Find Something to Burn
Book burning in Tennessee? Do you all recall when Gone With the Wind was temporarily pulled from HBO before being re-instated with an attached warning? Remember the reactive increase in sales as the movie soared to #1 on Amazon Prime? Remember the conservative outrage at the fact that it had been pulled at all?
We do.
It would seem, on the face of it, that the outcry from the movie’s removal is a cry to protect the integrity of history. That is, something produced at the time is a reflection of how people at the time (white people at the time) chose to view the Antebellum South. There’s an argument there as it does captivate the mentality, however wrong-minded it was, pervasive across the nation at the time. That mentality still persists today — that enslavement was a boon to the African’s who lived here, docile creatures unworthy of equality. Regardless of the mentality, it’s important to remember not only what really happened (through factual accounts), but also the national perspective and misinformation (which is writ large in Gone With the Wind).
Couple that outrage, though, to a book burnings (Tennessee), book restrictions (Texas, others) and the ‘viewpoint diversity’ of forcing teachers to provide an '“alternate view of the holocaust” (Texas and Tennessee), and a trend emerges. This isn’t a trend of protecting history. You have to look at what’s happening, and not the smokescreen around it.
The McMinn County Board of Education voted to remove the graphic novel Maus from McMinn County Schools because of its unnecessary use of profanity and nudity and its depiction of violence and suicide. — Daily KO
This is the smokescreen. Nudity and suicide — depicted in a graphic novel about the holocaust? Well, of course there is. Humans were tortured and killed in work camps, much like in the Antebellum South. They were stripped of their humanity, reduced to animals, and destroyed. Wasn’t a problem when the book was originally selected. Then, someone thought the truth was more important than a feel-good interpretation of history.
Ahem.
The point here is if you look at the trend, the books being banned or burned have a common theme: they tell the true story of what happened in America (The Bluest Eyes, The Confessions of Nat Turner to Between the World and Me) and what happened during the holocaust (Maus) for dubious reasons. All while many on the right also cloak any desire to help each other under the label of Socialism.
There’s consistency here. And despite being not politically affiliated, to not point out such things when we see them would be a show of cowardice and dishonorable. So here’s the flat truth. And there’s more of that in this podcast episode titled “Find Something to Burn”.
