The 5 Greatest Books With Psychotic Fanbases
Books can change the world. That's not a controversial statement: From the Holy Bible to Reading Rainbow, just about everybody acknowledges the importance and influence of the written word. Even psychopaths.
...
Especially psychopaths.
#5.
The Lord of the Rings - Neo-Nazis
The Classic Book
Lord of the Rings basically defined the fantasy genre. Its staples--elves and dwarves, dragons and orcs--are still the groundwork of most fantasy fiction today. It was a tale of brotherhood versus greed, good versus evil and like eight different kinds of midget versus the grim reaper. It was awesome, is what we're saying here.
The Offenders
Neo-Nazis.
Wait... seriously?
For example, take this discussion on the white pride forum Stormfront featuring musings on which Middle Earth species represent each race.
But it's not an isolated Internet shenanigan: Italian fascists also viewed the book similarly, going as far as naming their fascist training facilities "hobbit camps." A whopping three-thousand kids attended, because it sounds way more fun when you phrase it as "romping about the shire with friends" as opposed to "learning how to combat the economic stranglehold of the Jews on modern Europe."
And that wasn't even relegated to antiquity: The modern equivalent of those same factions have also screened the first film. So it's not like you're missing something subtle they're interpreting in those dense tomes; they totally think the story as presented by the movies is pro-Nazi.
Why the Bullshit Interpretation is Exactly That
Lord of the Rings is a work that shows multiple races setting aside their mistrust and hatred of each other, and working together for a peaceful world. It would be much easier to analyze the novel as a veiled condemnation of Nazism and racism than twisting it to be pro-fascist. The only hidden meaning to Lord of the Rings as confirmed by the author is the horror of rapid industrial expansion at the expense of nature. Which pretty much opposes the policies of the Nazi party completely. Whatever else they were, they were not "green."
More of a shit brown, really.
#4.
Catcher in the Rye - Various Murderers
The Classic Book
It's doubtful that, by telling the story of a whiny 17-year-old reminiscing on things that happened to him when he was a whiny 16-year-old, J.D. Salinger intended to give sweaty man-birth to a new gospel. It was just a story, and a rather simple one at that: It's a few days in the unremarkable life of Holden Caulfield, a teenager who pretty much hates everything (like every teenager) except children (like those creepy camp counselors).
Camp counselors ruin everything.
The Offenders
Apparently Holden's self-centered whining makes people want to kill celebrities. And not in a small scale, "fuck those guys" kind of way. No, in a "call the national guard, everybody is dead oh god they're all dead" kind of way.
Mark David Chapman shot John Lennon five times outside the Dakota apartment building in New York, claiming Catcher in the Rye was his inspiration. After committing the crime, Chapman even pulled out the book and started reading while still steps away from the murder scene. He signed, "This is my statement, Holden Caulfield" on the inside cover. So he either the chubby adult murderer thought he was Holden, or he thought Holden was real and could absorb all knowledge imprinted upon his book. When both options for your mental state are that crazy, it doesn't even matter which one was the case; doctors just diagnose you with "clinical craziness."
Robert John Bardo stalked a lengthy list of actresses before murdering Rebecca Schaeffer in 1989, also while carrying a copy of the book. A copy was also found in the possession of John Hinckley, Jr., the attempted assassin of Ronald Reagan. And those are just the celebrities; you know, the important people. The novel has been linked to a number of lower-profile murders over the years since its release.
Why the Bullshit Interpretation is Exactly That
It's been speculated that Chapman killed John Lennon in order to preserve his innocence--which is odd considering Lennon was like 40 years old at the time. Not exactly an age of wide-eyed wonder, 40. If you see a 40 year-old man riding a big wheel and asking why the sky is blue, you don't shoot him to preserve innocence, you ask around to find his caretaker and make sure his helmet is on tight.
