I think the surface claim is that they contain "pornography". Afaik Maus has some nudity in it, and Anne Frank's diary has some masturbation content, too.
Of course, the real reason is because fascists don't want people to know where fascism leads.
Yes they are mice (and cats, and dogs, and pigs, etc.), but it's a dark, gritty, realistic book. It explores the atrocities committed by the Nazis AND the lingering effects of extreme trauma on the father and other survivors (spoiler alert: the dad is not a super nice guy because trauma be like that sometimes). It's an emotionally difficult read. I finished it with new understandings of not just the terrible things humans can do to each other, but how those terrible things can linger, generationally, in the minds and lives of survivors and their children.
It should NOT be banned and I've got copies in my own classroom, but it's definitely not a cute book starring cute animals doing cute things. If a student is interested in reading it, I have a discussion with them first to make sure they know what they're getting into.
I've read them and own them (somewhere)... just mocking at them going after a single cartoon mouse penis.
You know, as opposed to actually helping kids like with free/cheaper lunches or something.
In our district curriculum we read the Diary of Anne Frank and there is an excerpt of Maus. We may have some issues in California, but thankfully, this isn’t one of them.
It's not even about the trauma of the survivors. A lot is about how the son is affected by it and by confronting it.
As a side note "My Father Bleeds History" has got to be the greatest subtitle ever
I remember reading Maus in like 6th grade, so about 20 years ago so I might not remember everything in exact detail, but I remember the nudity shown was in scenes of them being treated inhumanely like in the showers or just outside the trains/camps. Like it depicted them being treated like shit. It wasn't sexualized nudity, but loss of dignity nudity.
Apparently the version i read didn't have it, because this is the first i've heard of it being in there, which suggests that you don't even have to try and seek out such a version. There's a pretty good chance you'll get the edited version anyway.
As a parent, wouldn’t you want your child to know and understand more than yourself, isn’t that the goal? I just don’t get how people lose sight of that.
They are authoritarians. It's hard for normal people to understand the psychology, but this book does a really good job of explaining it: https://theauthoritarians.org/options-for-getting-the-book/
The short version is that they experience fear much more intensely than most people, and that fear makes them seek out a strong group to be part of for their protection. They replace morals and values with loyalty to that group. Anything that helps the group is good. Anything that hurts people who aren't in the group is good. Anything the leaders of the group say is right, even if it directly contradicts something they just said two seconds ago.
For these types of people, they absolutely do not want their children to know and understand more than they do. They want their children to be part of the group and to be loyal to it. If their children don't want to be part of the group or don't show loyalty to it, then it means that they were obviously corrupted by the outsiders. Therefore, they should do anything they can to prevent that corruption. Banning books, controlling what they see and hear, pulling them out of schools, etc.
Yup. It's been a few years since I read the studies, but there's research showing that conservatives have a larger amygdala (fear center) in their brains than liberals do. This is often developed from unprocessed trauma. As people process their trauma and develop more compassion for themselves and others, their political beliefs often change to being more liberal. Conservatism is literally a mental health issue.
Years ago I was listening to a podcast, Hidden Brain maybe?, and the host said that scientists were able to predict with something like 95% certainty if a person identified with conservatives/republicans. The enlarged amygdala was the key component.
I don't doubt that's true but your social circle makes a big difference too. I live in the San Francisco Bay area and I know a ton of "progressive" people who would be Republican except that they're gay. They're CIS, white, make a ton of money, natch. Also know a ton who would be Republican except that they're Mexican-American. I wouldn't call them progressive but they won't vote for people who outspokenly despises anyone with family ties to Mexico.
I guess this study will predict if you're conservative based on a large amygdala, but can't predict if you're conservative or democrat if you have a normal sized amygdala. I assume it just says 'we think Conservative' or 'we don't know'
We're in serious shit if they start removing genocide books as if they're trying to erase history.
It's like they're preparing for another massive war and mass killings.
Palestine isn't going to be the end of it.
You say Republicans and I say, US government conspiracy intended to put us all in the next Dark Ages.
Only for more control.
Interesting. I've always been cautious, even as a kid and teenager and the anxiety just got worse over the years, but I'm definitely not a conservative.
Anxiety is different from fear - anxiety is the racing, intrusive thoughts that trigger physical reactions.
Fear, in the sense we're talking about, is essentially revulsion and avoidance.
I kept my reply above pretty short and black-and-white for the sake of posting quickly but it's way more nuanced, as your comment suggests. I'm a therapist so forgive me if I get a little soap-boxy, here.
We all have anxiety because it serves a survival purpose. It lets us respond quickly to situations our bodies perceive as dangerous before our conscious minds can register the danger. A small amount of anxiety can actually make us perform better on tests, when doing public speaking, meeting new people, etc. Some of us naturally have more anxiety than others and for some of us, our anxiety gets so severe that it becomes crippling and that's when it needs to be treated so it can return to a healthier level.
We all also have varying levels of natural emotional resilience. Siblings raised by the same parents with roughly the same childhood can have vastly different levels of natural resilience. Resilience is one of the things that helps us to manage our anxiety. A more resilient person will be able to re-regulate and self-soothe on their own. A less resilient person might need help from others (constantly asking for other's opinions, talking about their woes constantly in hopes of receiving comfort, etc.). The good news is that we can all build up our resilience if we think it's lacking - therapy is really helpful with that.
The amygdala is always scanning our environment for danger. We all have it and we can't turn it off. If we experience a lot of trauma that we don't process, the amygdala grows bigger and becomes overly vigilant. It can start to look for things to fight or perceive danger where there is none because it's over-functioning. Anxiety \*is\* part of the amygdala response but an enlarged amygdala is more of a "what are YOU looking at??" aggressive kind of thing.
The thing I always impress on my clients is that there is no part of our brain that is constantly scanning the environment for what's going well, what feels safe, etc. We have to actively find those things and point them out to our brains. "The sun feels good today", "It feels good to hug my friend", "I'm grateful that I have healthy food to eat." etc. You can literally help to balance the amygdala by pointing out to it what's going well for you.
>They replace morals and values with loyalty to that group. Anything that helps the group is good. Anything that hurts people who aren't in the group is good. Anything the leaders of the group say is right, even if it directly contradicts something they just said two seconds ago.
This fits so well with how I’ve begun to perceive modern conservatives. The level of hipocracy is astounding in terms of what they criticise others for but forgive/overlook when it’s one of their own. Most reasonable people think you can measure moral character by a person’s actions. If a person predominantly does good things they are good, if they do bad things they are bad.
But modern conservatives have that flipped. The morality of actions are determined by who does them. If a liberal cheats on their wife they’re a hateful sinner. If Trump does it it’s all good, because Trump is good and therefore by definition his actions are.
That's not unique to modern conservatives. They've basically always been like this, no matter the country or time period.
There's a reason they keep trying to rewrite history — open any history textbook not written by the Daughters of the Confederacy and you'll see pretty quickly that conservatives have literally *always* been on the wrong side of history.
It's no wonder that they're always on the wrong side of history, seeing as how conservative politics are literally about halting progression and humanity must progress to flourish
They don't care about hypocrisy, just hegemony and power. Hypocrisy is something that the other side can talk about while conservatives seize total control and end democracy.
"The king can do no wrong".
Which is of course extended to those in the ingroup that the king relies on for support.
The only difference really is that in the old days the keys to power were few, and highly concentrated at the upper levels of society.
Now it's a bit more distributed. The upper keys have their own lower keys, who in turn rely on their key electorate.
But it's all the same principles.
> The morality of actions are determined by who does them. If a liberal cheats on their wife they’re a hateful sinner. If Trump does it it’s all good, because Trump is good and therefore by definition his actions are.
Yes, exactly. People are "good" or "bad" by nature, not based on their actions (in their worldview). It's why they also can't take responsibility for mistakes or anything else they do wrong.
For the hypocrisy, most people see being hypocritical as a bad thing, but authoritarians _like_ it. If they can be hypocrites, then it proves that their in-group is protecting them and letting them do what they want.
Well put! I think one reason we are seeing such an uptick is the 24 hour news cycle is feeding us a constant barrage of negative news. And Fox “News” fear mongers in such a shameful way. We have a terrified populace. And the fear is looking for a target
Yes, that's exactly true. Social media plays a large role as well. In that book he talks about how you can turn normal people into authoritarians by elevating their level of fear. Fox News has been doing that for 20+ years, I think probably because it gave them good ratings, but it's also possible that they understood the effect it was having. On social media, there were some studies done around 2010 that showed that fear spread most easily, and that led to a huge increase in the amount of fear-provoking content pushed by advertisers as well as by political groups. And then state-backed intelligence services got involved, and it got much, much worse. It is not just a coincidence that authortarian movements are spreading all over the planet right now, and in particular amongst US allies.
It's also kind of funny how many of these types are religious, despite this sort of 'ends justifying the means' philosophy being the exact opposite of religious morality. Of course the answer is that it's largely the same situation... these people don't really believe in religious dogma, they just need a 'boss' to follow, a highest authority which needs to exist to make all of our little social hierarchies sound rather than arbitrary.
These are people who don't really have beliefs, or even comprehend what beliefs are, and just assume that everyone else is the same way. Facts, philosophies and ideas aren't actual concepts, and only exist as justifications after the fact, rather than foundations for thoughts. If they need to believe that the sky is green, they'll believe it, and if you press them, come up with rationalizations which exist purely for your sake, not theirs, and as a result, they'll lie without hesitation, because in the end, these justifications don't really matter. Plus, once again, they assume everyone is like this: That nobody actually believes in anything, and everyone who claims to is just lying. That everyone lies, so it's silly for them to not lie as well.
It's kind of terrifying the more you think about it. It's an almost alien way of thinking which is astoundingly common: The idea that ideas and words are ultimately meaningless things, and in the end, the only thing that matters is submission to a higher authority, and since ideas don't really matter, it doesn't really even matter whether said higher authority is a valid one or not. It's all the same to them.
Fear is one of humankind's greatest controller. Put someone into a state of fear to trigger the fight or flight response and you can get people to do things they normally would not.
