Re: [silk] bookburners are alive and well

["Christopher M. Kelty" <chris@xxxxxxxxx>]

<x-flowed>At 10:10 AM +0530 4/1/01, Udhay Shankar N wrote:
> Just in case we forget what censorship can do...the following story 
> is an example of one of the early steps on the slippery slope that 
> leads to things like Dachau. I am not joking.
>
> Udhay
>
> http://www.latimes.com/print/asection/20010328/t000026662.html


Nice Troll.  I'll bite.

In the US context, such outbursts of religious fervor, even if they 
don't take the form of book-burnings specifically, are 
extraordinairly common.  If there were a slippery slope we'd be at 
sea level by now, at least.  Nothing suggests a comparison with the 
rise to power of the Nazi Party in Deutschland, especially 
considering that the Nazi's were neither specifically religiously 
oriented, nor specifically censorship oriented.  Their attacks on 
"degenerate art" for instance, took the form of public state-funded 
quasi-pathologized exhibitions of it, not grass-roots community based 
destruction of it.  In the US, these people are dangerous only at a 
trans-local level, they infect school boards, local libraries, and 
city councils across the country and impose their own political-moral 
beliefs with the mandate of voters.  This is normal, if distasteful: 
when they are voted out, Harry Potter and Evolution go back into the 
schools.  At a national level the Christion Right is less organized, 
and less powerful than, say, the BJP, and therefore less likely to be 
able to implement sweeping centralized censorship, except in extreme 
cases where the Republican center agrees with them.  They are also 
christian americans, which means they hate all non christians 
equally, rather than focussing only on the jews :)

I say let them burn their books, the Time-Warner-AOL-EMI megamammoth 
will make more.

The thing that leads to the WWII scenario is the permanent 
installation of an illegitimate party in control of the gov't.  If 
George W. Bush were to declare America a one-party state, then we 
would have a serious problem, and Harry Potter fans would rise up in 
magical protest everywhere :).  As it stands, he's only managed to 
take over for four years.  Let's hope the far christian right never 
figures out how to manipulate the supreme court the way the 
republican party can...

ck



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