But even if Lennon was about to enter puberty at the age of 41, the book doesn't support that action: Holden, while initially wanting to protect children, realizes that he's no role model, and they're all better off left alone anyway. Sure, some of 'em will fall off that cliff, but how else are kids gonna learn not to play in rye?
#3.
Horton Hears a Who - Rabid Pro-Lifers
The Classic Book
Horton Hears a Who is the story of a flamboyant elephant who discovers a tiny planet on a speck of dust, and all the other animals--perhaps with good cause--think Horton is a mental case for believing the planet exists. Less reasonably, they quickly put him in a cage and torture and mock him relentlessly rather than just write him a prescription for Elephant Xanax. Ultimately, the inhabitants of the speck of dust make enough noise for the sadistic captor animals to hear them, thus ending the debate on their existence and freeing Horton.
Seriously though, look into medication if this happens to you.
The Offenders
Fanatically religious pro-lifers. Apparently, the story--geared towards ages four to six--is meant to be a complex, prophetic metaphor which condemns the right of a woman to choose to get de-babied. Christian website The Elijah List, which boasts 127,000 members, ran a piece which not only drew parallels between Seuss's book and the abortion debate, but heralded it as a banner for their movement to rally around. In their words:
"Horton...is the prophetic Church with big ears and a large trumpet. He can hear what no one else can hear -- the sound of these little people. In the book, we also find a kangaroo who wants to kill all the little Whos, because he cannot see or hear them. He doesn't believe they exist. Immediately the thought came to me, "The kangaroo is the kangaroo court!" -- it stands for the Supreme Court who issued the death decree of '73 in Roe v Wade, and legalized abortion."
Or it's about an elephant.
So it's not even as if they're using the book as an example to support their argument, they're actually treating it as the word of God. This isn't some long-dead movement either, as eagle-eyed readers will have noticed when we said they had a website: They're still going to this day. Pro-lifers even stormed the premiere of the film version of Horton, parading around the theater chanting religious jargon, which tragically distracted from the valid attendees there to mourn the death of Jim Carrey's career.
Why the Bullshit Interpretation is Exactly That
Remember how we mocked the church earlier for taking a harmless kid's story as allegory for complicated political rallies? Yeah, our bad: Turns out he was totally doing that. It just wasn't about abortion at all. Seuss intended Horton Hears a Who to serve as an allegory for the American post-war occupation of Japan, not the issue of abortion, which--considering it was written in 1954, 20 years before Roe V. Wade--should have been obvious to everybody that doesn't believe Dr. Seuss can see through time. Even Seuss himself felt compelled to set the record straight, stating that "Horton is not a book about abortions. These notions are distortions; they're heaping portions of deciduous contortions piled high with a side of whamdiddly dodortions."
Considering that the geisel's regularly donated to Planned Parenthood (and Mrs. Geisel continued to after his death) , I think that the pro-life movement's pretty much ignoring reality on this one.
ReplyHow is Horton an Allegory for the American occupation of Japan? I've read the book and I don't really see a connection between the two.
ReplyAaand cue the Neckbeard Defense Brigade to combat all criticisms of anime and manga!
ReplyThe quote from that rabid pro-life in relation to the
Reply"Horton" connection-oy...*Rolls eyes, puts head in hands*.
Last entry was a disappointing end to this article. What studies? And why even mention them when they're "not exactly concrete"? I'm also curious about how there's no links to the supposed (exclusively Japanese?) paedophiles who think Lolita champions paedophilia, when all other entries have had them and even mentioned specific crazy people who thought the other books supported them.
ReplyHow Thorpe assumes all "lolicons" to love the book and even have read the thing is beyond me. That's like saying everyone with an Oedipus complex is familiar with Greek mythology and thinks the myth encourages boning one's mother.
The biggest draw of lolicon (and by extension, shotacon) materials is, I think, cuteness. It's not, "Oh god, s/he's a child, FAP FAP FAP" but rather "Oh god, s/he's so cuuuuuuuuute, FAP FAP FAP". Flandre from Touhou is almost five-hundred years old but that doesn't stop porn being made about her.
