The Invisible Fire of Cultural Cleansing
The Nazis burned books. Now, we just remove them, erase people, and rewrite history.
On May 10, 1933, the crowds lifted their arms in “Sig Heil” salutes and chanted Nazi slogans in Bebelplatz Square, Berlin, as they burned the works of hundreds of independent authors, journalists, philosophers, and academics. This “Cleansing by Fire” was organized by Nazi student groups to symbolize the purification of German culture.
Twenty-five thousand books went up in flames, including those of Albert Einstein, Helen Keller, Sigmund Freud, Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Upton Sinclair, Jack London, and even Felix Salten… the author of Bambi.
Similar pyres burned throughout the country that night. German libraries were warned to remove books deemed subversive or representing ideas opposed to Nazi ideology.
In 1953, Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 to reflect his concerns about the threat to democracy during the McCarthy “witchhunt” era. The authoritarian government of his futuristic novel burned books because reading, education, and free thinking threatened its objectives. As Bradbury himself noted in an interview,
“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
In George Orwell’s novel 1984, the totalitarian superstate “Oceania” maintains power through constant surveillance, manipulation of truth, control of its own citizens, and dominance over its rivals through propaganda and fear. Perhaps the most seminal quote from the book is:
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
Last week, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s office ordered the removal of Maya Angelou’s autobiography, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” and Janet Jacobs's “Memorializing the Holocaust,” from the U.S. Naval Academy Nimitz Library on the Annapolis campus. In all, 381 books were targeted as part of the ongoing Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) purge of federal Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs.
The Associated Press reports that it has “obtained a database of tens of thousands of Department of Defense website images that have been flagged for removal, or already removed due to having content that highlighted diversity, equity or inclusion. Images highlighting female service members' contributions have been removed as have images highlighting Black, Hispanic and Pacific Islander contributions to the military, among many others. The database AP obtained contains 26,000 images that were flagged — and they may only be a fraction of all the content that is being removed.”
There is a bronze plate set in the ground at the site of the 1933 book burning in Bebelplatz Square, Berlin, inscribed with the warning:
That was but a prelude;
Where they burn books,
They will ultimately burn people as well.
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I look forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments section.
Resources:
Maya Angelou Memoir, Holocaust Book Are Among Those Pulled From Naval Academy Library In DEI Purge
The Pentagon’s DEI purge: Officials describe a scramble to remove and then restore online content
List of Books Purged from Nimitz Library
The Burning of Books, The History Place
Support our library. Come to the book fair on Saturday April 12, 10 to 4 in front of the library. All proceeds go to the Friends of the Coronado Public Library.
Great Piece!
The actual list of the 381 books banned by Hegseth is jaw-dropping. As you may have noticed, most deal with Race and/or Gender and our country's complex history with the same. Among the titles banned are many that are currently available in our Coronado Library.
Among one of the notable books banned but not mentioned anywhere is the incredibly well-researched book Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream by the Civil Rights activist, researcher and historian Leonard Zeskind. Published in 2009, Zeskind lays out in intricate detail the history of the White Nationalist movement from the mid 1950s to 2009. The book forebodes the possibility of what has now come to be in the current Trump 2.0 administration that is a supercharged anti-Immigrant, anti-Black, anti-LGBTQ administration. Here is the Kirkus Review of the book:
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/leonard-zeskind/blood-and-politics/
Banning books that describe how we got here is exactly the point. As you point out, repeating historical atrocities is easier when events are erased from memory.