The American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom has been doing Banned Books Week every year since the 1980s.
Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. Typically held during the last week of September, it spotlights current and historical attempts to censor books in libraries and schools. It brings together the entire book community — librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers of all types — in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular.
It publishes lists of banned or challenged books, encourages people to read them, and encourages libraries to prominently display collections of these books near the entrance, with an ironic "warning" that some people consider them highly dangerous. Because to hell with censorship, right?
So these guys are definitely going to come out with a strong statement supporting Dr. Seuss and condemning the evil jackasses who want to cancel him for daring to celebrate diversity -- right? Right, guys?
Here's the stunning and brave anti-censorship statement the ALA OIF saw fit to release.
How libraries approach the Dr. Seuss books is going to differ, said OIF Director Deborah Caldwell-Stone, based on individual guidelines for collection curation and community demand for certain books. https://t.co/rJdEQJGmr2
— ALA OIF (@OIF) March 3, 2021
Wow, Deborah Caldwell-Stone, way to let these shitbirds have it with both barrels. Nice to have someone standing up for the freedom to read.
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In case you haven't figured it out yet, no content-neutral "anti-censorship" movement actually exists. "Supporting banned books" means supporting the sort of books that usually get banned. Any guesses as to what sort those are? Well, the ALA has prepared a helpful infographic.
See "racism" there in the word cloud showing the reasons for book challenges? You might need a magnifying glass. Oh, and be sure to zoom in and read the yellow light-bulb thing in the lower right corner.
The "censorship" these people oppose is, overwhelmingly, opposition to the sexual revolution and to the glorification of sexual neuroses. That's it. That's what they stand for. They want children to be exposed (against their parents' wishes; see the third green square) to LPGABBQ propaganda -- not, Moloch forbid, to the obscenity of a Qing-era Chinaman wearing traditional clothing and eating rice with chopsticks! When they say they support books "some consider unorthodox or unpopular," they mean unpopular among benighted proles. (What, you didn't think "unorthodox" meant heretical, did you? They obviously don't support crimespeak!) They speak power to truth, not the reverse. They deserve no one's support.
4 comments:
It is interesting that the leftist SJWs seem usually to attack their own of an older generation; rather than genuinely pro-Christians and traditionalists. 'Seuss' was (as well as being a genius) a pretty extreme liberal/ leftist of his era, going right back to the 1930s. James Watson likewise, and others who have been singled-out.
There appears to be something arbitrary about who in particular gets caught up in a positive-feedback media-hate cycle; and some of it is the selfish desire to clear away past reputations to make way for the current generation ("if people don't buy Seuss, maybe they will buy me?").
But it is most likely a feature of the permanent revolution version of New Leftism, whereby the incremental move towards increasing destruction and evil is fuelled by destroying those 'moderates' who are slightly 'behind the times' (i.e. slightly less Sorathic) than the current average leftist. If you continually attack the moderates, then politics becomes polarized with no moderates - and also radicals need continually to become more radical if they are to be safe (safe for now, that is) - it makes demonic sense.
"Permanent revolution" is exactly right. James Watson and Dr. Seuss got Trotskied.
Selfishness likely plays a role as well. It can't be a coincidence that the charge against Seuss is being led not by concerned parents-of-color but by three mediocre children's writers who are apparently hoping that "doing better" will translate into buying more of their books.
I know you tend to dismiss Freud, but there's something to his "narcissism of small differences" idea (from Civilization and its discontents). Leftist elites are competing for status with other leftist elites, not with the Neanderthals.
"speaking power to truth"
That's exactly what it is.
A reversal that wouldn't be out of place in one of Chesterton's essay
Not my own turn of phrase. I read it somewhere a long time ago. Steve Sailer, maybe.
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