Book Censorship One Step from Book Burning.

 

The phrase, “Give me 26 lead soldiers and I will conquer the world,” has been attributed to both Benjamin Franklin and Karl Marx. It is an affirmation that the pen is mightier than the sword. Throughout history, however, the written thoughts of mankind have been subject to divergent philosophic and religious beliefs that saw existing writings as a threat. Today it is called “book burning” or censorship. At other times in human history it was heresy. Regardless of the reasons given, great works of ancient and modern thought have been lost because new movements strove to eradicate writings deemed dangerous.

 

Destroying Records of the Past

 

Historians of the Ancient Near East point to Nineveh as a repository of one of the first libraries. Nineveh was the capital city of the hated Assyrians. Incessant warfare ultimately led to the destruction of Nineveh at the time the Medes and the Persians ended Assyrian domination of the greater Middle East region. The library was destroyed with the city, perhaps viewed as an extension of Assyrian religion. Scholars believe the library contained over 12,000 texts, many of which have been recovered through archaeological endeavors.

 

Although the Nineveh library was most likely burned because it was a part of the palace grounds, this was not true of the most famous of all ancient libraries located at Alexandria, Egypt. Estimates of the library’s holdings range from 400,000 works to 900,000. The library endured through the early Roman Imperial period but after Christianity became the state religion in the 4^th Century CE, it deteriorated. Part of the reason rests with Egyptian Christians that had a long history of zealotry.

 

When Christians destroyed the temple of Serapis, their anger resulted in the destruction of the Museion or House of Muses. In the process, many library texts were burned. Muslims conquered Alexandria in the 7^th Century, but according to Philosophy of Religion Professor Camden Cobern (deceased), there is no evidence to support the commonly held view that Caliph Omar burned the library in 641 CE.

 

Books Threaten Shared Values and Control

 

Historian Carlo Ginzburg recounts the saga of a 16^th Century miller whose desire to read books caused his eventual execution after a trial by the Inquisition (The Cheese and the Worms, Penguin Books, 1985). Once the Christian Church dominated religious thought and practice in Western Europe, available texts were strictly controlled. St. Jerome’s Vulgate defined the canon of scripture and any conflicting writings were banned. This continued throughout the Middle Ages. At the 16^th Century Council of Trent, Erasmus’ Greek New Testament was burned and the Catholic Church began a more rigid evaluation of books.

 

But book burning was not unique to the Catholic hierarchy. Reformer Martin Luther sanctioned the burning of Jewish sacred writings when Jews refused to convert. In the 20^th Century, the Nazis celebrated their victory of achieving dominance in the German government by burning the writings of Jewish scholars in a Berlin bonfire. This infamous “book burning” has been captured on film and recreated in several movies.

 

The Threat to Religious and Social Values

 

Even in the United States, certain books have been deemed inappropriate, removed from libraries, and banned from public school reading lists. In Meredith Wilson’s “The Music Man,” Marian the librarian is accused of advocating “dirty books” like Rabelais and Balzac. In reality, however, books like Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye have been censored by local school boards in more recent decades.

 

Historically, evidence suggests that book burning and censorship derives from acute religious convictions of particular societies and communities seeking to preserve a belief system and viewing non-acceptable writings as threats. It is an extension of the debate between Darwin’s Origin of the Species and creationism in Genesis. Like Ray Bradbury’s “fireman” in Fahrenheit 451, book burning is the ultimate way to ensure control and the obliteration of opposing views.

 

Sources:

 

Camden M. Cobern, “Alexandria,” International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia, Volume I, (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1939).

Tony Perrottet, Route 66 A.D.: On the Trail of Ancient Roman Tourists (New York: Random House, 2002)

 

 So much for globalization and a new world order. Everyone thought the world was on the cusp of a utopian dream when students began filling their Instagram slots with pictures of them walking China's Great Wall while eating a Big Mac in Beijing. Score one for internationalism. Student travel companies were building resumes detailing student jogs up the most remote peaks and traipsing through old ruined castles in what was once only considered East Europe or the "Third World." The Peace Corps had done it's job. Kids in Fiji could read (and similar places). The world was being made safe for democracy (thank you Woodrow Wilson) through Americanism: consumerism, entertainment, Disney Parks, Fast Foods, etc. 

