https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/gop-book-burning-dictatorship
May 1933: German soldiers and civilians give the
Nazi salute as thousands of books smoulder during one of the mass book-burnings
implemented throughout the country to destroy non-Aryan publications. (Photo
by Keystone/Getty Images)
Burning
Books and Destroying Education on the Path to Fascist Dictatorship
From Nazi Germany to the Pinochet
regime in Chile, global parallels with where this type of repression leads
should set off alarms.
Feb 28,
2023
Widening the lens on the escalating assault on education and
those who teach it offers chilling thoughts on the future of U.S. democracy.
From book bans to classroom demonizing trans youth and LGBTQ
lives, to eradicating the real history of the U.S. and its ongoing legacy on
racial and gender oppression, to the intimidation of educators and purging
those who don't toe the line, global parallels with where this repression leads
should set off alarms.
Chile provides a case study. After the 1973 coup, led by Augusto
Pinochet with U.S. support against democratically elected Socialist President
Salvador Allende, "the military seized control of campuses and swept out
those they felt sympathized with Allende rule," as the Christian Science Monitor put it.
Active-duty generals were appointed to run the universities and
primary and secondary schools were placed under the rule of mayors appointed by
Pinochet to promote full government control of classroom instruction.
Targeting educators was a priority with strict penalties imposed
on what could be taught, leading to the firing of thousands of university
professors and teachers, while others were forced out by sweeping cuts in
educator pay.
Privatization, sharp cuts in public education funding, and
corporate control of curricula was a major goal, including the elimination of
political science and sociology in favor of vocational and business programs,
and banning of texts.
The cuts and restrictions "sharply increased economic
discrimination in higher education," said Allende's former education
superintendent Iván Núñez, producing a privatized, corporatized school system
that became more elitist. Implicit was the recognition that an egalitarian
education system produces generations of young people who study the society
they live in, think critically, and pose a major impediment to dictatorial
rule. It would take 17 years until democracy finally was restored in Chile.
Comparisons with Nazi Germany are always fraught with
overstatement. But it is worth emphasizing Hitler's reign started not with
death camps, but with an onslaught on education and those it deemed as
undesirables. Just weeks after Hitler's rise to Chancellor in 1933, Germany
enacted a Civil Service law that as historian Jarrell Jackman wrote in The Muses Flee
Hitler, immediately "forced over 1,000 scholars from
their academic positions as either 'politically unreliable' or
'non-Aryan'."
On May 10, 1933, Nazi student groups carried out book burnings
in 34 university towns across Germany.
Comparisons with Nazi Germany are always fraught with
overstatement. But it is worth emphasizing Hitler's reign started not with
death camps, but with an onslaught on education and those it deemed as
undesirables.
On the bonfires went some
25,000 "un-German" books especially those by Jewish writers from
Albert Einstein to Sigmund Freud, socialists, and communists, like Bertolt
Brecht, August Bebel, and, of course, Karl Marx, literary and political critics
of fascism and the Nazi regime, and foreigners considered advocates of social
justice, such as Helen Keller targeted for championing rights for women,
workers, and the disabled.
Speaking at the largest book bonfire in Berlin, propaganda
minister Joseph Goebbels would declare that
"Jewish intellectualism is dead" and he endorsed the students' "right
to clean up the debris of the past." In the prescient words of banned,
19th century Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, "Where they burn books, they will
also ultimately burn people."
"Nazi mentality," wrote Jackman, "held that only
a small segment of humankind belonged among the chosen citizenry" and that
the 'undesirables' should be '"segregated from the rest of society." Those
defined as "non-Aryan" or undesirables—which would also include
people of color, lesbians and gays, the disabled, Gypsies, socialists,
communists and any other opponents of the regime "were linked together in
one form of conspiracy to destroy the purity of the German Volk."
"Since everyone was either supportive of German purity, or
too scared to speak up for fear retribution, the Nazi Party could push any
policy they wanted," writes Julia Rittenberg,
calling it "a necessity for dictatorial control. Fascist leaders seek to
crush any thoughts that might encourage resistance to their regime."
U.S. history is stuffed with examples of racial and gender
oppression, repression of those viewed as "undesirable," censorship
of education and history, and book banning, all intended to suppress any
perceived threat to the dominant political class and white supremacy. In the
wake of Trump's demagogy and attempted coup, the past two years illustrate the
most dangerous illustration of those attacks on democracy.
Last year alone, more than 1,600 books were banned from school
libraries, involving 138 school districts in 32 states, according to
a report from PEN America.
