There’s an interesting hinge on the last bit, which is they’re fine examples for restriction, but are also critical titles to be aware of, read, and understood, so that you can be aware of and understand fanatics.
I say that as a sometimes-librarian, in the facet of “Mein Kampf is good to have around because it’s part of history, shines a light on the worst of us, and people are curious, plus it’s objectively bad and undermines fascist arguments”. It’s a hot button and understandably so, but the going logic in libraries has been for many, many years to have it available, and I think that’s a prudent choice for that case.
I also say that as an exvangelical who leans on the side of book burning for the singular title To Train Up a Child–lean, but come back, because it’s horrible to read, but it helps me understand depths of religious trauma that I was able to bypass, which gives me the full picture of religious trauma, not just my own. Like Mein Kampf, it is also just. *Tremendously* evident to anyone not already entrenched in Gothardism that these people are full-blown whackadoodle and should be hung by the neck until sorry…
…or it *should* be, but can it be trusted to be understood?
I know we’re talking about conservatives, but the really unifying and worrying thing we have going on right now is the death of media literacy. If honest to God *editors* are looking at Lolita and going “This is a book written to glorify pedophilia and should be burned”, if the people in charge are missing the point that hard, we are in some deep shit.
I could go all the way out and say the Bible is available absolutely everywhere, to the point that you’re encouraged to steal them from hotel rooms if your name or Biblical name is Gideon, and that it has supported white supremacy against its will for many, many years, but I don’t want to sound pretentious, and it’s not the Bible’s fault. Nobody I knew in The Cults wanted to read it in context, they just used deliberate (or, in the sad cases, completely unaware and righteous) cherry-picking and “interpretation” to support hateful beliefs they already had. It’s a hell of a lot of weight to put on a book so old they used to have to write it on dead sheeps.
