Land of the Free, Home of the Book Burners...

Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2021 Find more shareable statistics on the Free Downloads webpage.

The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 729 challenges to library, school, and university materials and services in 2021. Of the 1597 books that were targeted, here are the most challenged, along with the reasons cited for censoring the books:

1. Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe

Reasons: Banned, challenged, and restricted for LGBTQIA+ content, and because it was considered to have sexually explicit images

2. Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison

Reasons: Banned and challenged for LGBTQIA+ content and because it was considered to be sexually explicit

3. All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson

Reasons: Banned and challenged for LGBTQIA+ content, profanity, and because it was considered to be sexually explicit

4. Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez

Reasons: Banned, challenged, and restricted for depictions of abuse and because it was considered to be sexually explicit

5. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Reasons: Banned and challenged for profanity, violence, and because it was thought to promote an anti-police message and indoctrination of a social agenda

6. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

Reasons: Banned and challenged for profanity, sexual references and use of a derogatory term

7. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews

Reasons: Banned and challenged because it was considered sexually explicit and degrading to women

8. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Reasons: Banned and challenged because it depicts child sexual abuse and was considered sexually explicit

9. This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson

Reasons: Banned, challenged, relocated, and restricted for providing sexual education and LGBTQIA+ content.

10. Beyond Magenta by Susan Kuklin

Reasons: Banned and challenged for LGBTQIA+ content and because it was considered to be sexually explicit.

Think the above is far-fetched? Think again (from Insider):

Amid the GOP’s nationwide push against teaching about race and sexuality in schools, two members of the Spotsylvania County School Board in Virginia advocated for burning certain books, according to the Fredericksburg-based Free Lance-Star newspaper. This came as the school board directed staff to begin removing “sexually explicit” books from library shelves, after voting 6-0 in favor of the removal, the Lance-Star reported. The board has plans to review how certain books or materials are defined as “objectionable,” the paper said, which opens the door for other content to be removed.

Courtland representative Rabih Abuismail and Livingston representative Kirk Twigg both championed burning the books that have been removed. “I think we should throw those books in a fire,” Abuismail said. Meanwhile, Twigg said he wanted to “see the books before we burn them so we can identify within our community that we are eradicating this bad stuff.”

Exactly Why and How Republicans Hate Ilhan Omar

It has literally nothing to do with antisemitism

THE HOUSE OF Representatives voted 218-211 on Thursday to kick Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., off the Foreign Affairs Committee. Why?

According to the resolution, it was because “Omar, by her own words, has disqualified herself from serving on the Committee on Foreign Affairs.” It listed four statements by Omar and made pains to note that they had all been condemned by some of Omar’s fellow House Democrats for being antisemitic or anti-American (whatever those words mean in present-day politics).

Omar spoke out for herself yesterday. “This debate today is about who gets to be an American. What opinions do we have to have to be counted as Americans?” she said. “I am Muslim. I am an immigrant. … Is anyone surprised that I am being targeted?”

For her part, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said, “One of the things that we should talk about here is … the targeting and racism against Muslim-Americans. … This is about targeting women of color in the United States of America.”

The GOP’s stated rationale is obvious nonsense. On the one hand, it’s not fair to say antisemitism is the last thing the Republican Party cares about, because the last things the Republican Party cares about are racism and wealth inequality. On the other hand, antisemitism is perfectly fine with the GOP, as illustrated by (among endless other examples) its reaction to former President Donald Trump hosting a chummy dinner with Nick Fuentes and Kanye West.

In fact, you can make an argument that antisemitism or something with the same structure is fundamental to all conservative politics. They need it to hide what they’re really about.

Conservatives can’t acknowledge the obvious reality that modern societies are run by huge corporations and the ultrawealthy, because they work for huge corporations and the ultrawealthy. Instead, they’re forced to come up with nonsensical explanations for how the world works, which always involves an imagined secret elite. The Jews are a perennial favorite, but it can also be unions, or the gays, or the international communist conspiracy, or the space lizards wearing ultrarealistic human masks. In the confused minds of the right-wing base, it can be all of these at once, with Jewish Unionized Gay Communist Lizards controlling all unseen.

While it sounds a little presumptuous to say so, the explanations offered by Omar and Ocasio-Cortez for the GOP’s actions are also not the whole story.

It’s certainly true that in the past, conservatives would not have been able to abide a nonwhite, nonmale, non-Christian in any position of power. But today, the U.S. right would be absolutely ecstatic to have someone with Omar’s background on the Foreign Affairs Committee, as long as she were an enthusiastic proponent of bombing everything. This is actually a small sign of societal progress, which we should celebrate.