Books sympathetically portraying diversity, especially featuring
LGBTQ individuals and works, including children's books, describing struggles
against racism by Black, Latino and civil rights figures, and human sexuality
lead the list.
In Tennessee where one school district notoriously banned the
graphic novel series "Maus" about the Holocaust, Rep. Jerry Sexton,
sponsor of a bill to police school libraries, said he would burn books he
considered inappropriate. A Texas school district official told educators if
they kept books about the Holocaust in their classrooms, they would be required to offer "opposing"
viewpoints to comply with a new state law.
Since January, 2021, reports Education
Week, 44 states have introduced bills or taken other steps to restrict
teaching critical race theory or limit how teachers can discuss racism and
sexism; 18 states have imposed the bans and restrictions either through
legislation or other avenues.
After heavy criticism from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a likely
leading candidate for President in 2024, the national College Board on the
first day of Black History Month this February released an official curriculum
for its new Advanced Placement course in African American Studies that stripped key parts of its
content.
Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis
takes the stage in front of a sign reading "Awake Not Woke" at the
Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on February 24, 2022 in
Orlando, Florida.(Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
On top of the DeSantis' infamous "Don't Say Gay" and "Stop
Woke Act," bills, a bill introduced in late February would
bar colleges and universities from spending any money to fund educational
programs or activity that promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion, and could
eviscerate programs on African American, gender studies, and other vulnerable
curriculum.
Historian Robin D.G. Kelly describes these moves as
"attacking the whole concept of racial justice and equity. It's an ongoing
struggle to roll back anything that's perceived as diminishing white power.
They want to convince white working people… if they can get control of the
narrative inside classrooms, their lives would be better. Racism actually
damages all of our prospects and futures."
As in Chile and Germany, educators are a major target.
Multiple bills have threatened teachers with discipline, including termination,
fines, criminal penalties, and loss of their teaching credentials for perceived
violation of the laws, including the complaint of even one parent.
In Texas, Republican officials have called for criminal charges
against school officials who make certain books available to young adults.
In New Hampshire, a conservative mom's group is offering a $500 bounty to
catch teachers who break a state law prohibiting certain teachings about racism
and sexism.
A high school English teacher in Missouri lost her job following
parents' complaints that one of her assignments taught critical race theory after
assigning a worksheet titled "How Racially Privileged Are You?"
as prep material for reading the school-approved book "Dear Martin," a
novel about a Black high school student who is physically assaulted by a white
police officer.
In Tennessee, a teacher was fired after telling her class that
white privilege is a fact. In Texas, a Black principal lost his job after
parents accused him of promoting critical race theory based on a letter he had
written more than a year earlier, calling for the community to come together
and defeat systemic racism in the days following the murder of George Floyd.
DeSantis and Florida are again leading the charge. A substitute
teacher in Jacksonville, was fired after
posting a video to Twitter
showing rows of empty bookshelves at the school's library.
DeSantis insisted the video was fake, even though in Duval County Public Schools
administrators also instructed faculty to cover or remove their
classroom libraries, mentioning the felony risk in a video on how to comply with the new law.
Another teacher near Naples, FL was fired after a
classroom discussion prompted by LGBTQ students asking if they could create art
expressing their own sexualities and identities.
Preschool Storytime at the Portola
Valley Library in California.(Photo: San Mateo County Library)
DeSantis has also gone after teacher unions,
seeking to defund them, along with other restrictions, and the newest bill would
allow a faculty member's tenure to be reviewed "at any time."
Activists across the country are fighting back. In Indiana, for
example, a coalition of organizations mobilized to defeat two anti-critical
race theory bills after a Republican state senator urged
teachers to be impartial on "isms," and a history teacher went viral
for saying he refuses to be impartial when teaching Nazism.
And, in New Hampshire, a group called Granite State
Progress boasted wins in all
34 of the school board races where it supported candidates who pledged to
resist pressure to restrict the teaching of the history of racism.
"The history of Nazi book burning is one of the most
obvious antecedents to the censorship of books in the U.S.," notes Julia Rittenberg. "While book
banners and censorship supporters paint their concerns as specific to
contemporary issues, it's a common way to consolidate power."
In a commentary in
the New York Times, prominent historian, educator Henry Louis Gates
cited the work of historian Carter Woodson, pioneer in 1926 of what has become
Black History Month. Woodson was "keenly aware of the role of politics in
the classroom," said Gates, "if you can control a man's thinking, you
do not have to worry about his action."
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Donations can be sent
to Max Obuszewski, Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame Lane, Apt. 206,
Baltimore, MD 21212. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at]
comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives."
Eugene Victor Debs
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