John Singleton, Advertising News, March 30, 1973, p. 4.

Hitler was very big on censorship. He knew that if the people were allowed to think for themselves only good could come from it. So Hitler banned everything.

Because, basically, Hitler despised people and knew that they were dirt beneath his feet. This attitude, and other actions by this particular gentleman did not endear him to the world at large.

And as a matter of fact, Mr. Hitler caused quite a bit of trouble and really did not protect the people from anything except the right to decide for themselves, which is the very right that makes people people.

The same dangerous Hitleresque minds are at work in Australia today.

The same philosophy is allowing people in high places to regard the rest of the people as mindless fuckwits who must be protected from themselves, lest they think for themselves.

The signs are not as dramatic as they were in Mr. Hitler’s day, but they are equally unmistakable and equally paranoid.

Every day we see the signs in advertising regulations. It is o.k. to sell cigarettes. It is o.k. for the Government to make a fortune out of cigarettes. It is even o.k. to advertise them for a while. But at the end of every ad the Government runs a tag that tells the world that smoking is bad for you.

Smoking!!!

Good Christ, if smoking of tobacco is the biggest concern to mankind today we really have it sweet.

What about booze? The way I feel today, surely it can’t be extra good for you. What about late nights? Lights off at 6??

We see it in selling regulations:

The Governments are spending fortunes trying to find a way to protect people from “pyramid” companies.

The people must not be greedy. And other people must not be allowed to exploit the greedy to satisfy their own greed.

Such a regulation is unframable.

Most people fail at most things. Most people are greedy and self-centred and no regulation will ever stop this greed; nor stop this greed from feeding on itself even until starvation.

We see it in literary censorship:

In Queensland we have some cop saying that David Williamson’s “Don’s Party” is filth and has no literary merit.

And further that because he thinks this, the play will not be allowed to be screened in Queensland so that other people might judge for themselves.

When in fact the play is a mirror reflection of society exactly as it was 10 years ago and today. “Don’s Party” is what is happening right here in Australia. Incisively and crudely exactly as we was and we is. Which is not allowed to be.

Please rub out what you did because you didn’t.

We see it in obscenity regulations:

In N.S.W. we have an Act being presented in Parliament where obscenity will be anything that any two people say they don’t like in front of a J.P.

Once this decision is made by these two virgin widowed aunts in front of the virgin widowed J.P., then all the virgin widow cops have to stop collecting drunks and start filling their black marias with dirty pictures of nude people just like you and me — because the human body is obscene. Tell that to God.

And then instead of a jury trial, the decision on whether the literature is in fact indecent or obscene or whatever those words mean is made by a senile virgin widowed magistrate.

So that any four people in Australia could, in theory, have the Bible banned, or Shakespeare, or why not Enid Blyton because Noddy was feeling a little queer?

In Victoria some hundreds of thousands of dollars of creative material has just been destroyed by the same unthinking minds. For the same reasonless reasons.

Even last week I saw the forces at work myself in small but important ways. We had The Sun Herald refuse to run a very bland ad for Clyde Packer’s new Forum magazine, and the acting managing editor didn’t even feel the need to give a reason for this action.

The same week we have the Melbourne Sun News-Pictorial decide that the word bloody could not be used in an advertisement. In Australia! Where bloody is not just a word, but a part of our heritage.

Tomorrow the censor merchants will be at us all again. More and more and more. Until the world is perfect.

All petrols are the same and must not be advertised unless it is demonstrable to a magistrate in front of three nuns and five policemen that the petrol does in fact have advantages over other petrols.

Coke is not the real thing because pot is, which must also not be advertised because it is the real thing.

Cars are transport. Food is sustenance. Clothing and housing are protection. A bird is a bird. A stuff is a stuff.

Everything is the same. Nothing is different. No one must think. No one must be told there is a better way. Or even a worse way, or most importantly another way. Right or wrong; an alternative to consider and accept or reject.

Thank God young people find the whole thing senility gone wild. Thank God they care enough to do something about it. Vietnam is over bar the fighting and the shame. Pot is almost legal. Love is alive and well.

Thank God for the young clean minds who see the lurking madness in the polluted, confused old minds that find killing and cheating and violence and war and hatred beautiful.

But believe that the world will be corrupted by the public portrayal of the act of love. Or the puffing of a piece of tobacco. Or the exploitation of the greed of the people who wish their greed to be satisfied.

People cannot be protected from themselves. They never have been. They never will be.

The people should only be protected from the people who seek to protect them.