Banning Books, Burning Books and the Slippery Slope
Alternate title 1: Defining Fascism
Alternate title 2: Do you Know What your Kids are Reading?
Author’s Note: I originally wrote and published this post on Open Salon in October 2008. Now, eight years later, it feels relevant. With a few minor updates, I am reprising this post for your consideration. Feel free to substitute the current set of candidates, the absurd Trump campaign, and current events in your mind’s eye to reach your own conclusions.
In an earlier post on Open Salon (10/2008), writer Diane Cipa compared Barack Obama to Hitler.
Obama is a cult leader who inspires fascism. He’s dangerous.
Tough times cause people to embrace this kind of leadership. I understand completely why the German people went for Hitler. It was too late before they realized the mistake.
That post is no longer available as the Open Salon site no longer exists, but that nonsense was thoughtfully deconstructed.
However, it got me thinking…
What, exactly, is Fascism?
I had always thought it had more to do with a totalitarian, nationalist regime than a Britney-like cult of fandom (another of the anti-Obama themes).
Wikipedia defines fascism this way –
Fascism is a totalitarian nationalist and corporatist ideology. It is primarily concerned with notions of cultural, economic, and social decline or decadence, and which seeks to solve such problems by achieving a millenarian national rebirth by exalting the nation, as well as promoting cults of unity, strength and purity.
I see more of the totalitarian, nationalist and corporatist ideology in the Republican party, both in the George W. Bush administration and in Senator John McCain’s campaign. Yet, I can see where some might argue that Barack Obama’s campaign is seeking a “rebirth” and “exalting the nation.” I’ll leave it to you to examine and argue which party, if either, better fits the definition.
Wikipedia goes on, by way of explanation, to quote Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism:
A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
and Roger Griffin, The palingenetic core of generic fascist ideology:
[Fascism is] a genuinely revolutionary, trans-class form of anti-liberal, and in the last analysis, anti conservative nationalism….The core mobilizing myth of fascism which conditions its ideology, propaganda, style of politics and actions is the vision of the nation’s imminent rebirth from decadence.
Sound like culture wars, evangelism, or Gingrich’s Contract with America to anyone? Or updated for 2016, Donald Trump’s Muslim ban, gaslighting, or sloganeering — Make America Great Again?
So, what does this have to do with book burning or banning?
Well, coincidentally, there happen to be two books floating around my home. Both are fiction, and are marketed to Young Adults. Both deal with book burning, and not coincidentally, with fascist regimes. Hmmm….
One, The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak, is about a girl named Liesel who is sent to Munich for safety in 1939. I read it for Book Club and my husband had it recommended to him by a co-worker. The other, Incantation by Alice Hoffman, is about a girl named Estrella de Madrigal in Spain in 1500. It was loaned to my daughter by a friend and she has been walking around reading aloud and quoting from it for the last few days.
Here are some excerpts from The Book Thief:
In a way, it was destiny.
You see, people may tell you that Nazi Germany was built on anti-Semitism, a somewhat overzealous leader, and a nation of hate-fed bigots, but it would all have come to nothing had the Germans not loved one particular activity:To burn.
The Germans loved to burn things. Shops, synagogues, Reichstags, houses, personal items, slain people, and of course, books.
And another:
It was late May 1939, and the night had been like most others. Mama shook her iron fist. Papa was out. Liesel cleaned the front door and watched the Himmel Street sky.
Earlier, there had been a parade.
The brown-shirted extremist members of the NSDAP (otherwise known as the Nazi Party) had marched down Munich Street, their banners worn proudly, their faces held high, as if on sticks. Their voices were full of song, culminating in a roaring rendition of “Deutschland uber Alles.” “Germany over Everything.”
As always, they were clapped. They were spurred on as they walked to who knows where.
People on the street stood and watched, some with straight-armed salutes, others with hands that burned from applause. Some kept faces that were contorted with pride and rally like Frau Diller, and then there were the scattering of odd men out, like Alex Steiner, who stood like a human-shaped block of wood, clapping slow and dutiful.
And beautiful. Submission.
On the footpath, Liesel stood with her papa and Rudy. Hans Hubermann [Papa] wore a face with the shades pulled down.
Incantation
Alice Hoffman, in Incantation, gives us a story set in 16th century Spain, “when Jews who refused conversion to Christianity risked everything — love, life, family, faith.”
Part One: Soul. Be careful. starts Chapter One: Ashes, this way:
If every life is a river, then it’s little wonder that we do not even notice the changes that occur until we are far out in the darkest sea. One day you look around and nothing is familiar, not even your own face.
My name once meant daughter, granddaughter, friend, sister, beloved. Now those words mean only what their letters spell out. Star in the night sky. Truth in the darkness.
I have crossed over to a place where I never thought I’d be. I am someone I would have never imagined. A secret. A dream. I am this, body and soul. Burn me. Drown me. Tell me lies. I will still be who I am.
I don’t know how much this has to do with fascism, per se, but it is poetically beautiful. We later find out Estrella is Esther and it makes more sense. We begin to understand after friends are arrested, because they “were Jews who were only pretending to be Christian.” The friar and family prayed to St. Esther only in the most terrible of times. “She was a queen who had to pretend she was someone other than her truest self in order to save her people.”
Part Two: Angels, Never Trust begins:
The day when the arrests began reminded me of the day of the burning books, when the air was filled with sparks, when something bad crept out onto the Plaza from the deep evil place, something that would become so strong no one could catch it or beat it down or lock it away.
Now I understand those days were not really a beginning but a continuation. A monster is hard to see and even harder to kill. It takes time to grow so huge, time to crawl up into the open air. People will tell you it’s not there; you’re imagining things. But a book is a book. Pages are pages. Hawks are hawks. Doves are doves.
Hatred is always hatred.
Hatred is always hatred.
