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I like to use "The Turner Diaries" as a kind of litmus test for people who don't want to ban books. I notice that, while all of the books this article calls ou

I like to use "The Turner Diaries" as a kind of litmus test for people who don't want to ban books. I notice that, while all of the books this article calls out specifically are available at the Brooklyn Public Library - per their online catalog, "The Turner Diaries" is not and neither are any books by its author - either his real name or pseudonym. The Turner Diaries, for reference, is a white supremacist novel that is thought to have inspired the Oklahoma City Bombing. It's a pretty famously banned book. The reason I like to use this as a litmus test is that people often say something like "I'm against banning books" but what they mean is "I am for things I like". That's not surprising, almost everyone is for things they like. If you were really against banning books then it's strange that you only take this position for literature you like. I personally don't think The Turner Diaries should be made available to children and teens. I don't see what good that would do. But then, I also don't go around saying I'm against book banning. I think some books are appropriate for young people and some aren't and that we should ban the inappropriate books from contexts where young people would plausibly encounter them.

watwut 5y ago
The books being banned are more of antiracist. Maybe if the usual measure of freedom of speech did not consistently priviledged white supremacist books, as if those were more important then their oposition, the state of affairs would not be as it is.
aaron695 5y ago
vincent-manis 5y ago
Libraries can and do choose what books to keep in their collection. If a library chooses not to acquire a book, that isn't necessarily `banning'. If I write a book on dog poop art, a library may well decide that nobody is going to want to read it, and that acquiring the book would be a waste of budget and of shelf space. Banning can best be thought of as external. If a library has a book, and a politician (e.g., library board or school board member) demands the book be removed, that is a call for the book to be banned. Not all banning is external, to be sure. A library that refused to acquire books of interest to people of color, or to LGBTs, can definitely be said to be banning books. Librarians I have known have pretty much all had the opinion that, as much as possible, acquisitions should be responsive to the needs of the community, and would not be supportive of policies like that. As for the Turner Diaries, I'd echo the OP that, even if a library chose to include it in its collection (and thus spend money on it that would not be available to spend on other books), it should be held in a Special Collections division, available only on request. But my guess is that my dog poop art book would get more circulation than the Turner Diaries.
CPLX 5y ago
But is it a book with literary value? There’s a lot of books in the world, why do you feel this one is essential for a library to stock?
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  "Literary value" is a hard thing to define. It's a famous book that has inspired (negative) real world events. It has comparable Google search traffic to "The Black Flamingo", one of the books listed in the article as being available, despite being written in 1978. It captures the thinking of an under represented group of people - by which I mean white supremacists, not the kind of "white supremacists" who think affirmative action is bad, but the kind who literally explicitly want to exterminate non-white people.
  - slg 5y ago
    >"Literary value" is a hard thing to define. Which is why it should be decided by the people who run the libraries and not politicians. That is the difference between banning a book and a library choosing not to buy a book. Is the Turner Diaries banned or have libraries simply decided not to buy a copy?
    - PolygonSheep 5y ago
      Couldn't much the same thing be said about Florida schools "banning" books with so-called "critical race theory" and/or LGBTQ themes? Students aren't going to get expelled for reading these books. Their parents aren't going to be criminally charged for buying them for their kids to take to school and read. Everyone in Florida is welcome to buy as many copies of these "banned" books as they want. The schools in Florida have just chosen not to buy some books they feel didn't have educational value. So what's all the fuss about?
      - slg 5y ago
        >The schools in Florida have just chosen not to buy some books they feel didn't have educational value. So what's all the fuss about? The fuss is about the state deciding what Florida schools can and cannot do. Yes, I think the same concepts apply in Florida, but you are misstating what is happening there. The political wings of the government are making these decisions. I want the experts to make these decisions, the people on the ground running these libraries. The needs of a majority Hispanic school in Miami are going to be different than the needs of a rural majority white school outside of Lake City. Don't take tools out of the hands of the people running those libraries. Let them make the decisions instead of some politician trying to score points. The irony of this coming from the "small government" party shows that this is not a principled stand. It is motivated purely by politics and I don't like that.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bfgoodrich 5y ago
wfleming 5y ago
The Turner Diaries is, I think, a poor choice of litmus test for this. It was never picked up by a major publisher, and was basically always self-published as far as I know. Wikipedia gives an estimate of 200k-500k copies sold, total, since 1978: that’s not a lot! Libraries do have to make curatorial choices about what to stock, both physically and digitally. So it’s not surprising a lot of libraries don’t stock a book that was never widely published or sold many copies, regardless of political connotations. And as controversial books go, I don’t think the Turner Diaries is one of the ones that necessarily merits wider availability for “historical interest”. I’ve never read it, maybe you have, but from I understand it’s not even a particularly interesting book it itself, only for it’s connection to some right-wing terrorists like McVeigh. The fact it never sold much sort of indicates not many people want to read it, a good reason not to carry it! And for ebooks in particular, it’s worth remembering most libraries (including Brooklyn) outsource their digital catalog to a third party provider. So their curatorial choices are potentially limited by that as well. Again, self published book never widely published or sold: not surprising to me that the major ebook providers for libraries might not have it. As a litmus test against your litmus test, it’s worth noting that the BK library does carry other controversial books like Mein Kampf, physically and digitally. All of this to say that while politics is always going to influence curatorial choices of “merit”, I think suggesting that the Brooklyn library “banned” The Turner Diaries merely due to its absence from the catalog is a bit of a stretched conclusion.
- popcube 5y ago
  I almost was convinced by this point, but I guess we can find Mein Kampf in library
