4 ms·

What I find absurd is the author takes the stance that banning books is wrong, but not so subtly hints that so called “racist” books should be banned. I find t

What I find absurd is the author takes the stance that banning books is wrong, but not so subtly hints that so called “racist” books should be banned. I find this contradictory.

adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
IMO the author's point is that banning books is wrong, and even if it isn't, it makes no sense that his book is banned while Mein Kampf isn't.
DangitBobby 4y ago
Or put more charitably, their stance is if you _must_ ban books for the safety of prisoners, racist ones are a good candidate, but having not banned racist books indicates it's not about safety.
- imwillofficial 4y ago
  I could see that logic.
- mindslight 4y ago
  By my superficial understanding, the main social organization in most prisons is gangs based around racial lines (eg Aryan Brotherhood) so anything that can raise the temperature is a poor idea.
kingkawn 4y ago
[flagged]
czx4f4bd 4y ago
> so called “racist” books Setting aside questions about the morality of banning books, why is "racist" in scare quotes here? The only two books I saw the author explicitly note as being unbanned were Mein Kampf and the Turner Diaries. Are you suggesting that these works are falsely maligned and not truly racist?
- imwillofficial 4y ago
  Because the books he labeled racist came from a list like the ADL. (I might be wrong on the org). In recent times these types of popular lists have been used to call all sorts of things racist which were not so. Like the book, to kill a mockingbird for example being recently banned in many school districts.
  - QuarterReptile 4y ago
    If you're talking about the author, she cited SPLC. I'm not familiar with ADL, but I'd be surprised if they're more ill-suited for assembling blacklists of racist reading material than SPLC.
    - mardifoufs 4y ago
      The ADL was originally founded to protect a rapist that tried to get a black man that worked for him accused for the rape he committed in Atlanta but failed. It also advocates for an ethnostate in israel. That completely destroys any credibility it has.
      - czx4f4bd 4y ago
        The original article cited the SPLC, not the ADL, so this has literally nothing to do with the topic at hand except that the GP commenter's mind for some reason jumped to the ADL while trying to defend books about murdering Jews and other minorities.
        imwillofficial 4y ago
        Hardly defending, I’m just no fan of censorship, including the authors book. What I don’t like is lists of books we accept as bad without reading them ourselves.
  - czx4f4bd 4y ago
    It would have taken you two minutes of investigation to realize that these books are nothing like To Kill a Mockingbird. You could have read the SPLC article that the author linked, which lists numerous books explicitly promoting white supremacy, violence against minorities, and ultimately the extermination of anyone who isn't white. Or you could've just looked up the books' summaries and a few choice quotes to see how overtly racist they are. From Mein Kampf: > The Jews were responsible for bringing Negroes into the Rhineland, with the ultimate idea of bastardizing the white race which they hate and thus lowering its cultural and political level so that the Jew might dominate. For as long as a people remain racially pure and are conscious of the treasure of their blood, they can never be overcome by the Jew. Never in this world can the Jew become master of any people except a bastardized people. From the Turner Diaries, in an extended passage describing the author's extermination fantasy, much of which is too grotesque to even share: > There are many thousands of hanging female corpses like that in this city tonight, all wearing identical placards around their necks. They are the White women who were married to or living with Blacks, with Jews, or with other non-White males. There are also a number of men wearing the I-defiled-my-race placard, but the women easily outnumber them seven or eight to one. On the other hand, about ninety per cent of the corpses with the I-betrayed-my-race placards are men, and overall the sexes seem to be roughly balanced.

What I find absurd is the author takes the stance that banning books is wrong, but not so subtly hints that so called “racist” books should be banned. I find this contradictory.

adgjlsfhk1 4y ago

IMO the author's point is that banning books is wrong, and even if it isn't, it makes no sense that his book is banned while Mein Kampf isn't.

DangitBobby 4y ago

Or put more charitably, their stance is if you _must_ ban books for the safety of prisoners, racist ones are a good candidate, but having not banned racist books indicates it's not about safety.

imwillofficial 4y ago
I could see that logic.
mindslight 4y ago
By my superficial understanding, the main social organization in most prisons is gangs based around racial lines (eg Aryan Brotherhood) so anything that can raise the temperature is a poor idea.

kingkawn 4y ago

[flagged]

czx4f4bd 4y ago

> so called “racist” books Setting aside questions about the morality of banning books, why is "racist" in scare quotes here? The only two books I saw the author explicitly note as being unbanned were Mein Kampf and the Turner Diaries. Are you suggesting that these works are falsely maligned and not truly racist?

imwillofficial 4y ago
Because the books he labeled racist came from a list like the ADL. (I might be wrong on the org). In recent times these types of popular lists have been used to call all sorts of things racist which were not so. Like the book, to kill a mockingbird for example being recently banned in many school districts.
- QuarterReptile 4y ago
  If you're talking about the author, she cited SPLC. I'm not familiar with ADL, but I'd be surprised if they're more ill-suited for assembling blacklists of racist reading material than SPLC.
  - mardifoufs 4y ago
    The ADL was originally founded to protect a rapist that tried to get a black man that worked for him accused for the rape he committed in Atlanta but failed. It also advocates for an ethnostate in israel. That completely destroys any credibility it has.
    - czx4f4bd 4y ago
      The original article cited the SPLC, not the ADL, so this has literally nothing to do with the topic at hand except that the GP commenter's mind for some reason jumped to the ADL while trying to defend books about murdering Jews and other minorities.
      - imwillofficial 4y ago
        Hardly defending, I’m just no fan of censorship, including the authors book. What I don’t like is lists of books we accept as bad without reading them ourselves.
- czx4f4bd 4y ago
  It would have taken you two minutes of investigation to realize that these books are nothing like To Kill a Mockingbird. You could have read the SPLC article that the author linked, which lists numerous books explicitly promoting white supremacy, violence against minorities, and ultimately the extermination of anyone who isn't white. Or you could've just looked up the books' summaries and a few choice quotes to see how overtly racist they are. From Mein Kampf: > The Jews were responsible for bringing Negroes into the Rhineland, with the ultimate idea of bastardizing the white race which they hate and thus lowering its cultural and political level so that the Jew might dominate. For as long as a people remain racially pure and are conscious of the treasure of their blood, they can never be overcome by the Jew. Never in this world can the Jew become master of any people except a bastardized people. From the Turner Diaries, in an extended passage describing the author's extermination fantasy, much of which is too grotesque to even share: > There are many thousands of hanging female corpses like that in this city tonight, all wearing identical placards around their necks. They are the White women who were married to or living with Blacks, with Jews, or with other non-White males. There are also a number of men wearing the I-defiled-my-race placard, but the women easily outnumber them seven or eight to one. On the other hand, about ninety per cent of the corpses with the I-betrayed-my-race placards are men, and overall the sexes seem to be roughly balanced.