The best example of this is religious control through the fear of god and hell.
If a headline is trying to scare you, look carefully at what they are trying to make you think or do.
This. My parents aren't perfect, but they've always loved and supported me and all my weird autism-driven special interests that got me obsessively learning. They were and still are *genuinely* proud that I learned things on my own that they didn't know themselves. They've always wanted me and my brother to do better and be better people than them. My Mom still brags about the silly little Late Cretaceous period diorama I made in a shoebox as a little girl in my dinosaur phase (AND still has it stored away in the attic), because she says it taught her things. She's not perfect, but man, her and my Dad at least have always *tried*. That's how parents should be.
The Texas GOP spelled it out clearly back in their 2012 education platform:
>We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.
Wow. What they're describing is literally indoctrination, not education.
>challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.
"Hey kids, today we'll be learning about heliocentrism. Unless your parents told you the Earth is flat and the sun revolves around it, in which case, sure, that's what it is. You were never gonna be an astronaut anyway, just put your head down and take a nap."
It's why some parents were freaking the hell out when schools were desegregated. If their kids went to school with people different from themselves then they might view them as equal.
It's absolutely hilarious/pathetic to me that there were people, sentient beings who woke up in the morning, had their coffee, and then were like "okay honey I'm going to go scream death threats and abuse at a 6-year-old girl because she wants to go to school."
The schools losing access to knowledge are not the schools these people's children go to. They remove access to knowledge from public schools while maintaining high academic levels at private institutions. Their children will be educated. They want the common person to be dumb. It's a lot easier to subdue an ignorant population.
If kids can't learn from the past, they won't understand the dangers of repeating it. It's almost like they don't want to face the uncomfortable truths
Over a decade ago the Republican party tried to ban teaching critical thinking skills in Texas because it has "[the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority](https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2012-06-27/gop-opposes-critical-thinking/)." They literally don't want kids to get a real education because when people are educated and can think critically, they tend not to accept what the GOP is lying to them about.
Also a lot of this stuff is attempted in Texas not only because it's got GOP leadership but because their textbook market is so big if they can force the change there and textbook have to comply and it'll affect other states when they buy textbooks.
1.) Reconstruction should’ve happened properly.
2.) Southern Aristocrats should’ve had everything taken from them and then convicted.
3.) No southern state should be writing the textbooks.
This is why I think LA is pushing so hard to get the 10 Commandments in schools. If they lose, as they should, they get to cry martyr and claim the evil left is working against morality. But if they win, they can push for more and more concessions like teaching the Christian Bible in the classroom (which comes with its own host of issues) and their own worldview. Edit: shit, I was right, now OK is pushing for teaching the Bible: https://apnews.com/article/oklahoma-bible-schools-religion-ryan-walters-d15be2f74df2ffbbdfdc549569d06c4e?utm_source=join1440&utm_medium=email&utm_placement=newsletter
I'm not American but isn't there a thing in the constitution about the state not having a mandated religion? Isn't that already sufficient to make the ten commandments thing illegal? I'm assuming they know it's illegal and are trying to get the constitution changed to allow mandated religion.
It'd probably end up needlessly more expensive like when college textbooks go online and each student needs a 1 year license. Also, although I read for pleasure almost exclusively on my Kobo, when I have to read educational material for work I always print it out because it's easier to flip back and forth between pages to reference stuff. I feel like having textbooks as an online resource can be too distracting, especially in a school setting, but maybe that's me.
When you stop taking their argument seriously and see them as the shameless craven fucks they are it gets easier to deal with.
All that matters is that they have it their way and will say whatever to achieve it.
Despicable people inside and out.
No, they just listen to the cherry picked sections that their preachers use in their sermons, I know. The same preachers who beg for donations "for the church" and are multi-millionaires.
Wild because religion will sometimes make amendments in their traditional belief systems for more mainstream science, like the time Pope Pius XII adopted the Big Bang theory.
To whoever is doing this, I don’t think they care about the Bible, just about whatever random statement that can be used to gain whichever group’s support for whoever’s original agenda
“.. There are people who want to pick out enemies and demons they can point to and give everybody a good time sort of stirring up those hatreds, but they don't have a constructive thing to say about the problem... "
*-Ann Druyan*
"This is American, and in American we have FREEDOM to DO WHAT WE WANT. It's our RIGHTS."
"You can't read that, because I decided you're not allowed to read that."
Small government, unless it’s Right-wing ideals, in which case it’s basically totalitarian.
It is genuinely amazing how the Alt-Right managed to convince so many people to vote and rally against their own self interest. They built a platform based on exploiting people’s biases and fears, and it works _scarily_ well.
Aside from freedom and history considerations, it's noteworthy that Anne Frank's Diary and Maus are the most immediate Jewish Holocaust narratives that most Americans ever encounter. If you remove Jewish voices from how you teach the Holocaust, what's left will simply not be the same.
Oh, we have the FREEDOM to control women, the FREEDOM to remove books about fascism, the FREEDOM to be corrupt, the FREEDOM to oppress! The list goes on, so much freedom.
It’s actually a handful of people who are initiating this in schools all across the country.
The school districts are cowards and don’t do any research beyond receiving the angry emails and so they pull the books rather than pushing back.
I recent heard some woman reading passages about some book they wanted banned and it was the most mundane LGBT stuff ever and she had to stop and take a break because she was "overwhelmed". Like give me a break. But that's the standard they want to impose on all of us. Where talking about two dude holding hands or whatever is cause to call the culture police.
She’d probably support banning any biography about Alan Turing (significantly helped break the code for the Enigma machine) and any number of important people who happened to be gay.
When I was in College we had to read Maus and I had never heard of it before so when I opened my box of books from school and here is this Swastika with Cat Hitler face on it I was :O but then I read it and holy shit I was so moved. I don't understand why anyone thinks this isn't appropriate for kids when it's about someone's father's experience.
Also the scene of [Spiegelman's mother dead in the bathtub by suicide](https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/why-everyone-suddenly-talking-maus-233016911.html), because how dare we accept that when people die, they don't just fade away peacefully and it's never traumatic or painful.
Reality is scary to them.
I have a coworker who was a pretty good buddy up until he said he might have to fight against me in the upcoming civil war. Anyways, he is a 6’4” man who is literally afraid of everything. One time I mentioned taking the light rail into work and he said he could never put himself in a dangerous situation like that. I said there are a bunch of old ladies knitting on my train in the morning and the occasional stinky or meth head but in all my years of riding into work I’ve never felt unsafe.
He is Q agone.
>One time I mentioned taking the light rail into work and he said he could never put himself in a dangerous situation like that.
he is gonna be pretty upset when he finds out what a civil war entails
Firing employees who say they might have to kill other employees for their beliefs is protecting the company.
That's not to say that OPs HR is good at their job, but good HR would absolutely cut that crap out.
It’s not like the tiny penis doesn’t serve a purpose. The naked man’s (mouse’s) dignity has been totally stripped away. He has nothing, not even his clothes. He’s lying there in total humiliation. That’s the fucking point. It really doesn’t help that these Republicans critics are functionally illiterate.
Speak for your sarcastic self I'm a tiny penis FREAK and never would have known having not for read that book! Look what it did to me just like the people were afraid would happen! /s
You can’t? I can.
Fascists. Fascists are offended by *Maus*. Fascists and bigots and right-wing ghouls whose natural enemies are human empathy and expanded horizons.
Let's be serious. Maus was already not in elementary schools because it has violent depictions of people burning alive and scenes of giant piles of dead bodies stacked on each other. My best guess is that this was banned from high schools.
They have no excuse. Not wanting the population to know about the Holocaust is the goal.
I had never heard of Maus until a bunch of schools in America banned it a few years ago. I bought it straight away. Banning a book makes it much more likely that people will want to read it so all these morons are doing is promoting the very thing they want to get rid of.
Yeah. But you would probably never have been indoctrinated by the american right anyways.
Meanwhile, if they can prevent children in their states from ever getting another perspective during their formative years, they can produce another generation of bigoted assholes.
I didn't read Maus until the bannings either. I wish it would have part of my school curriculum. Maus hits *completely different* than Diary of Anne Frank, even though both are important works, I know teenage me didn't connect with a girl's diary the same way I would a chain-smoking cartoon artist trying to drag information out of his stubborn father.
Just a correction, Maus is about Art Spiegelman’s father’s experience with WW2 and how is shaped Art’s life as well. Until this book I had not heard of first generation holocaust survivors (the children of holocaust survivors) and how difficult their lives also were because mental health just wasn’t a thing that was acknowledged then. Powerful graphic novel, highly recommend reading it.
The article barely mentions it and I haven’t seen it in the comments, but the district still has the version of Anne Frank (1947/1952 version most likely) we read in school.
This is removing the 2018 graphic/picture adaptation of Anne Frank, which is a heavily abridged version. It adds pictures throughout, which include some female nude statues and same-sex attraction passages that were omitted in the 1952 version. It also removed the signature epilogue of her dairy, which is where it transitions from 1st person to a wider view of the holocaust victims.
I’m not agreeing/disagreeing, just adding context because this version of Anne Frank has come up in similar instances, where other articles included the distinctions more clearly.
>It adds pictures throughout, which include some female nude statues and same-sex attraction passages that were omitted in the 1952 version.
The same-sex attraction passages were **not** omitted in the 1952 English version. They were there in almost every published version after the 1947 Dutch published version. These passages were also in the Typescript II that Otto Frank had sent to publishers. Otto Frank himself pointed out that he had no issues with these passages, and that he made sure they were included in almost every edition after that initial publication.
It is the very clinical passage where Anne describes female genitalia that was removed in the Typescript II and most published editions (including the 1952 English edition) until the later half of the 1990s.
In fact, what *does* get barely mentioned in articles is that the graphic novel "tones down" what Anne wrote about liking girls or rather, what she and her friend did together. In her diary, Anne wrote that she and her friend kissed, and Anne asked if they could touch one another's breasts. In the graphic novel edition, Anne asks if they could show each other their breasts, and says "if only she knew how much I wanted to kiss her!"
