This was in an A.P. English class. I wonder if that kid was embarrassed by his mother’s actions?
Up to eleven if you count the udder’s teats (which you should, particularly in this case). #MooToo!
I don’t disagree that it’s authoritarianism. It is a distinctly American kind of authoritarianism, and (I propose) in this case a regional subtype.
That’s why I disagree with the characterization that they want to hide these books because their kids will know they were caught sleeping on the creeping Nazi menace (or whatever). That’s exactly backwards. They’re not hiding anything. They are conspicuously flexing their muscles of parental authoritarianism both to flaunt it and entrench it. Anyone who thinks these people feel shame obviously doesn’t understand who they’re dealing with here.
For everyone who thinks the SS is going to come goose-stepping through the streets to roust out all the Jews, I would likewise say you’ve got it wrong. When/if fascism does come here, it won’t look like or begin exactly like the German manifestation of it. If that’s what you’re looking out for, then you may end up sleeping on the ways it actually does end up emerging (the example of parental authoritarianism I’ve been trying to point out).
Enough to reach the ground.
Uh, I did not mention shame, the reason authoritarians do that is to keep future generations as ignorant as possible.
I mostly agree, except that I don’t think many here are concentrating on that, only on the ignorance that is also killing us. There was a lot of the same ignorants being elected that came in because they also talk loud about parental authority regarding vaccines, it was not just their fragile minds regarding the teaching of how unjust slavery was.
The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame. – Oscar Wilde
I was pointing out the flaws in an upthread YouTube video that some folks felt was spot-on. I felt it was partially correct but flawed.
If you went to school in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area in the 1970s-1990s, you might remember Holocaust survivor Mike Jacobs who lost most of his family at Treblinka. He would frequently come to schools and speak to students about the Holocaust and he came to my school around 1988-89. And he spoke candidly about some pretty horrifying things he witnessed and participated in. I was a kid, I had lived in Germany prior to my time in Texas so I was aware of the Holocaust, but given my age, I don’t know if I really appreciated the magnitude of it at the time. Even today, it’s hard to grasp at times.
I’ve never read Maus but I’ve read snippets. It seems to me that it’s certainly appropriate for middle school kids. If I, as a 12 or 13 year old kid, could listen to a real life human being pour his heart out to me about the horrors he experienced when he was a teenager, then I think most kids can handle Maus.
^^^ Another excellent Twitter thread providing much-needed context and perspective. Highly recommended.
Re: the psychiatrist with the cat picture which I thought was 2 dogs: Spiegleman went to the shrink’s home for his sessions, and the guy had both cats and dogs. He does have the framed picture of a cat (really), and in other panels, there are pictures of dogs and cats on his wall. He later mentions he had to walk his dogs. I’m a dog person, so that’s why I remembered dogs.
It is really the kind of material you need to hear from an authoritative first-hand source, most of whom are understandably not really eager to talk about it. If they do open up… I do not remember how the subject came up, but a woman I knew one day casually mentioned that when she was a slave in a Lithuanian concentration camp, the old clothes they gave them to sew into sandbags still had bullet holes and bloodstains on them. Anyway, she is dead now, so she won’t be writing any comics, and that is just the tip of the iceberg as far as tales of murder, cruelty, and genocide are concerned. If it gives people nightmares, that is the point. As far as banning, I always figured that hard-core Nazis would be proud of their work, but maybe that is naive thinking.
Thanks. That’s interesting. And meshes with the movement to reject “critical race theory” because it might make white children feel bad.
Or worse–that perhaps it wouldn’t make white children feel bad, because white children might come to see themselves as being aligned with justice rather than their race. And then what would stop these white children from rejecting their racist families in favor of their own values?
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (Santayana).
It isn’t always a passive process, though. Sometimes it needs a little encouragement from nefarious actors with fairly clear agendas.
I actually agree with Beau of the Fifth Column that – like a narcissistic man doesn’t want women to read articles about … how to spot narcissistic men – those who support(ed) an authoritarian regime that hopes to rise again have a vested interest in keeping the bread crumbs well hidden.
I believe it was Wil Wheaton who donated copies to comic book stores and encouraged others to do the same.
Now is not the time to talk about what fascism [i]will[/i look like when it comes here. Now is the time to talk about what fascism did look like when it came here.
The best revenge…
I’m sure the board will be very happy about this outcome. It’s what they wanted all along, amirite?
Despite my earlier posts perhaps conveying some apathy about this situation, I revisited my copies of Maus (volumes 1 and 2) last night - some of the first graphic novels that I bought in my life, and I guess I had forgotten just how good they are, both as art and as literature. Spiegelman is just such a peerless storyteller. One very subtle thing I noticed was how initially at Auschwitz, in the second volume, you just see mice (Jews) as the prisoners, but as the story goes on, you increasingly see pigs (Poles) wearing the striped prison uniform, and then towards the end you even see a few cats (Germans) wearing the prison uniform mixed in with everyone else, and among the increasing piles of dead bodies. It’s a subtle reminder that they may have come for the Jews first - as the famous quote goes - but before long, nobody was safe.
If this idiotic attempt at banning the book only winds up increasing its readership, all the better.
I know a board that is mostly very happy with this outcome: this one. 
It’s not weak, though. Focusing specifically on Braveheart rather than treating it as an example is weak. The point is that the vast majority of conservative parents will let their kids watch several things with similar issues. His observations fit my own. He doesn’t have to check with these specific people in Tennessee to be fairly certain they are like nearly all other conservatives.
I don’t disagree with you about the parental authority thing. I just think you lack a good explanation for why the Holocaust gets these people all riled up. One of the premises of Beau’s channel is that Southerners are not as stupid as those on the coast think, and that also aligned with my observations.
It’s not a conscious thing. But I do believe that a big reason that conservatives have gotten big about not teaching the Holocaust is that they see the similarities. The parental authority aspect is that they don’t want their kids to think they acted poorly.
I explains why they didn’t seem to care as little as five years ago. There has to be some reason they see the libs talking about Nazis as a threat to their parental authority.
Plus Beau has a track record of predicting things bases on not assuming Southerners are stupid. He attributes this to asking himself “what would the fascists do?”
I find any argument of “they’re too stupid” to be far less explanatory.