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My Life with Maus, Or How I Was Banned… by Tom Englehardt

On banning the book that changed how we talk about the Holocaust.

February 22, 2022 · via Rise Up Times · BY TOM ENGELHARDT Tom Dispatch shared with thanks

Sometimes life has a way of making you realize things about yourself. Recently, I discovered that an urge of mine, almost four decades old, had been the very opposite of that of a rural Tennessee school board this January.

In another life, I played a role in what could be thought of as the unbanning of the graphic novel Maus.

For months, I’ve been reading about the growing Trumpist-Republican movement to ban whatever books its members consider politically unpalatable, lest the lives of America’s children be sullied by, say, a novel of Toni Morrison’s like The Bluest Eye or Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale or a history book like They Called Themselves the K.K.K.

It’s an urge that just rubs me the wrong way.

After all, as a boy growing up in New York City in the 1950s, when children’s post-school lives were much less organized than they are today, I would often wander into the local branch of the public library, hoping the librarian would allow me into the adult section.

There — having little idea what I was doing — I would pull interesting-looking grown-up books off the shelves and head for home.

Years later, exchanging childhood memories with a friend and publishing colleague, Sara Bershtel, I discovered that, on arriving in this country, she, too, had found a sympathetic librarian and headed for those adult shelves.

At perhaps 12 or 13, just about the age of those Tennessee schoolkids, we had both — miracle of miracles! — not faintly knowing what we were doing, pulled Annmarie Selinko’s bestselling novel Désirée off the shelves.

It was about Napoleon Bonaparte and his youthful fiancé and we each remember being riveted by it. Maybe my own fascination with history, and hers with French literature, began there. Neither of us, I suspect, were harmed by reading the sort of racy bestseller that Republicans would today undoubtedly loathe.

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Oh, and if you’ll excuse a little stream of consciousness here, my friend Sara was born in a German displaced-persons camp to Jewish parents who had, miraculously enough, survived the Nazi death camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald, which brings me back to the jumping-off spot for this piece.

The Naked Masked Face of New Normal Fascism – by CJ Hopkins

New police uniform in Ottawa!

via Consent Factory, Inc. shared with thanks

I told you this part wasn’t going to be pretty. The collapse of fascist ideological movements and fanatical death cults never is. The New Normal is proving to be no exception.

After three weeks of non-violent civil disobedience outside the Canadian parliament in Ottawa by truckers and other Canadian citizens struggling to uphold their right to not be subjected to forced “vaccination,” Justin Trudeau unleashed the goon squads.

Thousands of militarized riot police (and other unidentified heavily-armed operatives) swarmed the area, surrounded the protesters, started breaking into trucks and arresting people, and beating them with batons and the butts of their rifles.

In one particularly ugly episode, the New Normal stormtroopers rode their horses directly into a crowd of non-violent protesters, trampling an elderly lady with a walker. She had just finished saying something to the police along the lines of “you break my heart … this is about peace, and love, and happiness.” Then they knocked her down and rode their horses over her.

Despite an abundance of video evidence clearly depicting exactly what happened, the Ottawa Police tried to spin it this way …

Putin’s Great Gamble..recognizes and sends ‘Peacekeeping’ troops to Donbass

By effectively taking control of Donbass Russia may protect the Russian population not already evacuated and thwart the US and Ukraine’s NATO backed Russophobic campaign.

The Great Gamble of course is whether the powerful US military issues Russia with a nuclear ultimatum to get out of Ukraine. And if Ukraine launches the 150,000 army it has on the Donbass borders, armed with the latest free gifts from NATO.

Then Russia would have to defend Donbass (or abandon a million Russians) causing a massacre of Ukrainian troops, causing a NATO intervention, causing a nuclear holocaust ……

Putin orders Russian army to enter Ukraine’s Donbas ‘to support peace’

The EU and US will no doubt install their already prepared massive economic sanctions, but Russia has resisted previous sanctions and right now is rolling in cash, with gas and oil prices still rising.

The sanctions were coming anyway, and could be a massive own goal if energy and other vital raw materials are cut off in reply.

The Donbass rebels lack Turkish Drones, Javelin missiles, Stingers, etc

Russian State launches massive military operation amid fears

The trouble with the chessboard analogy is that the aim of that game is to annihilate the enemy.. which could easily include you and me! And even if Russia does manage to force a Peace it will surely worsen rightwing chauvinism and repressive nationalism in Russia, to the detriment of any dissent and the over 100 ethnic minorities

The final logic of decadent predator Capitalism is total war. This combined with the curse of far right Statist nationalism in Europe has historically inspired hatred, repression and finally killing of ethnic and religious minorities, who happen to be stranded in the ‘wrong’ State.

After two world wars the recipe repeats itself, with the west advancing on Russia’s borders, colonizing and supporting the neo nazi movement in Ukraine. Nobody really knows why..

Putin orders Russian military to ‘maintain peace’ in Donbass…

Russia cannot abandon its citizens in Donbass, and is obsessed with the memory of the last time the west attacked Russia in 1941, finally leaving over 20 million Russian and USSR people dead.

Putin’s Great Gamble is to step right into the trap and double dare the USA to attack. And to see if Russia can survive Savage Sanctions. Europe has let itself be dragged into the endless insane US and UK Crusade against Russia, which must now assert its borders and turn East, to China.