Rising fascism in the US

Thinking of the book suppression happening in Florida and elsewhere (in both schools and libraries) I'm wondering how long it will take before we see challenges to Fahrenheit 451, the Handmaid's Tale, Animal Farm and 1984 on the claim that a student or citizen was made to feel anxious and uncomfortable by those books' content.

Tennessee school board bans Pulitzer prize-winning Holocaust novel, Maus< - 77 years ago, the Germans began the evacuation of Auschwitz and its subcamps. So there's no need to read about it, especially, if there are eight curse words and an illustration of a naked cartoon mouse.

And how about The Bible? That is a book that should make EVERYONE anxious and uncomfortable.

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Tennessee school board bans Pulitzer prize-winning Holocaust novel, Maus< - 77 years ago, the Germans began the evacuation of Auschwitz and its subcamps. So there's no need to read about it, especially, if there are eight curse words and an illustration of a naked cartoon mouse.

What's happening to American culture and politics seems likely to become the most tragic story of my lifetime.

What's happening to American culture and politics seems likely to become the most tragic story of my lifetime.

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What's happening to American culture and politics seems likely to become the most tragic story of my lifetime.

And we're dragging the rest of the world along with us, for good measure.

Agreed. Something horrible has happened and it’s becoming more powerful.

We also know that mythic, delusional notions of American exceptionalism notwithstanding, American democracy can collapse.

And right-wing protests were therefore justified by the threat situation.

In 1929, one could not have imagined in Germany what would happen in 1933.
Then, at that time, people were agitating against the parties in the Weimar Republic, because they were of the opinion that the German people did not need these parties, but only one true representation of the people - in the form of a leader, in the form of a single strong party.
And right-wing protests were therefore justified by the threat situation.
And fear of immigration and foreigners was constantly stirred up.

The Nazis in the Weimar Republic grew up on the streets.
And verbal agitation turned into violent assaults.
All these elements of the Weimar Republic can certainly be seen again today.
But that does not mean that we are repeating Weimar. Rather, it means that we must prevent Weimar in the consciousness of Weimar.

Just saying.

"When the terrorist attack comes remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it."
--Timothy Snyder

The right's book-banning campaign reaches a new level

t was last fall when local Republicans' efforts to ban books started to look like a national trend. A county in Virginia removed LGBTQIA fiction from school libraries. Around the same time, a Kansas school district started pulling several well-known novels from school libraries, including "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood and a Pulitzer Prize winning play from August Wilson.

It was against this backdrop that a Republican state legislator in Texas put together a list of 850 books he believed might make students feel uncomfortable — and then asked schools which of the titles are available to students.

Nora Pelizzari, a spokesperson for the National Coalition Against Censorship, soon after told The Washington Post, "What has taken us aback this year is the intensity with which school libraries are under attack.... [T]his feels like a more overarching attempt to purge schools of materials that people disagree with. It feels different than what we've seen in recent years."

The campaign clearly isn't fading. NBC News reported overnight:

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A Tennessee school board voted to remove "Maus," a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, from the district's curriculum after officials objected to eight instances of profanity and an image of a nude woman. The McMinn County Board of Education's Jan. 10 vote to remove the novel, published by cartoonist Art Spiegelman about his Jewish parents' experiences in Nazi concentration camps, was 10-0, according to meeting minutes.

The fact that the unanimous vote to remove the celebrated work about the Holocaust came shortly before Holocaust Remembrance Day made matters just a bit worse.

It'd be easier to overlook stories like these if they were far and few between, but that's simply not the case. Axios reported last week, "School districts from Pennsylvania to Wyoming are bowing to pressure from some conservative groups to review — then purge from public school libraries — books about LGBTQ issues and people of color. "

The article quoted Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom, saying, "I've worked for this office for 20 years, and we've never had this volume of challenges come in such a short time."

NBC News reported a week earlier that dozens of Black authors are finding their works "are being pulled from school libraries under the pretext that they're teaching critical race theory.... Most of the books that are targeted for bans don't teach critical race theory but are written by and about people of color."

As we've discussed, these fights are not altogether new. Conservative activists have launched all kinds of related efforts for generations, targeting books they deemed morally and socially unworthy for one reason or another.

But there's evidence that the renewed book-banning campaign is intensifying, even as many on the right complain about "cancel culture.

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We also know that mythic, delusional notions of American exceptionalism notwithstanding, American democracy can collapse.

I get the feeling that, whatever the combination of factors which has led to the global challenges to democracy we see today, in the USA our vaunted institutions have been unable to respond, primarily prevented by a system of government designed in a different era, for a different population – and we're too romantically wed to the "shining city on the hill" rhetoric to see just how rotten we've become.