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JetPunk t1_iu1rzmm wrote

Here's another fun fact. Each year the American Library Association puts out a list of "banned books". But these are only books that library patrons have requested to be banned.

Books that are actually banned by libraries don't appear on the list. So the banned books contains exclusively books that are NOT banned by libraries.

Now that's Orwellian!

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cerpintaxt33 t1_iu2beba wrote

What sorts of books are actually banned?

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JetPunk t1_iu2e36i wrote

I don't know. Anarchist's Cookbook. Mein kampf probably.

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GrymanOne t1_iu2hgr1 wrote

The Cookbook isn't really what you think it is, more of a CIA tool. The latter is certainly purchasable.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/mein%20kampf

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vegainthemirror t1_iu3dni8 wrote

It is now, because it is public domain. Up until 2015, 70 years after ole Adolf's death, it wasn't possible to have it legally republished

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madnessmaka t1_iu3i9nh wrote

I laugh thinking of his estate taking people to court over copyright infringement.

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vegainthemirror t1_iu3j5j5 wrote

It was less of an estate, but more of a general (governmental?) agreement that anything AH-/Mein Kampf-related was not allowed for use to the public. At least in german-speaking countries

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Salty_Animator_4019 t1_iu4e5sg wrote

The government of the German state Bavaria took over the copyright from the original publisher after the Nazi time and tried to ensure that the book was not published other than perhaps in a scientific research context. This ended when the copyright ran out 70 years after Adolf Hitlers death.

A new, official version WITH critical annotations was made available, since this year also in a free edition on the internet (in German): https://www.mein-kampf-edition.de/

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arcosapphire t1_iu68no2 wrote

What? Back around 2000, my mom got me a copy, I assume from B&N. It certainly wasn't banned.

I feel obligated to add a disclaimer: my mom is Jewish and it was for educational reasons to understand history. That said, I couldn't make it more than a couple of pages in. I was expecting some intelligent but misguided philosophy that I could eruditely analyze and go, "aha, here was where he went wrong" and pat myself on the back. Instead it's a bunch of immediately blathering nonsense. Which is educational in a different way, relevant to note recent events this very article is tangentially related to, that such nonsense can actually get people politically pumped. But I don't think more than a couple of pages would have been necessary to learn that anyway.

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vegainthemirror t1_iu696lh wrote

Depends where. In german-speaking countries, it was banned, difdicult if not impossible to obtain it, physically and digitally. I know of a history teacher at my high school who somehow was able to get a copy from somewhere, but we've never seen it, let alone read from it.

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arcosapphire t1_iu6acyp wrote

Yeah, it was rather famously censored in Germany. But I don't think there was any restriction in the US, certainly not something about publishing rights and public domain. The 70 year copyright thing is also country-specific and thus couldn't explain it being somehow unattainable anywhere. Which it wasn't.

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-BlueDream- t1_iu2jqc7 wrote

Most of the shit in anarchist cookbook is bullshit or already relatively common knowledge like making a Molotov cocktail. Nobody is building a bomb or stealing a car with these instructions, it’s basic shit made to entertain people.

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BarbequedYeti t1_iu3wl5a wrote

You sure as shit ain’t getting high from banana peels.

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Bigred2989- t1_iu2ofwl wrote

A British anarchist named PA Lutty published guides on how to make submachine guns without heavy machinery. He was arrested for illegal firearms production but died of cancer before being prosecuted, and people in the UK who have downloaded his guides have been raided by law enforcement. No idea how it's treated in the US, but the more recent debates over 3D gun files rings similar.

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OcotilloWells t1_iu2z4e1 wrote

I'm sure it's fine in the US. Generally knowledge is fine, it's when you make things like this that it becomes a problem. There are exceptions.

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cC2Panda t1_iu4n49x wrote

The FBI might show up at your door anyway. After the Boston bombing there was an uptick in people saying they got FBI visits after looking up how to make a pressure cooker into a bomb.

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uristmcderp t1_iu3aqco wrote

Maybe for like childrens' libraries.

The real dystopia is if those books are actually banned. That implies there's enough power in whatever's written that it would sway the worldviews of your citizens. Or your citizens are that easily manipulated.

In reality, banned books are more like unpopular books that aren't worth shelving much less printing.

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[deleted] t1_iu2i5b2 wrote

[deleted]

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CakeDayisaLie t1_iu4aao9 wrote

Mein Kampf was accessible to me as a 4th grader in my private Christian schools library lol. No idea why.

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Wide-Composer-7230 t1_iu5vbz3 wrote

Yeah I took out Mein kampf from my public library.

I was just curious as a history major who took so many World War II history courses in college.

I read it in English and thought that it was terribly written from a grammatical and humanitarian standpoint . To clarify, I am the farthest thing from a racist but was surprised that this book was written by an individual who was able to take control of Europe for half a decade. It sounded like a whining child rambling about life‘s unfairness. So then I thought maybe the translation to English changes the perception, so I spoke to a few Germans I knew in the literary field and they all said the German version is exactly the same.

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ThepalehorseRiderr t1_iu5ud99 wrote

I actually accidentally stumbled upon the anarchists cookbook at my local library WAY back in the day. Even then, it blew my young mind and I knew I was looking at some heavy shit.

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[deleted] t1_iu6awce wrote

[deleted]

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ThepalehorseRiderr t1_iu6bgmu wrote

I remember the cookbook had detailed schematics to build all sorts of heinous shit. One such device was called "the blotto box". Supposedly you'd make this thing, plug it into your phone line and not only would it make every phone in your area code ring but would shock people nearest to you.

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mcampo84 t1_iu41t74 wrote

I highly doubt Mein Kampf would be banned, given its historical significance.

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TaftIsUnderrated t1_iu1z23e wrote

And book stores make bank selling "banned" books. A lot of the book banning fear mongering has been a marketing ploy.

And most actually banned books are banned because of copyright violations.

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PercussiveRussel t1_iu3c7gr wrote

>A lot of the book banning fear mongering has been a marketing ploy.

^([citation needed])

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Stachemaster86 t1_iu2tndn wrote

Originally published in Playboy. Other fun fact. 451 is what the fire department said was the temp for paper to burn. Don’t remember anything else about reading the book in junior high.

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blitz672 t1_iu34vxt wrote

I don't know if it's still the case but I am as in high school in the early 2000s I would check the list every year and read from it. At that time there was an explanation on the website that said they were frequently banned or challenged books

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