Omar was closest to the mark when she said this is about a particular question: “What opinions do we get to have?” It is largely forbidden in elite U.S. circles to point out the existence and motivation of the Israel lobby — because you can get called antisemitic for noting that Boeing deeply enjoys selling joint direct attack munitions to Israel or for having the temerity to agree with an Israeli prime minister. You cannot suggest, as Omar did, that the U.S. should be judged by the same moral standards as others, because our enemies kill in an irrational frenzy, while we have reasons. (This squelching of open debate is naturally led by those who proclaim their vociferous opposition to cancel culture and political correctness.)

It’s unquestionably true that the rage on the U.S. right toward Omar is greatly accentuated by her failure to be a white, Christian, native-born man. The pullulating hate that Trump demonstrated in 2019 toward her — and Ocasio-Cortez; Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass.; and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich. — is still bracing to read. It can only be explained as the loathing elites always have for their inferiors when they step out of their rightful place.

So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly......

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 14, 2019

Trump’s tweets were also hilariously stupid, given that, of the four members of Congress, only Omar was born outside of the U.S. Pressley is from the far-away foreign land of Cincinnati.

So the right has an especially terrifying brand of venom reserved for someone like Omar. White Christian men certainly have far more wiggle room to tell the truth, but conservatives are perfectly capable of revving up their giant hate machine against anyone who wants to say things that make them uncomfortable.

The upshot here is that all of us — everyone who thinks American politics doesn’t have to be dominated by childish lies — are in this together. Omar is a truly courageous person who must be defended by everyone who values honesty. Understand, though, that this is both because it’s the right thing to do and because, if you have a similar affection for reality, you’re also on their list, and you better believe they’ll eventually get to you too.

Source: @TI

Labour's Sturmer: witchhunter supremo

Email from the Witchunters of the London Labour Party

From: London General

Date: 24 January 2023 at 20:09:05 GMT

To: stephenkapos@gmail.com

Subject: FAO: Stephen Kapos

Dear Stephen,

It has been brought to the attention of the Labour Party that you have been advertised as a speaker for an event entitled ‘Zionism During the Holocaust - Reclaiming the Memory of All Those Who Died’, hosted by Socialist Labour Network on Friday 27th January 2023.

In line with Labour Party rules, Socialist Labour Network is a group which the NEC of the party has determined is incompatible with Labour Party values. Any support for the organisation would likely be deemed in breach of Party rules and may lead to expulsion.

Yours sincerely,

London Labour

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Stephen Kapos’s Reply to Labour’s Witchhunters

To: London General

Labour Party 26th January

2023

Dear London General,

Thank you for your emailed letter of the 24th of January giving me advance warning that I am likely to be expelled from the Party if I were to speak from the panel as a Holocaust survivor at the SLN (Socialist Labour Network) Webinar on the 27th January — on Holocaust Memorial Day.

The Holocaust is the most important single example of genocide, which at its worst descended into an industrial process of mass murder of millions.

As a child survivor and one of the fewer and fewer still living direct witnesses to the Holocaust I feel a compelling duty to bear witness and speak out about it at any platform that would invite me and to any audience ready to listen.

I am an activist for Palestinian human rights and an active member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in its Camden Branch. The defence of Palestinians living under a brutal occupation is very important to me, particularly as a Holocaust survivor. Palestinians live under a system of apartheid as recognised by Amnesty International and other major human-rights organisations. Those are my political beliefs which I claim are protected characteristics under the Equalities Act 2010.

I am not a member of SLN nor have I been following its activities, but via the book to be discussed on the 27th I have a general understanding of SLN’s views on present-day Zionism (as a political movement ) and on some of the actions of the Zionist movement during the Holocaust and WWII. I am in sympathy with some of those views on the grounds of my political beliefs mentioned above. I have personal experience of the Kastner project in Hungary which was driven by Zionist ideology.

My father was a victim of Kastner’s scheme and ended up stranded in the Belsen and Theresienstadt concentration camps. I was myself briefly interned in a Kastner-run detention camp in Budapest.

You make mention of Labour Party values.

I learnt about Labour values during my party activism in the period when Frank Dobson was our MP and I worked in a warm and friendly atmosphere prominently on various election campaigns.

Those values were very different to that of the present leadership whose values permit intimidation, banning of discussion of some of the most vital political topics, disregard for the Party’s own rules, and for natural justice, the drastic reduction of inner party democracy, extreme factionalism, lack of support for striking workers.

I do not share these values.

Please accept my immediate resignation from the Labour Party effective from tomorrow, i.e. from the 27th of January 2023. Your attempt to effectively bar me from speaking about the Holocaust on Holocaust Memorial Day was the last straw for me.

In the short term the Tories are self-destructing which may well bring the Labour Party into government soon.

In the long term this period of the Party’s history will be remembered with shame: this was when MacCarthyism was revived and imported into the Labour Party — and into the political life of the UK itself.

Yours sincerely,

Stephen Kapos

Copies to : Sir Keir Starmer MP,

The Secretary, Holborn & St. Pancras CLP.

(pls forward)

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With thanks toTony Greenstein.