My last piece exposed MAGA’s hatred for the one of the fiercest advocates of the First Amendment, the American Library Association. However, the recent change in the character and nature of today’s MAGA book bans should be cause for alarm, as they are warning signs of a rerun of Nazi Germany on our own American soil.
In the early days of MAGA censorship and book bans, the motives were primarily superstitious and fear-driven, and mostly targeted contrary ideas and information. The MAGA censorship of old consisted of classical scaremongering about things like “witchcraft” and “the occult.”
The late televangelist Pat Robertson’s address to the 1988 Republican Convention warned, “We must recognize that the so-called New Age curriculum of progressive education is a colossal failure and must be replaced.” In 1996, the right wing American Center for Law and Justice urged, “Appeal to the teacher, then the principal, then the school board. If those appeals fail, and you are dealing with a clear example of a school trying to implement a New Age practice, legal action could prove successful on a First Amendment basis.”
The Georgia chapter of the SPLC-listed hate group American Family Association warned in its December 1997 Network News, “Parents and a few leaders are starting to understand that when God was removed from government schools, the gods of secular humanism and the New Age took the place of the one true God.” In his December 2000 letter to supporters, Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family warned, “Then they attempt to weaken expressions of Christian faith while strengthening alien theologies, New Age movements, Eastern mysticism and post-modern philosophies.”
To be sure, the 1990s were not without fearmongering about the so-called “homosexual lifestyle.” But the overall tenor of MAGA’s early censorship crusades consisted of good, old-time superstition.
Those were the good old days; in hindsight, it seemed so relatively harmless by today’s standards.
The advent of Trump ushered in a much darker era. Fear of ideas gave way to conscious, active campaigns to erase the identities and humanity of groups of people. Fear of “witchcraft” and “mysticism” stepped aside and cleared the path for active hate for anything that told the Black side of American history and banishment of any content that affirmed the humanity of anyone who wasn’t white, male, heterosexual, and as MAGA erroneously calls it, “Christian.”
Today, the driving force isn’t superstition so much as malicious, active, aggressive bigotry. The National Education Association (NEA) reports that “Anti-DEI Laws Take Aim at Students of Color and LGBTQ+ Students.” The University of North Texas has eliminated multicultural and Pride centers from campus. New Tennessee laws punish schools that discuss race or gender in classroom. Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” laws dehumanizes the LGBTQ+ community with surgical precision by banning even mere achnowledgement of their identity.
These are the book bans of today: books that humanize the LGBTQ+ community, the trans community, and tell history and personal experience from the Black perspective. Florida lawmakers ban meaningful Black History content from school libraries under the guise of being “guilty” of “Critical Race Theory.” Louisiana has done likewise, banning meaningful and accurate Black History and any mention of systemic racism from its classrooms.
It was one thing for the MAGA of yore to focus on perceived threats such as the loss of parental rights and teaching supposed New Age beliefs, which characterized much of the scaremongering around the Outcomes Based Education and Goals 2000.
But this dark turn toward erasing the humanity of entire groups of people from classroom, libraries and campuses is a prerequisite for real acts of actrocity to begin taking place.
This turn toward darkness must be stopped, and it can be stopped. What is required is for decent people to speak up and stand strong.