A memo distributed by US National Security Agency leadership to its staff says that on February 10, all NSA websites and internal network pages that contain banned words will be deleted. This poem contains all 27 of them.
This Poem Should Be Banned
by Rebecca Lowe
The word Injustice is now banned,
As if the New Oxford Dictionary
had been rebranded by Ayn Rand
And our only objective was to stand
At the centre of our own circle,
Ignoring the needs of others.
DEI and Allyship of our sisters and brothers
Consigned to the dustbin, a shredding of integrity,
Likewise Inclusive, All-inclusive and Inclusivity,
Inclusion is an illusion, creating confusion
In a world of ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’,
Equality, Equitableness and Equity,
Mere words determining Confirmation Bias –
They rub out easily.
Likewise, Anti-racism, Racism activities
And all talk of Racial Identity
shall simply cease – a whitewashing of history,
Harkening back to the golden days of Empire,
When nations stole proudly and showed off their spoils
Don’t spoil the party, with your arty-farty talk of parity,
When what we need is simple clarity in terms of Identity,
Such as:
Rich/poor, Right/wrong, Male/female, Rulers/ruled,
There’s no space for Intersectionality
In our Brave New World,
Where Diversity is
a dirty word,
Where He (and it is always He,
remember, Feminism is an aberration)
He who speaks loudest takes up all the space.
Our Freedom of Expression:
The freedom to express
Our prejudice and privilege
(But never your opinions; no, never that).
We’ll have no talk of Diverse Sexuality,
Gender Pronouns, Transgender and Gender Identity,
We’ll Make America Great Again –
For ‘Great’, read ‘Hate’ –
By simply obliterating everything
We don’t understand
Or don’t like.
We’re strong, we’re psyched,
We’re walking stereotypes:
Fat white men in puffed out suits,
Unrepentant in the repellent stench
of our own intellectual offence.
You might call our actions Orwellian,
If we even understood what that meant.
The 27 banned words distributed to NSA staff are all in the Tags box below:
