Like the glaze-inducing opening of the ubiquitous “What I Did Over Spring Break” essay, M.T. Anderson opens his dystopian novel, Feed, with his undiscerning teen protagonist, saying “We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck”(3).  The novel’s generalities and bleakness are woven with references to Nazis, fatal civil disobedience, and societal brainwashing in future America. In Anderson’s novel, high-schoolers vacation on the moon via flying cars, advertisements for the hippest cyberpunk slamdance club are piped directly into the brain, and everyone monitors each other’s movements even when seemingly alone: all done by the feed.  The feed advances fascist rule in a new world order aimed at American youth; fabricated not by barbed-wired fences and cyanide showers, the feed instead is a consumer-driven concentration camp, enslaving humanity with wires and broadband in lieu of ball and chain. Titus, Feed’s teenaged narrator, uses “like” where there is no simile, resorts to swear words to avoid specifics, and finds anything boring if it is not fed by the feed, a cyberpunk internet-like cerebral implant that broadcasts corporate sponsored entertainment.  The cycle of consumption in Feed has powered the corporations to own even the schools.  Titus says, “School™ is not so bad now, not like back when my grandparents were kids, when the schools were run by the government, which sounds completely like, Nazi, to have the government running the schools” (109). School has been trademarked by corporations and infiltrated by capitalistic entities, in Titus’ view, that saved students from government rule, which is compared to Nazism.  Titus’ use of this loaded term illustrates how he does not truly understand either the current state of the world or historical contexts for state control. The etymology of Nazism generally means right-wing authoritarianism, according to the Oxford English Dictionary Online. Despite Titus claims that the feed supposedly helps students become “supersmart” (47), his assessment of past government-run schools is inaccurately portrayed as Nazism. (The O.E.D explains authoritarianism as authoritarianism as favorable “to the principle of authority as opposed to that of individual freedom.”) Titus’ opinion of individual freedom is a product of corporate intervention and reengineered history: Back then, it was big boring, and all the kids were meg null, because they didn’t learn anything useful, it was all like, da da da da, this happened in fourteen ninety-two, da da da, da, when you mix like, chalk and water, it makes nitroglycerin, and that kind of shit? And nothing was useful. (109) Meg and null are slang for mega and boring, respectively.  Insensibly lacking concision, Titus’ redundancy of “big” and “boring” (along with the use of “like”) are indicative of his (sub par) English education.  Beyond language, he reduces the historical significance in Christopher Columbus discovering America to “this,” and he botches the science behind nitroglycerin with failing to recall that Alfred Nobel added chalk to nitroglycerin in order to stabilize it for use in dynamite. The choices to cite these as Titus’ examples for “boring” facts are also historical events leading to genocide.  In Indians Are Us? Culture and Genocide in Native North America, a legal brief by Colorado State Judge Ward Churchill, the author explains perceptions of Columbus (and his discovery) leading to a “New World” while de-populating entire native tribes: It has been contended by those who would celebrate Columbus that accusations concerning his perpetration of genocide are distortive “revisions” of history. Whatever the process unleashed by his “discovery” of the “New World,” it is said, the discoverer himself cannot be blamed. Whatever his defects and offenses, they are surpassed by the luster of his achievements; however “tragic” or “unfortunate” certain dimensions of his legacy may be, they are more than offset by the benefits even for the victims of the resulting blossoming of a “superior civilization” in the Americas. (Churchill, 1994) The “offset benefits” cited by Churchill as having blossomed a “superior civilization” are prescient extrapolations that result in America’s technology in Feed, the significance of which is now lost in Titus’ education being filtered in order to maintain the power of the State.  Churchill connects Nazism to Columbus by adding: Essentially the same arguments might be advanced with regard to Adolf Hitler: Hitler caused the Volkswagen to be created, after all, and the autobahn. His leadership of Germany led to jet propulsion, significant advances in rocket telemetry, laid the foundation for genetic engineering. Why not celebrate his bona fide accomplishments on behalf of humanity rather than “dwelling” so persistently on the genocidal by-products of his policies? (Churchill, 1994)   The connections between advancement and genocide are argued as viewing technology as an impact with positive benefits outweighing the loss of life.  Ironically, Titus sees the public school system as backward and antiquated along with grandparents and Nazis; however, it is the current school system that perpetuates a subtler trend of genocide for the sake of technological advancement such as upcars (jet propulsion), rocket telemetry (vacations on the moon), and genetic engineering (the feed controlling the limbic system). The violent pinnacles of world history are also rooted in Titus’ unconscious invocation of Alfred Nobel (for whom the Peace award is famously named). Nobel’s discovery that chalk stabilizes dynamite for transport led to technological advances in colonization, and arguably World War I.  A French newspaper labeled Nobel the “merchant of death” (Golden, 2000). Just as Churchill suggests advances came through Nazism, Titus sees corporations through a prophetic lens: “Now that School™ is run by the corporations, it’s pretty brag [worthy], because it teaches us how the world can be used, like mainly how to use our feed” (101).  Solidifying the self-sustaining cycle of perpetual consumption, the feed, supplied by corporations, teaches children how to shop, buy, and use. Titus says: It’s good because that way we know that the big corps are made up of real human beings, and not just jerks out for money, because taking care of children, they care about America’s future. It’s an investment in tomorrow. (101)   Feed’s society [...]