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  It would be better to have a suite of controversial books and check those - I agree. That wouldn't really be a "litmus test" though - that would be more of a "test suite" which is a bit more effort than I care to invest in the claims of random groups that they oppose book banning. A litmus test, by definition, has a singular pass/fail check. Regarding the popularity of The Turner Diaries - I believe I already addressed this. It has similar search volume, per Google Trends, as one of the example books from the article - "The Black Flamingo" - despite being published ~50 years earlier. So, I don't think popularity is a determining factor in what books the BPL is making available. Furthermore, effectively banned books, by definition, cannot be popular. If they were popular then the bans on them would not be effective. I feel that I've let my desire to engage in "point by point" internet-style arguments derail me though. Why the BPL does not have The Turner Diaries is beside my point - maybe they don't like it ideologically, maybe it's just not popular enough, maybe they've never heard of it - who knows. Instead, the point I want to be making is more like - "If you think book banning is bad, would you want to make this book that advocates for genociding non-white people available to kids?" Because you should test your principles at the limits and not on appealing special cases. A lefty 2SLQBTGIA+ activist may think and say that "Book banning is bad" when they look at a list of 1,500 books about gay sexuality being banned - but that doesn't mean they are actually against book banning, they might just be against things they like being banned. If you want to know if that lefty person is against book banning, find a book that they would hate and ask them how they feel about that. Similarly, if this article were published by a neo-Nazi institute of religious fundamentalism, I wouldn't be asking them "How about the Turner Diaries?" They would absolutely host that book and complain about it being banned. I'd ask them "How about the 1619 Project?" As I wrote in my original comment, I am actually for book banning. I think some books are inappropriate for young people and those books should be banned from contexts where young people are likely to encounter them. When someone comes along and says "I'm against book banning!" I feel the need to challenge that because I think book banning is fine and good.
jasonlotito 5y ago
And your qualifications to make this call as opposed to a professional like a librarian are?
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Numerous libraries will take recommendations for book purchases. Acting on those tends to scale with the reputation of author and/or publisher, but there are reasonably good odds.
- abnry 5y ago
  It is obviously not an "expert" issue, but a values issue, which anyone is able to argue. In fact, this common equivocation of "expert knowledge" with "value judgments" is a scourge on our modern discourse.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > And your qualifications to make this call as opposed to a professional like a librarian are? This is a... stunningly helpless and pathetic appeal to authority. Librarians are professionals in the field of locating information within a collection. They are not professionals in the field of what books people should or shouldn't read. That is a moral question; the relevant professional would be a priest or similar.
vmception 5y ago
so where is a good example of that litmus test being passed, where self published books are also routinely hosted?
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  I think Library Genesis is an excellent example. As a quick test they host both The Turner Diaries and The 1619 Project. https://libgen.li/ https://libgen.li/ I would believe the people who run libgen if they said they were against book banning - at least until I discovered the books that they did ban, if there are any.
  - robonerd 5y ago
    Probably a better test for Library Genesis would be books that are notorious in Russia (whatever those might be, I don't know.) I doubt the Turner Diaries has much notoriety in Russia, due to the language barrier if nothing else.
    - HWR_14 5y ago
      Indeed. If it's supported (tacitly or explicitly) by the Russian government, I would expect them to have books that polarize Americans.
      - mardifoufs 5y ago
        Okay, but what russian books are banned on libgen? Because otherwise this is just such a weird conspiracy. The russian government is funding niche fringe books on a niche website to divide Americans? But also not censoring anything that would hurt their own cabale?
        HWR_14 5y ago
        My point was more "of the books that would be banned, these are not the right type of books." I don't speak Russian, but I would doubt they have anti-Putin books in Russian or in English. That seems bad for the curators health.
jeffbee 5y ago
I think this choice of litmus test say a great deal about you, and basically nothing about the phenomenon of banned books.
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  If it says a "great deal" then surely you could elaborate beyond a single vague sentence.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- Tao331 5y ago
  What's so bad about it? If someone says they are against banning books, asking "what do you mean by that?" may not get you an honest response due to the claimant not necessarily considering their position thoroughly. Checking for the Turner Diaries seems like a good quick and dirty test to see what they really mean.
paxys 5y ago
Where is the line between banning and just not caring about a book? I have written a book of my own. No library in the world has it. No publisher chose to pick it up. Does that mean I am the most "banned" author in the world? Or maybe people have deemed that what I wrote is just not worth their time?
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  The line is drawn by what you think the underlying motive is or would be. If you asked the BPL to host your book our shared assumption is that they would decline because they don't have infinite space and there are a large number of books out there. If their reasoning was that they thought your content was offensive or would inspire bad things in your audience then we would consider them to be "banning" your book.
  - paxys 5y ago
    So then how do you know which one of these it was when you apply your test?
    - ALittleLight 5y ago
      I don't know. I just guess. It's not a completely random guess. Context informs the guess. For example, all the examples they give, and the books I saw when I scrolled through the underlying list their article is based on, seem to be about and banned for having gay sex, sexual abuse of children, sex with children, and racism. If they were equally interested in all banned books I think it would be an odd coincidence for all of their examples to be in that narrow range of topics. There are no books about how to run drug labs, commit genocide, or burn heretics among their examples? Odd...
      - caslon 5y ago
        Most of the latter... aren't banned? Like, at all. They aren't so popular, but you can definitely find books on chemical synthesis in libraries.
bmacho 5y ago
> The reason I like to use this as a litmus test is that people often say something like "I'm against banning books" but what they mean is "I am for things I like". I am positive that 98%+ of people that state the former mean the former.
- Tao331 5y ago
  I'm positive that most people who mean the former will backpedal, provide conditions and loopholes, or become outright angry and start calling you a nazi if you make them actually think about it.
  - standardUser 5y ago
    Sounds like you spend a lot of time arguing online. That's bound to give you a horribly skewed view of "most people".
hkt 5y ago
Maybe the most reasonable interpretation of people's professed desire to not ban books places them into two categories: books that inspire acts of terrorism or are otherwise tantamount to inciting, and books which introduce political or personal concepts which a small number of people object to. Eliding the difference between the two seems a little absurd, if I may say so.

