"Spiegelman’s mother died by suicide when he was 20, and in 'Maus,' he depicts how his father discovered her lifeless body, unclothed in a bathtub. Spiegelman also laughs in reaction to a board member bringing up the author’s past comics contributions to Playboy magazine when assessing the anthropomorphic nudity in 'Maus,' which includes stripped-down concentration camp prisoners. Spiegelman acknowledges that the voices who spoke at the meeting weren’t 'monolithic by any means.' One instructional supervisor spoke of “Maus” as an anchor book to begin teaching the Holocaust to children: 'I am very passionate about history, and I would hate to rob our kids of this opportunity.' The member also noted: 'Mr. Spiegelman did his very best to depict his mother passing away.'"
From "Art Spiegelman sees the new ban of his book ‘Maus’ as a ‘red alert’" (WaPo).
Background: "A school district in Tennessee banned the use of 'Maus,' a Pulitzer-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, in its middle school classes, citing the work’s profanity and nudity in a 10-to-0 vote. As leaders in conservative areas across the country push for more control over the way history is taught, the McMinn County school board expressed concern that the expletives in 'Maus' were inappropriate for eighth-graders. Members also said Art Spiegelman’s illustrations showing nudity — which depict Holocaust victims forced to strip during their internment in Nazi concentration camps — were improper."
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194 comments:
As such school votes strategically aim to limit “what people can learn, what they can understand and think about,” he says, there is “at least one part of our political spectrum that seems to be very enthusiastic about” banning books.
“This is a red alert. It’s not just: ‘How dare they deny the Holocaust?’ ” he says with a mock gasp. “They’ll deny anything.”
He sounds deranged.
Amid the controversy, Spiegelman embraces the fact that “Maus” has an afterlife. “We thought it would be self-published and a one-shot in our RAW magazine.”
“I didn’t realize there would so many comics and graphic novels about the Holocaust” to follow his, he says. Cumulatively, they make Holocaust comics “more plausible as part of a curriculum.”
Buried in the last paragraph of the story: there are plenty of other depictions of the Holocaust to choose from.
The words damn and bitch are too much for 8th graders learning about the Holocaust, yet kindergarteners learn to be silent and hide for active shooter drills.
No one who banned this book has read it, as anyone who has sees how insane this is.
George Mason Professor disagrees with the media spin
David Bernstein
@ProfDBernstein
·
Jan 26, 2022
You can save yourself a lot of moral outrage by reading this. A Tennessee school district didn't ban Holocaust-related books. It took Maus off its Holocaust education curriculum. The rest of the Holocaust education curriculum remains, and Maus will be replaced with something else
David Bernstein
@ProfDBernstein
The grounds for removal were dumb, though I'm not sure Maus is the book I'd choose for 8th graders if I were choosing. In any event, again, no ban on Holocaust books, not even a ban on Maus, just no longer required reading for students.
8:30 PM · Jan 26, 2022
Just for the record, when kids read The Diary of Anne Frank, they read an edited version, one more appropriate for school children. No one is attempting to remove the Holocaust from the curriculum in that case either.
Is it any wonder Tennessee is the world leader in biotechnology, advanced robotics, computer science, physics, etc.
Oh wait, that's woke Massachusetts.
Tennessee is the world leader in corrupt Christian megachurches. Instead of praying the gay away, try praying the Stoopid away.
I think The Diary of Anne Frank might be a better way to inform children of the Holocaust. The image of a mother committing suicide is disturbing for a kid and probably not in a way that teaches any useful lesson about the Holocaust.
I'm a grandfather who's wondering, again, at what age do you introduce kids to the Holocaust.
It's one thing for a parent to make the judgment, even if it turns out to be too early. It's another to impose it on kids without any judgment as to individual kids' reaction to it.
I was born in 45 to a veteran of the ETO. We knew where the term "trainload of dead babies" came from. I sure wouldn't want my granddaghtrers, age ten and fourteen, to hear about that.
