It’s National Library Week, so I’ve been thinking a lot about knowledge and the idea that knowledge should be readily available – for all. An informed populace is crucial to the health of the nation and a bulwark of democracy. The ability to think, to reason, to avoid being fooled, all these notions are tied to reading and easy access to the wisdom of the ages.
And this is exactly why libraries – and their contents – are under siege these days.
HuffPost’s Jennifer Bendery recently told readers:
“Librarians are living in constant fear. They have become the targets
of Republican politicians and far-right groups like Moms for Liberty
Liberty that are hellbent on burning books about LGBTQ+ people,
people of color and racism. Some librarians are quitting their jobs
because of constant harassment; others are getting fired for
refusing to clear shelves of books that conservatives don’t like.”
If that’s not bad enough – and it is – Bendery informs us there’s another evil twist in the tale: “The GOP’s censorship campaign has shifted from book bans to legislation threatening librarians with jail time.” Idaho’s tried several times to enact such legislation; this February, West Virginia passed a bill “making librarians criminally liable if a minor comes across content that some might consider obscene.” Idaho, Iowa, Alabama, and Georgia are also considering various means of keeping books they don’t like off the shelves...and they’re not alone.
The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom shared some frightening statistics: “The number of titles targeted for censorship at public libraries increased by 92% over the previous year, accounting for about 46% of all book challenges in 2023; school libraries saw an 11% increase over 2022 numbers.”
Given these ever-more-frequent, ever-more-strident attacks, what can a concerned reader do to stem the tide of book-banning?
PEN America, an organization whose mission “is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible,” offers a number of ways to make one’s voice heard. Whether you’re a student, a parent, an author, or a librarian, PEN America provides advice, assistance, and resources to keep you informed and ready to push back.
The need to support the nation’s libraries is more urgent than ever. In Bendery’s HuffPost piece, American Library Association President Emily Drabinski draws a chilling conclusion: “What gets lost in conversations about book banning is that it’s really about eliminating the institution of the library, period. It’s not about the books. Well, it is about the books, but the books are the way in to gut one of the last public institutions that serves everyone.”
“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture,” Ray Bradbury once said. “Just get people to stop reading them.”
Bradbury was one of the 20th century’s finest fabulists, the author of The Martian Chronicles, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and the worldwide blockbuster Fahrenheit 451. Published in 1952, the novel Fahrenheit 451 is set in a future where books are illegal and firemen don’t put out fires – they start them. Printed matter is what they burn.
Bradbury was writing in the tense, paranoid early years of the McCarthy era. But he might as well have penned those words last Thursday.
Support your local library. Speak up for the voices the hate-mongers would shut down. Before – as history’s proven again and again – they try to shut down yours.
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Students fight a book ban by giving away free banned bookswww.youtube.com
The New York Public Library has also weighed in on the matter, you can find its suggestions here.
Global Alliances and America's Rise to Prominence
America didn't come to rule the world over night.
Henry Kissinger is often thought of as the originator of realpolitik–political action dictated by circumstance and pragmatism rather than ideologies or ethics–but this couldn't be further from the truth. From Sun Tzu to Machiavelli to Thomas Hobbes, philosophers and political theorists alike have been advocating for a more practical politics for thousands of years, and their edicts have had profound effects on the way in which global alliances have shifted throughout history. Inasmuch as it takes a powerful nation to create powerful enemies, it's worth examining America's rise to alliance breaker/maker, a rise that's rooted in the 19th and early 20th centuries. A story:
Just after the American civil war, one of the best known practitioners of realpolitik, Otto Von Bismarck was consolidating power in Prussia and slowly, through a series of small wars, unifying Germany. Later, in 1873, Von Bismarck helped create the Three Emperors League between Russia, Austria-Hungary, and newly-unified Germany (formed following the Franco-Prussian war). Eventually, revolts and civil disorder in the Balkans eroded Russian involvement with the League, and upon its dissolution, Germany and Austria-Hungary formed the Dual Alliance, which was later expanded to include the newly formed Kingdom of Italy. It was then appropriately renamed The Triple Alliance.
Otto Von Bismarck
As the power vacuum in Europe was being filled by Germany, late 19th century America was still smarting from the Civil War, and it can be assumed, because of French and British involvement, the U.S. was a bit weary of the Western European powers. During this time, the largely amiable relations between Germany and the United States also started to decline. Imperial ambitions and Germany's decision to to build a large fleet of battleships in the 1890s ruined much of the cordiality the two nations shared throughout the previous decades. Coincidentally, this is when the United States and the United Kingdom started becoming chummy, partly due to the fact that Britain sided with the U.S. towards the latter half of the Spanish-American War– once it was clear the Americans were going to win.
