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# Maus Goes on the Pyre
- URL: https://goodoil.news/maus-goes-on-the-pyre/
- Published: 2022-01-29T03:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2022-01-28T03:44:49.000Z
- Author: Cam Slater
- Tags: Books, Censorship, Education, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2024-07-17 01:12

**Ray Bradbury**’s dystopian classic *Fahrenheit 451* envisions a world where books are routinely burned (the title refers to the ignition temperature of paper). But, as Bradbury himself said, “There is more than one way to burn a book”. Why bother burning books, when you can just ban them, strike them off reading lists, or simply declare them ideologically off-limits?

Back in the 80s and the heyday of the Religious Right, the Right-On Left regularly sneered at schools banning books like *Tarzan of the Apes* and even *Where’s Wally?* But the left are the Establishment now — and they’re banning books with a zealousness that would make **Jerry Falwell** blink.

*To Kill a Mockingbird* is the classic novel of tolerance and anti-racism. It’s as impossible to read it as “racist” as it is to read *Mein Kampf* and conclude, “That Hitler fellow really liked Jews”.

But never underestimate the zealous stupidity of the leftist inquisitors.

> A top school has scrapped teaching classic novel *To Kill a Mockingbird* because of its “dated” approach to race.  
>  
> James Gillespie’s High School in Edinburgh fear the seminal book by **Harper Lee** promotes a “white saviour” narrative.  
>  
> *Allan Crosbie*, the curriculum leader for English at the school, is also banning *Of Mice and Men* as part of a bid to “decolonise” the syllabus.  
>  
> He slammed the use of the N-word in *To Kill a Mockingbird* and believes third-year students shouldn’t be taught using the classics.  
>  
> [The Sun](https://www.the-sun.com/news/3226563/to-kill-a-mockingbird-banned-school-race/?ref=goodoil.news)

“The N-word.” That such childish nonsense is *de rigeur* today shows just how intellectually and morally stunted are the times we live in. I’d like to see these mental midgets deal with (black) scholar **Randall Kennedy**’s magnificent etymological history, *Nigger* — not least his conclusion that it’s perfectly OK for white people to use the word, in context.

But the very utterance of “nigger” — in an age where “fuck”, even “cunt” are little more than punctuation marks — is so blasphemous to our ruling elite, that its prevalence in another classic, *The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn*, sees the book even more widely banned than *To Kill a Mockingbird*. Anyone who reads the following exchange and concludes that it’s promoting “racism” lacks not just a sense of humour but basic mental acuity:

*“Good gracious! anybody hurt?”*  
*“No’m. Killed a nigger.”*  
*“Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt.”*

The satire is as plain (and as searing) as in **Richard Prior**’s *Blazing Saddles* script: *Horses! We can’t afford to lose any horses, you dummy! Send over a couple of niggers.*

Just to prove that you can’t satirise the stupidity of book banners, *Fahrenheit 451* itself is [another oft-banned book](https://bannedbooks.library.cmu.edu/ray-bradburys-fahrenheit-451/?ref=goodoil.news). Even children’s books like *The Giving Tree* [have been banned](https://bannedbooks.library.cmu.edu/shel-silverstein-the-giving-tree/?ref=goodoil.news) (for supposed “sexism”).

Now another modern classic is headed for the banned list — a classic which deals with the horrors perpetrated by another group of committed book-burners.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/the_bfd_maus.jpg)

Few books are as brutal as this. The BFD.

> A Tennessee school district has voted to ban a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust due to “inappropriate language” and an illustration of a nude woman, according to minutes from a board meeting.

In fact, it’s for much more than that:

> “It shows people hanging, it shows them killing kids, why does the educational system promote this kind of stuff? It is not wise or healthy,” School Board member **Tony Allman** said about the book, which was part of the district’s eighth-grade English language arts curriculum.  
>  
> [ABC Australia](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-28/maus-holocaust-book-banned-in-tennessee-school-district/100787030?ref=goodoil.news)

Yes: a Holocaust narrative depicts children being killed. Because, you know, *that’s what happened*. *Maus* is almost entirely based on the story of Spiegelman’s parents, as well as how the shadow of the Holocaust hangs over succeeding generations.

The fact that *Maus* is a comic book (“graphic novel” is just a fancy term for nerds who want to put on a bit of swank) populated by cartoon animals (Jewish mice, German cats, Polish pigs and American dogs) shouldn’t mislead anyone, any more than *Animal Farm*. Maus is an often-brutal read, one of the best accounts of the Holocaust I’ve ever read.

Its confronting nature is exactly why it should be read.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/31/f4/31f4e20a-0315-499e-83ff-139e8eab53bf/content/images/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/the_bfd_maus2.jpg)

This is no simple comic book. The BFD.

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