But all was not going well in Russia where an ever deranged Vladimir Putin began to cast himself as the incarnation of Tsar Alexander III, a man whose three reasons for living were autocracy, orthodoxy and nationalism. The rest of the world, especially those break-away nations, were out to destroy Russia. Or, if you like, a Putin in the model of Ivan the Terrible, the so-called gatherer of Russian lands." But Putin doesn't have a thing for dogs.

In the early 1990's I was with a small group of Americans, mostly students, allowed to visit the Armory in the Kremlin while on a student visit to Moscow. We marveled at the Kremlin, St. Basil's Cathedral, and Red Square. We were told that we were the first western group to see the Armory, but only for two hours.

It was a time we all thought would lead to greater openness. Russians no longer traded those marvelous black hats for a carton of Marlboro's. They wanted cash or some of those early video games.

We noticed American and European companies opening, and ate lunch at the largest McDonald's. It was New Year's and we were not just cold but frozen. But we loved the country, the people, and city. St. Petersburg was an oasis of art of beauty. We toasted the New Year with imported Belgian beer.

I took students and adults all over Europe and the South Pacific. I also joined Educator Conferences in places like Turkey and Russia. We learned from each other and looked forward to a world were all people would eventually be citizens of a planet, working together for the common good. In my latter years I taught global studies at a traditional black university and was thrilled when students spent a year abroad in African or South American Countries. 

But now all of that is moot. Alexander Dugin is much like an "Old Believer," much like the men who thought Peter the Great was an antichrist for wanting to leave Russia. And the Russian people, for the most part, either don't know the story is false or are too afraid to contradict it. Very similar in the United States with the myths perpetrated by a former president.

And so globalization may be dead. It may take decades to rebuild and restore old relationships. And for that, we have Russia to blame.

I heard a story on NPR yesterday morning dealing with water quality in America. (August 8, 2022 on 1A). What immediately struck me was the plight of poor communities and communities of color who seem to have no recourse to healthy water. This is particularly true of the Navajo Nation where water pipes have not been replaced for decades. Is water inequity not a human rights violation?

The BBC recently reported on migrant children in an army camp (Fort Bliss) near San Antonio, Texas (US Migrant Camp Kids 'Feel Like They're in Prison', 23.June 2021). Similar reports by the BBC purport that thousands of migrant children are in camps, living in deplorable conditions and in desperate need of medical attention." 

According to the Washington Examiner as well as local Greensboro, NC media reporting outlets, the Biden Administration has signed a five year contract for the housing and care of migrant children to be housed at the vacant Hebrew Academy in Greensboro, NC. (June 26, 2022)

All of these examples - and there are many more - remind us that we Americans are not immune to human rights violations. But we have a habit of criticizing our adversaries for their national programs and sins such as the Uyghurs in China. Or human rights violations in North Korea. Or Human rights violations on the part of Turkey against the Kurdish people. How many nations can say that they do not practice human rights violations?

Of our Allies, the Australians have, for hundreds of years, practiced an abysmal human rights policy toward the Aboriginal indigenous peoples. Canada has only recently hosted Pope Francis for a joint mea culpa regarding the treatment of indigenous peoples, especially children brutalized in Catholic-run schools

In Japan, home of our noble allies, there exists a shadow caste, known as the burakumin or eta. These are Japan's "untouchables" and never spoken of. Asian societies are full of such inequities: India is but the largest nation to segregate it's people, often harshly. Only in New Zealand have the white people developed a rapprochement with the Maori peoples. But we Americans don't dare point out fingers at our allies! There should be fingers pointed back at our own streets and parks.

Every street corner features one or more beggars holding cardboard signs,"will work for money," or "Wife and three children." Frequently the children are on the side of the street also.

Our diplomats and top government leaders love to bring up the issue of human rights all over the world while ignoring our own. We berate the Cubans and point to the many braving the waters - and the sharks, to swim to Miami. Yet we speak not a word about "Gitmo," the infamous camp that should have been closed during the first Obama administration. And this does not take in the shame of Iraq's abu Ghraib.