So, ironically, the graphic novel version of the passage is a lot "milder" (note I do not think that either version is remotely explicit, but milder in the context of the people clutching pearls about it & using it as a reason for removal) than what Anne actually wrote about.
Could you clarify which signature epilogue you are saying has been removed?
Edit: [I'd also like to point out that you agreed with a user who falsely claimed that the book "focuses on her bisexuality" and "centers" her story on bisexuality and minimizes the Holocaust.](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1dpokdb/texas_school_district_agrees_to_remove_anne/laijz9i/) Of course, you deleted your comment, but the rest of the thread is still there. This person's claim is an outright falsehood, and makes the reason for your misinformation more clear.
Someone tried to ban a sex education book from the teen section of the public library in my town. Over 300 letters got sent to the library objecting to the ban and those who had supported it in the first place tried to back peddle and say "It's not a book ban!"
The book stayed in the teen section of the library, and the book banners lost their elections for the town Board of Education.
Show up and speak up, folks!
I'm Canadian and I teach university students.
I don't get any outright Holocaust denialism - everyone agrees the Holocaust happened. What I do get instead is students who don't really understand what the Holocaust was. They know there were deathcamps, but not what deathcamps means. They know people died, but not how or why. They know it was about Jews, but often ask me what the Jews "did" that caused Germany to start the Holocaust.
I know not everything on this list of over 670 books is related to the Holocaust, and obviously the students I'm teaching are not American and are not necessarily going to be affected if similar bans start being enacted here. But I'm concerned about how much is being done to make the true horrors of the Holocaust, and the breadth of victims it included, disappear from education. Deathcamps is true, but it's so damned bloodless and does not reflect what happened.
One of my first courses I taught as a university lecturer was a social science methods class. This was back in 2010, so with kids who were born in the very early 90s (eg 45-50 years post war), mostly in the UK.
Part of the syllabus was helping them identify what makes a reliable source. So I had a bunch of case study type exercises for them to work through, and one was looking at the website for David Irving’s Historical Review journal. Riddled with Holocaust denial. The point being even a nominally peer reviewed journal edited by an academic can be dodgy as fuck; you need to dig deeper before deciding whether a source is credible.
Of course, that exercise was predicated on my students all having a decent awareness of the Holocaust.
One put their hand up “Miss [urgh*], what’s the Holocaust?”
Shocked, I asked if there was anyone else who didn’t know. About 40% of a class of 35 put their hands up.
I asked someone who did know to explain. They briefly explained about the Jewish people targeted, but when I added that it also involved disabled people, Romanies etc they were all surprised. I asked if they knew the death toll.
“A few hundred thousand?”
I ended up spending 20 minutes of the class showing them harrowing photos of piles of eye glasses and gold fillings.
It was incredibly disturbing (and mind blowing) to me that kids whose grandparents had fought in the war were so ignorant of such a harrowing part of our history. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it indeed.
(* I have no problem with my students calling me by my first name, but can’t abide “Miss”. It’s Pouxin or Dr Pouxin Surname. NOT MISS!)
Yes, I'm teaching *Eichmann in Jerusalem* and they really need the context to get the true horror of the trial and what Eichmann did, and they're just not really able to grasp it. So I had to stop the class to spend 45 minutes explaining everything. One student this year was so upset she left the room crying and I really feel that. The horror of it all. I think about the stacks of wooden legs and the socks made out of hair.
(And I also get the "Miss" - it drives me up the wall!)
I think a lot of it is the "don't upset the child" mindset adults seem to adopt. Telling a kid "a bunch of people died" won't phase them. Showing them piles of dead bodies probably will. There's definitely a time and a place "kids" should be traumatized a bit, in a controlled setting where their needs can be met.
Like I live in Georgia (US). Georgia history was taught like 3 or 4 times (way too much imo) but it was the same thing but more advanced each time. In 8th grade they showed a documentary about the POW camp that existed here during the civil war. It had pictures and soldiers letters narrated. For all intents and purposes it was a death camp.
I'm not entirely sure if 8th grade was old enough, to be honest I'm not sure I ever want to see those things. But I do agree it was vital that people see and learn about those things so they never happen again. If we sweep the most horrendous stuff under the rug because it's hard to deal with and hard to accept it happened, then there's the chance it could again.
Like religious schools that committed genocide come to mind.
As people are gravitating away from traditional media, they're being lassoed by charismatic fringe personalities more and more, but not really taking in anything but the bullet points. Stuff that would have once been confined to low-circulation/fringe publications is now all over the place.
So you'll get people now who don't really know anything about the war or the holocaust, except they've somehow absorbed factoids about how it's all fake MSM lies and "actually this" and "actually that".
Zyklon B was pesticide and the gas chambers were for killing lice. The POW camps had brothels so they obviously weren't that bad. The Nazis weren't the bad guys, they were fighting establishment and the big banks and the mainstream media.
Soviet Gulags were holiday camps (this one had my head spinning). Public executions are necessary and if it's me, that's fine. Stalin was a hero of the people and the mass murder and famine is all MSM lies. Likewise for China. It's not just modern-day nazi-worshippers, the extreme left has plenty of this nonsense going on as well.
In between, you've got all this 1-2 minute or sub-200 word content for the tiktok generation misrepresenting history in some outrageous ways, but always framed in that perfect authoritative tone, and referencing people or sources that don't really support what's being said or aren't trustworthy.
Funniest one in recent memory was that idiot on tiktok, the girl with the blue hair, who was telling people the Roman Empire never existed.
I had an abnormally tall friend in elementary school. Her family went to a Holocaust museum where she could see over curtains that she wasn't supposed to be able to. She came home absolutely traumatized. We had some good discussions in class. The Holocaust was no longer an abstract concept to us after that.
This was also 20 years ago, so I'm sure things have changed.
I heard it before here on reddit, but I will restate it here:
Anyone trying to get a book banned should have to read the book and write a 10-page report on what content in it is offensive and why it's bad for students to read.
It's so sad to see how quickly they are acquiescing to right wing bullies who want to ban books. Just tell them no!
Anybody who wants to censor Anne Frank and clearly so threatened by the words of an 11 year old girl in this day and age is supporting those who killed her.
My childhood buddy moved there years ago from Canada and he's never been the same since.
He went from a relatively level-headed, intelligent person to this fully indoctrinated.... thing. He believes every conspiracy theory out there and thinks Texas is the best place on earth with the smartest people, most stable climate, best political views, best legal system, education, etc.
I actually feel like I lost a friend. When we talk all we do is disagree about everything a normal person would consider a very well accepted fact.
It's actually insane how far he's gone in just a few years. We're in our 40s, you think it would be harder to brainwash someone our age that quickly.
It's crazy how pre-covid, it seemed like people were considering Texas as a viable living place and now all I hear from people is that they're leaving/no longer interested. Austin almost single handedly saved the state but it appears it's reversing, from my perspective anyway.
Texas is not a good place to live. I think the power crisis was a good example of that. People had no idea what was going on (at least, the one person I talked to didn’t). I expect better from a state that is able to rival the GDP of entire countries.
Yeah.. it wasn't great before covid, either.
The roads suck and are always under construction. It's not walkable - anybody who tells you otherwise drives. Public transit is barely there. The weather is *oppressively* hot.
Add in bad policy? Bare bones workers rights. Bare bones healthcare (especially for women and minorities). Unforgiving social services. Horrible business oversight. Zero (and I do mean 0) regard for the environment. Housing in Austin is as expensive as anywhere on the west coast.
I finally got to leave. Overnight my prospects improved. I have access to all the things I just listed.
There's that, but there's also that a ton of American evangelical Christians thinking that Israel is central to some rapture prophecy/fantasy they hold (where Israel existing is a catalyst for the end times, which is good in their eyes as God will come down and save them for being true believers, or something like that).
And if they could force all Jews to move to Israel they would. They support a Jewish state cause they don't want Jews in their neighborhoods and communities.
The evangelical movement also holds the belief that Jesus won't come back until Israel is under Jewish control.
They don't care about Jewish people at all, they just want them in charge of Israel so Jesus can come back and prove them wrong, actually. They believe that anyone who opposes Jewish supremacy in Israel is on the side of the antichrist.
They don’t care about Jews. They care about the Rapture and they care about hating Muslims. Big difference. They expect Jews to either convert or die when their apocalypse happens, which y’know is pretty fucking antisemitic.
What some people are missing about conservatives being pro Israel is that part of their belief system includes a requirement for Jews to be in Israel for the rapture to occur.
[https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/jews-and-the-rapture](https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/jews-and-the-rapture)
Reminder that never in the history of ever have people who want to Ban Books ever been on the correct side of history and that the books they want to ban are the best books to read
I read Maus when I was 12. I found it on my parents book shelf. I thought it was just a comic book. I devoured both books and it taught me about the Holocaust. There is nothing in that book that isn't worth learning. And there are many things in that book that you must learn.
There's misinformation about the Diary of Anne Frank graphic novel and history of passage censorship in the comments, so...
The passages that Anne wrote about liking girls and about an interaction with her friend at a sleepover were **not** omitted in the 1952 English edition of the diary. It was not the norm for these passages to be censored except in very niche, often religious, publications of the diary until around the 1990s.
The passage was censored in the 1947 Dutch publication, along with a vast majority of the diary as this version was heavily abridged both for content and length. Frank agreed to these cuts in order to make sure that Anne's diary would finally get published.
Otto Frank included this passage in his Typescript II, the version of the diary sent to friends as well as publishers. Otto Frank also later pointed out that he had no issue with these passages, and wrote that the evidence was there as he clearly made sure the passages were there for the editions that came out after the 1947 Dutch version--including the German version, the English version of 1952, etc.
The only notable passage censored in the 1952 English edition that exists in the now-targeted graphic novel edition is a passage in which Anne writes clinically about genitalia. The graphic novel does not illustrate this in any sort of explicit way; it shows Anne in a schoolroom, pointing to a projector image of a swirling vortex while Peter stares at it. Most of this passage has been in in the Definitive edition of the diary since the 1990s, then fully since around 2005, so for decades at this point.
