Conservative activists, led by a local pastor and outspoken Israel advocate, pushed the district, Mission CISD, to excise books mostly about gender, sexuality and race. Their demands represented an extreme version of a nationwide culture war over books that has played out in recent years — and ensnared a number of books with Jewish themes.

In Mission, the long list of books on the chopping block includes a recent illustrated adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary; both volumes of Art Spiegelman’s Holocaust graphic memoir “Maus”; “The Fixer,” Bernard Malamud’s novel about a historical instance of antisemitic blood libel; and “Kasher in the Rye,” a ribald memoir by Jewish comedian Moshe Kasher.

  • hexabs@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I simply cannot wrap my head around this. How is this defensible? What possible justification could they provide for banning Maus?? Anne’s Diary?? How could you even link these to any contemporary agenda?

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      See, us Jews control Hollywood, so all of that is just PR messaging about our Holocaust lie. And we also control the banks, so we’re the ones buying these books and bribing school librarians to put them on the shelves. Whereupon, I guess, something about the trans agenda happens? I’m a cishet Jew, so I’m only up on our side of the conspiracy.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Why do you think Oregon is on fire right now? I swear, it’s like people don’t think I even know how to do my job sometimes…

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          There’s a reason for that, which I mentioned in a post elsewhere in the thread:

          “Outspoken Israel advocates” who are evangelical Christians don’t love Jews. Quite the opposite. They need Israel to exist so all Jews in the world can be forcibly deported to it, and then made to rebuild the Great Temple, so Jesus can come back and throw them all into Hell.

          And a red cow comes into the picture as well.

          None of that is sarcasm. That is really what they think.

          • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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            5 months ago

            In my experience something similar exists with a subset of Russians, - they hate Israel the particular way, they just love the fact that it exists and commits crimes.

            When you are Jewish and proud of yourself, it makes them just as livid as when you are Armenian and proud of yourself.

            Republic of Armenia is quite miserable and they enjoy that, Israel is strong, but lacks dignity even more than RoA and they enjoy that, so the emotion gets especially extreme when you put these states and your own pride and the fact that they can change and have dignity in contrast.

            (I have tested that.)

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              Armenians have suffered their own genocide as well, one the Turks still refuse to acknowledge. At least the Germans acknowledge the Holocaust.

              • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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                5 months ago

                one the Turks still refuse to acknowledge

                That’s actually imprecise.

                They acknowledge that “something” happened, but deny various separate traits, like intent or numbers or relevance for today or even just say that genocide wasn’t illegal then. There’s also that “it didn’t happen, but they deserved it, and we’ll do it again” thing. Which gives a very special feeling, considering they are well in position to do it again.

                And it’s illegal to publicly recognize it in Turkey, so not only malevolent, but also benevolent voices seem to be kinda in denial, while in fact not.

                Still had Germany not lost WWII so conclusively, I suspect we’d be amazed at how self-conscious a lot of Turks are as compared to Germans.

                • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                  5 months ago

                  True, I was not totally right in that. It just is so sad beyond the genocide and the genocide denial that Ataturk was such a force for good when it came to his own people and such an evil fuck when it came to Armenians. Until Erdoğan, Turkey was a generally secular state, a rarity for a predominantly Muslim country and that is down to Ataturk, who was an atheist. I wish I could praise him, but I can’t. He was part of the Young Turk movement and he was instrumental in trying to erase what happened from history.

                  • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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                    5 months ago

                    He wasn’t as good to them either, look up Dersim rebellion and such. Erdo started as a democratic change with a small flavor of Islam. Because that secularism was about creating a fascist state and a social layer of Kemalist privileged elite (military mostly). But that’s something a Turk may explain better.

          • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Even without the whole Religion angle, racists the world over just love ethno-nationalism: each ethnicity living in their own corner, separate from the rest, is exactly what these people want.

        • Phegan@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          It tracks! Nazi Germany was actually pro Jewish state as well, the rationale was that it gets all the Jews out of Germany. It also supposedly kicks off the rapture when the Jews return to Israel.

        • Lets_Eat_Grandma@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          Well it’s a trick, they are more anti-muslim than anti-jew. They want the war to escalate because both sides die, and the one they hate more has more casualties.

          They can also sell them all the weapons used in the war… might as well fill the pockets with the new “solution.”

    • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      They can link them to their own goals. They want to avoid that people might notice the signs and recognize them as a warning. Let me guess, “The Wave” has been banned there, too?

      • davidagain@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Wise person: “Those who do not know history’s mistakes are doomed to repeat them.”

        Actual Nazis: Great idea. Let’s burn some books.

      • hexabs@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Nah I get that they’re Nazis. But the article failed to mention the official justification to ban these. I want to know what’s the sugarcoated, duplicitous rationale they provided.

        • Etterra@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Their justification is that they would have banned them anyway if they’d thought of it on their own, but now that somebody’s brought it up they realize it exists and provided the smallest justification to ban it.

          It makes me glad that my state passed a law against banking books (in public libraries at least). Hopefully it’ll spread to public schools. Religious schools are probably a lost cause though.