I began my journalistic career under strict censorship. It was imposed on the press and media by the Greek colonels who had seized power in a bloodless coup in Athens on April 21, 1967. Censorship, however, suited me fine. That’s because I was an ardent backer of the coup, the democratic process having been torn to shreds by the socialists and extreme left-wingers in Parliament. Now, 52 years later, I am once again writing under censorship, but this time run by the politically correct leftist gestapo. One wrong word and one’s career is kaput!

A society in which an ill-judged joke means losing one’s livelihood is not a laughing matter. Today’s censorship differs from the Orwellian vision of an intrusive government that polices thought, as expressed through the written and spoken word. Today’s demand for total conformity does not come from any government, but from the media, the film industry, and universities.

When you think of it, it’s really quite unique. Governments have been suppressing speech since time immemorial, but for the first time in man’s history censorship has taken place through osmosis, through the subtle persuasion of the people who teach, write books, and make movies: the universities, the media, and Hollywood. They created magical, taboo words to restrict speech and liberally applied them to their opponents—words including “racist,” “sexist,” “homophobic,” “nationalist,” and “white supremacist.” Meanwhile, they’re neutering common terms with real meaning, most recently “convicted felon.” San Francisco’s government ignores its streets drowning in human feces but is pushing through a law mandating the substitute phrase “justice-involved persons.”

Don Cherry, an 85-year-old Canadian hockey star, was recently fired from his sports announcer job for regretting on air that new immigrants had abandoned the tradition of wearing a poppy in their lapels to commemorate veterans who had lost their lives in World War I. The diversity mob demanded Cherry’s head the moment after he uttered that sentiment.

Megyn Kelly’s superstar television career was derailed in October 2018 because she rhetorically asked on the air what was wrong with children wearing blackface paint if they wanted to dress up as black characters during Halloween. She compounded her mistake by also saying that Santa Claus was white, not black. Both Cherry and Kelly were fired because aggrieved listeners were shocked by such talk.

Nothing of course can match The New York Times for waging unrelenting war against white people. The rag praises the Black Lives Matter apologist film Queen & Slim as if it were Citizen Kane:

Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith) and Slim (Daniel Kaluuya) are slow-dancing in a Louisiana juke joint. The black couple have been on the run since shooting a white police officer dead and are taking a pause from their escape. The two sway tenderly, staring deeply into each other’s eyes…

I haven’t seen this trash, but I bring it up because of the sympathetic manner in which the rag presents the black cop-killers. Imagine what would happen if someone wrote in this manner about a white couple murdering a black police officer.

Even civil discourse itself is racist, according to ideologues like Egyptian-American feminist Mona Eltahawy, who said this on a panel on Australian Broadcasting Corp.’s Q&A program:

This idea of respectability, this idea of civility, this idea of unity, all of these words—decorum. Who invented those words? Those words were invented by white men for the benefit of other white men, in systems of institutions that were always designed to be for white men.

The preening intolerance of militant feminists, militant gays, militant blacks, militant transsexuals, militant whatevers has turned the U.S. into a laughingstock.

Never mind that black justice-involved persons are especially prominent in anti-LGBT crimes, comprising 10 out of 12 of those arrested in New York City. Only the New York Post had the courage to print this. The New York Times was apparently too busy reporting on how the Calgary Flames hockey team coach had uttered a racial epithet 10 years ago. He was fired.

Finally, Syracuse University recently gave in to student demands after the appearance of racist graffiti triggered weeks of rioting. Students of color won additional financial aid, $1 million in spending on curriculum to address racism, and preferential housing options—because someone drew a swastika in the snow. Taking offense has never been so profitable. Why, if these outrageous provocations didn’t exist, they would surely have to be invented.