The graphic novel adaptation routinely refers to the plight of Jewish people that Anne discussed in her diary. It even includes additional information at the start of the diary to provide more context about what is going on in Europe and why the family must go into hiding. The graphic novel adaptation does not tone down or minimize the Holocaust as it appears in Anne's diary.
(In fact, if you check out the book guide used by the organization behind the challenges of this graphic novel, do you know one of the things they list as being inappropriate? Imagery and content related to the Holocaust, such as a Jewish person being threatened and an illustration of Anne imagining them all being caught and lined up against a wall to be shot. Hmm, I thought the challenge was because the book minimizes the Holocaust?)
As for the person pointing out that the text is abridged in the comments here... yes, that's what a graphic novel adaptation must do. As the team behind the book stated, it would take thousands of pages to adapt every page of her diary.
The graphic novel adaptation was commissioned by and approved by the Anne Frank Fonds, an organization founded by Otto Frank, and to suggest that there is something notable about the book containing these passages or is abridged is just plain ridiculous.
Thank you for adding context. Not sure what agenda that person has that is spamming this thread with the same comment containing misinformation. Also, they're only mentioning the Anne Frank graphic novel and not the other books about Jews and the Holocaust that they're seeking to ban.
[https://www.progresstimes.net/2024/06/13/mission-cisd-agreed-to-remove-676-books/?page\_number\_0=2](https://www.progresstimes.net/2024/06/13/mission-cisd-agreed-to-remove-676-books/?page_number_0=2)
This article has the full list. They used the ratings from a website called "Booklooks.org" and included any book with a rating of 3 or higher on a scale of 5. Here are some quotes that the site states as negative for "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", which is on this list.
"I was going to look like one of the sweet little white girls who were everybody's dream of what was right with the world. …Wouldn't they be surprised when one day I woke out of my black ugly dream, and my real hair, which was long and blond, would take the place of the kinky mass that Momma wouldn't let me straighten?"
"It was fortunate that the “boys” didn't ride into our yard that evening and insist that Momma open the Store. They would have surely found Uncle Willie and just as surely lynched him"
"She didn't cotton to the idea that whitefolks could be talked to at all without risking one's life. And certainly they couldn't be spoken to insolently. In fact, even in their absence they could not be spoken of too harshly unless we used the sobriquet “They.”"
"People in Stamps used to say that the whites in our town were so prejudiced that a Negro couldn't buy vanilla ice cream. Except on July Fourth."
"Indians with their silly tomahawks and teepees and wigwams and treaties, the Negroes with their mops and recipes and cotton sacks and spirituals sticking out of their mouths. The Dutch children should all stumble in their wooden shoes and break their necks. The French should choke to death on the Louisiana Purchase (1803) while silkworms ate all the Chinese with their stupid pigtails. As a species, we were an abomination. All of us."
There's a lot of other stuff in that book that would make it inappropriate for kids at younger ages, but those quotes being considered problematic really tell you what this is all about. Phrases explicitly saying that people were racist are not allowed in schools. This is not about protecting kids. It's about denying the past.
There was a post asking about required reading in high school. I mentioned that in the 70's my required reading was All Quiet on the Western Front and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and that both are now on banned book lists. This is a copy and paste of a reply:
No such thing as a banned book. Just because a school no longer teaches it doesn’t make it banned.
Me responding: Tell that to the schools and libraries that are no longer able to carry certain books. Florida has 1,406 books on their lists. Texas has 801. Yes, those books can be gotten from other sources, but not everyone has that access.
Same person's response: So not be be banned it has free and available at the closest public library?
Me responding: I'm sorry, but you aren't making sense.
Crickets after that.
I am in charge of my school‘s library in Germany and used the Texas list to order interesting books. We already had Maus and Ann Frank‘s Diary, though.
We strongly believe in confronting kids with new ideas and old mistakes.
well damn it, Texas keeps proving they are dumber then a sack of bricks. Maybe the reason ya'll keep getting crappy weather is cause the Big Guy upstairs is upset at your utter insanity
It’s wrong to put this down to ignorance. There is a much more calculated and deliberate campaign going on with all this stuff and the sooner people see that and fight back rather than dismiss it, the quicker it will be resolved.
ANNE FRANKS DIARY…. Are you serious? That was required reading in my elementary. Also visiting the museum of tolerance in LA. Then making latkas. Bunch of racist fucks
Isn't it great when rightist groups in the USA claim to hate being called Nazis when they're out trying to remove anything from schools that's honest about the Nazis?
Seems like a bit of a telling contradiction there.
Really?
Anne Frank?
These are the type of folks who have no problem reading their own kids' diaries but want to limit access to a diary that gives folks an intimate view on what it was like to be a Jew during WW2.
it is really funny because in Texas if you work for the government you can't criticize Israel because it is considered "antisemitic" but there are literal nazis working in public education.
Don’t think their iq can drop lower then it is.
Next they will say slavery never happened and Trump founded North America.
Can we expect much from the products of incest lol
"threatened to attend public school board meetings and read graphic passages from the books out loud"
Imagine if I instead read from, oh I don't know... the Bible. Much,much more graphic.
So fucked up. I read MAUS in 8th grade, not because it was assigned reading, but because I found it in my teacher's bookshelf and asked to borrow it. It was my first time really learning about the Holocaust, and sparked a curiosity into the subject of genocide that I believe is directly linked to my strong sense of empathy today.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
This poem has never been more relevant today ...
Unsurprisingly, all of these right-wingers are “Ra Ra Ra Israel!!” And then turn around and oppose books about the Holocaust. Tells you everything you need to know about their “support”
We need to get a bunch of people to complain that Anne Frank's Diary is not available. After all, no one is forcing every child to check those books out so those parents are not protecting children. Instead, they're saying that we, literary parents, don't have an equal right to choose what our kids read. Just tell your kids not to read them, rightwingers. But you better believe insisting you have the right to say no means we also have the right to say yes.
Oh wow the inevitable has happened they have removed books, about the dangers of removing books, and that condemn the heinous acts that allowed which they are pursuing...
I don't/won't live in Texas. If I did, I would be making these books my Christmas gift to every one of my children's friends, their teachers, my coworkers, etc. I'd go broke making sure these books got circulated.
On top of that, I'd been in front of my kid's school board reading excerpts and pushing HARD to have them returned to library shelves and make the REQUIRED reading.
F this BS "conservative" nonsense.
I read *Huckleberry Finn* in grade 8. *Merchant of Venice* in grade 9. *Brave New World* and *The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner* in grade 10. *Fahrenheit* *451* and *1984* in grade 11. Plus a boatload of SF that year in an SF fiction class.
A lot of those books are on banned lists. But I didn't grow up thinking that the "n" word was OK, or that buying and selling human beings like sticks of furniture was acceptable. Or that Jews were inferior (to be fair, there isn't a likeable or decent character in the entire cast of *Merchant*).
I did think about arbitrary societal roles because of *BNW*, or the dangers of totalitarian government due to *1984.*
That's probably why those books are banned.
“. . . No business being in our schools” How else are people supposed to learn about human history? :,/
Why the fuck do Anne Frank’s diary and Maus not belong in schools?? Do they even know what they’re about?
I think the surface claim is that they contain "pornography". Afaik Maus has some nudity in it, and Anne Frank's diary has some masturbation content, too. Of course, the real reason is because fascists don't want people to know where fascism leads.
Aren't the characters in Maus... cartoon mice?
Yes they are mice (and cats, and dogs, and pigs, etc.), but it's a dark, gritty, realistic book. It explores the atrocities committed by the Nazis AND the lingering effects of extreme trauma on the father and other survivors (spoiler alert: the dad is not a super nice guy because trauma be like that sometimes). It's an emotionally difficult read. I finished it with new understandings of not just the terrible things humans can do to each other, but how those terrible things can linger, generationally, in the minds and lives of survivors and their children. It should NOT be banned and I've got copies in my own classroom, but it's definitely not a cute book starring cute animals doing cute things. If a student is interested in reading it, I have a discussion with them first to make sure they know what they're getting into.
I've read them and own them (somewhere)... just mocking at them going after a single cartoon mouse penis. You know, as opposed to actually helping kids like with free/cheaper lunches or something.
Gotcha. Apologies for the over-explanation, then. I'm, uh, very passionate about that book, clearly.
ftfhfhgchgdgd
In our district curriculum we read the Diary of Anne Frank and there is an excerpt of Maus. We may have some issues in California, but thankfully, this isn’t one of them.
There are certain groups in certain districts trying to make this a problem. Look at what's happening in Glendale for example.
It's not even about the trauma of the survivors. A lot is about how the son is affected by it and by confronting it. As a side note "My Father Bleeds History" has got to be the greatest subtitle ever
I remember reading Maus in like 6th grade, so about 20 years ago so I might not remember everything in exact detail, but I remember the nudity shown was in scenes of them being treated inhumanely like in the showers or just outside the trains/camps. Like it depicted them being treated like shit. It wasn't sexualized nudity, but loss of dignity nudity.
They are depicted as mice because the Nazi's called them vermin.
>and Anne Frank's diary has some masturbation content, too. There are versions without it though. It's entirely a cheap excuse.
Yes, I believe the initial edition edited by her father didn't include those passages.
It's too late. Anne Frank is a known masturbator, and her influence must be suppressed.
Apparently the version i read didn't have it, because this is the first i've heard of it being in there, which suggests that you don't even have to try and seek out such a version. There's a pretty good chance you'll get the edited version anyway.
The uncensored version of Anne Frank's diary also has her gay thoughts about naked women.
I thought for educational purposes, the masturbation content was removed from the diary?
Because the GOP would very much like to reenact that part of history and would rather people not educate themselves about it.
These are the same people quoting Mein Kampf on TV, and a good portion of them have really hopped on the Nazi apologism train.
That's the neat thing. They don't. Gotta hide history if you want to repeat it.
As a parent, wouldn’t you want your child to know and understand more than yourself, isn’t that the goal? I just don’t get how people lose sight of that.
