WESTERN CANADA IS REELING AFTER AUTHORITARIAN BOOK BAN BACKLASH
One of the problems of the Trump Effect is losing sight of other important things that are happening. But then again, that is one of the integral strategies of the Trump Effect. This time, I realize I hadn’t been tracking the rise of dominant conservative politics in western Canada. The province of Alberta, to be precise. Yet conservative politics these days, especially in the West, really means authoritarianism. And one of the ways that has manifested in Alberta is a book ban that has people reeling. A book ban, of course, being a prime warning threat to free speech and democracy as a whole.
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ALBERTA PREMIER DANIELLE SMITH ISN’T HAPPY HER BOOK BAN IS GETTING COVERAGE
How do you know people are reeling? Because when someone like Alberta’s Premier Danielle Smith sets the guidelines for a book ban, those guidelines end up including seminal titles like The Handmaid’s Tale, 1984, and Brave New World. And librarians in this western Canada province dutifully started pulling such titles from the shelves. Well, perhaps not dutifully in any subservience to the Premier. But loyalty to the people, as their actions spurred more common awareness about what the book ban represents.
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SMITH EVEN ACCUSED LIBRARIAN RESPONSE TO BOOK BAN AS “VICIOUS COMPLIANCE”
And to hammer the point home, those 3 titles mentioned above share the theme of stories about totalitarian governments that dictate what people are allowed to read. Premier Danielle Smith, in turn, is now condescendingly angry about how her directive to ban “explicit sexual content” has been broadly interpreted to elicit outrage against her. She even accused school boards of engaging in “vicious compliance.” But that’s the problem with starting down a path of authoritarian censorship before you have everyone in chains, isn’t it?