I never understood the appeal of Maus and don't expect 8th graders would either, except as fetishization of the holocaust as a guess.
8th graders have way more interesting and wholesome things to fetishize.
I used to get academic book catalogs from all over and often there was a holocaust section, with books like holocaust for children. Okay, something weird is going on there, I surmised.
To complain about bad words is weird but that's another weird.
My landlord in Vienna mentioned Nazi Scheisse a couple of times, a bad word he picked up as a child I guess. He seemed to think it was the right word.
Is the book still in the high school library? Panic porn is the new cool thing
It's completely dishonest to overlook the long history of trigger warnings applied to depictions of suicide, which didn't come from the right.
There's also the point that what the board actually did was remove Maus from the curriculum. How many school districts actually teach from Maus?
It's like the joke about the hunter and the bear where the punchline is "this isn't about hunting, is it." This isn't about the Holocaust, which the real pictures themselves adequately convey the horror of what happened, this is about an artist trying to push the envelope as part of an endless movement to coarsen the culture. I side with the parents on this one.
The book wasn't banned. It was removed from 8th grade curriculum. I think parents should be allowed to say that a book is too adult themed for 8th graders. Honestly, they should also be allowed to decide that a graphic novel is not the medium they wish for teachers to use, no matter how good the content is.
The real question is , “is Maus appropriate for 8th graders?”
“ , this is about an artist trying to push the envelope as part of an endless movement to coarsen the culture…”
You are far off. Read the book. It’s excellent. A great work of art.
As a history lesson, it may be a bit inefficient, since it’s about a man’s relationship to his parents, with the story of their survival of the holocaust unfolding.
As literature, it’s fantastic.
"Just for the record, when kids read The Diary of Anne Frank, they read an edited version, one more appropriate for school children. No one is attempting to remove the Holocaust from the curriculum in that case either."
"More appropriate for school children?" Schoolchildren experienced terror and ultimately death in the Holocaust. Why are schoolchildren too tender to learn the ugly facts of life? Why do we think it is normal to infantilize children?
Blogger Howard said...
Is it any wonder Tennessee is the world leader in biotechnology, advanced robotics, computer science, physics, etc.
Oh wait, that's woke Massachusetts.
Tennessee is the world leader in corrupt Christian megachurches. Instead of praying the gay away, try praying the Stoopid away.
Never heard of Oak Ridge I guess…
Sometimes better to remain silent than remove all doubt, Howard…
"...this is about an artist trying to push the envelope as part of an endless movement to coarsen the culture."
An artist telling the truth of his mother's suicide and telling of his parents' experiences in the Holocaust is "coarsening the culture?"
"I side with the parents on this one."
Of course you do. But, this wasn't even necessarily the parents. It was the members of the school board. (Though, they are probably a sad reflection of the majority of the parents in the community.)
"Honestly, they should also be allowed to decide that a graphic novel is not the medium they wish for teachers to use, no matter how good the content is."
What's wrong with the medium of graphic novels?
"As literature, it’s fantastic."
For adults.
Everywhere I see this story, 'Pulitzer-winning' is used as if it mattered in this case.
My father privately printed his diary about being a soldier in WWII. He took a massive amount of photos while he was fighting in Europe. Mostly when he was not fighting, although there is a sequence of mortar landing nearby.
He was at Dachau shortly after it was liberated and took a lot of photos. I once asked him why there were no photos of the prisoners in his pictures. He replied he thought it was disrespectful to take their photos because it would be like turning the people into souvenirs.
He's now been dead for years, but whenever I see/read about Holocaust pictures, I remember his standard. This school board argument seems to be you must follow my approach to teaching this subject or else you're a Holocaust denier. Maybe there were other reasons not presented in the article.
"Just for the record, when kids read The Diary of Anne Frank, they read an edited version, one more appropriate for school children. No one is attempting to remove the Holocaust from the curriculum in that case either."
