The Library Journal, which advertises itself as the “most trusted and respected publication for the library community,” appears to be calling for the banning of books it considers guilty of “whiteness.”
What this really is of course is a soft launch towards censorship and book burning.
In a tweet published earlier this week from Library Journal’s verified account, the trade publication announced to its 202,000 followers that “Library collections continue to promote and proliferate whiteness with their very existence and the fact that they are physically taking up space in our libraries.”
Library collections continue to promote and proliferate whiteness with their very existence and the fact that they are physically taking up space in our libraries. Via @sofiayleung https://t.co/iKEk0462Mh pic.twitter.com/ov8hZ5Zt2J
— Library Journal (@LibraryJournal) April 16, 2019
The tweet links to a semi-incoherent piece written by librarian Sofia Leung on her personal blog, who complains at length about “library collections … written mostly by straight white men [that] are a physical manifestation of white men ideas taking up all the space in our library stacks.”
She continues:
If you look at any United States library’s collection, especially those in higher education institutions, most of the collections (books, journals, archival papers, other media, etc.) are written by white dudes writing about white ideas, white things, or ideas, people, and things they stole from POC and then claimed as white property.
…
Library collections continue to promote and proliferate whiteness with their very existence and the fact that they are physically taking up space in our libraries. They are paid for using money that was usually ill-gotten and at the cost of black and brown lives via the prison industrial complex, the spoils of war, etc. Libraries filled with mostly white collections indicates that we don’t care about what POC think, we don’t care to hear from POC themselves, we don’t consider POC to be scholars, we don’t think POC are as valuable, knowledgeable, or as important as white people.
Ms. Leung is entitled to her opinions, and while it’s disturbing that a librarian, someone in a position to influence minds, holds such opinions, as long as she is doing her job in a professional manner, she is entitled to believe whatever she wants.
The Library Journal promoting this surreal mix of nonsense and racial hate is, though, something altogether different.
What we have here is a trade publication that affects how public dollars are spent essentially arguing against books, opposing books, promoting the idea that a certain category of books are “physically taking up space in our libraries.”
In other words, these books must be removed to make room for “acceptable” books that contain “acceptable” ideas and opinions.
The category under fire here is “whiteness,” a deliberately vague and imprecise term, a word right out of George Orwell’s 1984 that manages to be whatever it needs to be to the woke fascists, censors, and book burners desperate to blacklist specific ideas, thoughts, and opinions.
The term “whiteness” is meant to conjure up the same feelings as the term “white supremacist,” but “whiteness” sounds more polite, more scholarly, and it allows the blacklisters and censors to associate every idea, thought, and opinion they want blacklisted as an act of white supremacism.
Obviously, this is an insidious manipulation of language meant to appeal to decent people because all decent people oppose white supremacism, want white supremacism rooted out of polite society.
But just look at how the free speech debate has shifted in an influential part of the library community.
No longer are organizations like the Library Journal talking about protecting books from the censorship of removal; no longer are they calling for additional voices, no longer are they advocating for the importance of the inclusion of books from all people from all walks of life. Quite the opposite. The debate has now shifted to the idea of removing voices, removing ideas, removing people who hail from a certain walk of life because their “whiteness” is “physically taking up space in our libraries.”
In other words, a certain school of thought, a specific well of ideas is now a burden to our libraries and must be removed, disappeared, made unavailable to a public that must not be exposed to a certain school of thought.
This actually is Fahrenheit 451 come to life. Like all totalitarians, the book burning government in Ray Bradbury’s classic cautionary tale is not driven by bad intentions… Oh, no, no, no… Bradbury’s book burners are motivated by the noblest of intentions: to protect its citizens from any ideas, thoughts, or points of view that might offend or make them uncomfortable. The book burners are the good guys. The people love their book burners.
What’s more, in Bradbury’s prescient story, society has been numbed and made compliant with legalized drugs, reality TV, gadgets, social media, and the overall pursuit of pleasure. The population is pampered and sheltered, so inoculated from stress and adversity that this has morphed into a venomous intolerance that opposes any idea or thought that challenges their beliefs or world-view, that upsets their gilded bubbles.
Any of this starting to sound familiar?
This is exactly what is happening today, happening at the hands of social media companies blacklisting ideas for our own good, happening in a news media that deliberately removes precise terms like “illegal immigrant” from the lexicon, and now…
A major library publication is arguing that certain ideas are taking up too much space in our libraries.
In a sane country, in a sane culture, in a tolerant and open America, there is room for all ideas in our public libraries, and to argue against that, as the Library Journal is now, is as un-American as it gets.
If you have not yet read Fahrenheit 451 or 1984, you are woefully unprepared for what’s coming, for the future the far-left and their media allies hope to build for us.
Both novels were written, not by fanboys titillated over the idea of Dystopia, but by learned men who believed in human freedom, in intellectual pursuit, who saw the future, and who penned the warning signs decades ago.
If you can forgive their whiteness, Orwell and Bradbury gave us vital access to the left’s playbook.
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
A long, long time ago when I was touring the US I made a point of visiting the libraries of whatever town I was working in to get free books. Most people aren’t even aware of “de-accessioning” where they simply weed out old books that are no longer popular or are damaged, etc. Librarians were always willing to give me a couple of free books and I slowly built up a decent collection of books on a wide variety of subjects, most of them written in the era before the great intellectual lock-down went mainstream. I still have them- many of them- and some of them were pivotal in opening my eyes to the reality of the world and that no matter what library, no matter what town, a lot of the books featured the same titles and authors; Which Way Western Man, The Rising Tide of Color, Conquest of a Continent, The Thirteenth Tribe (autographed!), The Camp of the Saints, etc. I didn’t realize that what was happening was a kind of housecleaning where specific ideas, authors, movements and historical perspective were slowly being erased from our collective memories intentionally, by the very people who supposedly love books.