I was doing a report on porn in high school and I actually came across a statistic that said that Japan actually has fewer sex based crimes per capita than America. I found that interesting because they have so much more kinky porn and fetishes in the open than we do. The site speculated that maybe they were inversely proportional. Maybe, when perverts have plenty of access to their weird fantasies being acted out by actors or cartoon characters, they're less likely to try to act it out in reality on an unwilling victim. I included that point in my report.
I don't know why I bothered to type all that out, but it seemed relevant and I thought it was interesting. XD
Tolkien was a conservative Catholic who did show some broad sympathy to the fascist cause in the Spanish civil war, primarily because he saw them as champions of the Catholic church in Spain. Obviously it's a huge leap from that to seeing 'The Lord of the Rings' as Neo-Nazi (not least because it's wedded to a notion of English landscape and national identity that was literally under threat from Nazism while the book was being written) but Tolkien's sympathies were at least one of the factors that led to his increasing estrangement from C.S. Lewis.
ReplyThen again, JRRT saw Fascists in Spain as pro-Catholic due to the fact that the soviet-backed "democracy" they were fighting were massacring Catholics left and right, so much so that Catholic liberals who wanted to side with the Republic ended up fighting for the fascists since they're the side that didn't shove rosaries down priests' throats and burn churches with people inside.
"Seuss intended Horton Hears a Who to serve as an allegory for the American post-war occupation of Japan,..."
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesAre you kidding? Look at the political cartoons that Seuss drew during the war. He championed American involvement and the internment of Japanese Americans. I'd really like to see a credible reference that even suggests that the American occupation of Japan had anything to do with the writing of "Horton..."
Um, try the Wikipedia article for one reference, and their first listed reference for another.
Stivali - wikipedia is not a reference.
OliverCromwell- Aren't you dead?
I still highly doubt that it was for a message against abortion, that's what the author was trying to point out.
I love this, I thought they all were hilarious -- except #1 didn't quite click. I've read Lolita, and I know that lolicon exists, but I don't think lolicon lovers are exactly a huge deranged fanbase of the book. It probably got its name from it, but people who are fans of lolicon aren't necessarily fans of the book at all, and I don't know that there are a lot of people in or out of Japan who use the book in their defense if busted for pedophilia.
ReplyOther than that love this.
Agreed regarding Lolita. Japan has all those "Lolita" teen fashion subcultures for the lolicon nuts to feed off instead. Also the other books are misappropriated in some dumb way, but Lolita is a different kettle of head-dip. You're in HH's head and he eloquently justifies himself on every page. You have to want to hate him. Which pedophiles and narcissists might forget to do.
Agreed regarding Lolita. Japan has all those "Lolita" teen fashion subcultures for the lolicon nuts to feed off instead. Also the other books are misappropriated in some dumb way, but Lolita is a different kettle of head-dip. You're in HH's head and he eloquently justifies himself on every page. You have to want to hate him. Which pedophiles and narcissists might forget to do.
I am bored. So I am going to go on about how a random children's book is propaganda used by scientologists.
ReplyThe book Artemis Fowl is ancient astronaut propaganda. On an episode of "Ancient Aliens" entitled "Underground Aliens", they discuss the topic of a sentient racies of creatures "protecting the planet" that appear "alien" and have cities. They also go into details of their technology, such as Laser guns and UFOs.
Artemis Fowl is about an Irish kid that is bored, so he feels like surfing the internet. Instead of finding things like porn or this webiste, he somehow discovers that there's a race of fairies that live in the center of the earth. So he does what any Irish kid with a bunch of cash and a seven-foot tall bodyguard would do: kidnap a fairy and ransom it to the fairy government. If this does not sound like a story about a pedophile, look at a picture of the author, Eoin Colfer. (The same guy that wrote the sixth Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
Might I mention that these "fairies" have a civilization that predates humans by thousands of years, have been protecting the earth, have UFO like ships, and laser guns.