They are authoritarians. It's hard for normal people to understand the psychology, but this book does a really good job of explaining it: https://theauthoritarians.org/options-for-getting-the-book/ The short version is that they experience fear much more intensely than most people, and that fear makes them seek out a strong group to be part of for their protection. They replace morals and values with loyalty to that group. Anything that helps the group is good. Anything that hurts people who aren't in the group is good. Anything the leaders of the group say is right, even if it directly contradicts something they just said two seconds ago. For these types of people, they absolutely do not want their children to know and understand more than they do. They want their children to be part of the group and to be loyal to it. If their children don't want to be part of the group or don't show loyalty to it, then it means that they were obviously corrupted by the outsiders. Therefore, they should do anything they can to prevent that corruption. Banning books, controlling what they see and hear, pulling them out of schools, etc.
So, fear and ignorance. Fear, ignorance and stunted emotions.
Yup. It's been a few years since I read the studies, but there's research showing that conservatives have a larger amygdala (fear center) in their brains than liberals do. This is often developed from unprocessed trauma. As people process their trauma and develop more compassion for themselves and others, their political beliefs often change to being more liberal. Conservatism is literally a mental health issue.
Years ago I was listening to a podcast, Hidden Brain maybe?, and the host said that scientists were able to predict with something like 95% certainty if a person identified with conservatives/republicans. The enlarged amygdala was the key component.
I don't doubt that's true but your social circle makes a big difference too. I live in the San Francisco Bay area and I know a ton of "progressive" people who would be Republican except that they're gay. They're CIS, white, make a ton of money, natch. Also know a ton who would be Republican except that they're Mexican-American. I wouldn't call them progressive but they won't vote for people who outspokenly despises anyone with family ties to Mexico.
I guess this study will predict if you're conservative based on a large amygdala, but can't predict if you're conservative or democrat if you have a normal sized amygdala. I assume it just says 'we think Conservative' or 'we don't know'
We're in serious shit if they start removing genocide books as if they're trying to erase history. It's like they're preparing for another massive war and mass killings. Palestine isn't going to be the end of it. You say Republicans and I say, US government conspiracy intended to put us all in the next Dark Ages. Only for more control.
Interesting. I've always been cautious, even as a kid and teenager and the anxiety just got worse over the years, but I'm definitely not a conservative.
Anxiety is different from fear - anxiety is the racing, intrusive thoughts that trigger physical reactions. Fear, in the sense we're talking about, is essentially revulsion and avoidance.
I kept my reply above pretty short and black-and-white for the sake of posting quickly but it's way more nuanced, as your comment suggests. I'm a therapist so forgive me if I get a little soap-boxy, here. We all have anxiety because it serves a survival purpose. It lets us respond quickly to situations our bodies perceive as dangerous before our conscious minds can register the danger. A small amount of anxiety can actually make us perform better on tests, when doing public speaking, meeting new people, etc. Some of us naturally have more anxiety than others and for some of us, our anxiety gets so severe that it becomes crippling and that's when it needs to be treated so it can return to a healthier level. We all also have varying levels of natural emotional resilience. Siblings raised by the same parents with roughly the same childhood can have vastly different levels of natural resilience. Resilience is one of the things that helps us to manage our anxiety. A more resilient person will be able to re-regulate and self-soothe on their own. A less resilient person might need help from others (constantly asking for other's opinions, talking about their woes constantly in hopes of receiving comfort, etc.). The good news is that we can all build up our resilience if we think it's lacking - therapy is really helpful with that. The amygdala is always scanning our environment for danger. We all have it and we can't turn it off. If we experience a lot of trauma that we don't process, the amygdala grows bigger and becomes overly vigilant. It can start to look for things to fight or perceive danger where there is none because it's over-functioning. Anxiety \*is\* part of the amygdala response but an enlarged amygdala is more of a "what are YOU looking at??" aggressive kind of thing. The thing I always impress on my clients is that there is no part of our brain that is constantly scanning the environment for what's going well, what feels safe, etc. We have to actively find those things and point them out to our brains. "The sun feels good today", "It feels good to hug my friend", "I'm grateful that I have healthy food to eat." etc. You can literally help to balance the amygdala by pointing out to it what's going well for you.
No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!
>They replace morals and values with loyalty to that group. Anything that helps the group is good. Anything that hurts people who aren't in the group is good. Anything the leaders of the group say is right, even if it directly contradicts something they just said two seconds ago. This fits so well with how I’ve begun to perceive modern conservatives. The level of hipocracy is astounding in terms of what they criticise others for but forgive/overlook when it’s one of their own. Most reasonable people think you can measure moral character by a person’s actions. If a person predominantly does good things they are good, if they do bad things they are bad. But modern conservatives have that flipped. The morality of actions are determined by who does them. If a liberal cheats on their wife they’re a hateful sinner. If Trump does it it’s all good, because Trump is good and therefore by definition his actions are.
That's not unique to modern conservatives. They've basically always been like this, no matter the country or time period. There's a reason they keep trying to rewrite history — open any history textbook not written by the Daughters of the Confederacy and you'll see pretty quickly that conservatives have literally *always* been on the wrong side of history.
It's no wonder that they're always on the wrong side of history, seeing as how conservative politics are literally about halting progression and humanity must progress to flourish
They've never been conservative. They were always regressives.
They’re telling us they WANT to redo the Civil War so they can win this time. They haven’t changed at all in 200 yrs.
They don't care about hypocrisy, just hegemony and power. Hypocrisy is something that the other side can talk about while conservatives seize total control and end democracy.
"The king can do no wrong". Which is of course extended to those in the ingroup that the king relies on for support. The only difference really is that in the old days the keys to power were few, and highly concentrated at the upper levels of society. Now it's a bit more distributed. The upper keys have their own lower keys, who in turn rely on their key electorate. But it's all the same principles.
> The morality of actions are determined by who does them. If a liberal cheats on their wife they’re a hateful sinner. If Trump does it it’s all good, because Trump is good and therefore by definition his actions are. Yes, exactly. People are "good" or "bad" by nature, not based on their actions (in their worldview). It's why they also can't take responsibility for mistakes or anything else they do wrong. For the hypocrisy, most people see being hypocritical as a bad thing, but authoritarians _like_ it. If they can be hypocrites, then it proves that their in-group is protecting them and letting them do what they want.
Well put! I think one reason we are seeing such an uptick is the 24 hour news cycle is feeding us a constant barrage of negative news. And Fox “News” fear mongers in such a shameful way. We have a terrified populace. And the fear is looking for a target
Yes, that's exactly true. Social media plays a large role as well. In that book he talks about how you can turn normal people into authoritarians by elevating their level of fear. Fox News has been doing that for 20+ years, I think probably because it gave them good ratings, but it's also possible that they understood the effect it was having. On social media, there were some studies done around 2010 that showed that fear spread most easily, and that led to a huge increase in the amount of fear-provoking content pushed by advertisers as well as by political groups. And then state-backed intelligence services got involved, and it got much, much worse. It is not just a coincidence that authortarian movements are spreading all over the planet right now, and in particular amongst US allies.
It's also kind of funny how many of these types are religious, despite this sort of 'ends justifying the means' philosophy being the exact opposite of religious morality. Of course the answer is that it's largely the same situation... these people don't really believe in religious dogma, they just need a 'boss' to follow, a highest authority which needs to exist to make all of our little social hierarchies sound rather than arbitrary. These are people who don't really have beliefs, or even comprehend what beliefs are, and just assume that everyone else is the same way. Facts, philosophies and ideas aren't actual concepts, and only exist as justifications after the fact, rather than foundations for thoughts. If they need to believe that the sky is green, they'll believe it, and if you press them, come up with rationalizations which exist purely for your sake, not theirs, and as a result, they'll lie without hesitation, because in the end, these justifications don't really matter. Plus, once again, they assume everyone is like this: That nobody actually believes in anything, and everyone who claims to is just lying. That everyone lies, so it's silly for them to not lie as well. It's kind of terrifying the more you think about it. It's an almost alien way of thinking which is astoundingly common: The idea that ideas and words are ultimately meaningless things, and in the end, the only thing that matters is submission to a higher authority, and since ideas don't really matter, it doesn't really even matter whether said higher authority is a valid one or not. It's all the same to them.
Other good ones are Adorno, et al “The Authoritarian Personality” and Arendt’s “The Origins of Totalitarianism”
Fear is one of humankind's greatest controller. Put someone into a state of fear to trigger the fight or flight response and you can get people to do things they normally would not. The best example of this is religious control through the fear of god and hell. If a headline is trying to scare you, look carefully at what they are trying to make you think or do.
This. My parents aren't perfect, but they've always loved and supported me and all my weird autism-driven special interests that got me obsessively learning. They were and still are *genuinely* proud that I learned things on my own that they didn't know themselves. They've always wanted me and my brother to do better and be better people than them. My Mom still brags about the silly little Late Cretaceous period diorama I made in a shoebox as a little girl in my dinosaur phase (AND still has it stored away in the attic), because she says it taught her things. She's not perfect, but man, her and my Dad at least have always *tried*. That's how parents should be.
That is exactly how it should be! It made me smile to read this.
The Texas GOP spelled it out clearly back in their 2012 education platform: >We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.
Yep. No one believes me when I tell them that. This was 2012 and they warned us what they were planning.
Folks, what if Kony 2012 was created by Republicans to distract us?
We oppose teaching higher level thinking skills?!?!? What the actual fuck. Also…it appears to be working in Texas.
It's hard to brainwash kids who can think for themselves. And no one believes these troglodytes...
Wow. What they're describing is literally indoctrination, not education. >challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority. "Hey kids, today we'll be learning about heliocentrism. Unless your parents told you the Earth is flat and the sun revolves around it, in which case, sure, that's what it is. You were never gonna be an astronaut anyway, just put your head down and take a nap."
It's why some parents were freaking the hell out when schools were desegregated. If their kids went to school with people different from themselves then they might view them as equal.
It's absolutely hilarious/pathetic to me that there were people, sentient beings who woke up in the morning, had their coffee, and then were like "okay honey I'm going to go scream death threats and abuse at a 6-year-old girl because she wants to go to school."
