[gr3ml1n]

Every bookstore nowadays, front and center, has a 'banned book' section. It's practically a meme. In the article you linked, no books were removed from the shelves.

It's the definition of an imaginary threat.

The books that are actually banned, the ones that were forced out of print, not available in public libraries and cost hundreds or thousands for a used copy? They are right-leaning politically.

[Arainach]

It's not an imaginary threat. It is happening all over in GOP-controlled areas.

https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/roughly-300-books-were-r...

[Izkata]

Even back in the late 90s/early 2000s, public libraries had a "banned books week". It was mostly a gimmick to get kids to read through the allure of the forbidden, to the point where sometimes through deals with teachers you could get extra credit in school for having checked them out.

[vixen99]

And book banners may be driven by any political persuasion. In the 'Left-leaning' (rather more than leaning' of course) Soviet Union, universally acclaimed literary masterpieces (not books objecting to a certain lifestyle) were banned. All publishing houses in the USSR were state-owned, and every text had to get past the censor before appearing in print.

https://www.rbth.com/arts/331150-books-banned-ussr

[bee_rider]

What are some examples of books that have actually been forced out of print?

[jcranmer]

The copyright to Hitler's Mein Kampf passed to the Bavarian government, which after WW2, refused to allow it to be printed until the book fell into public domain.

Browsing the list of in rem cases in the US turns up quite a few cases where the US actually seized several pornographic books such as Lady Chatterley's Lover, which is perhaps a little more in line with what you were thinking about.

[cafard]

I was once on a tour of St. Albans, a very expensive private school in Washington, and Mein Kampf was the first book I noticed on the shelves. I have to suppose that the school has confidence that any boys who read it will not be indoctrinated.

[veqq]

- Decent Interval - Frank Snepp - About Saigon's fall by a CIA analyst - Inside China's Nuclear Weapons Program - Danny Stillman - Operation Dark Heart - Anthony Shaffer - Afghanistan. "The Pentagon" bought and destroyed the whole first printing - The Targeter - Nada Bakos - About fighting ISIS

The last guy's alluding to right wing books though. I remember Axios reported that the Turner Diaries and Camp of the Saints are going for hundreds now, because printing has been ended: https://www.axios.com/2021/01/28/racist-novels-skyrocket-in-... But books are now available on Amazon for cheap and pirating is easy, but here are some which libraries don't seem to have stocked and mostly aren't purchasable.

I imagined Holocaust denial etc. are effectively banned/not stocked by most libraries. Googling, I found discussions about My Revolutionary Life by Leon DeGrelle, Into the Cannibal's Pot by Ilana Mercer etc. But things from other movements too like an Ulster loyalist Ian Paisley's Messages from the Prison Cell or Uncomfortable Questions for Comfortable Jews by Rabbi Meir Kahane. Pinochets memoir is also inaccessible.

Then there are books about bombs or e.g. Put em Down, Take em Out by Pentecost about knife fighting ($60/now used). In the UK, a nazi was jailed 13 years for having a pdf the White Resistence Manual: https://www.itv.com/news/calendar/2023-08-31/prison-officer-...

I'll stop there. There are long lists, with about half the entries seeming plausibly banned.

[bee_rider]

Yeah, it is the second and third paragraphs I was wondering about. I guess I’m not really 100% clear on what he meant by “forced,” I don’t see any instances there of the government actually forcing them out of print, right? It looks like the situation where nobody wants to publish or distribute that sort of stuff.

[keepamovin]

中国宪政转型, 无敌的铁拳 - you probably know more hehehe ;)

[musicale]

> Every bookstore nowadays

I miss bookstores.