What I don't think (white, Christian) people understand about the Maus ban is, this isn't just "culture wars."
This is a deliberate move to make sure future voters are incapable of understanding how far right "culture wars" lay the groundwork for extreme political violence.
This is a deliberate move to make sure future voters are incapable of understanding how far right "culture wars" lay the groundwork for extreme political violence.
Far right "culture wars" are never just battles about culture.
They are about impacting our knowledge, perceptions, and prejudices so that we are not capable of deciphering their writing on the wall.
They are about impacting our knowledge, perceptions, and prejudices so that we are not capable of deciphering their writing on the wall.
What makes the Maus ban so telling and terrifying isn't *just* the fact that it's a clear effort to mainstream Holocaust denial.
It's that this is a book ABOUT how to read the writing on the wall, and the consequences of ignoring it.
It's that this is a book ABOUT how to read the writing on the wall, and the consequences of ignoring it.
And of course, that's what the Holocaust denial project is about, at its heart.
What the deniers really seek to deny isn't just the Holocaust, it's the fact that this sort of writing on the wall exists, can and should be read, can and should be addressed.
What the deniers really seek to deny isn't just the Holocaust, it's the fact that this sort of writing on the wall exists, can and should be read, can and should be addressed.
I've monitored far right chats and forums for years now, and it's like clockwork the way they go from "culture war" hot take to calls for genocide.
That's what far right "culture wars" are about: building our tolerance for fascism, and creating a pretext for genocidal violence.
That's what far right "culture wars" are about: building our tolerance for fascism, and creating a pretext for genocidal violence.
That's it.
That's the goal.
They don't want you to be able to catch them until it's too late.
And once it's too late, the next step is repeating the very history Maus depicts.
That's it, full stop.
The end.
That's the goal.
They don't want you to be able to catch them until it's too late.
And once it's too late, the next step is repeating the very history Maus depicts.
That's it, full stop.
The end.
(And PS, part of what the writing on the wall always tells us is who the first targets of that violence will be. It is not a coincidence that so many of these books are by, and about being, Jews, queers, and POC.)
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