[63]

It was surprising to me just how many of the banned books have immense literary value. The Color Purple, The Handmaid's Tale, The Kite Runner, etc. aren't random books that may be a little obscene, they're literary classics. In my opinion this is what makes it obvious that these bans were made in bad faith.

[tomrod]

Absolutely.

There has been an organizing current in US politics around the theology and political theory of dominionism -- that a certain set of related religions have a responsibility to take over governmental authority in order to make the law support their particular belief set so that things they view as sinful are not supported, or actively discouraged, by the legal framework.

The people supporting this political wave tend to be extremely triumphalist in their personal religious zeal, unwilling to make compromises, and are iconoclastic and disrespectful to most outside their in-group.

Much like other iconoclasts and zealots, they rely on the pluralistic principle of toleration to force the paradox of tolerance to bend their way.

It's shame - pluralism is much more invigorating and no one forces lifestyles they disagree with onto dominionists.

[SilverElfin]

> There has been an organizing current in US politics around the theology and political theory of dominionism -- that a certain set of related religions have a responsibility to take over governmental authority in order to make the law support their particular belief set so that things they view as sinful are not supported, or actively discouraged, by the legal framework.

Reading your comment, I feel like the word religion is misleading. You see the same dynamic in how progressive political ideology, despite it not having to do with a god, has been introduced into many layers of government and other institutions. All the things said here can be demonstrated for the religious right but also the non religious left. It’s less about religion in my opinions, and more about how politics is about winning by controlling institutions instead of supporting individual freedoms.

[jrs235]

If they are, or consider themselves, libertarian they are royal libertarians (not georgists) and therefore "might makes right" and "live free" means violence. A belief in "four legs good, two legs better".

[btilly]

There is a lot of evidence that engaging emotionally with literature will shift people's values. In a way that engaging with intellectual ideas does not.

These are not just literary classics, they carry a specific culture forward. People whose values are threatened by that culture need to not engage with them. They do so by finding things to be offended by in the books. In many cases the offence is perfectly genuine. It is caused by cognitive dissonance, and not cynical manipulation.

That doesn't make it less frustrating. But understanding why people have trouble with these works helps build empathy for them. And empathy is necessary to present your points in a way that is persuasive to their views. Yelling in anger at them is easy. Actually changing their minds is far harder. And it does require trying to understand.

[nancyminusone]

I don't think changing their minds is a requirement. They are allowed to not like something, but they shouldn't be able to ban it.

[mlinhares]

Sorry for the vocabulary here but this is bullshit. The people submitting the banned books here have stated multiple times they have never read most/all the books they have asked for banning and are being driven by lists built by political entities like Moms for America.

There is no genuine offense here, they don't even know what the books are about other than someone saying "its LGBT". It is just cynical manipulation and hate.

[nerdjon]

While I can understand the side that you are coming from. One of the biggest failures I have seen from my friends is demonizing anyone that may have voted for tump and these people, and refusing to have a conversation. Immediately labeling them as racist for example (which I don't think is necessarily untrue for many of them, but when we know there are black people that voted for Trump that argument as a blanket statement gets harder to make).

I strongly believe that for many people just doing this is causing them to dig into their heels and instead of examining themselves they are pushed to being on the defensive trying to say they are not racist, homophobic, sexist, whatever. Which is not getting us anywhere and is just making both sides angrier.

There are the extremes, people that have the power that are pushing things like this. But then there are the manipulated. Those that are being told lies and being encouraged to vote a certain why because they simply are only seeing part of the picture. Maybe they don't have exposure to the world. Whatever.

While I do respect someone's right to protect their own mental health and not want to engage in a conversation with many of these people, these conversations do need to happen. I truly believe that the majority of people are nowhere near as vile as those in power right now are. So we need to understand why they are enabling them.

That being said...

It is a very fine line. Too much empathy can lead to them thinking that this is ok, there does need to be some force in a push back against what is happening right now. Pushing back on the misinformation that is causing many people to hold these views.

So yes we can try to understand where these views are coming from without giving them weight as being valid.

[tremon]

[flagged]

[alkyon]

I don't know if this was bad faith or not, but honestly, you need to be a bigoted retard to ban Slaughterhouse-Five of all the things.

The side effect of this is that some literary classics will enjoy a brief surge in popularity among young people.

[m463]

Sometimes I kind of wonder if putting important books on the list would be a measured way to overturn broken or unjust laws.

