[ There’s a long history of book-banning in the U.S. But
conservative groups are emboldened like never before, and they’re
taking their mission to a new level.]
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THE RIGHT-WING PLOT TO DESTROY PUBLIC LIBRARIES  
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Nathalie Baptiste
August 6, 2022
HuffPost
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_ There’s a long history of book-banning in the U.S. But
conservative groups are emboldened like never before, and they’re
taking their mission to a new level. _

“In the last few years, public libraries have taken a stronger
stance of racial justice and queer rights and representation,” said
Alison Macrina, the director of the Library Freedom Project. “This
is reactive to that, certainly.”, ILLUSTRATION: JIANAN LIU/HUFFPOST

 

In Jamestown, Michigan, the local public library has about six months
until funding runs out and it may be forced to shut down.

Last week, residents voted against passing a millage, which raises
property taxes, to fund the Patmos Public Library. What could make a
town turn against its own library? Homophobic and hateful rhetoric —
specifically, the false idea that kids books with LGBTQ characters are
secretly about pornography or being used to abuse children, which has
exploded in the conservative worldview over the last year.

“50% millage increase to groom our kids? Vote no on library,” read
one sign seen around town before voters went to the polls.

Debbie Mikula, the executive director of the Michigan Library
Association, said she believes the millage didn’t pass because the
library has books with LGBTQ themes. “This is a full-out campaign
against the library,” she said.

Two library directors at Patmos left this spring. One said it was
because of online harassment and accusations of abusing children.

The library board has less than two weeks to get the millage back on
the ballot for a vote in November. If they don’t, it’s likely the
library will have to shut down permanently.

The people in Jamestown are “very, very conservative,” Mikula
said, “and they are holding the library hostage.”

Conservatives’ scorn for most government institutions — like
schools or public health agencies — is not a new phenomenon.
Consider the way right-wingers treated government officials
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to blunt the impact of the coronavirus pandemic
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But now, perhaps emboldened by openly right-wing extremist
politicians, they’ve set their sights on our public libraries.

“I have seen Republicans try to take over school boards my entire
lifetime, but this is totally different,” Alison Macrina, the
director of Library Freedom Project, a nonprofit organization, said
about the shift to public libraries.

In the same way that parents in the ’80s and ’90s fretted about
their children being swept up in a satanic cult, suburban moms are now
tossing and turning at night over the horrors of books that might
depict anything but conservative Christian morals.

“In the last few years, public libraries have taken a stronger
stance of racial justice and queer rights and representation,”
Macrina said. “This is reactive to that, certainly.”

And it’s a reaction being seen around the U.S.

A public library in Vinton, Iowa — a small town with about 5,000
residents — temporarily shut down in July after most of the staff
quit because of threats against its LGBTQ members. People in the town
complained that there were not enough books about former President
Donald Trump, that LGBTQ books were on display, and that members of
the LGBTQ community worked there, according to the Iowa Starting Line
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The library reopened with an all-volunteer staff.

In Llano County, Texas, the county commission made the public library
system shut down for a few days in December in order to review the
books available to children
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remove any deemed questionable. They specifically targeted the 850
books that GOP state Rep. Matt Kruse had personally deemed
inappropriate for kids earlier that year. He said
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list of books included those that “might make students feel
discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological
distress because of their race or sex.”

Suzette Baker, a librarian in the county, reportedly refused to go
along. She told local reporters in March that she had been fired from
her job
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not removing books, including a memoir by Jazz Jennings, a transgender
teen. “It is her biography of her life growing up as a transgender
teenager, and obviously this group thought that was too much for their
children to read,” Baker said. “No one is forcing their kids to
read anything.”

Now, residents are suing the county
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saying book bans are censorship and violate their First and 14th
Amendment rights.

[A person sits in the Houston Public Library on April 26, 2022 in
Houston, Texas. A group of local residents is suing Llano County in
federal court for the county's removal and censorship of library books
addressing racism and LGBTQ issues.]

A person sits in the Houston Public Library on April 26, 2022 in
Houston, Texas. A group of local residents is suing Llano County in
federal court for the county's removal and censorship of library books
addressing racism and LGBTQ issues.  BRANDON BELL VIA GETTY IMAGES

Free speech advocates have noticed that the targeting of public
libraries isn’t just confined to one or two states.

“It cannot be a coincidence that multiple people around the country
are getting the same message,” Jonathan Friedman, the director of
free expression and education programs at PEN America, told HuffPost.
“They’re taking some of that ‘stolen election’ energy and
directing it towards public schools and public libraries.”

But there isn’t really a singular group leading the charge —
instead different groups, including Moms for Liberty or Catholic Vote,
are pushing the same narratives.

“The nature of their organizing is that the ideas are bouncing from
group to group on Facebook,” Macrina said.

Moms For Liberty is a right-wing group with an unassuming name that
two former school board members launched in Florida in 2021 to fight
for “parental rights,” including battles against mask mandates and
“critical race theory.” The group now claims to have 160 chapters
in 33 states.

As Media Matters reported
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Moms For Liberty is partnering with conservative groups to flood
public libraries with children’s books _they_ approve of, like an
anti-trans children book or a book that paints Rush Limbaugh as hero
— with no regard for how parents of LGBTQ or Black children may
feel.

For Pride Month, the conservative political advocacy group Catholic
Vote launched a campaign dubbed “Hide the Pride.” In June, the
group encouraged parents to go to their public libraries and check out
any LGBTQ or other books conservatives don’t like — to prevent
other people from reading them. “Do you see rainbow-trans-BLM flags
everywhere? Including in your public, taxpayer-funded spaces? We do.
And we are meeting the challenge head on,” read one online flier
with instructions on how to “reclaim” the library.

The group encouraged people to go to their libraries in groups and
record themselves checking out the books, then posted photos online of
people doing just that. The group argued its campaign was fair because
parents hadn’t been consulted before these books were put in their
libraries.

The obvious solution for these parents is to just not allow their own
children to read about LGBTQ issues or racial justice. But that’s
not really why they’re targeting libraries.

“They’re not interested in compromising,” Friedman said.
“Their aim is to shut them down and stop them entirely.”

There’s a long tradition of book-banning in the U.S. In the 1980s,
the Moral Majority, the group founded by Jerry Falwell, was leading
the charge in book banning. Thanks to the election of Ronald Reagan,
Christian evangelicals’ influence was growing in public life — and
they objected to any books that didn’t reflect their beliefs back at
them.

But while the movements have echoes of each other, the new effort to
ban books has definitely changed.

The right-wing culture warriors also have the support of elected
officials. As they began their crusade, laws about book banning began
showing up in state legislatures.

“I’ve never seen that kind of effort to change laws,” Macrina
said. “You’re seeing that down to the really micro level now.”

Even Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) have spoken about book
bans in speeches, making book censorship red meat for Republican
voters.

“Reactionaries are now advertising themselves as Christian
Nationalists. They used to vehemently deny that they were,” Macrina
said. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a popular figure in the
right-wing movement, is now selling T-shirts
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herself as such.

These groups want to not only rid public libraries of books they
don’t like, but also to reshape public life as we know it. That’s
why they claim they’re being censored and are promoting liberty but
are only concerned with conservative views.

“It comes from a kind of Trumpian playbook,” Friedman said. “All
public institutions are enemies of the state.”

And it’s only a matter of time before they set their sights on
another institution.

* book bans
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* Public Libraries
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* Right-wing agenda
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