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| American Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden circa WWII |
Did you know that a significant amount of Americans supported Hitler during the WWII era? They kind of leave that out of schoolbooks because, and I know this sounds strange, but once upon a time almost everyone agreed that Nazis are bad, and they didn't want kids reading about how a lot of the US actually supported Hitler back then. It really shouldn't come as a surprise, considering two of the most famous Americans at the time, Walt Disney and Henry Ford, were not just fans of Hitler but were also his friends.
A while back I used to work at the Elmhurst Public Library, and I did something there that I used to think about often because I acted against my ethics this one time. I believe that people should read whatever they want to because I used to think that people who read were smarter than most. I never had any illusions about Nazis disappearing. My illusion was that they were a fringe society far from the mainstream.
Here's what I did. I was working the drive thru window late on a Friday night when I heard someone shove a bunch of books into the book drop. It was my duty to check those in, so I went into that room and discovered that they weren't library books. They were propaganda pamphlets, some book-sized. And there were a lot of them. A sticky note said they were a donation.
I didn't know what they were yet, so I eagerly took them back to my desk to look them over. Once I saw that they were celebrations of Nazism and denigrations of who they deemed as inferior people, my enthusiasm deflated. Ordinarily I would put these by the donations shelf, but I took them home instead. I doubted that they would have wound up in circulation. We have Mein Kampf in the collection, but that's an historical document. These pamphlets were attempts to convince people that Hitler had it right. Still, I didn't want to risk it.
Why did I take them home instead of throwing them out? I thought I'd read them to maybe understand the kind of horseshit these dickheads have in their heads to be spouting such garbage. I never got around to it, though. I put them in my closet, and there they stayed until recently, while I was packing up my things.
I decided then that I didn't need to understand them. Fuck 'em.
I'd taken it upon myself to make sure those books didn't wind up in the hands of impressionable readers, which kind of sounds like banning books, something I'm absolutely against. That's why it bothered me over the years. It no longer bothers me, though. And maybe that makes me a hypocrite, but fuck Nazis.
Because since I took those books I've learned that Nazis aren't just fringe. They're mainstream. Back when Trump was running in 2016 and all these cocksuckers came pouring out of the woodwork? That was a surprise. And guess what: it's no longer obvious to society as a whole that Nazis are bad.
I threw out those shit rags on a rainy day, and I'm certain that they've reverted to the cheap pulp they were made from. I'm glad no one else got to read them because people are stupider than even I thought, and that is saying a fucking lot. If I stopped even one person from nodding along while reading this tripe from saying, "Huh, Hitler isn't so bad after all," then it was worth it. Because I made the world a better place.
A lot of book banners seem to be of the same frame of mind. "I'm making the world a better place by making sure children don't read whatever the fuck I don't want them to read." Here's the difference: the books they're after aren't promoting the idea of killing "inferior" people en masse. To Kill a Mockingbird dares to suggest that maybe, just maybe, a Black man is a person, too. For example. Or The Great Gatsby hints that rich people are decadent and depraved and might just be horrible and untrustworthy people. Don't get me started on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
So yeah. I did the right thing. I will sleep like a baby tonight. And one more thing: Nazis (punks, surfers, whatever their flavor) need to fuck off.
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