[lolinder]

I agree that any attack on books and literacy is a problem, but let's not pretend it's just the right that's responsible.

It's not the right's fault that I now have to wonder if a given copy of Matilda is as it was written or if it's been 'sanitized'. It's not the right that challenges Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird for their depictions of racism. Harry Potter, once feared by the hyper conservatives for witchcraft, is now under fire because of the political opinions of the author.

We all need to get better at dealing with difficult ideas, and that includes books whose contents and authors we disagree with. This is a systemic problem across the entire US, not one unique to one wing.

[Arainach]

Publishers releasing amended copies is not banning books. No one has demanded that original copies of such books be removed from libraries. Meanwhile state legislators in Florida and elsewhere are aggressively regulating libraries and demanding content be removed - and conservative legislatures are overwhelmingly responsible for funding cuts and closures.

[lolinder]

> No one has demanded that original copies of such books be removed from libraries.

They don't have to. Publishers caved to cultural pressure from the left and were originally planning on stopping publishing of the original editions. That plan would have phased out Dahl's work without having to force anyone to do anything—as libraries replaced damaged books their shelves would become sanitized.

Left-wing destruction of history and suppression of difficult ideas isn't better for the world just because it finds non-legislative means like silent publisher edits and massive grassroots cancellation campaigns.

Florida is awful, and I'm not condoning their legislature's behavior. But so are those who yank Harry Potter because Rowling is loudly not liberal enough for their tastes. It's just different tools to accomplish the same odious end.

[Arainach]

Please point to an example of someone pulling Harry Potter from a public or school library.

People deciding not to support an author is not censorship. Despite malicious right-wing claims trying to muddle it, being "cancelled" is just people exercising their right not to support you. No one's facing jail time for stocking Harry Potter in a library. You can't say that about right-wing crusading.

[sitkack]

Don’t both sides this. I am not discounting that there are some folks who are not aligned with the Right. The magnitude of the efforts by the right to censor and limit ideas is a large multiple of what occurs on the left.

[lolinder]

It's really not, it's just that the right is loud and obnoxious about it while the left is smart and subtle.

The left isn't better from a moral perspective just because they suppress their taboo ideas by quietly influencing school curricula and sanitizing books at the publisher level rather than hamfistedly legislating the "problematic ideas" away.

Both are reprehensible, but one is less competent. I honestly view the left as more dangerous when it comes to censorship precisely because it's not hamfisted.