The new age of book banning

Even before the invention of the printing press, books were often deemed subversive and threatening by authoritarian rulers. It’s no surprise then that maneuvers like book banning, confiscation and even burning have been used repeatedly by desperate tyrants fearful of a fully-informed citizenry. Book banning also has a long history in the United States, from censors seeking to keep Harriet Beecher Stowe’s abolitionist novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” out of the hands of readers to the targeting of birth control advocacy under the 1873 Comstock Act. But the country has never seen anything quite like today’s national campaign to silence voices disfavored by the contemporary Republican Party.

When did the recent book purge begin?

After the COVID-19 pandemic, far-right activists concocted a serie