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Dispatches From the Culture Wars - The Great Book Banning

A dress rehearsal for fascism, or did we just miss the opening credits?

Credit,Andy Marlette/Pensacola News Journal

 

The Great Book Banning of 2022

It’s Politics  By Elizabeth A. Harris and Alexandra Alter, The New York Times 

Librarians Speak Out  By David Montgomery, Stateline

Funded Attacks on Critical Race Theory  By Sonali Kolhatkar, Yes!

Maus Trap  By David M. Perry, CNN

Students Form Banned Book Clubs  By Lisa Mitchell, Reading Eagle

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Moms Fight  By Tat Bellamy-Walker, NBC News

Twee Rebellion

By Ian Wang
Jacobin

Love it or hate it, twee is back. It’s the subject of innumerable think pieces, but the subculture’s radical roots in feminism, punk, and the fight against Margaret Thatcher often go unnoticed.

Fascists on the Ballot

By Brittany Gibson
Politico

At least 57 individuals who played a role in the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol — either by attending the Save America rally that preceded the riots, gathering at the Capitol steps or breaching the Capitol itself — are now running for elected office.

Chinatowns vs. Gentrification

By Eda Yu
Teen Vogue

The use of artists by developers to distract from the negative effects of displacement is commonly referred to as “artwashing” — and it is exactly what organizers describe took place in Manhattan’s Chinatown a decade earlier.

To Be Young, Left and Marginalized

By Emma Frith
Red Pepper

Although young leftists fighting for a better world will never cease, let’s hope that older generations, particularly those who are fellow socialists, will at the very least see our concerns and voices as legitimate and valuable.

Faith, Guns and Plague

By Peter Manseau
The Baffler

With both guns and Covid, many of our fellow citizens would trade a million lives for their need to do exactly what they want. There has emerged in some of the rhetoric surrounding Covid an eerie resonance with school shootings, the shared expression of a uniquely American death wish.

Is Don’t Look Up a Documentary?

By Debs Grayson
Lawrence Wishart Blog

If the Hollywood Global Disaster Movie reinforces the message that the US deserves to monopolise the world’s resources because it will step in to protect humanity when needed, Don’t Look Up depicts US elites as ideologically, culturally and technologically incapable of the most basic acts of self-preservation, let alone saving the rest of the world.

Is Succession a Reality Show?

By Priyam Marik
The Wire

Winners, as the third season of Succession reveals, are habitually capable of doing ruthless things, for they see society not as a collection of the good and the bad or the right and the wrong, but as a collection of those who win and those who do not. (Spoiler alert!)

When a Loved One Drinks the Kool-Aid

By Sue Muncaster
Huffpost

My sister-in-law texted me to warn me that my brother was heading, unannounced, to my doorstep in Idaho. I knew he believed “everyone on the planet who received the vaccine will be dead in a few years,” but I had no idea of the depth of his fantastical beliefs.

Ali: The Last American Hero

By Robert Lipsyte
TomDispatch

Other than, I guess, Abraham Lincoln or Jesus Christ, the current go-to-guy for a quick symbolic fix of history, spirituality, and spectacle is that heavyweight boxer who called himself The Greatest.