The Immortality of Hatred and Revenge: The Interconnections of Censorship, Disinformation, and Cultural Erasure in the Book Bans Targeting Marginalized Populations

Abstract

While the contemporary censorship movement is driven by aggressive demands for book bans in libraries and schools, the motivations and goals fueling the movement are far more complex. Examining these motivations and goals, this article argues that the movement is intentionally deploying censorship and disinformation to pursue cultural erasure of specific marginalized communities. By drawing on not just library and information science, but economics, psychology, and other fields of knowledge, this article explores the movement’s objectives, origins, political approaches, deployment of technology, and tactics learned from previous movements. This detailed excoriation of the contemporary censorship movement, and the living legacy of its powerful antecedents, is intended to provide informational professionals and their supporters with a richer understanding of the threats that they are confronting and strategies for engaging these threats.

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