"More appropriate for school children?" Schoolchildren experienced terror and ultimately death in the Holocaust. Why are schoolchildren too tender to learn the ugly facts of life? Why do we think it is normal to infantilize children?
The material edited out wasn't the stuff about terror and death. It was the stuff about sexual longings, thoughts on her genitalia and bitchy comments about some of the people she was hiding with. There are actually many versions. There is at least the following: the original version Anne wrote, an edited version that Anne wrote, her father's edited version, and one edited for use in American schools.
There has to be more to this story.
What replaced this vehicle to teach the slice of history, that is the Holocaust?
Graphic novels would be a good way to hold the attention of 8th graders. But its obvious not every graphic novel, even if it was handed a Pulitzer, is appropriate.
Changing course material is not book banning. It happens thousand of times a year across the globe.
The fact remains The educational cabal is not to be trusted. New math, sight reading, and all other manner of failed notions have been foisted on the public schools. Treating our kids as lab rats. Parent involvement is a great asset to our children's education.
Inevitably, the non-European minorities growing up in America will be disinterested in the Holocaust- aggressively disinterested in some cases. I'm surprised the curriculum hasn't been pressured into focusing on the Rwandan genocide, or the Russian Holodomor because Vladimir Putin is the most evil Russian ever.
Maus might be a good book. But comics are an intensely visual medium, and after a few pages of talking mice my interest as a teen rapidly diminished. Decent writing, highly overrated.
Massachusetts is very big in biotech, but it isn't what it once was when it comes to tech companies. The days when Rte. 128 rivaled Silicon Valley are long over. MIT still comes up with more technological advances than the Tennessee county next door to the Scopes trial site, but they have had a head start and have a lot more money.
I own Maus, two copies, but I don't use it to teach about the Holocaust. It wouldn't be effective for that purpose for most 8th graders anyway.
I think board discussions end up focusing on nudity and vocabulary because the other issues are abstract. Also, reporters may only choose to mention those parts of the discussion.
Why do we think it is normal to infantilize children?
This is a joke, right?
Yes, the problem with Maus is that it's art, not history. Too many teachers teach art and never get to the history. Starting a unit with Maus seems to suggest what kind of program the district is running. If the parents want to go in a different direction, they should be allowed to without screams of censorship.
I'd like the WaPo to show Spiegelman the book, Lawnboy and see what he thinks about it being "banned." That might get us to the heart of the matter.
Why are schoolchildren too tender to learn the ugly facts of life? Why do we think it is normal to infantilize children?
Got to toughen them up.
Ignore Hundreds of Universities across this Nation that fear their very identity if a person like Jeff Sessions would speak on campus. Not a required course, but a speech, wholly voluntary. Adults, they need to be shielded from the icky.
https://jonathanturley.org/2022/01/29/university-of-illinois-student-government-demands-school-bar-jeff-sessions-from-campus/#comments
Physician heal thyself.
The biggest problem that I have with Maus is the portrayal of different nationalities as different types of animals. A mouse can never be a cat and vice versa, cats can't help but kill mice, etc.
Always learn something here.
I had no Idea the Diaries of Anne Frank were edited. My teacher failed to include that fact. Why the secrecy?
College students demanding trigger warnings is fine, but being sensitive to 13 years olds is not? Most middle schools use either Anne Frank or Elie Wiesel's "Night" to teach kids about the Holocaust. They are both stories about teens and are relatable to eighth graders. Put the graphic novel on the shelf in the library, but don't make it required reading. There are a lot of books that fit into that category. Books worth reading when a young teen is ready for them, which varies widely. I have to wonder if some people are basing their opinions strictly on where the discussion about this book is happening. If Massachusetts were to skip this book when the teachers were planning curriculum (hint: schools there have), would you feel the same about it as you do because the you hear about it in Tennessee?
Does Maus address the 12 million people murdered in the National Socialist death camps?
Or just the 6 million Ideas?