watwut 5y ago

The books being banned are more of antiracist. Maybe if the usual measure of freedom of speech did not consistently priviledged white supremacist books, as if those were more important then their oposition, the state of affairs would not be as it is.

aaron695 5y ago

vincent-manis 5y ago

Libraries can and do choose what books to keep in their collection. If a library chooses not to acquire a book, that isn't necessarily `banning'. If I write a book on dog poop art, a library may well decide that nobody is going to want to read it, and that acquiring the book would be a waste of budget and of shelf space. Banning can best be thought of as external. If a library has a book, and a politician (e.g., library board or school board member) demands the book be removed, that is a call for the book to be banned. Not all banning is external, to be sure. A library that refused to acquire books of interest to people of color, or to LGBTs, can definitely be said to be banning books. Librarians I have known have pretty much all had the opinion that, as much as possible, acquisitions should be responsive to the needs of the community, and would not be supportive of policies like that. As for the Turner Diaries, I'd echo the OP that, even if a library chose to include it in its collection (and thus spend money on it that would not be available to spend on other books), it should be held in a Special Collections division, available only on request. But my guess is that my dog poop art book would get more circulation than the Turner Diaries.

CPLX 5y ago

But is it a book with literary value? There’s a lot of books in the world, why do you feel this one is essential for a library to stock?

