I just want to remind everyone why censorship is bad

There's been a lot of talk about how the liberals have dabbled in censorship these days.
Please don't misunderstand what I'm about to say. Censorship is always bad, especially from anything left of center.
But I think people have forgotten the primary reason why it's so bad:

Because if liberals open the door to censorship, the right-wing will take up the cause with gusto.

This is the way it has always been historically.
And unfortunately, I think it's starting up again.

On Jan. 10, the school board in McMinn County, Tennessee, voted 10-0 to remove Maus from the eighth-grade history curriculum. The book, a graphic novel by Jewish American cartoonist Art Spiegelman depicting the grim realities of the Holocaust, expressed the absolute inhumanity of what happened in clear terms that children could understand.

As the child of Polish-born parents who lost much of his own family to the Holocaust, Spiegelman understood the gravity of the subject matter and committed himself to one clear idea: “Never again.”

To its great shame, the school board argued the book contained objectionable language and was unsuitable for use in the classroom. Despite pleas from history teachers concerning the importance and effectiveness of the work, the conservative school board chose to diminish its own school community’s understanding of the horrors of Nazism. Ironically, it did so by taking a tactic directly employed by Nazis themselves.

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If it was just one book in one district, I wouldn't bother to write this.
Unfortunately, it's much worse than that.

Leander Independent School District (ISD) is a school district based in Leander, Texas. It covers a wide stretch of geography, including Leander, Cedar Park, Georgetown, Jonestown, Round Rock in Williamson County and northwest Austin in Travis County. At issue are the district's book club reading list, where students are allowed to pick one book from a list of 15 titles chosen for their grade level around a theme each semester. All middle and high school English classes are part of the book club and the idea is to let each kid pick what interests them. However, parents have objected to the choices that their children are being given and the school district have already agreed to ban The Lottery, Kiss Number 8, Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me, The Handmaid’s Tale, Y: The Last Man, and V for Vendetta, have "paused" the choices of a few others (like My Friend Dahmer) and are considering banning more.

This is just the start. Remember how conservatives are in a frenzy about critical race theory, even though they don't usually understand what it is? Well, not understanding something actually helps the cause of censorship.

Kentucky House Bills 14 and 18, which hope to outright ban certain topics and books from schools under the guise of avoiding “division between, or resentment of, a race, sex, religion, creed, nonviolent political affiliation, social class or class of people” are causing major damage to free speech. In the schools themselves, local decrees, made in fear of these proposed bills, are just as damaging, if not more so, due to their vague nature. My school’s English department has been instructed by multiple administrators in the last year not to teach anything “racial,” and our superintendent has requested anything “sexual” or “racial” be discussed with administrators before being presented to students.

The people behind this censorship are firmly rooted in the current zeitgeist, and their views are shared by administrators across the country: They believe the presence of race, gender and LGBTQ identities to be potentially problematic or disruptive. That silences teachers who want to be team players or just keep their jobs.

Speaking of censorship, you can't discuss this topic and not mention anti-BDS laws - a favorite of the right-wing. 33 states that have passed legislation punishing boycotts of Israel by states in the last 7 years.
Texas' anti-BDS law lost in court this week. Ant-BDS laws have lost four of five lawsuits on freedom of speech grounds. It's only win was in Maryland.

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snoopydawg's picture

because it has racial undertones. I don’t remember the details but saw in passing last week. How long then until they ban Gone with the Wind for the same reason? Huckleberry Finn was banned how long ago? Brer Rabbit? Song of the South? It’s good to see that courts are striking down anti BDS because that was obviously wrong from the beginning, but was done on Israel’s behest.

If you missed Greenwald's essay on censorship Joe posted it again in the EBs. I think it’s one of his best.

WTF? Banning V for Vendetta? Gawd's nightgown why is it being banned? Maybe because it hits a little too close to what’s happening now? And 1984 comes with a warning too. This country has gone bat shit crazy! I’m just glad that I’m as old as I am, but now afraid that I ain’t old enough to escape the dystopian nightmare coming for us.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Tomorrow is another day!

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

usefewersyllables's picture

@on the cusp

is to deepfake a blue shirt on him.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDuHXTG3uyY width:300 height:200]

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Twice bitten, permanently shy.

usefewersyllables's picture

used to regularly have people come into the town library, pull books off the shelf, and make a great show of destroying them. Most of the titles mentioned above were already verboten by the 60s. Everything old is new again, and this is just another symptom of the final dissolution of everything that made America great, all in the name of making America "great" "again"- or perhaps making sure that no stone is left atop another, and the fields are well salted.

Part of me wants to rhetorically ask "Who will be the first lynching?", right up until I realize that cops have that covered, and have been doing it all along here with greater and greater regularity. We don't even need the Klan anymore- now we have the Oligarchy's private army to do the dirty work, and there is no right to appeal once you're dead.

Fee Waybill was right. What do you want from life? Well, you can't have that...

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-BcETGjRTw width:300 height:200]

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Twice bitten, permanently shy.

@usefewersyllables
lewis.PNG

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earthling1's picture

@usefewersyllables
long before dope was kool.
s/

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Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

Bisbonian's picture

No matter what "Liberals", neo- or real, want to do.

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"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X

usefewersyllables's picture

@Bisbonian

the members of each team want to ban anything that they believe that the members of the other team would want to see/advocate/learn from/educate with. Books, music, livestreams, TV channels, yadda yadda.

Your team bad, my team good, ook ook (flings feces).

"An eye for an eye" leaves the whole world increasingly stupid. It is tragic as hell. Time to pour some more Brawndo.

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Twice bitten, permanently shy.

usefewersyllables's picture

of that team spirit in operation.

Long story short- the voters voted in a bloc of 4 new members of the local school board in November, who then got together in private and decided to hijack the process of managing the schools and demand the immediate resignation of the superintendent. Which is definitely bad juju, as the school board isn't just made up of people from their team: there are people from the other team who are also supposed to have a say, and furthermore the process is supposed to be conducted on-the-record in public school board meetings, not in private little scrums. Don't even have to tell you which team they are (presumably) on.

Whatever. There will be lawsuits, and the shit will simply pile up deeper. This goes on every day, every where, and the people simply don't care as long as they think their team is the one that is winning (assuming that the story gets covered at all). The book bannings to come will simply be icing on the cake.

Spoiler alert: nobody's team is winning. But we're no longer a nation of laws, so that should come as no surprise. The rot is as deep as the roots.

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Twice bitten, permanently shy.

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