Or maybe the History channel is REALLY running out of material, so they are trying to take stories from Irish children's books and take up air time trying to show how they are plausible. Oh, and the book was published almost a decade before Ancient Aliens ever came on view.
Wow, I should write a topic here on how that book is scientologist propaganda.
That did not make any sense. At all.
I know it can't be on this list.. but the misinterpretation of the movie Scarface by idiots everywhere infuriates me!
ReplyPeople actually used "Horton Hears a Who" to support a pro-life agenda? Wow, that's one of the DUMBEST interpretations for a children's book ever. I don't know about how it represents the US occupation of Japan though.
ReplyThey f*****g say "A person's a person no matter how small" ALL THE f*****g TIME!! I can't stand pro-life psychos.
Yep. Thinking an unborn fetus isn't totally disposable is SO psychotic. Indeed. It's much more normal to see them as worthless pieces of tissue that we can harvest for their stem cells. That's MUCH more civilized.
Lolita is one great mind-fuck of a book. Nabokov was an effing genius.
ReplyI'm going to see how many FBI watchlists I can get on by buying The Collector, Catcher in the Rye, Lolita, and the Ragnar Benson collection. Wish me luck!
ReplyIf you get on more than six you get a free trip to Cuba. I'm only on two but I'm keeping my eyes on the prize
Isn't there some sort of boxed set I can order on Amazon?
"Horton is not a book about abortions. These notions are distortions; they're heaping portions of deciduous contortions piled high with a side of whamdiddly dodortions."
ReplyIt took more cues than I'm willing to admit to realize that wasn't a real quote. Well played, Cracked. Well played.
I must live under a rock or something because the only other time I've heard of 'The Collector' was Criminal Minds 'The Fisher King Quest' episodes (which, after reading this, make more sense).
ReplyIts also one of the only films to have a 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomato.
I agree with madplatypus: not all anti-abortionists are crazy or psychotic. We have our opinions (both political and spiritual) as do pro-abortionists. Seuss' classic tale is a clear story of honoring the dignity of life-whatever form that life may take. In the case of his era, j*panese-Americans subjected to internment camps. The beauty of a classic story is that it is timeless and yet personal to each era. Seuss had great respct for children and the learning process, so I cannot imagine he wouldn't have seen the Whos as children in general. But the story can be applied to other areas as well. And I always use it in class to teach about respect for life and for fellow man, no matter the age, development, religious/political-persuasion or citizenship.
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesPost-war allegory. POST-war. As in, after the war when the internment camps were closed up and the US was occupying Japan. Please try not to co-opt my national history to your personal agenda.
If we can take the Constitution, a document written over 200 years ago, and apply its language to a variety of problems that its framers could not have foreseen (which we do, and with good reason), then I see no reason why the message of a book written just over 50 years ago can't be used the same way.
No, you are f*****g crazy. Stop f*****g trying to snatch pop culture to support your anti-woman, control freak agenda. You can have respect for life without being a d*****t or vilifying women who choose abortion.
The difference between the constitution and a book written for children (albeit a book with a message in mind) is that the constitution was deliberately written for people under theUS gov't to live by for all times. With an amending process written into it for times they could not foresee. Stories with messages are generally written for one event. Thought their tales may become timeless, it's dangerous to co-opt them into modern problem solving
Canwizard: Except we’re talking about a text that the writer came out and said “This had nothing to do with abortion, and I don’t want you using my book to push that agenda” He actually pushed to have several pro-life groups that were printing the Horton quote bumper Stickers with cease and desist orders and other legal ramifications.
It’d be like if someone started to use Ann Coulter quotes to say she thinks that liberals will save America, or quotes from the pope to say that the catholic church is a cult, no matter what Coulter or the Pope say about their own writings. It’s a gross willful distortion of what the author’s intention was..
