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“Authors should not be ALLOWED to write about–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative
“This book should be taken off of shelves for featuring–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative
“Schools shouldn’t teach this book in class because–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative
“Nobody actually likes or wants to read classics because they’re–” you are an anti-intellectual and an idiot
“I only read YA fantasy books because every classic novel or work of literary fiction is problematic and features–” you are an anti-intellectual and you are robbing yourself of the full richness of the human experience.
“you are functionally a conservative” is such a good and clarifying insult
Literally right after I saw this post, I saw another post in a discord chat for BOOK EDITORS in which an outspokenly liberal editor talked about how Nabokov should have never been published because he wrote about p*dophiles and described women’s bodies in ways that made her uncomfortable. She described his writing as “objectively terrible” and said she wanted to burn his books. And other editors were bringing up classics they didn’t like and talking about how they wanted to throw them in the trash. This wasn’t like a light “unpopular opinion!” conversation. This was actual book editors talking about how books should be destroyed and censored.
There is something so scary and toxic in global culture right now. The revival of fascism is influencing everyone’s mindset and approach to art, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum.
I see far more books being censored today than when I was a kid. Librarians handed me The Catcher in the Rye, The Sexual Politics of Meat, and Animal Farm when I was literally 8-11. My mom would never have taken a book away from me. I read everything from the Tao Te Ching to the Qur’an to atheist texts under my desk at school. Teachers thought nothing of it or encouraged it. Books seemed universally acknowledged as sacrosanct to me.
Now I can’t find any adults who don’t hesitate or want to make exceptions when it comes to censorship. Even the most liberal social activist librarians I know go, “well except for book X…”
Functionally conservative. It’s so important to have the language to express that.
Thank you for this addition!
I don’t think say “functionally a conservative” is fully truthful.
I grew up around conservatives. They were pretty socially conservative, like they didn’t think it was okay to be gay or trans, they opposed abortion, and they were pretty sex-negative. But they also believed in small government and they generally did not think it was the government’s role to fix everything they saw as a problem. And they also tended to oppose book banning, they thought it was important to protect the status quo of individual liberty and local autonomy that is a fundamental part of the culture and social order here in the United States.
Also, the social views of conservatives when I was growing up, were the mainstream status quo of the broader society. Society was homophobic, it was transphobic, so conservatives were homophobic and transphobic, merely because they were protecting the status quo.
The people we see dominating the Republican party aren’t conservatives. They’re right-wing authoritarians. They have some loose allegiance to social conservative values, but they aren’t committed to the fundamental belief in small government, local control, and stability and continuity in society that conservatives are committed to. They are willing to increase centralization of power, and use this power to push their will on the populace, even at the expense of local control and individual liberty.
And the relationship between the social views and the mainstream has changed. The conservatives when I was young were not appreciably more conservative than mainstream society. But nowadays it is different. Society as a whole has become more progressive. Gay marriage is legal. Mainstream corporations have policies about respecting trans people’s pronouns and chosen names. And yet the far-right sentiments that dominate the Republican party are holding onto views that were mainstream 30-50 years ago or even farther back. It’s not conservative, it’s reactionary. These people aren’t pushing to preserve the status quo, they’re pushing for radical change, which would involve great social turmoil, to return to norms from a few generations back.
Don’t call them conservative. Don’t allow them to call themselves conservative. They are reactionary and they are right-wing authoritarians.
“Conservative” is not a bad word. There are times when it is important to oppose change. Like I hate the way our society has become so dependent on smartphones, how social media has moved to curated feeds, how the quality of many products has declined, how our society has become more car-oriented in the past 80 or so years. This stuff bothers me and it’s good that I’m conservative in wanting to preserve what is good about society.
In fact, when you live in a free society that does not ban books, if you are fighting to keep books free, then you are a conservative. The people who are pushing to ban books are not conservatives, they’re pushing for radical change. They are reactionaries and authoritarians.
I hope this clarifies things.
darkheart-despairs
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