Woke Censors Ruin Roald Dahl

Woke censors have destroyed the much-loved works of Roald Dahl.

‘Sensitivity readers’ at Puffin have painstakingly gone through his classic books removing the vivid, darkly funny writing that captivated so many of us as children, replacing it with bland, woke platitudes and outright propaganda.

If your response to this is blind rage, then congratulations, you are a healthy functioning human being. 

There is something laughable about the fact that, with J.K. Rowling and now Roald Dahl, two of woke’s biggest targets are children’s authors. But then, the wokes clearly know the importance of indoctrinating the young as early as possible into their deranged and pernicious ideology.

Hitler allegedly said “give me the child at seven, and he is mine forever”. The quote is probably apocryphal, but it could easily have been the motto behind this new vandalising of Roald Dahl’s oeuvre.

If you think that’s hyperbole, read some of these examples and tell me there is not evil afoot.

Some changes simply drain all character from the writing, so that Dahl’s original text:

In her right hand she carried a walking stick. She used to tell people that this was because she had warts growing on her sole of her left foot and walking was painful.

Becomes:

In her right hand she carried a walking stick. Not because she needed help walking.

Others are absurdly woke. One change recruits Dahl into the cause of increasing the number of women in STEM careers. The original: “Even if she is working as a cashier in a supermarket or typing letters for a businessman” becomes “Even if she is working as a top scientist or running a business”.

At times, the language is so sanitised as to completely alter the original meaning. “It nearly killed Ashton as well. Half the skin came away from his scalp” becomes “It didn’t do Ashton much good”.

Naturally, all humour is removed, as in this example from Matilda, where the original:

Your daughter Vanessa, judging by what she’s learnt this term, has no hearing-organs at all.

Becomes the anodyne and garbled: 

Judging by what your daughter Vanessa has learnt this term, this fact alone is more interesting than anything I have taught in the classroom

Other passages are simply deleted entirely, such as:

She wore heavy make-up and had one of those unfortunate bulging figures where the flesh appears to be strapped in all around the body to prevent it from falling out

Naughty colonial authors are not even allowed to be named, so “Dickens or Kipling” becomes “Dickens or Austen”. 

There is nothing too mild to escape the woke censors, as phrases like “Shut up, you nut!” become “Ssshh! Not yet!”, and extreme racial paranoia means that “Turning white” becomes “Turning quite pale”.

There are many, many more pathetic examples cited in the Telegraph if you have the stomach for it.

We are now entering a world where one will have to obtain secret, coverless original copies of The Enormous Crocodile under the counter.

Incredibly, I am not even exaggerating, as several phrases from that book have been changed, with “fat juicy little child” becoming “juicy little child”, and “We eat little boys and girls” becoming “We eat little children” (the existence of biological sex being the offensive part, rather than the eating). 

“Mother” becomes “parents” and “Even the man who was working the roundabout jumped off it” becomes “Even the person who was working the roundabout jumped off it”. Because women can work on roundabouts too, bigot.

It is a reminder that nothing is too petty to escape the woke revolution. They will not stop until they have destroyed everything of value, from our great universities to The Enormous Crocodile (which I’m surprised has not been renamed The Body Positive Crocodile). 

Every single thing you love must be erased. 

The defacing of Roald Dahl is the final straw for me. We must obliterate the moronic, anti-human aberration that is wokeness once and for all.

Or, as a Puffin sensitivity reader might put it: “We should stop wokeness.”

P.S. If you want to read a book that has not been gutted by woke censors, try The Wadhurst Way, the spoof business memoir of executive coach Geoffrey Wadhurst, alter ego of Daily Sceptic contributor Ian Price.

An experienced HR manager turned entrepreneur and coach to the C-suite, Geoffrey built a global reputation for his leadership insights through his blogs for The Guardian and Huffington Post. Based in St. Albans, Hertfordshire – County of Opportunity – he is a frequent fixture at local networking breakfasts and business expos. Famed on the speaking circuit as far afield as Hitchin, he’s often available to address your networking event at short notice so tweet him if you’ve had someone drop out.

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