[Editorial]
They say that history repeats itself and “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
Conservative activists want to ban 400 books from a library — but they aren't even on shelves
NBC News
By Tyler Kingkade
August 23, 2022</
For months, a group of conservative Christians have inundated the staff and board of a public library in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, with complaints about books they didn’t want to see on the shelves.Their list of more than 400 titles predominantly focuses on young adult books with LGBTQ characters, scenes describing sexual activity or invoking the occult.
The only problem: None of the books are in the library’s collection.
Still, the activists in this town of 2,500 people wanted the books pre-emptively banned. They fumed that the library planned to join the American Library Association, a nonprofit trade organization known for fighting censorship that local activists falsely accused of “promoting pedophilia.” They started a campaign to recall four of the five library trustees over a policy against restricting access to controversial books, putting up signs around town that read: “Our Mission is to protect children from explicit materials and grooming.”
Now lets look at 1933 Germany…
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
On May 10, 1933 student groups at universities across Germany carried out a series of book burnings of works that the students and leading Nazi party members associated with an “un-German spirit.” Enthusiastic crowds witnessed the burning of books by Brecht, Einstein, Freud, Mann and Remarque, among many other well-known intellectuals, scientists and cultural figures, many of whom were Jewish. The largest of these book bonfires occurred in Berlin, where an estimated 40,000 people gathered to hear a speech by the propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, in which he pronounced that “Jewish intellectualism is dead” and endorsed the students’ “right to clean up the debris of the past.”
The library of Dr. Hirschfeld institute was attacked and the books on LGBTQ+ topics were burned!
6 MAY 1933: LOOTING OF THE INSTITUTE OF SEXOLOGY
On 6 May 1933, the Institute of Sexology, an academic foundation devoted to sexological research and the advocacy of homosexual rights, was broken into and occupied by Nazi-supporting youth. Several days later the entire contents of the library were removed and burned.
The institute was initially occupied by The German Student Union, who were a collective of Nazi-supporting youth. Several days later, on 10 May, the entire contents of the library were removed to Berlin’s Bebelplatz Square. That night, along with 20,000 other books across Germany, they were publicly burned in a symbolic attack by Nazi officials on their enemies.
[…]
Jewish, gay and outspokenly liberal, Hirschfeld was an obvious target for the Nazis, and the seizure and destruction of the institute on 6 May took place only three months after Hitler was made Chancellor of Germany. During the attack and subsequent book burning, Hirschfeld was working in Paris. He saw the burning of his own library in a news report at the cinema. Among the texts thrown onto the bonfire at the Bebelplatz was Heinrich Heine’s Almansor, in which the author noted:
‘Where they burn books, in the end they will burn humans too’.
Now here in the US books are being ripped off the library selves because the LGBTQ+, now tell me what is the difference between Fascist Germany and the right-wing conservatives?
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| Members of the white supremacist group The Patriot Front march through Boston shortly before 12:45 p.m. Saturday. (Boston Herald staff photo by Stuart Cahill) |
Boston mayor condemns ‘white supremacist’ march through city; civil rights probe launched
Michelle Wu, Ed Flynn call out ‘cowardly’ group
The Boston Herald
By Flint Mccolgan and Stuart Cahill
July 2, 2022
A group of about 100 marchers identifying themselves by flyers as belonging to the white nationalist group the Patriot Front, cut through the heart of downtown Saturday sparking a confrontation.A scanner call came in at around 12:30 p.m. announcing that a group had gone up to a rental truck parked in the area of the Haymarket MBTA station and off-loaded a number of shields and flags. Many were U.S. flags, with at least one flown upside-down and many showing just the 13 stars in a circle for the original U.S. colonies, as well as flags featuring different designs.
Many flags also had a stylized version of the symbol that represented Benito Mussolini’s National Fascist Party.
Then down in Charlottesville in 2017 there was the Tiki Torch parade…
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| Unite the Right march on the University of Virginia campus. Photograph: Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images |
Charlottesville: far-right crowd with torches encircles counter-protest group
People gathering to oppose Unite the Right demonstration say they were hit with pepper spray and lighter fluid in clash on University of Virginia campus
The Guardian
By Jason Wilson
12 August 2017
Hundreds of far-right demonstrators wielded torches as they marched on to the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville on Friday night and reportedly attacked a much smaller group of counter-protesters who had linked arms around a statue of Thomas Jefferson.Starting at a municipal park less than a mile away, “alt-right” protesters who have gathered for the weekend Unite the Right rally marched in a long column over the short distance to the campus, chanting slogans like “You will not replace us” and “Blood and soil”.