A decade later, in 1907, the UK, France, and Russia signed The Triple Entente. This served a few purposes. It rebuilt Anglo-Russian and Franco-Russian relations following the Crimean war, but it also created an alliance by proxy, as the Russian Empire and the United States were on very good standing following the Alaska purchase and the Alliance they formed when suppressing the Boxer Rebellion in China. Seven years later, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia after Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb, assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Russia then mobilized to aid Serbia, and slowly but surely the rest of the European powers were drawn in. The Triple Entente and The Triple Alliance were at war. WWI had begun. Unlike their more pugnacious allies, the United States was not interested in getting involved, and avoided joining the war until 1917, when the British intercepted a German message to Mexico, called the Zimmerman Telegram, calling for a German-Mexican military alliance.
Woodrow Wilson and King George V
After the war ended, the victors signed the Treaty of Versailles, and Germany was turned into the Weimar Republic. Around the same time, Benito Mussolini's fascist party took control of Italy. The Treaty of Versailles' harsh conditions combined with the Great Depression, plunged Germany into a period of hyperinflation and civil unrest that eventually gave birth to National Socialism. Italy and Germany, being the two major European fascist states, were natural allies, and together began rapidly developing their militaries to spur economic growth. On the other side of the world, Japan was preparing to invade China, and by the mid-1930s, war looked inevitable to anyone who was paying attention. The U.S. leveled sanctions against their once-ally Japan once Japan's invasion of China began, and within two years the world was in the midst of another World War, this one even more disastrous than the first. With over 80 million war-related deaths, and the devastation of most European nations due to bombing and mass extermination, America was the only country left with enough infrastructure necessary to run the world economy. The economy that was left to America however, wasn't one based on trade or the manufacturing of luxury goods, but war. The old alliances between the U.S., France, and the United Kingdom, stayed in place, but new alliances were only created with countries that could help the U.S. in their chess match with the Soviet Union over control over the new, non-eurocentric world.
Hitler and Mussolini
The Cold War, between the United States and its NATO allies and the Soviet Union, was marketed as a battle of ideas–capitalism vs communism–but was really just a new type of economy, one in which Soviets and Americans sold mass amounts of weapons to opposing armies throughout the 20th century. Some examples include the Soviet Union arming North Korea during the Korean War and the United States arming the Mujahideen during the Soviet-Afghan war. More interesting than the boilerplate on-the-record facts about the Cold War however, is what happened immediately following WWII.
The Nazis, for all the atrocities they committed, were nothing if not efficient. Germany under Hitler was a cult-like, militaristic machine and had the most technologically advanced and well-trained army during WWII. The Germans had rockets capable of reaching space and jet aircraft, technologies that were incredibly valuable to both the Soviet Union and the United States. During Operation: Paperclip, hundreds of Nazi scientists were brought to the United States by the CIA, most famously rocket scientist Wernher Von Braun. But, there was another section of the CIA more interested in Nazi commanders, namely ones in charge of intelligence. Reinhard Gehlen, Nazi Germany's head of intel ligence on the Eastern Front was recruited, along with hundreds of other Nazi officers, to set up a spy network in Germany to keep an eye on the Soviet Union. It was called the Gehlen organization.
Reinhard Gehlen
Stranger however, is the case of Otto Skorzeny, an SS lieutenant colonel, who escaped an allied prison camp and hid in Bavaria, all the while in contact with Gehlen. At Gehlen's and by extension the CIA's behest, Skorzeny was sent to Egypt in 1952 to train the Egyptian army under General Mohamed Naguib. Skorzeny, specializing in commando tactics, also trained Arab and Palestinian volunteers and helped them plan raids into Israel and Gaza. One of the people he trained was none other than Yasser Arafat, the future leader of the PLO. The question that remains is: why would a United States' intelligence organization would be interested in training soldiers in an army that recently declared war on Israel, one of their allies?
Matt Clibanoff is a writer and editor based in New York City who covers music, politics, sports and pop culture. His editorial work can be found in Inked Magazine, Pop Dust, The Liberty Project, and All Things Go. His fiction has been published in Forth Magazine. -- Find Matt at his website and on Twitter: @mattclibanoff