Reading is Freedom: Censorship as a Symptom of Authoritarianism
By Ella Roerden
Throughout history, authoritarian regimes and dictatorships have attempted to use many different methods to create an atmosphere of fear, enabling them to consolidate power and control the people they rule over. One such method that has been used frequently in the past century, lasting into the modern day, is the censorship or banning of written material. If the ruling party decides that material is being published that threatens or undermines the narrative they are trying to produce, they will move to take control of what can and cannot be published, sold, and spread.
The Nazi regime and its infamous book burnings are a prime example. Nearly all literature written by any group targeted by the Nazis in their race purity mania was seized and built into pyres, and then burned in large public squares all over Nazi Germany. On the heels of World War II came a less spectacled instance of the selective banning of literature, in any nation in the Soviet bloc or sphere of influence. From the late 1940s up to the fall of Soviet Communism in 1989-91, Soviet and Soviet-backed governments banned all kinds of books, articles, and other publications in their censorship efforts. Anything deemed critical of socialism or too capitalist was not allowed to be sold or published.
Fast-forward to the modern day, where, though one may not find such outright authoritarian regimes in the West as in World War II and Soviet-era Europe, censorship is still present. In the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, for example, books are not “banned” to the extreme they were by Nazis and Communists, but they are still incredibly challenged in an effort to push the agenda of these governments. Mainly right-wing politicians and advocacy groups accuse the left of indoctrinating young people via reading material, therefore deciding they need to be restricted and made inaccessible by students. This takes books out of classrooms, school libraries, and by association, many bookstores. The need for governments to control what information people, especially the younger, up-and-coming generation have access to is the same symptom of authoritarianism as the Nazis and Communists had, just with a modernized face.
Although the Nazi government of Germany did not explicitly organize most book burnings, it not only condoned but supported and participated in them. About twenty recognized book burnings occurred in Nazi Germany, all very shortly after Hitler became Chancellor, in May and June of 1933. They were organized by members of the Deutsche Studentenschaft, a pro-Nazi student group (USHMM Encyclopedia), but SS and SA men were heavily involved, among others. Book burnings primarily were arranged in university cities such as Breslau, Munich, and Berlin, created by participants pillaging their own personal shelves, and ransacking public libraries. The books sought out to be burned were mostly from a list by Nazi librarian Wolfgang Herrmann (USHMM Encyclopedia), and a majority of the books and authors targeted were those of Jewish origin. Work by various intellectuals and academics was burned as well, if they showed any sign of critiquing the Nazi state or praising socialism. It is remarkable that it was librarians and students, those who benefit most from books, who were the ones responsible for destroying them.
During the largest Nazi book burning, in the Opera Square in Berlin in front of the Humboldt University Library, 20,000 books were burned in a bonfire attended by twice as many people. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda himself, spoke at this public event. He elaborated on the “un-Germanness” of these books and their authors, and the need to replace “Jewish intellectualism” with “the German way” (USHMM Encyclopedia). In the Berlin book burning, another notable category of material seized was the entire library of Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science. The Hirschfeld Institute, the premier source of study on members of what we now know as the LGBTQ+ community, was renowned for its scientific discoveries and life-affirming care, but it was destroyed by the Nazis and its library of research set ablaze. Erasing this collection of queer heritage, plus anything by Jewish authors, and almost all pro-socialist, pro-Weimar Republic, anti-Nazi, and anti-war material from German society was the means of the regime and its affiliates to control the public, to shape the narrative of the threat of “others.” If the Nazis portrayed each of these groups as threatening to German (Aryan) life, they could manipulate people into believing it. The very act of creating an “other” and punishing it by banning it made people fear becoming “othered” themselves, thus staying in line and being afraid to resist Nazi initiatives. But demonizing this “other” also showed a weakness for the Nazis, because if there is something worth banning, the regime is not universally accepted. If they truly had total power, there would not be anything to ban at all.