We all know how this ends and we ought to be aware of where we are on the timeline. Once the option of thinking and speaking for yourself is no longer allowed, the energy behind those ideas and words must find a way to vent themselves- that’s the physics of the human species- and where that leads is always, every time and in every place organized violence on a massive scale.
And you could have just let us read our books and have our say.
And to continue with your theme, the new books that are put on the shelves these days are often subversive in many different and clever ways. The saddest part of it all is that the children’s section gets its own version of “age appropriate” propaganda.
Sadly my memory is incapable of memorizing an entire book or parts of books which Farenheit 451 had people doing in order to retain those books since they were burned out of existence. Today it’s not really a problem regarding actually burning books since so many people can’t be bothered to read an entire book, any book. Best they do is little snippets of stuff off their cell phone. Either that or their reading comprehension is so low they CAN’T read at higher than a fourth grade level.
I go into many homes where nary a book is to be seen.
“Ms. Leung is entitled to her opinions . . . .”
Why should we tolerate her opinions at all, or even her existence? The reverse is obviously not true of her.
These people are racial Marxists – where ‘class’ has been supplanted by ‘race.’ Rather than rounding up and liquidating the bourgeoisie, they plan to get rid of white people – they aren’t even hiding it any longer.
If you haven’t read Covington’s ‘The Brigade,’ a work of fiction, you are woefully unprepared for what is coming.
https://archive.org/details/TheBrigade
I am sick and tired of these vile bastards and their communist bullshit . Maybe God in his Mercy will give us a world wide economic collapse. That should wake the white majority from their slumber. It’s like whites are under some kind of magic spell .
The library industry, all the way from most publishers, many authors, most teachers, and professional library organizations like the American Library Association are fast becoming subversive elements, just as has already happened with the media.
Herr Goebbels would be smiling.
There’s a library in the town near where I live. Very few books but lots of movies and DVDs and computers.
Agreed. People like Leung are racists and haters, very much in the same vein as the vile beast hired by the NYT, Sarah Jeong. What is it with these Asian females and their hatred of white people and especially white males?
I don’t care about what Leung thinks, I don’t care to hear from Leung itself, I don’t consider Leung to be a scholar, I don’t think Leung is as valuable, knowledgeable, or as important as white people are.
There, are we clear now? And I don’t consider Leung to be a librarian, either – just a podunk censor with delusions of relevance and importance.
You can have my copy of Conrad’s “The Nigger of the ” ‘Narcissus'” from my cold dead hand.
This liebrarian named Leung would benefit from a flogging for her hatred.
The “Library Journal” should be deeply ashamed of their collaboration with this rayciss hater.
I’m looking forward to borrowing all those classics written by non-whites, especially . . . uh, give me a minute . . . Shit, there must be some. Anyone?
Well, there is that cookbook “Five Ways To Cook Up A Fruit Bat”, but don’t know if it would be considered a classic in “The Great Gatsby” sense.
Grima Wormtongue, having put the King of Rohan under a spell, sends the King’s Nephew into exile for daring to speak the truth.
Tolkien knew what he was writing about. Men of the West were nearly extinguished. We may yet be.
I don’t recall if admin has already written a price comparing Lord of the Rings to current events (he may have). He’s already written about books, songs and movies’ relevancy to the current climate (Unforgiven, the Foundation Trilogy, Muse’s Uprising, to name few).
The King (Strider/Aragorn, of the Dunedain) represented the Last Christian Monarch. When he knelt before Frodo and told him, “You bow before no one”, it was obvious who the Cross err Ring Bearer represented. Tolkien was a literary genius.
Today’s world is tending more to ‘Lord of the Flies’ as opposed to ‘Lord of the Rings’ altho the Orcs are alive and well and living in the ghetto and other ‘no go zones.’
Could it be that the great majority of quality books were written by “Whites” ? Will libraries now begin adding substandard books just because they are not written by “Whites”? God help us.
What do you call a library full of black scholarly works?
A: Empty
It’s just another salvo against Boomers. They are trying to push us off the map. This is all a bullshit millennial attempt to take control of the country. Fucking millies want to usher in the LGBTQ agenda. Boomers need to build a wall to keep the millies on the other side, otherwise they will vote for Sanders and institute gay government. Yokes, are you safe, I mean, are you a Boomer?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRLwV2xafpk
No EC. This is no attempt. You are old, they are young. You will die soon and they will take over control. It will happen whether you want it to or not. It will happen whether they try to make it happen or not. You can not isolate yourself from the young. It simply can’t be done as they are the ones who will be taking care of you in your dotage. You have already ushered in the LGBTQ agenda. Almost all in congress and the senate are gay and the last president was gay. You voted for each of them. It’s not your fault, you didn’t know they were gay, but they are there now and it wasn’t because of the millennials. Hell fewer of them vote than boomers, but that won’t last long. Their psychopaths will be replacing your psychopaths very very soon. The line of psychopaths stretches out the door and down across the mall all the way to the giant phallus that is the washington monument. Each is waiting for their turn at the trough.
What is ‘Whiteness.’ Can anyone explain this? Is their something called ‘blackness.’ How about ‘redness’ or ‘Brownness’ or’yellowness.’ Unfortunately this smacks of reverse racism. These people need to be constantly reminded of what Dr. King said that we should judge people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. This silliness needs to stop because it is only a matter of time before it turns vicious.