“The weaponization of libraries … is a bludgeon that’s scaring people everywhere,” said American Library Association President Emily Drabinski.
By Jennifer Bendery, Apr 7, 2024, 05:30 AM EDT
Emily Drabinski, the president of the American Library Association.
It’s that time of year again: National Library Week! A time to celebrate the endless adventures that children can experience in books that are free and accessible to all, and the safe spaces that libraries provide for learning and creating a sense of community.Or, it’s a time to reflect on how we got to a place where librarians are living in constant fear.
They have become the targets of Republican politicians and far-right groups like Moms for Liberty that are hellbent on banning books about LGBTQ+ people, people of color and racism. Some librarians are quitting their jobs because of constant harassment; others are getting fired for refusing to clear shelves of books that conservatives don’t like.
More recently, and perhaps most alarmingly, the GOP’s censorship campaign has shifted from book bans to legislation threatening librarians with jail time.
Embracing the politics of sadism, the GOP base hits a new low.
By Tom Nichols, November 1, 2022
Nancy Pelosi with her husband, Paul Pelosi, in 2019 in Washington, DC. (Zach Gibson / Getty)
A Spreading Cancer
It might seem late in the game to point to any one event as a final or conclusive moment in the decline of the Republican Party. And I have no doubt that if the GOP returns to power this winter, its worst members will find new ways to appall decent people while gamboling about in jester’s bells for its base. (As my Atlantic colleague Adam Serwer has put it so well, “The cruelty is the point.”)
But the reaction among Republican elected officials and their conservative-media life-support system to the beating of Paul Pelosi—by a man named David DePape, who was charged with attempting to kidnap Speaker Nancy Pelosi and admitted to planning to torture her—feels different.
I am not alone; my friend Mona Charen, among others, also senses that this event marks a new level of depravity in the GOP. I have struggled for a few days to decide why, exactly, this moment seems like an inflection point.
In terms of actual damage, January 6 was far worse than one violent crime in San Francisco. Republican leaders—and here I will leave aside Donald Trump, who is in a class of hideousness all by himself—have said far worse things over the past five years. But a parade of Republicans somehow think that an unhinged, hammer-wielding intruder putting an old man in the ICU is funny.
Attempts to remove books from school libraries have increased, spurred by activism from conservative parent groups and resistance to teaching socially progressive ideas in schools.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Attempts to ban books in schools are as old as books themselves. But there’s new momentum on book bans now that’s driven by conservative activists targeting local school boards. Nomin Ujiyediin of member station KCUR in Kansas City reports.
NOMIN UJIYEDIIN, BYLINE: Books about LGBTQ issues and race have spurred more conservative activism against school boards in recent months. It’s often the same books that are challenged, like “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison and “Crank” by Ellen Hopkins, because they deal directly with issues of sex, racism, violence and drugs. One group leading challenges calls itself No Left Turn in Education. It publishes lists of books and guides to help activists complain to their school boards. Andy Wells heads the Missouri chapter. He considers books like “The Bluest Eye” to be pornographic and argues they shouldn’t be in schools.
In an age of surging authoritarianism, our world is increasingly like science fiction – and not in a good way
By Tom Engelhardt, Published November 26, 2021 4:00AM (EST)
Donald Trump | Aliens (Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images)
Who knew that Martians, inside monstrous tripodal machines taller than many buildings, actually ululated, that they made eerily haunting “ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla” sounds? Well, let me tell you that they do — or rather did when they were devastating London.
I know that because I recently reread H.G. Wells’s 1898 novel “War of the Worlds,” while revisiting an early moment in my own life. Admittedly, I wasn’t in London when those Martian machines, hooting away, stalked boldly into that city, hungry in the most literal fashion imaginable for human blood. No surprise there, since that was almost a century and a quarter ago. Still, at 77, thanks to that book, I was at least able to revisit a moment that had been mine long enough ago to seem almost like fiction.
Editor’s Note: This is about authoritarianism, Trump, and attacks on American Democracy.