Human rights violations should be addressed but first by the countries willing to point fingers at themselves. Before we tell our neighbors to change policies, we must be willing to do so in our own communities. Who in America spoke for the Jewish people in the Holocaust where men, women, and children were gassed and cremated at Auschwitz  and other death camps. There were people, Like Raoul Wallenberg in Hungary who braved the Nazis to save countless Jews, but few nations. The United States and Canada knew what was happening but said and did nothing.

Before we criticize and point fingers, we need to look at our own deficiencies and treatment of people. All men might have been created equal, but all men are clawing up the mountain of democracy, oblivious to these around them or below them. And those were white men, no women and no people of color.

United States foreign policy has frequently criticized adversary nation for committing atrocities. In China, an estimate one million Muslim Uighurs are kept in concentration camp-like conditions with the goal of turning them into good Chinese communists. Not very different from what the Canadian government in conjunction with the Roman Catholic Church did to thousands of indigenous children in schools resembling prison orphanages. And in the United States the treatment of indigenous peoples has not been very different. Americans cloak it in the missionary movement, a forced effort to obliterate Native American culture and language. Do High School Students still read about the Trail of Tears or, for that matter, the prison cages at "Gitmo" that may never be empty despite President Obama's pledge many years ago.

Americans have a bad habit of criticizing  other nations about their internal affairs that may well be horrendous. But we have and continue to do the same. Where was the Congressional outcry over the events in Myra mar (formerly Burma)?  Why didn't Nancy Pelosi fly into Naypyidaw? She seems to appear at dangerous war zones such as Kiev and her contemplated flight to Taiwan, enraging the Chinese leadership. 

In short, American have no monopoly when it comes to championing the cause of freedom, integrity, and justice. We water boarded Filipino soldiers early in the 20th Century during the Filipino War, an act TR Roosevelt at first approved. 

America is no longer a knight on shining armor. That armor has been tarnished. And there are many many other examples of US policy not in tune with our Constitutional freedoms. And it wasn't always a matter of national security. How many conflicts could have been averted? Vietnam? Korea? Iraq? 

We need to play with China honestly. American policy toward Taiwan always maintained that it was not under the sphere of protection of the US or the so-called nuclear umbrella. That culminated with the Taiwan Relations Act (April 10, 1979). There is no guarantee of intervention. We sent the wrong message regarding Korea; President Johnson used the Gulf of Tonkin Resolutions to hoodwink the Congress and the American population in of to justify war in Vietnam.When Eisenhower was president there was talk if using atomic bombs in the Taiwan Straits. 

But this is 2022 and the world has dramatically changed. And we have no leaders of stature other than Trump-like Fascists and red-neck types that would easily double as brown shirts.

 

Never before, in the history of the American nation, has a Speaker of the House disregarded the cautionary warnings of the President and the Pentagon to embark on a visit to Asian nations, a visit that includes a stop in Taiwan. Whether it was for two days or two minutes, the very act was viewed as a provocation by China, and rightly so. At some point in the last several decades China, Japan, and Korea have claimed all or part of Taiwan. Even though Chairman Mao said Taiwan was not part of China, much has transpired in history since World War II and Mao's transformation of a peasant society.

Taiwan, after World War II, was a refuge for Chinese and Europeans, several of them missionaries, fleeing the Communist takeover of the Chinese mainland. China also dispelled the occupiers - the Japanese who, since the 1930's had ravaged both China and Korea. Who can forget the infamous "Rape of Nanking" (actually a book written by Iris Chang) which fits into the same categories of Nazi atrocities. 

We have no business wading into the  complexities of Chinese-Taiwanese-Japanese affairs. Previous presidents and secretaries of state recognized this. Americans like Douglas MacArthur recognized the Chinese genius and what it would mean for the future of America.

Yet, in one ill-thought out moment, Speaker Pelosi has offered up a conflict of perhaps massive proportions. Winston Churchill might have said we bet on the wrong horse. That is certainly true in Europe where energy concerns, or a lack of it may unravel the EU. I'm glad I still have a few Deutsch Marks and Drachmas for my next visit.