Fascism 101
Is the trigger warning crowd to blame?
Elizabeth Nolan Brown|Aug. 3, 2015 8:16 am
American support for banning books jumped by more than 50 percent between 2011 and 2015, according to a recently released Harris Poll survey. Conducted last March, some 28 percent of the 2,244 U.S. adults surveyed answered yes to the question “Do you think that there are any books which should be banned completely?” (up from 18 percent in 2011). “While it’s still a minority perception … I felt that from 18 to 28 percent in just four years was rather surprising growth,” Harris Poll Research Manager Larry Shannon-Missal told Library Journal.
To be fair, the poll wording is somewhat confusing, jumping from talking about the content of school libraries to books more generally in a way that may have influenced some responses. On the school-library front, a full 71 percent expect librarians to keep age-inappropriate books out of the hands of students. In addition, 60 percent think books containing explicit language should be kept from school bookshelves entirely, and 48 percent say the same about violent books. Those surveyed were also largely in favor of shielding students from books containing witchcraft or sorcery (44 percent), sexual activity (43 percent), drug or alcohol use (37 percent), and vampires (36 percent). That all seems pretty standard. More unsettling, perhaps, is the fact that 33 percent of Americans don’t think school libraries should stock a copy of the Koran, while 29 percent want to keep out the Torah or Talmud and 13 percent would ban the bible. About a quarter think students should be kept from any books that question the existence of a divine being, while about 20 percent want to keep out books discussing creationism.
https://reason.com/blog/2015/08/03/growing-support-for-book-banning-in-amer
