The New Index: From Prohibited Books to Prohibited Thought

Written by urbanwronski

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A president — and the institutions that support him — silencing political dissent. Journalists fired by right-wing media oligarchs. Even late-night talk show hosts Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert have found themselves targets. The US has seemingly returned to the 1950s, when McCarthyism saw a nationwide witch hunt for communists and “subversive” ideology. And it’s catching: the Red Scare-esque hysteria over political speech is evident in Australia, too, with campaigns against critics of Israel, climate activists and progressive voices supported by government crackdowns.  Crikey.

The 1950s called. It wants its witch hunt back; the whole grim arsenal of paranoid hysteria, show trials, and casual dobbing in. But where McCarthy wielded a cudgel, the new inquisition wields a scalpel. We’re not living through a Red Scare reboot; we’re witnessing the digital-age equivalent of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum; the Catholic Church’s master list of forbidden knowledge. Only now, the priesthood is a fusion of political operatives and corporate compliance officers, and excommunication is instantaneous, algorithmic, and laundered through the sterile language of “Terms of Service.”

McCarthy’s was a spectacle of public accusation. Today’s suppression is a bureaucracy of quiet erasure. Crikey Cut Through lays bare the blueprint: Trump’s movement isn’t just echoing history; it’s optimising it. The loyalists are embedded, the pressure is applied off-book, and the targets are neutralised with clinical efficiency.

The cancellation of a Colbert or a Kimmel isn’t framed as censorship; it’s a “budgetary decision” or a “brand safety concern.” This is Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil,” dressed in an HR memo. The modern HR department is no longer a protector of employees but a branch of the security state, outsourcing repression to the C-suite with a smiley-face emoji. It’s the boot of the state now manufactured by corporate subcontractors who are laughing all the way to the bank.

And Australia? We’re not just watching; we’re eager acolytes in this new faith. Former public broadcaster, the worm-holed, rat-infested ABC’s permanent lurch to starboard and its cowed, craven abdication of duty for placating the top end of town, is prior restraint, par excellence; a pre-emptive self-censorship born from anticipating power’s displeasure. Not so much truth’s watchdog as a capering Bichon Frise. When arts festivals purge “problematic” voices and journalism trades investigation for purity tests, they act as their own inquisitors. This is the most efficient control: when the censored internalise the censor.

Remember the Lavender Scare? It never ended; it just rebranded. The same paranoid logic that fired thousands for their sexuality now fuels conspiracy theories painting the LGBTQIA+ community as groomers. It’s history’s ugliest playlist, set to a new beat.

The weaponisation of language itself is a masterstroke. Calls for “civility” become gag orders. As Jonathan Swift understood, you can prove anything if you get to define the terms. This creates a Kafkaesque reality where the rules are unknowable and the accusation is synonymous with guilt. Orwell warned us about the boot on the face; Foucault explained why the system that designs the boot; the anonymous, normalising bureaucracy that makes the boot seem inevitable; is even more terrifying.

This isn’t a phase. It’s a chronic condition. The targets aren’t threats; they are symbols. Safety, morality, and national identity become the justifications for a symphony of suppression, conducted by Trump but played by an orchestra of institutional cowards.

So, what’s left is not just resistance, but a recalibration of courage. It requires the clarity of a philosopher, the wit of a satirist, and the stubbornness of an archivist preserving truths they know will be deemed inconvenient. For those with their BS detectors screaming in overdrive, this is the moment. This is not a drill. We must become students of suppression, recognizing the ancient patterns of the Index and the Inquisition in the latest FCC complaint, Inquiry or corporate decree.

We have indeed read the script. The question is whether we have the will to rewrite the ending. We have nothing to lose but everything: our voice, our truth, our very ability to laugh in the face of power. The call is to refuse; stubbornly, unyieldingly and without delay, to play our assigned roles in this tired, tragic, yet laughably inadequate but sordid farce.

So let’s lose the politeness, turn the volume to eleven, and burn this script to the ground.