Ray Bradbury’s dystopian classic Fahrenheit 451 envisions a world where books are routinely burned (the title refers to the ignition temperature of paper). But, as Bradbury himself said, “There is more than one way to burn a book”. Why bother burning books, when you can just ban them, strike them off reading lists, or simply declare them ideologically off-limits?
Back in the 80s and the heyday of the Religious Right, the Right-On Left regularly sneered at schools banning books like Tarzan of the Apes and even Where’s Wally? But the left are the Establishment now — and they’re banning books with a zealousness that would make Jerry Falwell blink.
To Kill a Mockingbird is the classic novel of tolerance and anti-racism. It’s as impossible to read it as “racist” as it is to read Mein Kampf and conclude, “That Hitler fellow really liked Jews”.
But never underestimate the zealous stupidity of the leftist inquisitors.
A top school has scrapped teaching classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird because of its “dated” approach to race.
James Gillespie’s High School in Edinburgh fear the seminal book by Harper Lee promotes a “white saviour” narrative.
Allan Crosbie, the curriculum leader for English at the school, is also banning Of Mice and Men as part of a bid to “decolonise” the syllabus.
He slammed the use of the N-word in To Kill a Mockingbird and believes third-year students shouldn’t be taught using the classics.
The Sun
“The N-word.” That such childish nonsense is de rigeur today shows just how intellectually and morally stunted are the times we live in. I’d like to see these mental midgets deal with (black) scholar Randall Kennedy’s magnificent etymological history, Nigger — not least his conclusion that it’s perfectly OK for white people to use the word, in context.
But the very utterance of “nigger” — in an age where “fuck”, even “cunt” are little more than punctuation marks — is so blasphemous to our ruling elite, that its prevalence in another classic, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, sees the book even more widely banned than To Kill a Mockingbird. Anyone who reads the following exchange and concludes that it’s promoting “racism” lacks not just a sense of humour but basic mental acuity:
“Good gracious! anybody hurt?”
“No’m. Killed a nigger.”
“Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt.”
The satire is as plain (and as searing) as in Richard Prior’s Blazing Saddles script: Horses! We can’t afford to lose any horses, you dummy! Send over a couple of niggers.
Just to prove that you can’t satirise the stupidity of book banners, Fahrenheit 451 itself is another oft-banned book. Even children’s books like The Giving Tree have been banned (for supposed “sexism”).
Now another modern classic is headed for the banned list — a classic which deals with the horrors perpetrated by another group of committed book-burners.
A Tennessee school district has voted to ban a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust due to “inappropriate language” and an illustration of a nude woman, according to minutes from a board meeting.
In fact, it’s for much more than that:
“It shows people hanging, it shows them killing kids, why does the educational system promote this kind of stuff? It is not wise or healthy,” School Board member Tony Allman said about the book, which was part of the district’s eighth-grade English language arts curriculum.
ABC Australia
Yes: a Holocaust narrative depicts children being killed. Because, you know, that’s what happened. Maus is almost entirely based on the story of Spiegelman’s parents, as well as how the shadow of the Holocaust hangs over succeeding generations.
The fact that Maus is a comic book (“graphic novel” is just a fancy term for nerds who want to put on a bit of swank) populated by cartoon animals (Jewish mice, German cats, Polish pigs and American dogs) shouldn’t mislead anyone, any more than Animal Farm. Maus is an often-brutal read, one of the best accounts of the Holocaust I’ve ever read.
Its confronting nature is exactly why it should be read.