Sort of like adding "Common Sense", "The Grapes of Wrath" or "The Pentagon Papers", etc.

[shepherdjerred]

Wow, I can't believe The Handmaid’s Tale was on the list. That book is excellent and not offensive at all

[AntiEgo]

It's offensive to the people who are trying to build the Republic of Gilead.

[insane_dreamer]

Those three were banned? wtaf

[TimTheTinker]

> they're literary classics

Reasonable people wouldn't ask to get these book banned. What if people colluding with the publishers got them banned as part of a larger strategy?

I have no evidence to support that hypothesis; it's just very odd for literary classics to have been banned.

[skrebbel]

It's standard Trumpian negotiation. Ban lots of books, outrage ensues, courts get involved, some books get unbanned. But not all!

[dfxm12]

Also par for the course: lots of wasted taxpayer money.

[zeroonetwothree]

I don’t think Trump was directly involved in this law? We don’t need to invoke his name merely as an epithet.

[burnte]

[flagged]

[dfxm12]

[flagged]

[thewileyone]

They don't want to have to pay royalties to Margaret Atwood when they implement the handmaids headgear.

[AlexandrB]

> They've been transparent about their desires to censor media.

100% agree, but what's frustrating is that "the left" are not much better. We get things like the rewriting[1] of Roald Dahl's books based on the feedback from "sensitivity readers".

I don't really know who to vote for to stop stuff like this. No political party seems to be on the side of a principled defence of freedom of speech. Instead it's always about censoring your opponents and their ideas while you're in power.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Dahl_revision_controvers...

[bigfishrunning]

Yes, extremely bad faith. These books are upsetting, and show a very ugly side of humanity, but they're not obscene.

[zozbot234]

> These books are upsetting, and show a very ugly side of humanity

Funnily enough, that's exactly what "obscene" means in popular parlance. On the other hand, the legal standard for what should be considered obscene is so inherently uncertain and varies so much across time and place that it's just meaningless to say anything that purports to be definitive about that.

[gosub100]

I'm frankly surprised that kids read books at all. With video games and smartphones and all this attention-draining junk, I would like to see how many books are actually read per 100 kids per month. I would be surprised if it even runs into the double digits.

[bryanlarsen]

Outliers skew averages. I know a couple of kids that read dozens of books per month.

[nilamo]

No bans are needed at all then. If "nobody" reads, then "bad" books can't hurt anyone.

[whimsicalism]

it doesn’t matter whether kids read books, all that matters is parents and how they vote.

also stats on book reading are notoriously cooked, look at how many books publishers claim the median American reads.

[makeitdouble]

> attention-draining junk

To put it plainly, this attitude is probably the main reason reading books is sometimes labelled as an elitist poser passtime.

Kids will enjoy reading books that are genuinely good, but they need to care about the subject in the first place and they'll come for more on their own term. Focusing on the numbers ("X books per months") or denigrating the other things they also enjoy solely based on the format will just signal no shit is given about the actual content.

[terminalshort]

Why limit it to kids? My brain and attention span is so rotted from the internet that I find it immensely difficult these days too.

[Der_Einzige]

Most good books are subversive towards the goals of education. I couldn't believe when they unironically asked me to read "Pedegogy of the Oppressed" and than tried to give grades on it.

Trying to give grades to kids for Oscar Wilde's work is fully against the spirit of his thinking. Trying to grade kids for a whole lot of modern "classics" also goes against the spirit of their thinking. Joyce was too busy writing horny smut to be a supporter of literary analysis of his work.

But more seriously, most young adult fiction is pretty low quality. I cringe pretty hard when I look back at what that genre had us reading at the time. Percy Jackson and Eoin Colfer are poster children for the millennial brain rot that ended our collective love of YAF. We are a far cry from the high point it hit under the excellent writing of a certain Brian Jacques

[TimTheTinker]

> these bans were made in bad faith

It's possible that the worst of these bans were done in strategic bad faith in partnership with the plaintiffs: to provide standing and legal cause for the plaintiffs to sue.

There may have been bans made that were reasonable but politically one-sided (perhaps an illustrated kamasutra, just to give an example), and the strategy to re-establish them was a sort of reverse motte-and-bailey -- get things that are far more innocent banned in a bid to sue and reverse all bans.

[rideontime]

A lot of things are "possible." Do you have any evidence to support this version of events?