Burning Books

Burning books, both literally and figuratively, is coming back into fashion. Sadly, this makes a twisted sort of sense. As we willfully and deliberately forget more and more of our history, there remain fewer and fewer cultural mile markers, like the Nazis, to remind us that burning books is anti-intellectual at best, destructive and evil at worst.

In the eighty years since the Nazis first made book burning infamous, American popular culture has worked hard to convince the world that the burning of books has been done primarily by those on the Ideological Right. Mobs of book-burning Christians have been marauding through our books and films for decades, in movies like FOOTLOOSE where books are blamed for giving kids the kinds of ideas that lead to (gasp!) dancing, and in FIELD OF DREAMS where Amy Madigan’s character memorably calls the leader of a mob of would-be book bunners “Eva Braun” and asks if she’d like to step outside.

But the reality is that you have never had to work very hard to find potential burners on the Left, as well. Tipper Gore, is but one example. Mrs. Gore, I feel confident, would have happily burned Ozzy Osbourne and Dee Snider records by the truckload if not for the fact that doing so would have released tons of noxious fumes into the air, fumes for which her husband would one day have to buy carbon credits from himself.

But that was then and this is now. And while banning, burning, and otherwise damaging books used to be an equal opportunity ideological exercise, here in 2021, it seems that the book burners of the Right have (mostly) departed the field and abandoned it to an emerging Totalitarian Left.

Book burning, like any other horror of the modern world, exists on a spectrum of increasingly Totalitarian behaviors. Banning books and burning them are not exactly the same thing. Banning lacks the theatricality and emotional gut punch of a good bonfire. But they are kissing cousins and both are designed to do the same thing, to deny others the ability to read ideas that the burners find offensive. Just as Totalitarian societies don’t jump right into pogroms and mass killings, it takes a circuitous route to get to book burning. This is not to equate burning books with genocide, but to point out that throughout history, the former has typically been a leading indicator that the latter is just up the road and around the corner.

I first noticed that we appeared to be on the road to a new culture of Leftist book burning in 2014 when I read an op-ed by a woman called Lynn Stuart Parramore who was shopping in Trader Joe’s when she heard the Rolling Stones classic UNDER MY THUMB played on the store speakers. Deciding instantly, as everyone must in these problematic times, that the lyrics were potentially damaging to any female shopper who might have been a victim of domestic violence, she approched the store manager and heroically demanded that he stop playing that particular song and remove it from all future playlists. Ms. Parramore herself was not offended by the song (or so she claims), she was only worried about the well-being of a hypothetical woman who MIGHT be offended at some point in an unknowable future, and so the song had to go.

UNDER MY THUMB is three minutes and forty-one seconds long, what are the chances that in the less-then-four-minutes it took Trader Joe’s to play that song that a women who is both catastrophically emotionally damaged by abuse AND who knows the lyrics to UNDER MY THUMB would happen to walk into the store? Perhaps “remote” does not entirely cover it. Now imagine having nothing better to do with your day than to worry about the emotional wellbeing of such an unlikely hypothetical person. This is not healthy behavior.

But then, neither is burning books.

The second signpost on the way to the next great literary bonfire was more of a recurring event, like some bizarro National Holiday. Each and every Fall we are treated to the news that some Parent somewhere in America has recently discovered that Mark Twain’s HUCKLEBERRY FINN has the “N Word” in it, and must therefore be removed from the school Library. It’s become a tedious annual event, in the same way that we are forced to debate the “discovery” that BABY IT’S COLD OUTSIDE is really about date rape, every Christmas Season (Spoiler Alert: it isn’t).

The digitalization of media has made book burning easier than ever. You no longer need a match, a large pile of wood, and a horde of screeeching followers in frightening robes. Now, all you need is a “delete” key, and the power to be able to push it. Last year Warner Bros.’ new streaming service briefly pulled GONE WITH THE WIND off its platform before public outcry convinced them to change their minds. The movie returned, albeit this time with an introduction “warning” impressionable viewers about the problematic words and ideas they were about to see. It feels like a miracle that they haven’t come after BLAZING SADDLES or ANIMAL HOUSE or CADDYSHACK yet, like being the only survivor of a plane crash.

One wonders if this will be the future… where every book and film comes with a introductory warning. Where cinephiles who want to watch problematic movies meet in back alleys to exchange tattered old VHS copies, like Dissdents in Prague during the Cold War. If so, I hope this future is filled with scenes like the one from DEAD POETS SOCIETY where Mr. Keating urges his young charges to rip out J. Evans Pritchard’s tone deaf mathematical introduction to their poetry textbook.

“Be gone J. Evans Pritchard!” we’ll shout, before clicking “confirm” on our digital purchase of WHITE CHRISTMAS.

Now, you may be saying to yourself, “for an essay on book burning, I’ve seen a lot of smoke and not much flame.” Well, like I said, it’s a continuum… we’ll get there. The activists who would seek to limit what you can see, read, and hear have to test the waters periodically to see what they can get away with. Remember, it’s not progroms and genocide at eight o’clock on day one, you have to ease into it.

Before I left Twitter and its platform for the emotionally damaged and socially deranged, I saw America finally arrive at its book burning destiny. The trigger was HARRY POTTER author JK Rowling. Nevermind what she said, the details are as pointless as they are uninteresting. But under the theory that what she said (said, not did) had put people “in danger”, young historically ignorant TikTok users began to upload videos of themselves burning Ms. Rowling’s books, blissfully unaware of the footsteps in which they were goosestepping.

What comes next? I don’t know, but it won’t be pleasant. A great dismantling of the culture, I suspect, which will leave a void into which just about anything can rush. And if history has shown us anything, it’s that the ugliest, most violent ideologies always rush the fastest.

All I can really do is to leave you with this reminder. It has always been true, and will always be true, that if you are burning books, you are the villain in the story.

UPDATE: Thanks to Kurt Schilchter for the Schlichter-lanche, and welcome to all you GMF Washington-curious. Might I recommend NEVER AGAIN? as an excellent follow-up essay to this one? And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter (@GMFWashington) and Gab (@GeorgeMFWashington)