Library time!

Old-fashioned book control event

A WaPo opinion (not paywalled) discusses the current wave of attacks on libraries by America's radical right authoritarian wealth and power political movement:

Libraries can help end the culture wars. 

That’s why they’re under fire.

Nothing threatens authoritarianism like a quiet place to explore knowledge

There is an organized cultural assault on libraries in America, and the casualties are piling up. Fueled by “parents’ rights” groups like Moms for Liberty, public libraries saw the number of titles targeted for censorship surge 65 percent from 2022 to 2023, according to the American Library Association. Many school librarians have quit, exhausted by harassment and even death threats; during the 2021-2022 school year, 35 percent of districts nationwide had no librarian at all. At one library in Idaho, the situation became so dire that it announced it no longer permits minors on the premises without an adult (or a signed waiver), fearing prosecution under a new state law that levies fines for books deemed unacceptable for children.

Though book bans have been a familiar tactic in culture wars, today we’re witnessing an attack on libraries themselves as social institutions. There’s a reason for this escalation: For those trying to move the United States toward a less democratic, more authoritarian model of governance, there is power to be gained by sowing information chaos. Libraries, on the other hand, are free, publicly funded places that exist to clear away the fog of uncertainty by providing patrons with access to primary sources, a diversity of recorded experiences and a calm place to consider them.

In my new book, “Stories Are Weapons,” I investigate the origins of culture war. This form of conflict has its roots in military psyops, or weaponized messages that aim to intimidate, confuse and demoralize an adversary. During the Cold War, however, military tactics spilled over into our cultural debates. Sen. Joseph McCarthy held hearings in which he accused Americans of slipping communist messages into everything from popular movies to high school textbooks. English professor and conservative pundit E. Merrill Root took the fight to schools, pushing for book bans as a member of the group Operation Textbook and describing how educators could stop “collectivism” by purging libraries of subversive materials.

If psychological warfare planted the seeds for the culture war, the key to ending it might lie in that history, too. In 1948, when an Army psychological operations expert produced a guide to psychological war [available online for free], it included instructions on how to achieve postwar psychological disarmament. “The free circulation of books” was key.

Modern day book control event

By Germaine: Pro-library person