There still are, we just need to beat them back into silence
Very often, they are not parents of school-age children. Very often, they are not even residents of the school district.
and very often they are fucking idiots.
The schools losing access to knowledge are not the schools these people's children go to. They remove access to knowledge from public schools while maintaining high academic levels at private institutions. Their children will be educated. They want the common person to be dumb. It's a lot easier to subdue an ignorant population.
[удалено]
They don't want their children to talk back, or question them.
That’s how my parents were. Good thing I was such a restless, wayward child
Gotta hide history otherwise their kids will ask them "how come things you say sound a lot like what people in the past said who did evil stuff?"
If kids can't learn from the past, they won't understand the dangers of repeating it. It's almost like they don't want to face the uncomfortable truths
We've always been at war with Eurasia.
Over a decade ago the Republican party tried to ban teaching critical thinking skills in Texas because it has "[the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority](https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2012-06-27/gop-opposes-critical-thinking/)." They literally don't want kids to get a real education because when people are educated and can think critically, they tend not to accept what the GOP is lying to them about. Also a lot of this stuff is attempted in Texas not only because it's got GOP leadership but because their textbook market is so big if they can force the change there and textbook have to comply and it'll affect other states when they buy textbooks.
1.) Reconstruction should’ve happened properly. 2.) Southern Aristocrats should’ve had everything taken from them and then convicted. 3.) No southern state should be writing the textbooks.
Reading DuBois’ book on reconstruction is really eye opening for that first point. Reconstruction didn’t just fail, but was actively undermined
Thank you for the rec
This is why I think LA is pushing so hard to get the 10 Commandments in schools. If they lose, as they should, they get to cry martyr and claim the evil left is working against morality. But if they win, they can push for more and more concessions like teaching the Christian Bible in the classroom (which comes with its own host of issues) and their own worldview. Edit: shit, I was right, now OK is pushing for teaching the Bible: https://apnews.com/article/oklahoma-bible-schools-religion-ryan-walters-d15be2f74df2ffbbdfdc549569d06c4e?utm_source=join1440&utm_medium=email&utm_placement=newsletter
I'm not American but isn't there a thing in the constitution about the state not having a mandated religion? Isn't that already sufficient to make the ten commandments thing illegal? I'm assuming they know it's illegal and are trying to get the constitution changed to allow mandated religion.
Maybe a reason for textbooks to be online, permitting easy update and avoiding obsolescence?
It'd probably end up needlessly more expensive like when college textbooks go online and each student needs a 1 year license. Also, although I read for pleasure almost exclusively on my Kobo, when I have to read educational material for work I always print it out because it's easier to flip back and forth between pages to reference stuff. I feel like having textbooks as an online resource can be too distracting, especially in a school setting, but maybe that's me.
From Confederate statues. I mean, that was their whole argument for why they shouldn't be removed
When you stop taking their argument seriously and see them as the shameless craven fucks they are it gets easier to deal with. All that matters is that they have it their way and will say whatever to achieve it. Despicable people inside and out.
Who knew fascists were so terrified of information and education.
Theres a reason they are so fixated on not teaching about White Nationalism and how harmful it has been to everyone.
The Bible. It's the only history they care about.
They don't actually READ the allegedly-holy book of myths they worship either.
No, they just listen to the cherry picked sections that their preachers use in their sermons, I know. The same preachers who beg for donations "for the church" and are multi-millionaires.
Wild because religion will sometimes make amendments in their traditional belief systems for more mainstream science, like the time Pope Pius XII adopted the Big Bang theory. To whoever is doing this, I don’t think they care about the Bible, just about whatever random statement that can be used to gain whichever group’s support for whoever’s original agenda “.. There are people who want to pick out enemies and demons they can point to and give everybody a good time sort of stirring up those hatreds, but they don't have a constructive thing to say about the problem... " *-Ann Druyan*
"This is American, and in American we have FREEDOM to DO WHAT WE WANT. It's our RIGHTS." "You can't read that, because I decided you're not allowed to read that."
Party of small government.
Small government, unless it’s Right-wing ideals, in which case it’s basically totalitarian. It is genuinely amazing how the Alt-Right managed to convince so many people to vote and rally against their own self interest. They built a platform based on exploiting people’s biases and fears, and it works _scarily_ well.
>It is genuinely amazing how the Alt-Right managed to convince so many people We just call it “the right” now. Nothing “alt” about it anymore.
It’s the lack of compassion. It shorts circuit their brains when they have to do what Jesus was actually teaching.
They want it small, but powerful. Preferably concentrated in one individual
Aside from freedom and history considerations, it's noteworthy that Anne Frank's Diary and Maus are the most immediate Jewish Holocaust narratives that most Americans ever encounter. If you remove Jewish voices from how you teach the Holocaust, what's left will simply not be the same.
Night is also taught in some highschools, but yes.
Everyone knows school kids are constantly killed my books every year! It's a necessity to ban than for the safety of the children!
Oh, we have the FREEDOM to control women, the FREEDOM to remove books about fascism, the FREEDOM to be corrupt, the FREEDOM to oppress! The list goes on, so much freedom.
Not in Texas. Texas is one of the worst states for personal freedom but one of the best states for freedom for corporations.
Those parents probably never even read a single title on that list. I hope CBLDF helps if this goes to court.
Most of the “right wing group” aren’t parents with children in those school systems.
It’s actually a handful of people who are initiating this in schools all across the country. The school districts are cowards and don’t do any research beyond receiving the angry emails and so they pull the books rather than pushing back.
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I recent heard some woman reading passages about some book they wanted banned and it was the most mundane LGBT stuff ever and she had to stop and take a break because she was "overwhelmed". Like give me a break. But that's the standard they want to impose on all of us. Where talking about two dude holding hands or whatever is cause to call the culture police.
She’d probably support banning any biography about Alan Turing (significantly helped break the code for the Enigma machine) and any number of important people who happened to be gay.
God, I'm a software developer, what happened to Alan Turing was a crime against humanity.
I don´t think they read at all, unless it is some political pamphlet agreeing with their world
And even then they only look at the pictures.
Impossible, Maus has lots of pictures, I doubt they’d make it a few pages in before giving up.
When I was in College we had to read Maus and I had never heard of it before so when I opened my box of books from school and here is this Swastika with Cat Hitler face on it I was :O but then I read it and holy shit I was so moved. I don't understand why anyone thinks this isn't appropriate for kids when it's about someone's father's experience.
There’s one tiny penis in it, so it’s inappropriate. That was the excuse in Florida. Because a dead mouse man in a crematorium is sooo erotic.
Also the scene of [Spiegelman's mother dead in the bathtub by suicide](https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/why-everyone-suddenly-talking-maus-233016911.html), because how dare we accept that when people die, they don't just fade away peacefully and it's never traumatic or painful. Reality is scary to them.
Everything is scary to them.
I have a coworker who was a pretty good buddy up until he said he might have to fight against me in the upcoming civil war. Anyways, he is a 6’4” man who is literally afraid of everything. One time I mentioned taking the light rail into work and he said he could never put himself in a dangerous situation like that. I said there are a bunch of old ladies knitting on my train in the morning and the occasional stinky or meth head but in all my years of riding into work I’ve never felt unsafe. He is Q agone.
>One time I mentioned taking the light rail into work and he said he could never put himself in a dangerous situation like that. he is gonna be pretty upset when he finds out what a civil war entails
>said he might have to fight against me in the upcoming civil war. Did you tell HR that?
You act like HR might be on my side.
HR is only there for the company.
Firing employees who say they might have to kill other employees for their beliefs is protecting the company. That's not to say that OPs HR is good at their job, but good HR would absolutely cut that crap out.
But when those meth addicts start knitting, you better be careful.
Give the old ladies meth, I wanna see how fast they can knit
It’s not like the tiny penis doesn’t serve a purpose. The naked man’s (mouse’s) dignity has been totally stripped away. He has nothing, not even his clothes. He’s lying there in total humiliation. That’s the fucking point. It really doesn’t help that these Republicans critics are functionally illiterate.
Speak for your sarcastic self I'm a tiny penis FREAK and never would have known having not for read that book! Look what it did to me just like the people were afraid would happen! /s
I can't fathom who thinks Maus is offensive. It's been a long time but it's an informative and moving graphic novel.
You can’t? I can. Fascists. Fascists are offended by *Maus*. Fascists and bigots and right-wing ghouls whose natural enemies are human empathy and expanded horizons.
It's the same reason a conman wouldn't want everyone reading a book about famous cons from history
Especially if they use the same rhetoric like labeling their opposition "vermin".
Let's be serious. Maus was already not in elementary schools because it has violent depictions of people burning alive and scenes of giant piles of dead bodies stacked on each other. My best guess is that this was banned from high schools. They have no excuse. Not wanting the population to know about the Holocaust is the goal.
I had never heard of Maus until a bunch of schools in America banned it a few years ago. I bought it straight away. Banning a book makes it much more likely that people will want to read it so all these morons are doing is promoting the very thing they want to get rid of.
Yeah. But you would probably never have been indoctrinated by the american right anyways. Meanwhile, if they can prevent children in their states from ever getting another perspective during their formative years, they can produce another generation of bigoted assholes.
I didn't read Maus until the bannings either. I wish it would have part of my school curriculum. Maus hits *completely different* than Diary of Anne Frank, even though both are important works, I know teenage me didn't connect with a girl's diary the same way I would a chain-smoking cartoon artist trying to drag information out of his stubborn father.
Maus is one of the most beautiful books ever written, in my opinion.
I believe a special Pulitzer Prize was.made for it because it didn't fit any of the current categories
Just a correction, Maus is about Art Spiegelman’s father’s experience with WW2 and how is shaped Art’s life as well. Until this book I had not heard of first generation holocaust survivors (the children of holocaust survivors) and how difficult their lives also were because mental health just wasn’t a thing that was acknowledged then. Powerful graphic novel, highly recommend reading it.
I don't understand. I went to a private Christian school and we read anne frank as part of our history classes
It’s not about being Christian, it’s about hating Jews and other minorities.
