[sgentle]

Your thought experiment asks: what if the banned book library contained out-of-print white supremacist books instead of historically banned books?

The answer should be obvious: it would be a white supremacist library.

Given that the present administration includes fans of those books, their banning seems unlikely. Perhaps a refresher on the kinds of books that are presently under threat is in order? https://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/top10

(You can find contemporary Huck Finn censorship attempts in their database here, by the way: https://airtable.com/appZthgrTU9u1Bf5d/shr4J8Mgiua2CV2Ig?mWW... )

[like_any_other]

Books that are assigned reading in schools and universities, and promoted by libraries, are "under threat", while books nearly impossible to find, never on any reading lists, and whose promoters get their speeches shut down by French police [1], or get investigated by the FBI and kicked out of university [2], are to be considered widely available, got it.

And your "historically banned" is just "occasionally removed from public school libraries on parental request". Not using tax money to promote them to children is a low, low bar for "banned". While actual availability is, of course, completely ignored. Whatever tells the best story, facts be damned.

[1] Jared Taylor's Banned Conference Speech - https://www.arktosjournal.com/p/jared-taylors-banned-confere...

[2] Ohio universities involve FBI in investigation of ‘It’s okay to be white’ and white nationalist group’s postings on campus - https://www.thefire.org/news/ohio-universities-involve-fbi-i...

[margalabargala]

We've decided collectively as a society that some ideas are "good" and others are "bad". For example, racism and white supremacy have been decided to be "bad".

There's an alternate reality where white supremacy is mainstream, where queer fiction is impossible to find, and that would be a different world.

Instead, what's being preserved are the books written that celebrate the values that match our broad cultural values, despite a handful of cultural deviants attempting to suppress the parts of the rest of humanity they dislike.

[BigTTYGothGF]

> that would be a different world

Yes, it's called "the past".

[chipsrafferty]

Why do you want people to read those books so bad?

[like_any_other]

It's convenient that only evil people point out the emperor has no clothes, isn't it?