Wave of Right-Wing Censorship Continues, but It Isn't New
The wave of right-wing censorship that is pummeling classrooms and school libraries across the country continues to grow. Over the last year, censorship efforts have reached a fever pitch – with the American Library Association recording 330 challenges to books, “in the last three months of 2021 alone.”1 These challenges have primarily targeted books about people of color, LGBT people, and other marginalized groups and perspectives, and they have been funded by wealthy, secretive groups and donors. None of this is a new phenomenon, however, and looking back at previous waves of censorship provides some lessons for all those who actually believe in free speech to fight back.
In an earlier post2, I discussed how the wave of right-wing censorship in the middle of the 20th century targeted books, especially textbooks, that right-wing groups felt were too left-wing. Individuals like E. Merrill Root and Allen Zoll fought hard to ban books throughout the country. These were usually on dubious grounds, such as word counts for different political figures, rather than on the merit and substance of the book. The uniting fear behind many of these efforts was a supposed communist conspiracy to infiltrate education.
The parallels to the contemporary wave of right-wing censorship are numerous. Fears of communist subversion have been replaced by equally unfounded fears of “critical race theory.” As before, groups backed by wealthy donors have used the appearance of grassroots organizing to help legitimize their censorship efforts. Instead of the Guardians of American Education, today there is Moms for Liberty and Parents Defending Education. Once again, pressure campaigns against school boards to censor materials have succeeded in banning books. Just as before, the censors use senseless double-speak to make their aims more palatable — claiming to stand up for liberty and freedom while taking every opportunity to stifle that freedom for students. Moms for Liberty, for instance, declares that they are “on a mission to stoke the fires of liberty.”3 while working to smother liberty by denying students the opportunity to read books with differing perspectives in school libraries.
Our response should be informed by these parallels, paying attention to the ways in which censorship has been challenged in these earlier instances. Several things stand out as successful. One is making censorship efforts public, which gives free speech groups a chance to respond to censorship efforts. A second is exposing groups and their funding sources, which undermines their cultivated public appearance of being grassroots concerned parents. A third is proactively approaching school boards to promote free inquiry in the schools; get there before they do. Finally, challenging the illogical nature of censorship and the claims of censoring groups (including that they are not for censorship which they will claim), can reduce support for their efforts. That resisting censorship can be successful is shown in recent successes in overturning book bans in Pennsylvania and Virginia.
This current tsunami of censorship is larger than in recent years, to be sure, but it is hardly unprecedented. If we take some lessons from the past, we will be able to withstand it and come out the other side with free speech and free inquiry in public schools intact.
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3.Here