Book Banning Happens on Both Sides

Censorship is Censorship whether from the right or the left

*I was planning to write this as a lengthy Substack “Note” but it simply became too long so I figured I’d just post it here. I’m going to do something unusual and turn comments “off” because I don’t want to spend five days doing lengthy, boring thread arguments with people. This is my view. You’re entitled to your view. We’re all complex human beings with ideas and values. I have mine. You have yours. We can all agree and disagree and that doesn’t make me or you “bad” or “good.” It makes us citizens of a free Democracy.

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Photo by Sergiu Vălenaș on Unsplash

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Book Banning. A reality-check for people on the political-left. Let’s get our contemporary history correct here. I keep seeing a lot of charts showing conservative book banning. This is accurate. And it’s bad. I am not a Republican and I do NOT support book banning on the political-right. And the book banning from the right has become out of control. I denounce it. Hard stop.

However.

The idea seems to be that those “fascist Republicans” suddenly, out of nowhere, for no reason, started banning books. They’re just awful, terrible no-good people.

No.

The long arc of publishing history in general shows that book banning has tended to come from the conservative end; this is true. Look at Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (1955) for instance. The 1990s and the first decade of the 00s, as Sherman Alexie can attest to, had their share of conservative banning.