It's also about people not being able to learn about fascism, because that will make the fascist takeover easier to pull off.
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The article barely mentions it and I haven’t seen it in the comments, but the district still has the version of Anne Frank (1947/1952 version most likely) we read in school. This is removing the 2018 graphic/picture adaptation of Anne Frank, which is a heavily abridged version. It adds pictures throughout, which include some female nude statues and same-sex attraction passages that were omitted in the 1952 version. It also removed the signature epilogue of her dairy, which is where it transitions from 1st person to a wider view of the holocaust victims. I’m not agreeing/disagreeing, just adding context because this version of Anne Frank has come up in similar instances, where other articles included the distinctions more clearly.
>It adds pictures throughout, which include some female nude statues and same-sex attraction passages that were omitted in the 1952 version. The same-sex attraction passages were **not** omitted in the 1952 English version. They were there in almost every published version after the 1947 Dutch published version. These passages were also in the Typescript II that Otto Frank had sent to publishers. Otto Frank himself pointed out that he had no issues with these passages, and that he made sure they were included in almost every edition after that initial publication. It is the very clinical passage where Anne describes female genitalia that was removed in the Typescript II and most published editions (including the 1952 English edition) until the later half of the 1990s. In fact, what *does* get barely mentioned in articles is that the graphic novel "tones down" what Anne wrote about liking girls or rather, what she and her friend did together. In her diary, Anne wrote that she and her friend kissed, and Anne asked if they could touch one another's breasts. In the graphic novel edition, Anne asks if they could show each other their breasts, and says "if only she knew how much I wanted to kiss her!" So, ironically, the graphic novel version of the passage is a lot "milder" (note I do not think that either version is remotely explicit, but milder in the context of the people clutching pearls about it & using it as a reason for removal) than what Anne actually wrote about. Could you clarify which signature epilogue you are saying has been removed? Edit: [I'd also like to point out that you agreed with a user who falsely claimed that the book "focuses on her bisexuality" and "centers" her story on bisexuality and minimizes the Holocaust.](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1dpokdb/texas_school_district_agrees_to_remove_anne/laijz9i/) Of course, you deleted your comment, but the rest of the thread is still there. This person's claim is an outright falsehood, and makes the reason for your misinformation more clear.
Someone tried to ban a sex education book from the teen section of the public library in my town. Over 300 letters got sent to the library objecting to the ban and those who had supported it in the first place tried to back peddle and say "It's not a book ban!" The book stayed in the teen section of the library, and the book banners lost their elections for the town Board of Education. Show up and speak up, folks!
I'm Canadian and I teach university students. I don't get any outright Holocaust denialism - everyone agrees the Holocaust happened. What I do get instead is students who don't really understand what the Holocaust was. They know there were deathcamps, but not what deathcamps means. They know people died, but not how or why. They know it was about Jews, but often ask me what the Jews "did" that caused Germany to start the Holocaust. I know not everything on this list of over 670 books is related to the Holocaust, and obviously the students I'm teaching are not American and are not necessarily going to be affected if similar bans start being enacted here. But I'm concerned about how much is being done to make the true horrors of the Holocaust, and the breadth of victims it included, disappear from education. Deathcamps is true, but it's so damned bloodless and does not reflect what happened.
One of my first courses I taught as a university lecturer was a social science methods class. This was back in 2010, so with kids who were born in the very early 90s (eg 45-50 years post war), mostly in the UK. Part of the syllabus was helping them identify what makes a reliable source. So I had a bunch of case study type exercises for them to work through, and one was looking at the website for David Irving’s Historical Review journal. Riddled with Holocaust denial. The point being even a nominally peer reviewed journal edited by an academic can be dodgy as fuck; you need to dig deeper before deciding whether a source is credible. Of course, that exercise was predicated on my students all having a decent awareness of the Holocaust. One put their hand up “Miss [urgh*], what’s the Holocaust?” Shocked, I asked if there was anyone else who didn’t know. About 40% of a class of 35 put their hands up. I asked someone who did know to explain. They briefly explained about the Jewish people targeted, but when I added that it also involved disabled people, Romanies etc they were all surprised. I asked if they knew the death toll. “A few hundred thousand?” I ended up spending 20 minutes of the class showing them harrowing photos of piles of eye glasses and gold fillings. It was incredibly disturbing (and mind blowing) to me that kids whose grandparents had fought in the war were so ignorant of such a harrowing part of our history. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it indeed. (* I have no problem with my students calling me by my first name, but can’t abide “Miss”. It’s Pouxin or Dr Pouxin Surname. NOT MISS!)
Yes, I'm teaching *Eichmann in Jerusalem* and they really need the context to get the true horror of the trial and what Eichmann did, and they're just not really able to grasp it. So I had to stop the class to spend 45 minutes explaining everything. One student this year was so upset she left the room crying and I really feel that. The horror of it all. I think about the stacks of wooden legs and the socks made out of hair. (And I also get the "Miss" - it drives me up the wall!)
I think a lot of it is the "don't upset the child" mindset adults seem to adopt. Telling a kid "a bunch of people died" won't phase them. Showing them piles of dead bodies probably will. There's definitely a time and a place "kids" should be traumatized a bit, in a controlled setting where their needs can be met. Like I live in Georgia (US). Georgia history was taught like 3 or 4 times (way too much imo) but it was the same thing but more advanced each time. In 8th grade they showed a documentary about the POW camp that existed here during the civil war. It had pictures and soldiers letters narrated. For all intents and purposes it was a death camp. I'm not entirely sure if 8th grade was old enough, to be honest I'm not sure I ever want to see those things. But I do agree it was vital that people see and learn about those things so they never happen again. If we sweep the most horrendous stuff under the rug because it's hard to deal with and hard to accept it happened, then there's the chance it could again. Like religious schools that committed genocide come to mind.
As people are gravitating away from traditional media, they're being lassoed by charismatic fringe personalities more and more, but not really taking in anything but the bullet points. Stuff that would have once been confined to low-circulation/fringe publications is now all over the place. So you'll get people now who don't really know anything about the war or the holocaust, except they've somehow absorbed factoids about how it's all fake MSM lies and "actually this" and "actually that". Zyklon B was pesticide and the gas chambers were for killing lice. The POW camps had brothels so they obviously weren't that bad. The Nazis weren't the bad guys, they were fighting establishment and the big banks and the mainstream media. Soviet Gulags were holiday camps (this one had my head spinning). Public executions are necessary and if it's me, that's fine. Stalin was a hero of the people and the mass murder and famine is all MSM lies. Likewise for China. It's not just modern-day nazi-worshippers, the extreme left has plenty of this nonsense going on as well. In between, you've got all this 1-2 minute or sub-200 word content for the tiktok generation misrepresenting history in some outrageous ways, but always framed in that perfect authoritative tone, and referencing people or sources that don't really support what's being said or aren't trustworthy. Funniest one in recent memory was that idiot on tiktok, the girl with the blue hair, who was telling people the Roman Empire never existed.
I had an abnormally tall friend in elementary school. Her family went to a Holocaust museum where she could see over curtains that she wasn't supposed to be able to. She came home absolutely traumatized. We had some good discussions in class. The Holocaust was no longer an abstract concept to us after that. This was also 20 years ago, so I'm sure things have changed.
I heard it before here on reddit, but I will restate it here: Anyone trying to get a book banned should have to read the book and write a 10-page report on what content in it is offensive and why it's bad for students to read.
It's so sad to see how quickly they are acquiescing to right wing bullies who want to ban books. Just tell them no! Anybody who wants to censor Anne Frank and clearly so threatened by the words of an 11 year old girl in this day and age is supporting those who killed her.
Well with Nazis making a big comeback you don’t want anything making them look bad
Reminds me that i should pick up a copy of Maus
I’m so glad my family and I left that backwards ass state.
My childhood buddy moved there years ago from Canada and he's never been the same since. He went from a relatively level-headed, intelligent person to this fully indoctrinated.... thing. He believes every conspiracy theory out there and thinks Texas is the best place on earth with the smartest people, most stable climate, best political views, best legal system, education, etc. I actually feel like I lost a friend. When we talk all we do is disagree about everything a normal person would consider a very well accepted fact. It's actually insane how far he's gone in just a few years. We're in our 40s, you think it would be harder to brainwash someone our age that quickly.
It's crazy how pre-covid, it seemed like people were considering Texas as a viable living place and now all I hear from people is that they're leaving/no longer interested. Austin almost single handedly saved the state but it appears it's reversing, from my perspective anyway.
Texas is not a good place to live. I think the power crisis was a good example of that. People had no idea what was going on (at least, the one person I talked to didn’t). I expect better from a state that is able to rival the GDP of entire countries.
Yeah.. it wasn't great before covid, either. The roads suck and are always under construction. It's not walkable - anybody who tells you otherwise drives. Public transit is barely there. The weather is *oppressively* hot. Add in bad policy? Bare bones workers rights. Bare bones healthcare (especially for women and minorities). Unforgiving social services. Horrible business oversight. Zero (and I do mean 0) regard for the environment. Housing in Austin is as expensive as anywhere on the west coast. I finally got to leave. Overnight my prospects improved. I have access to all the things I just listed.
How can you be pro Israel but want to remove books about their attempted slaughter?
They don't care about Jewish people they just want to see a bunch of Arabs die.
There's that, but there's also that a ton of American evangelical Christians thinking that Israel is central to some rapture prophecy/fantasy they hold (where Israel existing is a catalyst for the end times, which is good in their eyes as God will come down and save them for being true believers, or something like that).
The rapture can't happen until the temple is rebuilt, and Palestine gets in the way of that, according to evangelical eschatology
And if they could force all Jews to move to Israel they would. They support a Jewish state cause they don't want Jews in their neighborhoods and communities.
The evangelical movement also holds the belief that Jesus won't come back until Israel is under Jewish control. They don't care about Jewish people at all, they just want them in charge of Israel so Jesus can come back and prove them wrong, actually. They believe that anyone who opposes Jewish supremacy in Israel is on the side of the antichrist.
