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.

  • NotAnonymousAtAll
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    5 months ago

    An “outspoken Israel advocate” wants to get rid of books about the Holocaust and antisemitism in general? I am very confused. Usually right wing extremist demands make some kind of sense from within their twisted world view, but how does that fit together at all, in any world view?

    • buttfarts@lemy.lol
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      5 months ago

      Hard right folks don’t like teaching the history of the consequences of hard right political movements. Those histories never end with a country full of happy economically secure people just living their lives because the only thing fascists can do is destroy everything.

      • BuckFigotstheThird@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Sounds straight up delusional and seems like people who believe that sort of stuff and then act on it should be institutionalized for the safety of our fellow citizens.

        Aren’t most people who believe in invisible people and talk to thin air considered crazy?

        • ShareMySims@sh.itjust.works
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          5 months ago

          I think that’s a little ableist and a lot reductionist, ignoring the people creating these ideas and institutions and enforcing them (including by historically and still in different forms today actually institutionalising people that speak against them), because they didn’t come out of thin air, and the money and power those people have definitely isn’t imaginary.

          Don’t blame people grasping at straws for comfort in this shitty shitty world, blame those manipulating and exploiting them for profit and power.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      “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.