...SIx books that don't really have f**king fanbases; that's not what this f**king thing is about in reality, instead it's about twisted d*****ts who either a: misunderstood the material, or b: were pretty much independent of the material, and it would just be cool to make f**king s**t up, based on some unusually correlating "conspiratorial" lines.
ReplyWow, that's completely unreadable.
That is one hell of an unreadable, run-on sentence. Get rid of the George Carlin photo; he's ashamed of you.
The way I see it, LotR was inspired by WWII but Tolkien hated Alagory so he messed with it my making the tall blone white people and the Germanic horse riding people the good guys and the Africans and Orcs the bad guys, athough he also gave Saruman voice-based powers and an interest in war machines and breeding programs.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesKinda like how Starship Troopers III was made durin the War on Terror, yet it made the RELIGIOUS people the ANTI-war ones. (Then again I'm probably giving that movie too much credit.)
I think you're giving proper grammar & spelling too much credit.
ENGLISH MOTHERFUCKER! DO YOU SPEAK IT?
To be fair, Alagory did steal Tolkien's girlfriend.
No, it has more to do with the previous 1500+ years of European history. Usually the invaders, weather Huns, Mongols, Magyars, Goths, ect, came from the east, were shorter than the Europeans, and had slightly darker skin.
The only thing I wanted to kill after reading Catcher in the Rye was Holden Caulfield. The world had only just survived WWII and this kid is whiny about not being the centre of the universe. He was the sign of what was to come when the babyboomers came of age in the sixties. Not all of them are like Caulfield but most of them where/are.
ReplyI agree! Holy crap, did that book suck. I read it for the first time in fifth grade as an idiot ten year and didn't like it. Then I read it again in my Honors English class for a research paper sophomore year of high school and the paper was basically me trashing it in the most veiled, objective way possible. Because he's that much of a whinny bastard.
Isn't calling us pro-lifers psychotic a bit of a stretch, in comparison with Neo-Nazis and things? Sure, some of us get rather heated up about it, which would only make sense seeing as we believe abortion is murder. But still, comparing us with Neo-Nazi's, and even putting us as more psychotic then them is just sad.
Reply Hide All See All 14 RepliesAbortion clinic bombings.
Well, yeah, notice the article didn't even mention that.
He probably felt he didn't have to, since that's what everybody was already thinking.
Let me see if I understand. Of the millions of pro-life Christians in the world, four or five go bats**t insane and think bombing an abortion clinic or shooting an abortion doctor is okay, and for that you condemn the entire movement as nuts?
Actually, I follow your logic. I'm in complete agreement with you. From now on, muslims should no longer be allowed to fly on airplanes or gather in groups. After all, if FIVE OR SIX anti-abortion Christians are representative of THEIR ENTIRE FAITH AND MOVEMENT, then certainly the hundreds and hundreds of terrorist and insurgent trained muslims are themselves indicative of their faith and movement, right?
More muslims participated in the 9/11 attacks than Christians have participated in abortion killings, so they present a stronger representative sample than the relatively few anti-abortionites out there.
It's so cute how liberals try to make points sometimes.
And your attempt at using logic is simply precious, Chris, since you're saying that lumping all Muslims together like that would be a crazy right-wing satire of liberal treatment of abortion clinic bombers, when in fact, millions of right-wingers made the exact same point in seriousness about a decade ago - and have done so ever since then.
At best, you could point out that those who commented earlier were doing the same things that conservative retards have been doing for years. That'd be closer to being legit. Pretending that it's something only a liberal would think up, though, just makes you look like a f**king idiot looking smug while spouting bulls**t. Which doesn't seem entirely inaccurate.
But even then, it's not quite right. They were lumping them all together to call them 'psychotic'. You're attempting to make an equivalence not by calling names, but actually taking action against them. Anyone with a brain would realize that that's apples and oranges.
Earlier comments: Pro-lifers have bombed abortion clinics and killed people, I'm going to call them crazy.