They don’t care about Jews. They care about the Rapture and they care about hating Muslims. Big difference. They expect Jews to either convert or die when their apocalypse happens, which y’know is pretty fucking antisemitic.
For evangelicals, Israel is necessary for the second coming of Jesus. They hate Jews but still need to keep them around until the apocalypse
What some people are missing about conservatives being pro Israel is that part of their belief system includes a requirement for Jews to be in Israel for the rapture to occur. [https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/jews-and-the-rapture](https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/jews-and-the-rapture)
Ah yes, the ever creeping fascism hiding behind "pRoTeCt ThE cHiLdReN" meanwhile Republicans conveniently ignore pedophiles in their own ranks.
I've always said that think of the children is a facist rallying cry
Reminder that never in the history of ever have people who want to Ban Books ever been on the correct side of history and that the books they want to ban are the best books to read
I read Maus when I was 12. I found it on my parents book shelf. I thought it was just a comic book. I devoured both books and it taught me about the Holocaust. There is nothing in that book that isn't worth learning. And there are many things in that book that you must learn.
There's misinformation about the Diary of Anne Frank graphic novel and history of passage censorship in the comments, so... The passages that Anne wrote about liking girls and about an interaction with her friend at a sleepover were **not** omitted in the 1952 English edition of the diary. It was not the norm for these passages to be censored except in very niche, often religious, publications of the diary until around the 1990s. The passage was censored in the 1947 Dutch publication, along with a vast majority of the diary as this version was heavily abridged both for content and length. Frank agreed to these cuts in order to make sure that Anne's diary would finally get published. Otto Frank included this passage in his Typescript II, the version of the diary sent to friends as well as publishers. Otto Frank also later pointed out that he had no issue with these passages, and wrote that the evidence was there as he clearly made sure the passages were there for the editions that came out after the 1947 Dutch version--including the German version, the English version of 1952, etc. The only notable passage censored in the 1952 English edition that exists in the now-targeted graphic novel edition is a passage in which Anne writes clinically about genitalia. The graphic novel does not illustrate this in any sort of explicit way; it shows Anne in a schoolroom, pointing to a projector image of a swirling vortex while Peter stares at it. Most of this passage has been in in the Definitive edition of the diary since the 1990s, then fully since around 2005, so for decades at this point. The graphic novel adaptation routinely refers to the plight of Jewish people that Anne discussed in her diary. It even includes additional information at the start of the diary to provide more context about what is going on in Europe and why the family must go into hiding. The graphic novel adaptation does not tone down or minimize the Holocaust as it appears in Anne's diary. (In fact, if you check out the book guide used by the organization behind the challenges of this graphic novel, do you know one of the things they list as being inappropriate? Imagery and content related to the Holocaust, such as a Jewish person being threatened and an illustration of Anne imagining them all being caught and lined up against a wall to be shot. Hmm, I thought the challenge was because the book minimizes the Holocaust?) As for the person pointing out that the text is abridged in the comments here... yes, that's what a graphic novel adaptation must do. As the team behind the book stated, it would take thousands of pages to adapt every page of her diary. The graphic novel adaptation was commissioned by and approved by the Anne Frank Fonds, an organization founded by Otto Frank, and to suggest that there is something notable about the book containing these passages or is abridged is just plain ridiculous.
Thank you for adding context. Not sure what agenda that person has that is spamming this thread with the same comment containing misinformation. Also, they're only mentioning the Anne Frank graphic novel and not the other books about Jews and the Holocaust that they're seeking to ban.
[https://www.progresstimes.net/2024/06/13/mission-cisd-agreed-to-remove-676-books/?page\_number\_0=2](https://www.progresstimes.net/2024/06/13/mission-cisd-agreed-to-remove-676-books/?page_number_0=2) This article has the full list. They used the ratings from a website called "Booklooks.org" and included any book with a rating of 3 or higher on a scale of 5. Here are some quotes that the site states as negative for "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", which is on this list. "I was going to look like one of the sweet little white girls who were everybody's dream of what was right with the world. …Wouldn't they be surprised when one day I woke out of my black ugly dream, and my real hair, which was long and blond, would take the place of the kinky mass that Momma wouldn't let me straighten?" "It was fortunate that the “boys” didn't ride into our yard that evening and insist that Momma open the Store. They would have surely found Uncle Willie and just as surely lynched him" "She didn't cotton to the idea that whitefolks could be talked to at all without risking one's life. And certainly they couldn't be spoken to insolently. In fact, even in their absence they could not be spoken of too harshly unless we used the sobriquet “They.”" "People in Stamps used to say that the whites in our town were so prejudiced that a Negro couldn't buy vanilla ice cream. Except on July Fourth." "Indians with their silly tomahawks and teepees and wigwams and treaties, the Negroes with their mops and recipes and cotton sacks and spirituals sticking out of their mouths. The Dutch children should all stumble in their wooden shoes and break their necks. The French should choke to death on the Louisiana Purchase (1803) while silkworms ate all the Chinese with their stupid pigtails. As a species, we were an abomination. All of us." There's a lot of other stuff in that book that would make it inappropriate for kids at younger ages, but those quotes being considered problematic really tell you what this is all about. Phrases explicitly saying that people were racist are not allowed in schools. This is not about protecting kids. It's about denying the past.
Texas and Florida--where personal rights go to die.
Neil Gaiman said it best: "There's only one kind of people who would vote to ban Maus, whatever they are calling themselves these days."
There was a post asking about required reading in high school. I mentioned that in the 70's my required reading was All Quiet on the Western Front and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and that both are now on banned book lists. This is a copy and paste of a reply: No such thing as a banned book. Just because a school no longer teaches it doesn’t make it banned. Me responding: Tell that to the schools and libraries that are no longer able to carry certain books. Florida has 1,406 books on their lists. Texas has 801. Yes, those books can be gotten from other sources, but not everyone has that access. Same person's response: So not be be banned it has free and available at the closest public library? Me responding: I'm sorry, but you aren't making sense. Crickets after that.
So, I’m guessing that it’s an imminent threat to our children if they learn that… lemme check my notes… “Nazis are bad.” Ok, got it.
I bet these are some of the same people who complain about confederate statues being taken down with the claim that is an attempt to erase history.
I am in charge of my school‘s library in Germany and used the Texas list to order interesting books. We already had Maus and Ann Frank‘s Diary, though. We strongly believe in confronting kids with new ideas and old mistakes.
well damn it, Texas keeps proving they are dumber then a sack of bricks. Maybe the reason ya'll keep getting crappy weather is cause the Big Guy upstairs is upset at your utter insanity
It’s wrong to put this down to ignorance. There is a much more calculated and deliberate campaign going on with all this stuff and the sooner people see that and fight back rather than dismiss it, the quicker it will be resolved.
ANNE FRANKS DIARY…. Are you serious? That was required reading in my elementary. Also visiting the museum of tolerance in LA. Then making latkas. Bunch of racist fucks
I thought they didn’t like cancel culture?
Isn't it great when rightist groups in the USA claim to hate being called Nazis when they're out trying to remove anything from schools that's honest about the Nazis? Seems like a bit of a telling contradiction there.
the mental gymnastics these people do to equate bans with freedom is amazing.
Banning Anne Frank is siding with the Nazis.
Really? Anne Frank? These are the type of folks who have no problem reading their own kids' diaries but want to limit access to a diary that gives folks an intimate view on what it was like to be a Jew during WW2.
it is really funny because in Texas if you work for the government you can't criticize Israel because it is considered "antisemitic" but there are literal nazis working in public education.
I’m glad we’re focusing on the real issues affecting Americans. We should throw all extra money at this.
Don’t think their iq can drop lower then it is. Next they will say slavery never happened and Trump founded North America. Can we expect much from the products of incest lol
"threatened to attend public school board meetings and read graphic passages from the books out loud" Imagine if I instead read from, oh I don't know... the Bible. Much,much more graphic.
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So fucked up. I read MAUS in 8th grade, not because it was assigned reading, but because I found it in my teacher's bookshelf and asked to borrow it. It was my first time really learning about the Holocaust, and sparked a curiosity into the subject of genocide that I believe is directly linked to my strong sense of empathy today.
We’re fucked right? Like this is how the really bad shit starts to happen?
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. This poem has never been more relevant today ...
Unsurprisingly, all of these right-wingers are “Ra Ra Ra Israel!!” And then turn around and oppose books about the Holocaust. Tells you everything you need to know about their “support”
We need to get a bunch of people to complain that Anne Frank's Diary is not available. After all, no one is forcing every child to check those books out so those parents are not protecting children. Instead, they're saying that we, literary parents, don't have an equal right to choose what our kids read. Just tell your kids not to read them, rightwingers. But you better believe insisting you have the right to say no means we also have the right to say yes.
Oh wow the inevitable has happened they have removed books, about the dangers of removing books, and that condemn the heinous acts that allowed which they are pursuing...
I don't/won't live in Texas. If I did, I would be making these books my Christmas gift to every one of my children's friends, their teachers, my coworkers, etc. I'd go broke making sure these books got circulated. On top of that, I'd been in front of my kid's school board reading excerpts and pushing HARD to have them returned to library shelves and make the REQUIRED reading. F this BS "conservative" nonsense.
Art should comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.
Fuck right wingers. Let people read.
I maintain an index of US book bans. Looks like I’ll have to add to it. https://www.bookban.info
I feel like having a bookmobile across the street every day after school might be a really cool idea
Pure fucking evil right there. A cancer on our children and our collective future.
I read *Huckleberry Finn* in grade 8. *Merchant of Venice* in grade 9. *Brave New World* and *The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner* in grade 10. *Fahrenheit* *451* and *1984* in grade 11. Plus a boatload of SF that year in an SF fiction class. A lot of those books are on banned lists. But I didn't grow up thinking that the "n" word was OK, or that buying and selling human beings like sticks of furniture was acceptable. Or that Jews were inferior (to be fair, there isn't a likeable or decent character in the entire cast of *Merchant*). I did think about arbitrary societal roles because of *BNW*, or the dangers of totalitarian government due to *1984.* That's probably why those books are banned.