book banning

book banning, the practice of prohibiting or restricting the reading of certain books by the general public or by members of a local community or religious group. Books can be banned by means of their removal from publicly accessible locations (e.g, libraries), by their destruction (including the burning of printed books), or by making their authorship or distribution a punishable act. Books are typically banned by governments, but they can also be effectively banned by religious authorities, businesses, and—in rare cases—powerful private individuals. To ban a book is almost always a controversial act in a liberal democracy since its citizens consider media freedom to be both a common good and a necessary component of any democratic society.

Examples of book burning abound throughout the past and into the present. In 213 bce the Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang famously had every book outside of his own library burned if it was not concerned with agriculture, medicine, prognostication, or Qin himself, thus wiping out all records of the old order he sought to replace. In 1559 ce the Roman Catholic Church created the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, a definitive list of books forbidden by the church as dangerous to the faith or morals of Roman Catholics (publication of the list ceased in 1966). In 1873 the U.S. Congress passed the Comstock Act, the formal title of which was “Act of the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use.” The act criminalized the publication, distribution, or possession of information about or devices or medications for “unlawful” abortion or contraception.

Only since the 20th century have some (but only some) countries’ governments relinquished the right to control which books their citizens read, and even in those relatively permissive states there are exceptions. Books can still be banned in countries with a high degree of media freedom if they infringe on the legal rights of copyright holders, fraudulently impugn people’s reputations, expressly incite violence, or are obscene and without redemptive value (as some forms of pornography are judged to be).

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In addition, it is possible in some countries with media freedom to still ban books on a subnational level. In the United States, for instance, public and school libraries are legally allowed to restrict which books are made available to children since it is generally agreed that not every book is appropriate for children. However, this commonly accepted form of censorship again became a political flashpoint starting in 2021 as national groups of social conservatives and conservative politicians began making a concerted effort to remove a multitude of children’s and young-adult books from library shelves, primarily those written from the perspectives of people of colour and LGBTQ+ people (see also gay rights movement). In 2022 Republican lawmakers in some states began passing or attempting to pass sweeping laws to ban children’s books in public and school libraries that did not accord with their views on racial and sexual minorities. No judgment on the constitutionality of these laws has yet been made, though the U.S. Supreme Court, citing its earlier decision in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943), declared in Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26 v. Pico (1982) that “we hold that local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to ‘prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.’ ”

There are other ways to ban books than through the power of the state. Certain Muslim extremists, for example, have used the threat of violence to forbid the publication of books they consider disrespectful of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad, with some success. In 2010 the U.S. Department of Defense, alarmed by the classified material contained in Lieut. Col. Anthony Shaffer’s memoir Operation Dark Heart: Spycraft and Special Ops on the Frontlines of Afghanistan—and the Path to Victory purchased and destroyed 9,500 copies of it. In addition, and more subtly, some publishing companies have bought the rights to certain written works in order to drastically restrict their distribution or marketing, ensuring that few people read them (a procedure known in the industry as “privishing”).