The Nightmare of Cultural Licentiousness: The Insatiable Grip of Power

1. We think not in words but in the shadow of words. This statement by Vladimir Nabokov may refer to the silent world where language and thought come to life. The world of our inner dialogue. A world that flows in the back of our minds when we write and create; when we read and see, when we are silent among others and when we lie in bed before sleep overtakes us. All these are realms where the speech, language, images, culture, art, and thought we create come to life. This is not the realm of the unconscious. This is the land of our conscious dialogues in our presence and the voice we hear within without another hearing our voice. But we hear the voices of others. Like the silence that is shattered by the din of the street from behind the window. In this silent world, others are not present, but their shadow exists. This is the very realm that Big Brother (in George Orwell's sense) seeks to conquer. A Big Brother who wants to cast a shadow over our speaking, thinking, and creating art. 2. Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic, has stated that Iran's cultural institutions have become licentious. Dehkhoda's culture defines licentiousness as carelessness and indifference. Licentiousness carries a negative connotation among Persian speakers. Accordingly, it can be said that Mr. Khamenei believes that Iran's cultural institutions are being lenient towards what he deems unacceptable and do not adhere to the constraints he desires. He has clearly explained that, in his view, these institutions do not produce suitable cultural products and do not sufficiently prevent the dissemination of cultural products created by cultural and artistic figures. These criticisms are not new. Mr. Khamenei has repeatedly made this statement since the beginning of his leadership, albeit with less intensity during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidency. However, during the three other presidencies, he has consistently criticized cultural institutions. Sometimes warning about cultural invasion, sometimes expressing concern over infiltration in cultural institutions, and this time in the name of cultural licentiousness. The significance of the phrases Mr. Khamenei uses lies in the fact that each of these phrases temporarily becomes a pretext for justifying restrictive actions and intensifying censorship against cultural and artistic figures. All these expressions contain criticism of cultural creation in Iran. However, there is no explanation regarding what Mr. Khamenei is really seeking beyond limitation. The culture of censorship is a culture of restriction, prohibition, and closure, not a culture of creation. For this reason, those who censor cannot write or create art. This is why Mr. Khamenei's desire for the government to be able to write for the people and create culture is not realized. He does not understand this characteristic of culture. Therefore, he always suffers from the incompetence of the censors under his control, becomes angry, and lashes out at cultural creators. 3. A recent study on book censorship in Germany during the Nazi regime shows an interesting phenomenon: Despite the increase in the number of book censorship agencies between 1933 and 1945 and a maze of bureaucracy and restrictive laws engulfing the German publishing system, and many writers fleeing Germany, Hitler was never satisfied with book censorship. He repeatedly complained in party speeches that despite the Third Reich's significant advancements in politics and industry, it lagged in culture and had not yet freed itself from the cultural legacy he believed was born from the writings of Jews, communists, and capitalists, and generally from the culture created by the enemies of the Third Reich. For this reason, he was hard on censors like Goebbels, who was the Minister of 'Propaganda and Enlightenment' in the party and government. He accused them of incompetence and redefined new boundaries for censorship. This is the historical characteristic of censorship systems: they are insatiable. Simply because the flood of words cannot be stopped by a filter of censorship. This new study shows that the writings of German authors who remained in Germany were not imprisoned, unlike their authors. A writer can be imprisoned, but a book cannot. 4. Censorship is time-bound. Words that did not need to be censored at one time may be subject to censorship another day. Even texts that were previously censored must be censored again because not every point should be said at every time. Censorship is defined based on current conditions and has no universal law. These are characteristics that the censorship system in every totalitarian government is based upon. Every day, the criteria for censorship must be redefined based on current conditions. Through this repeated redefinition, the shadow of censorship is present in our inner dialogue every day. 5. Big Brother uses the methods of an interrogator against a prisoner to participate in our inner dialogue. Issuing repeated accusations! The interrogator instills doubt in the prisoner through accusations, forcing them to retreat from their self-definition. Big Brother also scares cultural and artistic figures every day with new accusations, forcing them to reevaluate everything. Now there is a new accusation for the usual suspects: cultural licentiousness. *'Dissident Writers in Nazi Germany' is the title of a book written by John Klapper. The basis of this historical research is documents released in 2002. These documents are based on reports prepared for the Allies by a group of German writers who lived in Germany or Austria during Hitler's time. These documents describe the system and developments of censorship in the cultural field, especially books, in Germany during the rule of the National Socialist Party.