When all of Central and Eastern Europe was either part of the Soviet Union or under its communist sphere of influence during the Cold War, censorship was extremely prevalent. News was filtered, letters from family or friends in the West were redacted, and so much of everyday life was surveilled so anyone suspicious could be arrested and removed. Literature, predictably, was very much part of this. Books of all kinds from nonfiction to fantasy novels, in addition to periodicals and academic journals and other publications were all subject to censorship. Though these were not burned in public performances like with the Nazis, they were forbidden, stripped from bookshelves, and torn from printing presses.
But the banning of this material was not the end of the story. Underground publications abounded, and many managed, amazingly, to be preserved to the present, as can be seen at Libri Prohibiti in Prague, the largest library of “samizdat” (illegally printed literature published underground) collected since the fall of Communism. Many volumes were smuggled in from the West and many others created in underground networks within the Soviet bloc. Some of the items at Libri Prohibiti that had been banned seemed to be perplexing choices to a modern American audience, such as J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings or C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia (though fantasy is often still challenged today). It is difficult for us to fathom how books set even in a fictional land could offend Communist ideology. Several of the samizdat pieces were bound in scrap material found at home. As discussed by Konstanty Gebert and other lecturers, if one tries to ban something, it only comes back stronger than ever, made very clear by the visible effort that went into maintaining these samizdat networks. Soviet and Soviet-backed governments tried to restrict the flow of information, of Western or capitalist ideals coming into their countries, but that need for control in fact showed a lack of it. If their view was the correct one shared universally by everyone, what need would there be to resist it in the first place?
In the 21st century, Western censorship of books is a big deal. While a book that is banned can still be published and bought, and a more accurate term would likely be “challenged” instead of “banned,” any book or author that faces this is still being subject to infringement on their freedom (Cato Institute). In a democracy like the United States, where freedom of expression and freedom of speech are supposed to be guaranteed, it is alarming to see books being pulled from shelves in school libraries because the school district has decided they are “unfit for” or “indoctrinating” young minds. Books featuring LGBTQ+ themes, race and other social justice initiatives, explicit or graphic scenes, and even fantasy and science fiction books are targeted, restricting access to information. These local, and sometimes national legislative decisions are dictating who can and cannot choose what they would like to read. They eliminate knowledge, just as their authoritarian Nazi and Soviet predecessors did, and works that authors have dedicated their lives to are being demeaned and slandered, whilst also losing readership, just as in the past. Semi-paralleling the samizdat producers of Soviet-era Central and Eastern Europe, under lower stakes but still forced into action by their morals, are booksellers and librarians. Many public libraries and bookstores in the United States have select shelves to highlight banned books, and a Banned Book Week dedicated to the specific promotion of banned books has been established. This is important because these are often stories that need to be heard the most; otherwise, there is no reason for the government to fear them.
By placing restrictions on knowledge and expression, modern democracies can show authoritarian symptoms. Many right-wing officials who are doing the banning fear that these books are threatening democracy by “indoctrinating” children (actually just teaching them, which is what school is for to begin with), but, hypocritically, they are the ones indoctrinating a mindset of fear of “others,” thereby threatening democracy themselves. While they claim to “protect” students, it is clear they are simply projecting their own agendas. History is being erased along with the present and future. Ironically, many books that are being challenged today are about World War II and the Nazis or the Cold War and the Soviets. Take, for example, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, a main theme of which is actually Nazi book burnings. It has been challenged many times over the years and was banned again this year by a school district in Tennessee (PEN America). Erasing haunted histories that banned books in the past by banning the topic in the present is a paradox that illustrates the authoritarian capacity even democracies can hold.
History is a natural warning to the present regarding the future. Nazi book burnings occurred six years before the Second World War began, which goes to show that censorship can be just the tip of the iceberg, a sign of something worse to come. When one freedom is threatened, it is reasonable to assume others will soon be as well. Heinrich Heine, an author whose work was burned in the Nazi book burnings coined the now-famous phrase, “where they burn books, in the end they will also burn people” (Central European University, 2014). This phrase is actually cemented in the Berlin monument to the book burning there, a ghostlike “empty library,” but it has been applied around the world. If authoritarianism is not stopped at the first signs of over-control, at the propagandization of “others,” even a democracy can be in danger. We must learn from the past to preserve free expression and access to knowledge, and in doing so, preserve life itself.
