Who woulda thunk it? MAGA, the self-described champions and guardians of the Constitution, free speech, and the First Amendment hate the guts of the American Library Association (ALA).

Why? Because the ALA is one of the fiercest defenders and advocates of the First Amendment on the planet.

Few things make MAGA’s blood boil hotter than the ALA-sponsored Banned Books Week. Despite MAGA’s claimed allegiance to the First Amendment, MAGA strives to ban books across the country, which makes the ALA their avowed adversary.

One thing that has really outraged MAGA about the ALA is the fact that … you know what’s coming … the ALA believes that public libraries should carry books that MAGA doesn’t want people to see or read. Some of MAGA’s contraband include Sexual Health Resources provided by MAGA’s Very Most Hated Organization, Planned Parenthood. One problem may be that in-depth sex education includes education about consent — an important topic that a MAGA specifically tried to remove from an Indiana sex education bill. Fortunately, this time push-back against the bizarre move won out.

Wisconsin Family Council, affiliated with the SPLC-listed hate group Family Research Council, is also furious with the ALA not just for MAGA’s hated “Drag Queen Story Hours,” but also because the ALA “champions diversity, equity, and inclusion.” MAGA doesn’t like anyone or anything that affirms the humanity of the groups of people whom MAGA hates. Remember: fascism begins with dehumanization.

To date, three MAGA states have disassociated with the ALA for the same reason: the “crime” of recognizing the humanity of groups of people whom MAGA wants to dehumanize. “Liberty” Council (where do they come up with these Orwellian names?) pours hatred on the ALA, claiming that “the organization now promotes Marxism and ‘equity, diversity and inclusion’ through children’s literature.”

MAGA organization Concerned Women For America in 2000 warned, “Is your neighborhood library becoming a breeding ground for sexual predators? It could be, if the American Library Association (ALA) maintains its staunch opposition to Internet filtering.” MAGA organization Focus on the Family in 2000 called Banned Books Week “a fraud” and hurled absurd claims like “Little children are sitting at library computers, looking at horrible, graphic sexual acts with the ALA’s blessing.”

The Ohio-based MAGA organization Citizens for Community Values accuses the ALA of a “licentious political and cultural agenda.” The SPLC-listed hate group American Family Association distributed a video claiming to expose “Radical policies from American Library Association.”

Primitive, grunt-level bigotry also powers MAGA’s hatred for the ALA; MAGA is killing mad that the ALA chose a “Marxist lesbian” as its President-Elect.

Book banners, book burners, and those who find other ways to curtail access to accurate information and limit the availability of knowledge always land on the wrong side of history. In the comparatively olden days, the book banners were primarily interested in censoring ideas or scientific information that they didn’t like.

But today, the motive is to censor and eliminate any factual or favorable information about groups of people. It is when the motive of the book banners is to suppress and eliminate the very humanity of minority groups that things become doubly dangerous.

That last is a necessary first step to a true rerun of the Holocaust.