Don’t Read This If You’re Stupid

Yes folks we could have a winner for most text in a zine. Don’t Read This is crammed fulla stuff to read, most of it reprinted from various unidentified sources of journalism and pseudo- journalism. Now a stupid person might think that all of this talk of cults, apocalypse and demonology is serious stuff. Some of it even is. Even though the first article — by Jan Groenvled from the cult awareness centre in Australia — is incredibly long and silly and filled with hyperbolic language, it is, I guess, meant to be taken seriously. Further on in the zine we find a pro-US pro-militia article in which certain letters are replaced with the letter B. Like many of the articles reprinted in this short word-jammed ‘zine, I’m not exactly sure what effect is being intended. Never mind. That’s my favourite thing about this zine. Truth is the roach of journalism, a lowly, inconsistent bug that always shows up eventually. Just ask Linda Thompson of the American Justice Federation. She winds up the zine with a long vindictive article on Waco which tells us the ‘truth’ about the Branch Davidians and what happened in Texas. In this fascinating bit of rhetoric she asserts that the US government employed similar techniques to discredit the Branch Davidians as the NAZIS did to discredit the Jewish people in NAZI Germany. Truth that lowly bug. Don’t read this if you’re stupid.

zine / #28 / no known publisher / main creator: ? / free? / 45 Reno Ave., Hamilton, ON, L8T 2S5

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