ALittleLight 5y ago
"Literary value" is a hard thing to define. It's a famous book that has inspired (negative) real world events. It has comparable Google search traffic to "The Black Flamingo", one of the books listed in the article as being available, despite being written in 1978. It captures the thinking of an under represented group of people - by which I mean white supremacists, not the kind of "white supremacists" who think affirmative action is bad, but the kind who literally explicitly want to exterminate non-white people.
- slg 5y ago
  >"Literary value" is a hard thing to define. Which is why it should be decided by the people who run the libraries and not politicians. That is the difference between banning a book and a library choosing not to buy a book. Is the Turner Diaries banned or have libraries simply decided not to buy a copy?
  - PolygonSheep 5y ago
    Couldn't much the same thing be said about Florida schools "banning" books with so-called "critical race theory" and/or LGBTQ themes? Students aren't going to get expelled for reading these books. Their parents aren't going to be criminally charged for buying them for their kids to take to school and read. Everyone in Florida is welcome to buy as many copies of these "banned" books as they want. The schools in Florida have just chosen not to buy some books they feel didn't have educational value. So what's all the fuss about?
    - slg 5y ago
      >The schools in Florida have just chosen not to buy some books they feel didn't have educational value. So what's all the fuss about? The fuss is about the state deciding what Florida schools can and cannot do. Yes, I think the same concepts apply in Florida, but you are misstating what is happening there. The political wings of the government are making these decisions. I want the experts to make these decisions, the people on the ground running these libraries. The needs of a majority Hispanic school in Miami are going to be different than the needs of a rural majority white school outside of Lake City. Don't take tools out of the hands of the people running those libraries. Let them make the decisions instead of some politician trying to score points. The irony of this coming from the "small government" party shows that this is not a principled stand. It is motivated purely by politics and I don't like that.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

bfgoodrich 5y ago

wfleming 5y ago

The Turner Diaries is, I think, a poor choice of litmus test for this. It was never picked up by a major publisher, and was basically always self-published as far as I know. Wikipedia gives an estimate of 200k-500k copies sold, total, since 1978: that’s not a lot! Libraries do have to make curatorial choices about what to stock, both physically and digitally. So it’s not surprising a lot of libraries don’t stock a book that was never widely published or sold many copies, regardless of political connotations. And as controversial books go, I don’t think the Turner Diaries is one of the ones that necessarily merits wider availability for “historical interest”. I’ve never read it, maybe you have, but from I understand it’s not even a particularly interesting book it itself, only for it’s connection to some right-wing terrorists like McVeigh. The fact it never sold much sort of indicates not many people want to read it, a good reason not to carry it! And for ebooks in particular, it’s worth remembering most libraries (including Brooklyn) outsource their digital catalog to a third party provider. So their curatorial choices are potentially limited by that as well. Again, self published book never widely published or sold: not surprising to me that the major ebook providers for libraries might not have it. As a litmus test against your litmus test, it’s worth noting that the BK library does carry other controversial books like Mein Kampf, physically and digitally. All of this to say that while politics is always going to influence curatorial choices of “merit”, I think suggesting that the Brooklyn library “banned” The Turner Diaries merely due to its absence from the catalog is a bit of a stretched conclusion.

popcube 5y ago
I almost was convinced by this point, but I guess we can find Mein Kampf in library
ALittleLight 5y ago
It would be better to have a suite of controversial books and check those - I agree. That wouldn't really be a "litmus test" though - that would be more of a "test suite" which is a bit more effort than I care to invest in the claims of random groups that they oppose book banning. A litmus test, by definition, has a singular pass/fail check. Regarding the popularity of The Turner Diaries - I believe I already addressed this. It has similar search volume, per Google Trends, as one of the example books from the article - "The Black Flamingo" - despite being published ~50 years earlier. So, I don't think popularity is a determining factor in what books the BPL is making available. Furthermore, effectively banned books, by definition, cannot be popular. If they were popular then the bans on them would not be effective. I feel that I've let my desire to engage in "point by point" internet-style arguments derail me though. Why the BPL does not have The Turner Diaries is beside my point - maybe they don't like it ideologically, maybe it's just not popular enough, maybe they've never heard of it - who knows. Instead, the point I want to be making is more like - "If you think book banning is bad, would you want to make this book that advocates for genociding non-white people available to kids?" Because you should test your principles at the limits and not on appealing special cases. A lefty 2SLQBTGIA+ activist may think and say that "Book banning is bad" when they look at a list of 1,500 books about gay sexuality being banned - but that doesn't mean they are actually against book banning, they might just be against things they like being banned. If you want to know if that lefty person is against book banning, find a book that they would hate and ask them how they feel about that. Similarly, if this article were published by a neo-Nazi institute of religious fundamentalism, I wouldn't be asking them "How about the Turner Diaries?" They would absolutely host that book and complain about it being banned. I'd ask them "How about the 1619 Project?" As I wrote in my original comment, I am actually for book banning. I think some books are inappropriate for young people and those books should be banned from contexts where young people are likely to encounter them. When someone comes along and says "I'm against book banning!" I feel the need to challenge that because I think book banning is fine and good.

