WASHINGTON, DC
Days after Donald Trump was sworn in as President, the Department of Education (now known as the Ministry of Truth) has decided to ban all dystopian novels from US public schools.
“Orwell’s 1984 went back onto the bestseller list a few days ago,” said Trump’s new Re-Education secretary. “We’ve got to stop this before it gets out of hand. We can’t have people reading books that encourage independent thought or criticize the government.”
Civil liberties groups are up in arms about the new legislation, suggesting that the banning of dystopian novels is “the most vile form of censorship we’ve ever seen.”
A Trump Administration spokesperson said “one man’s censorship is another man’s free speech,” and then said that all this talk about censorship is just an “alternative truth.”
Besides 1984, also on the hit list were Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.
“We’re gonna make bonfires of that Bradbury book,” said the spokesperson. “That’ll teach him for depicting our country as a backwards dystopia!”
Meanwhile, millions of Americans responded in the only way they knew how: starting a Twitter campaign to protest the new legislation.
“We’re going to make our voices known,” said one Twitter user. “You can’t ban books around here. And we’re going to use hashtag justice to stop you. It’s the most powerful weapon we have!”
Dystopian writers around the world, however, praised the new legislation as proof that their ideas were right. They noted that since no one had ever taken their words seriously in the past, and thus prevented this dystopia from becoming a reality, it really didn’t make any difference whether their books were banned or not.
“Don’t say we didn’t warn you,” said one writer. “But, what the heck, why not toss my novels on the fire, too. It clearly hasn’t had any effect.”