We keep on hearing about conservatives trying to “ban” books.

By now you know that the arguments we are having are not about banning anything, but about how books are curated by librarians. No library, and especially no school library, carries every book in print. Most school libraries have 5-10,000 books total, which is a fraction of a fraction of 1% of the books out there.

Every library is a curated collection, and we are arguing about how best to curate the books to ensure they are age-appropriate and at least vaguely educational. My guess is that no elementary or middle-school library carries the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or The Anarchist’s Cookbook and that it wouldn’t be controversial to demand they not be disseminated to students by the government.

Yet when parents question the wisdom of including books that promote underage sex, joining sex apps to meet up with adults, or promoting practices such as “scat play” they are attacked as “book banners.”

That is all the background to discussing the new approach to library curation that has shown up in Canada. Removing all books written before 2008 to ensure that the shelves are filled with appropriately “inclusive” works.

Amazing how often "inclusivity" is invoked to exclude.

"The new process, intended to ensure library books are inclusive, appears to have led some schools to remove thousands of books solely because they were published in 2008 or earlier."
https://t.co/DZBV9o6cP4

— Conor Friedersdorf (@conor64) September 13, 2023

This mass purging of books is being promoted by the same alphabet ideologists who scream loudly about “book banning” when Gender Queer is up for debate. Showing pictures of young teen boys giving blow jobs to each other is vital to education, but literally, every book written before 2008 must be taken off the shelves lest the kids see something that isn’t current in its inclusion of the DEI concepts so dear to the Left.

No, I am not kidding.

Harry Potter, The Hunger Games and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.

Those are all examples of books Reina Takata says she can no longer find in her public high school library in Mississauga, Ont., which she visits on her lunch hour most days.

In May, Takata says the shelves at Erindale Secondary School were full of books, but she noticed that they had gradually started to disappear. When she returned to school this fall, things were more stark.

“This year, I came into my school library and there are rows and rows of empty shelves with absolutely no books,” said Takata, who started Grade 10 last week.

She estimates more than 50 per cent of her school’s library books are gone.

In the spring, Takata says students were told by staff that “if the shelves look emptier right now it’s because we have to remove all books [published] prior to 2008.”

REMOVE ALL BOOKS PUBLISHED PRIOR TO 2008.

If that sounds like something right out of 1984 it’s because it is precisely the sort of thing that the government in 1984 would do.

I know that some of my readers think that I am exaggerating about the scope of the cultural battle we are in, or think that I am catastrophizing about the extent of the attack on Western culture.

I am not. Every book published prior to 2008 has been removed from a public high school library in Canada to ensure that kids are not exposed to the wrong cultural values–wrong being determined by ideological zealots who want to wipe away our current culture and replace it with a totalitarian vision that exists in their fevered imaginations.

The CBC pushed the Ontario Education Ministry about the practice, and they agreed that the practice was extreme and unacceptable. But read what they said:

Prior to publication, neither Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce’s office, nor the Education Ministry, would comment on PDSB’s implementation of Lecce’s directive when contacted by CBC Toronto.

But in a statement Wednesday, the education minister said he has written to the board to immediately end this practice.

“Ontario is committed to ensuring that the addition of new books better reflects the rich diversity of our communities,” said Lecce.

“It is offensive, illogical and counterintuitive to remove books from years past that educate students on Canada’s history, antisemitism or celebrated literary classics.”

Had to throw in a line about how evil Canada has been, didn’t they? I may be reading between the lines, but the objection seems to be to the crudeness of the curation method, not the basic idea behind it. Obviously, the full range of historical facts, including the objectionable ones, should be taught to students. But it is clear that the presumption is that Western culture itself is fatally flawed.

Not DEI-friendly enough.

The message from the Ontario Education Ministry seems to be: Do better hiding your agenda, Erindale Secondary School. And the school board has no regrets about their actions:

“The Peel District School Board works to ensure that the books available in our school libraries are culturally responsive, relevant, inclusive, and reflective of the diversity of our school communities and the broader society,” said the board.

So far nobody has been fired, and there is no clear indication about what standard exactly would be used to curate books at Erindale or other  Ontario schools. I think we know by what standards they will choose what to put back, and which type of books are likely to be purchased in the future. In fact, the Ontario Ministry of Education is pretty explicit:

PDSB’s “equitable curation cycle” is described generally in the board document as “a three-step process that holds Peel staff accountable for being critically conscious of how systems operate, so that we can dismantle inequities and foster practices that are culturally responsive and relevant.”

First, teacher librarians were instructed to focus on reviewing books that were published 15 or more years ago — so in 2008 or earlier.

…

Step two of curation is an anti-racist and inclusive audit, where quality is defined by “resources that promote anti-racism, cultural responsiveness and inclusivity.” And step three is a representation audit of how books and other resources reflect student diversity.

When it comes to disposing of the books that are weeded, the board documents say the resources are “causing harm,” either as a health hazard because of the condition of the book or because “they are not inclusive, culturally responsive, relevant or accurate.”

For those reasons, the documents say the books cannot be donated, as “they are not suitable for any learners.”

You have to recognize that the goal is to destroy Western culture root and branch. Not improve it. Not make it more “inclusive.” Simply destroy and replace it with a radical Left replacement.

As with the American Library Association, whose president readily tells you that her goal is to turn libraries into Marxist indoctrination camps.

I keep on saying and will keep on saying that none of this is a conspiracy theory. There is literally no attempt to hide their agenda. They say it out loud, do it in front of you, and exalt in their progress.

People simply can’t believe their eyes and ears because it is so insane.

The goal is to rewrite our history and our culture. Wake up. We have to fight back now.