jasonlotito 5y ago

And your qualifications to make this call as opposed to a professional like a librarian are?

dredmorbius 5y ago
Numerous libraries will take recommendations for book purchases. Acting on those tends to scale with the reputation of author and/or publisher, but there are reasonably good odds.
abnry 5y ago
It is obviously not an "expert" issue, but a values issue, which anyone is able to argue. In fact, this common equivocation of "expert knowledge" with "value judgments" is a scourge on our modern discourse.
thaumasiotes 5y ago
> And your qualifications to make this call as opposed to a professional like a librarian are? This is a... stunningly helpless and pathetic appeal to authority. Librarians are professionals in the field of locating information within a collection. They are not professionals in the field of what books people should or shouldn't read. That is a moral question; the relevant professional would be a priest or similar.

vmception 5y ago

so where is a good example of that litmus test being passed, where self published books are also routinely hosted?

ALittleLight 5y ago
I think Library Genesis is an excellent example. As a quick test they host both The Turner Diaries and The 1619 Project. https://libgen.li/ https://libgen.li/ I would believe the people who run libgen if they said they were against book banning - at least until I discovered the books that they did ban, if there are any.
- robonerd 5y ago
  Probably a better test for Library Genesis would be books that are notorious in Russia (whatever those might be, I don't know.) I doubt the Turner Diaries has much notoriety in Russia, due to the language barrier if nothing else.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    Indeed. If it's supported (tacitly or explicitly) by the Russian government, I would expect them to have books that polarize Americans.
    - mardifoufs 5y ago
      Okay, but what russian books are banned on libgen? Because otherwise this is just such a weird conspiracy. The russian government is funding niche fringe books on a niche website to divide Americans? But also not censoring anything that would hurt their own cabale?
      - HWR_14 5y ago
        My point was more "of the books that would be banned, these are not the right type of books." I don't speak Russian, but I would doubt they have anti-Putin books in Russian or in English. That seems bad for the curators health.

jeffbee 5y ago

I think this choice of litmus test say a great deal about you, and basically nothing about the phenomenon of banned books.

ALittleLight 5y ago
If it says a "great deal" then surely you could elaborate beyond a single vague sentence.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Tao331 5y ago
What's so bad about it? If someone says they are against banning books, asking "what do you mean by that?" may not get you an honest response due to the claimant not necessarily considering their position thoroughly. Checking for the Turner Diaries seems like a good quick and dirty test to see what they really mean.

paxys 5y ago

Where is the line between banning and just not caring about a book? I have written a book of my own. No library in the world has it. No publisher chose to pick it up. Does that mean I am the most "banned" author in the world? Or maybe people have deemed that what I wrote is just not worth their time?

ALittleLight 5y ago
The line is drawn by what you think the underlying motive is or would be. If you asked the BPL to host your book our shared assumption is that they would decline because they don't have infinite space and there are a large number of books out there. If their reasoning was that they thought your content was offensive or would inspire bad things in your audience then we would consider them to be "banning" your book.
- paxys 5y ago
  So then how do you know which one of these it was when you apply your test?
  - ALittleLight 5y ago
    I don't know. I just guess. It's not a completely random guess. Context informs the guess. For example, all the examples they give, and the books I saw when I scrolled through the underlying list their article is based on, seem to be about and banned for having gay sex, sexual abuse of children, sex with children, and racism. If they were equally interested in all banned books I think it would be an odd coincidence for all of their examples to be in that narrow range of topics. There are no books about how to run drug labs, commit genocide, or burn heretics among their examples? Odd...
    - caslon 5y ago
      Most of the latter... aren't banned? Like, at all. They aren't so popular, but you can definitely find books on chemical synthesis in libraries.

bmacho 5y ago

> The reason I like to use this as a litmus test is that people often say something like "I'm against banning books" but what they mean is "I am for things I like". I am positive that 98%+ of people that state the former mean the former.

Tao331 5y ago
I'm positive that most people who mean the former will backpedal, provide conditions and loopholes, or become outright angry and start calling you a nazi if you make them actually think about it.
- standardUser 5y ago
  Sounds like you spend a lot of time arguing online. That's bound to give you a horribly skewed view of "most people".

hkt 5y ago

Maybe the most reasonable interpretation of people's professed desire to not ban books places them into two categories: books that inspire acts of terrorism or are otherwise tantamount to inciting, and books which introduce political or personal concepts which a small number of people object to. Eliding the difference between the two seems a little absurd, if I may say so.