Banning Books
This article from Online Books about banned books is an interesting little read. Two titbits:- Apartheid South Africa banned Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as "objectionable or obscene", and proscribed the infamous horse-based subversion of Black Beauty while it was at it too. Not only was Rousseau's Confessions banned in the US ("Land of the Free") in 1929 , but all works by the self-same proto-socialist, were banned in the "Socialist" USSR shortly afterwards. Joyce's Ulysses of course, widely banned in Europe and the US in the 30s, went on to be seen as the greatest novel of the century.
The section around the banning of Holocaust Denial works is very relevant at the moment. As the EU discusses introducing a blanket ban, such that exists in Germany and Austria, I am reminded again of Deborah Lipstadt's excellent arguments against such a move. Lipstadt is one of the great academic opponents of the odious pervision of Holocaust Denial, which makes the points she makes against the damage that would be caused by such a well-meaning folly all the more potent.
There's no absolute here, and "banning" itself is a subjective term. The article makes references to the crass racism of the Little Sambo books being ousted from classrooms since the 70s. Good. The active promotion of such brain-curdling crap on young minds is an undoubted evil. When it comes to the far worse racism of Holocaust Denial, the vast majority of book stores and publishers would boycott such material. Once again, good. But to have the the state persecuting individuals just for the crime of writing this filth, even of distributing it, is both a fundamental wrong, and fundamentally counter-productive. It makes victims out of bullies, and martyrs out of cowards.
