Amazon Is Censoring My Most Recent Magazine Issue: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Without explanation Amazon has blocked and unpublished my last issue of JOHNSTONE magazine which features my painting of Luigi Mangione on the cover. The link to order it is now dead. When I asked for an explanation or appeal they just sent a template response referring me back to their publishing rules.

So that’s annoying. The pay-what-you-want ebook of the issue is still available for anyone who wants it.

UPDATE: After initially refusing my appeals, Amazon has notified me that it has reversed its decision and the book is now back up. Not sure how this would have gone if I wasn’t someone with a large platform to make noise on, but I’m glad it’s back.

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In her bid to secure her confirmation as Trump’s next Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard is now pledging to support Section 702 of the FISA Act. This notorious law allows for the warrantless surveillance of Americans, and in congress Gabbard had previously fought to repeal it.

This is how the national security state works. You don’t change the machine, the machine changes you. Anyone who starts off opposing the imperial status quo of authoritarianism, warmongering and corruption either finds themselves excluded from the halls of power or adapts new positions in favor of the status quo.

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The Australian political-media class has been rending its garments over a ridiculously fake incident of antisemitic graffiti at a synagogue in Sydney, which features both swastikas and the words “Free Palestine” right next to each other.

It’s weird how few people I see calling this what it so obviously is. Apparently we’re all supposed to take very seriously the idea that either (A) Nazis are spray painting the words “Free Palestine” next to their swastikas, or (B) that supporters of Palestinian rights are spray painting Nazi symbols next to their pro-Palestinian slogans. Apparently we’re all truly expected to pretend we don’t know some Israel supporter did this themselves to provide political cover for the genocide in Gaza.

It is always okay to express skepticism about dubious incidents of “antisemitism” in today’s political environment. Israel’s supporters are shitty, evil people who support genocide, and faking antisemitic incidents is a standard hasbara tactic with a well-documented history.

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Watching footage of planes dumping water to put out fires in Los Angeles has been a fun change of pace for me, because it’s the exact opposite of watching what’s been happening in Gaza for 15 months. It’s like watching Gaza footage in reverse.

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I saw a viral post from somebody saying that it’s “hard to find the balance between educating yourself on current events and not making yourself so indescribably sad that you can’t properly function.”

I have come to be very dismissive of such notions. It’s a pervasive myth in our society that you have to choose between being happy and being informed. You don’t. In fact, it’s impossible to be truly happy if you are turning away from truth in any way at all. Rigorous self-honesty is a prerequisite to true happiness. This means being uncompromisingly honest with yourself about your inner life, about your interpersonal relationships, about your society, and about your world.

Nobody who avoids the truth is really having a good time, as hard as some of them try to make it look like they are. It’s impossible to be truly happy and content if you’re carving up your inner landscape into all these compartmentalized little chambers in order to avoid unpleasant truths. Psychological wellbeing comes from facing uncomfortable truths, not from avoiding them.

The trick is to just be really honest about what you see and feel it all the way through. Don’t try to resist the pain and anguish you experience from seeing the horrors in Gaza or wherever, just feel the feelings all the way through until they’ve been felt. If you don’t let those feelings have a full expression in your body they’ll just sit there unresolved and keep you feeling shitty. If you just have a good cry and a good shake or whatever your body wants to do until the feeling has had its say, you can get back up and motor on.

Really happiness is the natural default position of human consciousness; we just trick ourselves out of it with untruth in various ways. Life on this planet is immensely beautiful and delightful, even amid all the suffering and destruction. You can see this in the wonder and delight with which a baby experiences the world before they have learned to trick themselves out of that natural state with believed thoughts.

We can learn to see life like this all the time, even when very bad things are happening. The path back to our innate happiness is truth, not avoidance.

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/amazon-is-censoring-my-most-recent