Now look at Germany in 1933, Facing History and Ourselves writes,
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| On the night of January 30, 1933, SA men paraded with torches through Berlin to celebrate Hitler’s appointment as chancellor. |
On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany. That evening, members of the Nazi Party carried fiery torches as they paraded through the streets of Berlin. They were joined by thousands who had gathered to cheer for Paul von Hindenburg, the president of Germany, and Hitler. The two men responded to the crowd from separate windows—Hitler at the chancellery and Hindenburg at a hotel next door. Nearby was the French embassy, where Ambassador André François-Poncet watched from a window, later writing:
The torches . . . formed a river of fire . . . over the very heart of the city. From these brown-shirted, booted men, as they marched in perfect discipline and alignment, their well-pitched voices bawling war-like songs, there rose an enthusiasm and dynamism that were extraordinary.
Then we have Mussolini’s Blackshirts in 1922;
MUSSOLINI’S BLACKSHIRTS MARCH ON ROME SEIZING TOTAL CONTROL
History On This Day
October 28, 1922
Today on October 28, 1922, Benito Mussolini’s Blackshirts infamously March on Rome, seizing total control over the Italian government.The March on Rome marked the beginning of Fascist rule over Italy, ending all social-liberal parliamentary regimes. Benito Mussolini was the founding member and leader of the Fascist Party in Italy. With an abundance of personality and charisma, he was capable of captivating massive crowds and attracting large swaths of loyal followers. The end of World War I resulted in unfavorable peace treaties for both Germany and Italy, leaving widespread discontent across the population and a fragile political environment. The government was ripe for the taking. On October 24, the fascist party leaders planned to March on Rome and seize power from the liberal regime. Nearly a decade later, Hitler too would rise to power in Germany on the basis of popular unrest.
So what is the difference between 1933 and now?
We have Trump’s fascists marching through Charlottesville which Trump said that they “very fine people” and then in Boston we have Patriot Front white supremacist group, I don’t know about you but I do not see any differences… they are both fascists!
In Politico Mr. Lithwick writes,
Welcome to the new alt-right, which might not be so new at all.
***
‘Where America still sees Nazis and flaming torches, I see the first stirrings of the thing that comes after.’
Dahlia Lithwick is the senior legal correspondent for Slate.
Remember that both Hitler and Mussolini were part of the rise patriotism, they were part of their version of “Make America Great Again” and the social economic unrest of the “great depression” just the conditions we are seeing today.
[/Editorial]
The OAN reporter complained that the left wants to ban books while saying it's the right's "duty... to purge our schools of such filth."LGBTQ NationBy Alex BollingerAugust 24, 2022One America News (OAN) reporter Kara McKinney used a photo of Nazis burning books while calling LGBTQ literature “filth” that deserved to be banned earlier this week on her show.McKinney was ranting about how Democrats “use their outsize media influence” to trick voters into thinking that conservatives want to ban books.“It’s the [unintelligible] Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals tactic of accusing your political opponent of what you’re doing yourself,” McKinney insisted as she showed an image of the Hitler Youth burning books that were labeled “anti-German” in 1938.But less than a minute later, she was arguing for banning books.“I think banning pornographic books from school libraries was not only justifiable, it’s the only moral option,” she said.[…]If anything, McKinney’s use of the Hitler Youth image while talking about banning LGBTQ literature is apt; the Nazi Party destroyed Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sexology – which did pioneering work on understanding LGBTQ identities, including transgender people – in 1933, years before the onset of World War II.
Photos and video shows black and rainbow-clad people standing watch outside the venue where the drag brunch was happening.The AdvocateBy Christopher WigginsAugust 29 2022A group of people armed with AR-15 style assault rifles stood guard outside a Texas drag queen brunch location Sunday to defend people enjoying the show from armed right-wing extremists bent on disrupting it. Eventually, the two sides clashed, and a local journalist caught it on video.A video showing some of the heated exchanges that ensued went viral on Twitter.Dallas-area freelance investigative journalist Steven Monacelli posted a thread to his Twitter timeline, where he documented the day’s events.Monacelli also captured this terrifying image of a right-wing extremist menacing the assembled crowd by intimidating them with a baseball bat wrapped in razor wire.
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