Sparkling plots

Book censorship in Russia threatens to turn into books. This is how this happens in other countries

At the end of December, “Free Space” became known about the initiative of the Moscow Department of Culture: Moscow libraries began to lower lists of books subject to seizure. Among them are the works of Eduard Limonov, Stephen Fry, Oksana Vasyakina, Ksenia Bourghskaya, Michael Cunningham and others; In general, books with LGBT heroes. Even the sexology textbook Igor Kon (presumably - for refusing to recognize homosexuality with a disease) and the book of the conservative philosopher Vasily Rozanov, as well as a classic like Virginia Wulf and Mikhail Kuzmin, were prescribed. The seized books were ordered to be submitted to the waste paper - that is, either to process, or simply burn at the landfill. All this happens against the backdrop of the recent adoption of the Law on the full ban on LGBT Propaganda in Russia, the initiator of which was the State Duma deputy Alexander Khinshtein.

There would be to declare the burning of books by another Russian “traditional value”, but it suddenly turns out that in the sense of book prohibitions and censorship, Russia, in fact, simply copies the odious practices of other countries. New Europe has collected cases of prohibitions of recent years that ended in the burning of books.

USA

The list is opened by the United States, where the situation with book censorship, although not as deplorable as in Russia - at least no one opens the “witch hunt” at the federal level - but has worsened much over the past year. According to the Associations of Library of America, only from January to August 2022, 681 attempts to ban or withdrawing books from library funds throughout the country were recorded; The number of names that have tried to ban exceeds 1600. Pen America's human rights organization counted more than two and a half thousand initiatives to withdraw individual books from schools and libraries.

The southern states - Texas, Tennessee and Florida distinguished themselves most of all in the censorship.

Basically, books with LGBT content, which the ultra-right are considered “propaganda” and almost “molesticks”, fall into the lists. However, not only: activists demanded to remove books, the heroes of which were colored Americans. So, Tony Morrison - for a minute, Lauretes of the Nobel Prize in Literature, enter the top of books that fall under the ban and the “most blue eyes”. In one of the schools, Tennessi was banned by Mouse Arta Spiegelman - a classic anti -fascist comic book. In addition, in some cases, they demanded to remove books on American history and criticism of racial theory from school and library shelves. According to right -handed activists, such books force schoolchildren to "critically perceive the history of the country."

Basically, prohibitive initiatives come from activist groups: Pen counted them more than fifty throughout the country, among them the parent committees of schools. However, sometimes officials are directly engaged in censorship: for example, a deputy from the Republican Party in the House of Texas Matt Krause compiled a list of 850 books and demanded that all schools of the state report whether these names in school libraries are available and what you plan to do with them. In Virginia, two politicians tried to file a lawsuit against the libraries for refusing to remove books from the turnover, but the court ruled that their demand contradicts the constitution - like the federal law on the obscenitability that activists referred to.

Not without curioses. In the same Tennes, a pastor named Greg Lok, known for his support for the theory of the Qanon conspiracy, organized the burning of “satanic” books , as well as Tarot cards. The event was alerted by a gay pair, who threw the Bible into the fire and exclaimed "Glory to Satan!" After a couple of minutes, young people were noticed, after which they had to retire.

In general, a comparison with Russia will not be in favor of the latter: at the federal level, the initiatives of radical activists to ban books are not supported, the Americans are generally configured against censorship, and the libraries launch more and more promotions in support of colleagues. Nevertheless, the pressure on the industry does not decrease: the librarians are forced to quit due to online gross and protests of right-wing racks.

Türkiye

Fethullah Gulen is a Muslim preacher and philosopher. Erdogan's regime considers it responsible for trying to try the coup in 2016, when some of the Turkish military decided to shift the government. As a result, 204 people were killed, more than two thousand people were injured.

After the failure of the coup, Erdogan launched an unprecedented flywheel of repressions: 30 publishers, 200 publications were closed, over 5,000 teachers were dismissed from universities, and eighty writers were under investigation, six of them later received a lot of prison deadlines. Erdogan government measures reached the point of absurdity:

The ban on mathematics textbooks for the phrases “line from point f to point g” (initials of Fethullah Gulen) fell under the ban)

And books with the mention of the American state of Pennsylvania, where Gulen is allegedly hiding. In 2019, the Minister of Education of Turkey Zia Selchuk reported on the destruction of more than three hundred thousand books "related to the teachings of Gulen." Moreover, according to what criteria such books are revealed, the authorities are not specified.

Canada

In 2019, in the Canadian province of Ontario, the administration of Catholic schools (about thirty schools) came up with the initiative to destroy books in which the indigenous peoples of Canada were “denied”. Five thousand copies from school libraries, a total of 165 items, including the Tintin in America, the Belgian artist Erzhe and the comic book about the adventures of the Asterix and Obelix, as well as the novelization of the Demakhontas cartoon, went to the bonfires of the “cleansing flame” (this is the official name for the destruction of books).

Biographies of French researchers of Canada, as well as any images of Indians without clothing, were banned. The initiators justified the ban by the fact that

The books "promote stereotypes about indigenous peoples and are in themselves dangerous",

And the very practice of burning books was considered "harmless."

However, books written by the authors-representatives of indigenous peoples were also to be destroyed, for example, a novel for Michel Noel’s children “Winter Indian” or Young Edalta Silvi Brien “The Case in the Indian College”, according to the plot of which the college student protects the representative of the indigenous American peoples, suspected in the fag of the building.

The initiative caused bewilderment in the public. While the authors of the burned books warned of the return of the times of Catholic censorship, the Ontario authorities actually retreated from discussing the problem, calling the list of names in school libraries the work of the schools themselves.

Hong Kong

On June 30, 2020, despite many thousands of protests, a law on national security against Hong Kong was adopted in China. As a result, Hong Kong actually lost autonomy and fell under the total control of Beijing. This could not but affect free speech: for example, the next day after the adoption of the law, the books of Joshua Vonga and Tanya Chen, political thinkers of the liberal, began to disappear from public libraries.

By 2021, 29 names of books on the suppression of protests on Tiananmen Square, as well as literature, which described the Hong Kong protests of 2019–2020 were unavailable. In two schools, public burning books took place, to which the official Beijing responded with the recommendation to follow the protocol for the seizure of books from the libraries and not to fall into hype. At the same time, a single list of literature that fell under the ban was not published: this resembles the practice of current seizures in Russian libraries, when books are actually removed from the turnover at random.