Editorial 12.8, September 2010, by Deirdre Helfferich Flaming Idiocy Ah, once again, people are attacking a whole religion and culture, symbolically attempting to destroy the ideas they don’t like by burning books. Ironically, this attempt at censorship and censure by Florida pastor Terry Jones coincides with the recent release of A Universal History of the Destruction of Books: From Ancient Sumer to Modern-Day Iraq, by Fernando Báez, the director of the National Library of Venezuela. Emotions are being roused. There has been, naturally, plenty of condemnation of pastor Jones’ planned book-burning,* although there is definite reluctance to oppose his free-speech rights: that would be censorship. Even the political right wing is condemning the burning—Sarah Palin included. As Matthew Fishburn wrote in his Viewpoint for BBC News (“Book burning is no great trick,” September 9, 2010), “These fires play on the way in which people identify with books.…The issue of book burning also speaks to our reluctance to be considered a censor [but] even staunch proponents of a free press are often uneasy with the monsters they are making.… What is frightening is not so much Jones and his friends… but how the event is being used as a stalking horse in the great clash of symbols.” And that points to the rift in our society today, evidenced by the recent rise of the Tea Party and the decades of movement toward the ever-more-extreme right by the Republican Party. The horror that I and many others feel in contemplating Jones’ little bonfire has little to do with the particular title he plans to burn and much to do with the public, ceremonial destruction of books. Burning the Koran may embitter and inflame Muslims and make it easier for Al-Quaeda to recruit, potentially costing American lives, as General Petraeus fears—but it is more than soldiers, or even ideas associated with Islam or Muslim extremists that are threatened by this action, it is, in fact, civilized society itself. Our civilization, our democracy. Rebecca Knuth’s Libricide: The Regime-Sponsored Destruction of Books and Libraries in the Twentieth Century makes the case that destruction of ideas—of books and libraries—is akin to ethnocide, and often coincides with it or genocide. There is a worrying rise in Islamophobia in the US, an easy hatred and fear of anyone Muslim, or of Middle Eastern extraction (or anyone who “looks Arab”). President Obama is called a “Muslim”—as though the term is an insult, rather than an (inaccurate) description of his faith. This country is working itself up to find a scapegoat to sacrifice—and this kind of emotional, angry language comes overwhelmingly from the Right. In an interview with Chung Ah-young of the Korea Times, Knuth explained:
Knuth is talking about regime-sponsored destruction, rather than wingnut individual destruction, but consider: the Tea Partiers are making inroads on Republican territory, and incumbents of both the major parties are on shakier and shakier ground as our economy founders and our expenses continue to soar. Should the more extreme political elements gain control of government, people like Terry Jones may find their actions backed by the might of the American government. Democracies can transform into authoritarian regimes very quickly, and despotic governments are very good at fanning the flames of hate and fear to distract their citizens from the real origins of their misery. We’d best remember that. * Reports as of Sept. 9 indicate Pastor Jones may or may not be calling this off. | ||
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