Author’s Note: the following was dictated to me by Party leader Allardyce T. Merriweather at the Party’s ritual Charlottesville Book Burning, which took place 12 August 2021, four years after the white supremacist rally which saw the lives of over two thousand innocent victims slaughtered by fascist forces, a rally which Party historians mark as the beginning of our Second Civil War.

People not up on Party History think we started with the books. But it isn’t so. We got rid of the racist hate statues first. That was only natural. Books came after.

Now you might wonder about this. A statue is just a hunk of stone or metal, but a book can be filled with the most illegal thoughts you used to be able to imagine! Books are more toxic. Statues are comparatively harmless. So why did we start with them? It’s simple: People can see the statues.

I don’t mean it to sound as simple as that. Or maybe I do. People see statues. They’re right there, in your face. They remind people of forbidden times; they cause forbidden thoughts. A man sees a racist hate statue and he starts thinking, “Why is that there? Maybe things weren’t always this way. Maybe there were times when it was different.”

In a sense, it isn’t his fault he has these thoughts. He was triggered into them. We should pity this man.

People are weak and need Party guidance. The past was a hurtful time. Horrible things happened in the past. Racist, sexist, transphobic, even Islamophobic things. Hard to believe now, isn’t it? That’s the point, though. We want to make it impossible to believe.

This is why we must say that, in a sense, the past didn’t really exist. And since it didn’t exist, we can’t have reminders of it in public. The statues had to go. They went fast, too. Faster than we had hoped.

Statues — and movies, don’t forget the movies — caused massive trouble because they were visual. They were right there, out in the open. Books were different. A statue could trigger, but a book could corrupt.

You have to realize, when we started the burnings, people weren’t really reading them anyway. Most had no idea what was in ’em. How else do you think we were able to convince the indigenous populants to remove the statues so easily? They didn’t really know what they were — and we didn’t want ’em to find out.

That so few were reading history was one of the arguments some in the Party used to say we should wait on the burnings. True, books contained wrongthink, but if they were unread they were harmless. The poison in them had to be drunk to be effective. We could spend our energy better elsewhere, they said, like purging the remaining Churches.

But I pushed for it. I wanted the books to go as fast as possible. Sure, it’s true they were mainly unread, but you know what? It only takes one man to read one wrong book for trouble to start. We can never forget the danger that one man dedicated to his “truth” represents.

Besides, I likes me a good book burning. Watching all those wrongthink pages rising in flames fills me with dark glory.

Look: you don’t want some poor kid to stumble into a library and happen upon a book that contains disturbing material. I saw — I saw this with my own eyes, now — a kid walking through a History section. They still had one at this library. I was there surveying this library for its ritual burning.

Anyway, this kid chanced upon Clouds of Glory: The Life and Legend of [REDACTED] by Michael Korda. Author’s note: Merriweather spoke of a certain military leader in the first Civil War.

[REDACTED], as I live and breathe! Don’t go and print that name, now. I’m telling you because I think you can handle it, but we both know your readers can’t and won’t.

Well, I snapped into action. Right there and then, I snatched the book from the boy, and it was a good thing I had on me a lighter. I called some Party members over to take the poor boy, and lit that sucker up. Tossed it right on the pile. Woof! Whole library went up.

[Laughter] Oh, me, it does my heart good to think of it. It’s true we lost some good volumes by Mao and Howard Zinn in the blaze. But nobody said true freedom wouldn’t come with a cost.

The real good news? The boy came out of his re-education just fine. He is to this day a loyal Party member. With nary a thought of the past.

Note: The Soros Capitol Book Burning will take place next weekend. Attendance is mandatory.