You: Islamic extremists committed terrorist acts and killed people, I'm going to remove their constitutional right to assemble, and make it more difficult for them to travel.
If you think that these two are on par with each other, you're absolutely mind-bogglingly stupid. And if you realize that it's bulls**t, but were just hoping that no one else would catch it, then you might well have a career in the Republican party. Either way, you're incapable of making a legitimate, honest point, and your smugness while failing to do so is . . . about what I'd expect from a right-wing nutjob.
But on the other hand, when someone here in this thread (that isn't a sock puppet) says that abortion clinic bombings clearly mean that pro-lifers shouldn't be allowed to assemble any longer, and should all be required to stay a certain distance from any building where abortions are performed, then you'll have a legitimate point. Until then, maybe you should try thinking harder (if that's actually possible for a conservative) until something actually accurate pops into your tiny, right-wing brain.
There was nothing saying ALL pro-lifers are psychotic. Just the ones slavering over Horton Hears a Who like it's the second f**king Bible.
@ChrisRivan your line about 4 0r 5 "bats**t insane" people ruining it for everyone else is quite an exaggeration don't you think? Since no one said anything about every pro-lifer being a nut job except you and madplatypus
It's so stupid how conservatives try to blow everything out of proportion sometimes
As a Kansan, I have to say that comparing "pro-lifers" with Neo-Nazi's is not that big of a stretch. Our world famous clinic that provides women with this service has seen untold threats, bombings, & most disturbingly the shooting of Dr. Tiller AT HIS CHURCH. The only way anti-abortionists (this is the correct term) are not psychotic is that most of them have some idea of what they are doing. They aren't crazy, only misguided and following a tribalist mentality
It is nuts, because anybody who is actually educated on abortion at all is pro-choice.
I'm sorry, pro lifers, but in America law abiding citizens should have their rights. If a woman chooses early in her pregnancy to abort, that is her RIGHT. Just as it's another's right to choose adoption or to raise their child. You have the right to disagree of course, but I don't think anyone should have the right to take away others' rights, as long as those rights aren't harmful to a person who really should just keep their nose out of other people's business.
This article didn't refer to pro-lifers as psychotic. It referred to RABID pro-lifers as psychotic. There is a huge difference between a person with a moral objection to the termination of a pregnancy and an insane, slobbering lunatic who is so against it that he finds it perfectly acceptable to utterly destroy anyone who disagrees with him. Perhaps the majority of people who insist that Horton Hears a Who is anti-abortion aren't going to go out and bomb clinics and/or commit murder, but they are twisting something innocent towards their cause. It's not as destructive, but it's a step in that direction.
I'm not here to point fingers, and yes, some of you are reasonable. Sadly, the vast majority of anti-choicers, along with any other group on the 'right', are just babbling lunatics who believe fairy tales define reality.
Look. If you don't want an abortion, don't have a goddamn abortion. If you do want one, go ahead and have one. WHAT THE HELL IS SO DIFFICULT ABOUT THIS? I feel like just to be smart I have to be liberal because I don't hate gays, I feel women should get choices, I'm not Christian and I know Obama is not a f*****g Kenyan! Conservatives: If any of you out there are actually good people, SAVE YOUR PARTY! PLEASE!
And seriously, people? Fuckin' HORTON? Go to hell. The place you believe is for gays, Jews, blacks, and pretty much anyone.
Thank you McCorn!! I really do feel like I'm obligated to be a democrat because I have common sense! Based solely on basic principles, I could be a republican but the way republicans extrapolate those principles makes me want to jail everyone that votes republican. I know that's wrong on a lot of levels but that's how bad the republican establishment makes me feel!!!!
SAVE YOUR PARTY!!!
Unborn babies are people and deserve rights. Oh, and the abortion clinic bombings were condemned by EVERY respectable pro-life group. Because, y'know, we're pro- LIFE.