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Banning books at schools is just one step in the right wing strategy to control curricula and ensure students learn to conform to the conservative worldview. Maus is the latest book on the right’s “do not read” list. A Tennessee school board recently voted to ban the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust because of what it called objectionable language and nudity. Similar campaigns all over the country label books “pornographic” when, really, the right wingers are concerned about depictions of Black or LGBTQ characters.
Representative Matt Krause (R-TX) has gone so far as to create a list of about 800 books he claims are objectionable. According to the Huffington Post, Governor Greg Abbott (R-TX) is capitalizing on that list with a vague request to the Texas Association of School Boards to remove such content. Many of those books are books authored by women, people of color, and LGBTQ writers.
This battle is part of the same war pitting creationism against science-based stories about the history of the universe. We’ve been down this road with conservatives many times. They take a stand on free speech until it’s inconvenient to the worldview they espouse.
And of course we know that they are merely hypocrites because they don’t want to ban the Bible. They are for free speech, but they are banning books because of violence and nudity and all these things, but not banning the Bible. There’s murder in the Bible. There’s incest in the Bible. There’s genocide, there’s sexual content. There’s extramarital affairs.
I mean, what, it’s all in the Bible. And if you describe it to right wingers, and in fact, there’s videos of this being done. If you say, listen, there’s a book available in school libraries right now. And it contains a story of murder and of a guy who killing his brother, you know, incest genocide, should we have that book? And they go, absolutely not. And they say, oh, that book is the Bible.
They say, oh no, no, no. Different rules apply.
And so I recognize that to some degree, especially with kids, banning these books is going to make them interested in the books, but the bigger problem is the total control that these people want.
Horrifying, absolutely horrifying. And this is why when we say voting for president, very important. Senators, of course, very important. What’s happening at the state and municipality level, school, board, state, senator, state representative.
This stuff impacts the day to day for children, high school students, college students, and more. And so we can’t forget to remain active at the local level.
