship:

The important thing for you to remember, Montag, is we’re the Happiness Boys, the Dixie Duo, you and I and the others. We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought. We have our fingers in the dyke. Hold steady. Don’t let the torrent of melancholy and dreary philosophy drown our world. We depend on you. I don’t think you realize how important you are, we are, to our happy world as it stands now.

In Bradbury’s future, intellectuals came under scrutiny when ideas conflicted. The word “intellectual” became a “swear word.” The public dreaded “the unfamiliar” and disdained a world where merit mattered. Again, Bradbury has Beatty explain the mindset behind such thinking:

We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man’s mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well read man?

In Bradbury’s dystopia, thinking was not welcome. Even front porches were eliminated. One of Montag’s young neighbors explained why:

People sat there sometimes at night, talking when they wanted to talk, rocking, and not talking when they didn’t want to talk. Sometimes they just sat there and thought about things, turned things over… they didn’t want people sitting like that, doing nothing, rocking, talking; that was the wrong kind of social life. People talked too much. And they had time to think.

Social distancing is today embraced as a way to keep us safe from Covid-19. Social distancing also keeps us safe from “conflicting theories and thoughts.” Chairs have been removed from social gathering places. Hallways are quiet. Nobody stands around the water cooler. People have few places to talk with each other. The parallel to porches is haunting.
Perhaps you are sensing a shift in social norms undermining parental rights and the sanctity of the family. Bradbury foresaw a push for government-funded pre-school. Captain Beatty explains,

The home environment can undo a lot you try to do at school. That’s why we’ve lowered the kindergarten age year after year until now we’re almost snatching them from the cradle.

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https://www.activistpost.com/2020/09/fah...ranny.html