One of the many Prometheus-winning works that continues to be widely read and referenced in popular culture for its enduring dramatic power and themes is Fahrenheit 451.
Inducted in 1984 into the Prometheus Hall of Fame, Ray Bradbury’s civil-libertarian, anti-censorship and pro-reading novel envisions a dystopian future in which “firemen” burn books and literacy is suppressed, along with any memory of great literature.
While many find the novel relevant to our era, in which both free speech and the reading of books often seem threatened or in decline, few go as far as investigative reporter and media critic Matt Taibbi or as fervently.
An author, National Magazine Award-winner and former contributor to Rolling Stone who champions the Bill of Rights and offers a refreshingly honest and maverick take on passing events, Taibbi recently named one of his key projects in honor of Bradbury’s classic dystopian science fiction novel.
In a column on his Racket News website and at taibbi.Substack.com titled “Introducing ‘Project 451’ – Join the memory rebellion,” Taibbi wrote:
“Two weeks ago I complained about the failure/refusal of commercial news organizations to link to primary source materials…. now a full-blown crisis.. This brings Ray Bradbury’s famous Fahrenheit 451 scenario to life,” he wrote.
“If keeping hold of original versions of history is discouraged or prohibited, memory becomes rebellion. The new mechanism is a delete button instead of a flamethrower. Otherwise, it’s the exact theme in Bradbury’s book.”
In honor of Bradbury’s emblematic work, Taibbi has enhanced his website to challenge censorship and today’s related authoritarian trends.
“The new features we’re introducing are designed with these problems in mind. Americans showed fortitude in the last year in beating back (or at least wounding) a global censorship effort. Its new challenge will be finding ways to remember and record history in defiance of a creepy Year Zero ethos that’s become an institutional constant,” Taibbi wrote.
“There’s no easy solution. The Wayback Machine is technically foolproof, but like any digitization project, legally vulnerable…
“At least for now, I’m calling the new smorgasbord of “Library” features ‘Project 451’…. Still, it’s the same type of collective, rebellious memory effort that the book’s characters pursued.”
Taibbi doesn’t appear to be a libertarian, though he also seems to be much less of a contemporary progressive/leftist, instead upholding views that up until recently were viewed as “liberal,” meaning classical liberal or Kennedy-era liberal and civil libertarian.
Whatever his politics, as a journalist Taibbi remains a First Amendment and Bill of Rights absolutist and a dedicated journalist who refuses to be limited by politics and social pressure in his search for the truth.
“Sites like Wikipedia or search engines like Google emphasize “authority.” Their idea of editing is gatekeeping: figuring what credentials make a person deserving of being heard. I disagree with “authority” as a metric,” Taibbi explained.
“A human editor should only care if something is interesting. Funny has value, a crazy-ass theory has value, personal recollections are important, and even cultural references help (with Slavic politics, the right clip from the right mob movie is worth ten Brookings papers). Instead of one Wiki-style entry that attempts an inoffensive compilation of acceptable views, these family argument-type editorials should read as snapshots of what people really thought during these news cycles. It’s also a place where we can finally include the excellent idea of printing deleted comments from papers like the New York Times and Washington Post.”
Given Taibbi’s promising new approach to reporting, which at least seems both objective and libertarian in spirit, he just as easily could invoke Orwell as well as Bradbury.
“It feels right to be flies in the soup of those who want people to get out of the habit of remembering. Let’s make lying hard, and remembering easier,” Taibbi concludes his column.
No denying reality – even politically incorrect realities – or flushing the facts down Orwell’s proverbial “memory hole,” a la 1984 for Taibbi, a journalist who follows the facts wherever they lead.
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With COVID-19(84), you can see how they had to widen that memory hole after so many embarrassing lies and fallacies. Project 451 certainly promises journalism that will be both more entertaining and more accurate.