Bill Berkowitz for BuzzFlash: Modern Day GOP Book Burners Are Flexing Their Muscles by Issuing Gag Orders
November 15, 2021
By Bill Berkowitz
Two months before Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, he signed an executive order to set up “the 1776 Commission,” aimed at “encourag[ing] our educators to teach our children about the miracle of American history and honor our founding.” Despite a lack of the commission’s understanding of history, a movement was launched. These days, Republican Party officials across the country are fanning the flames of culture wars, advocating the censuring of books and in some cases, in echoes of Nazi Germany, calling for books to be burned
In a fall 2020 speech at the National Archives Museum, Trump “painted a dramatic and dark portrait of an effort by liberals to ‘indoctrinate’ America’s children and repress American values, culture and faith,” The Hill’s Morgan Chalfant and Brett Samuels reported.
On January 18, two days before he was to leave the White House, the hastily conceived 1776 Commission issued its report. A White House statement characterized as a “rebuttal of reckless ‘re-education’ attempts that seek to reframe American history around the idea that the United States is not an exceptional country but an evil one.”
In a New York Times op-Ed, the historian Michael Kazin wrote: “It is telling that not a single member of the 1776 Commission was a professional historian of the nation whose essence they lauded and which they vowed to make the core of a ‘patriotic’ education.”
After taking office, President Joe Biden wisely cancelled the commission.
This brings us to the current state of affairs: State and local Republican Party officials are stoking book-banning efforts across the country. In their minds, they have found an issue that resonates with their base voters, and has drawn some independent voters to their cause.
As Literary Hub’s Walker Caplan recently wrote “… many school districts are battling over what materials can be kept in libraries and taught in classrooms. The battle is making its way to the courts: … a [new] PEN America report found, between January and September, 54 separate bills across 24 state legislatures that would restrict teaching and training in K-12 schools, higher education, and state agencies. Special targets of these bills — and of many more parents and school boards, before formal legislation—are materials addressing the history of slavery and racism, as well as materials about LGBTQ+ issues, particularly books featuring transgender people.”
Words and messaging matter and this is where the Right has long held mastery in the US. The recent gubernatorial race in Virginia provides a powerful example where education became a culture wars hot button issue that contributed to a Republican win. A November 4-8 national Monmouth Poll underscores the power of messaging in shaping public opinion. In this poll, half of the individuals sampled were asked about teaching “the history of racism in public schools” and found 75% approval, including 54% of Republicans. When asked about the teaching of “critical race theory,” there was only 43% overall support and 16% Republican support.
While some have called this modern-day book burning, “Those trying to get the books banned have railed against this framing—but now, in Virginia, that characterization has become surprisingly literal, as school board members call for actual burning of ‘evil-related’ books.”
A Republican Party official in Pennsylvania recently called for transgressive books to be removed from public schools and burned. Pennsylvania school board member, Rabih Abuismail, urged people to “throw those books in a fire,” referring to texts that his school board had just unanimously banned.
As BuzzFlash’s Mark Karlin recently wrote: “No Republican governor exemplifies the perilous move toward book banning and burning than Texas Governor Greg Abbott. This week he announced that he was ordering a criminal probe into pornography in schools, after issuing two letters railing against such alleged books. It appears to be the latest cultural wars foray, financed by far-right Republican funders, into energizing the racial fragility of the white GOP base.”
While references to fascism can be overplayed and ahistorical, advocates of book burning are emulating events that led to the rise of fascism in pre-World War II Germany. A recent PBS report noted that “On May 10, 1933, university students in 34 university towns across Germany burned over 25,000 books. The works of Jewish authors like Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud went up in flames alongside blacklisted American authors such as Ernest Hemingway and Helen Keller, while students gave the Nazi salute.”
The article went on: “Walter Lippmann was one of the few journalists reporting on the Nazis who took the book burnings as an ominous sign of the Nazis' ultimate goal. "These acts symbolize the moral and intellectual character of the Nazi regime," he wrote. "For these bonfires are not the work of schoolboys or mobs but of the present German Government ... The ominous symbolism of [this act and] these bonfires is that there is a government in Germany which means to teach its people that their salvation lies in violence."
“Anyone who cares about freedom of speech and democratic values should be appalled by these exclusionary bills,” said Jonathan Friedman, a co-author of the report and PEN America’s director of free expression and education. “Educational gag orders muzzle entire subject areas, scare teachers from engaging in important discussions, and deprive students of opportunities to ask questions, learn, and grow. These intrusive bans have no place in our classrooms and institutions.”
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