My recollection is the latter. If so, it should be banned on the grounds of historical accuracy. Unless it is supplemented with other material that does address the other 6mm.
I'm also with others who wonder if Maus or National Socialist death camps is appropriate for middle school. it may be but perhaps middle school is too early.
Not for middle school perhaps but high schools should certainly teach about the 100 million people murdered by socialism in the 20th century. I don't think they are, generally.
John LGBTQBNY Henry
"An artist telling the truth of his mother's suicide and telling of his parents' experiences in the Holocaust is "coarsening the culture?"
Children's minds are not fully formed. My mother lived through Nazi occupation, her grandparents starved to death together in bed because they couldn't get food, and her father was forbidden to travel to where they lived, and discovered them three days after the liberation. My mother's Jewish school mates and teachers disappeared, though she did not know where, at the time. One of the Jewish kids was renowned for his math abilities among the other kids, and some of the kids used to threaten to beat him up if he didn't tell them the answer to some hard multiplication problem on the spot, he probably made up answers and satisfied them, then one day he was gone. I have a healthy revulsion at the Holocaust, but who needs to inflict an adult artist's fetishization of the horrors on children? Just the facts are enough.
This has nothing to do with the art that adults have a right to produce and to see.
If lifelong college professor Ann Althouse in Madison, Wisconsin wants to worry about censorship, there is no need to make a long journey to central Tennessee.
This is a lie. The book was swapped out of the curriculum for another Holocaust book but the district explicitly said they might bring it back. Oregon took Anne Frank out of the curriculum. So are Democrats there “banning books” or is it just how districts work, occasionally adding or subtracting works to the recommended reading list. This focus on the artist and the Holocaust is a smokescreen for progressive teachers unions that want no transparency no oversight and no parents meddling in their grooming and activism training. See through the emotionalism to see how DNC/Media spins news to rile up Biden’s base.
Changing which textbook you use for teaching algebra is not denying the existence of algebra. Why does replacing Maus with some other book about the Holocaust equate to denying the Holocaust?
It’s been years since I read Maus, but to the best of my recollection my problem with it was not nudity nor cuss words. It was the depiction of Nazis as a different species, a predator species. And that’s the problem, isn’t? The Nazis were just as human as the Jews and Gypsies and other identity groups selected for mass slaughter. Yes, some were evil psychopaths, but then there were camp guards and commanders who went home at night and asked their kids how school went and they were good husbands to their wives and tried to be good fathers to their children. The banality of evil; someone should write a book about that.
Is Maus banned by every school district which doesn't use it in their middle schools? I have a feeling that would be most of them.
BTW, I don't deny that fetishes can spawn from severe and genuine emotional pain, as I am sure the artist has experienced, and which he has a right to create art about. There is a theory, and it's been found to be true in lab animals, that the emotional pain and reward pathways are very closely located in the brain, and that at some point, if the emotional pain pathway becomes overly exercised, it can leak into the reward pathway, resulting in taking an unconscious pleasure in wallowing in that which caused the pain in the fist place, fetishization. It's more college level than junior high level stuff, dealing with this art.
This fake outrage story boils down to one thing. It's not a coincidence that it's coming out soon after the devastating smack down in Virginia.
People are upset that parents across the country are paying attention to curriculum and having an impact. So making a story out of this curriculum choice, which is something that happens all the time, is a way to paint parents as white supremecists or holocaust deniers. And low information people -- we have more than one here -- believe it.
It's hilarious that the usual suspects are complaining about local parents having influence, which according to the complainers is a travesty of justice. Do they ask themselves why, if local parents shouldn't have an influence on the curriculum, anyone should care about the opinions of the complainers, who may be thousands of miles away?
Would that it were possible to pray the stupid away. I might be able to say three Hail Marys and three Our Fathers and--poof!--Howard and other State cultists would magically disappear.
What "trigger warning" really means is the possibility of an undesirable political sentiment that may wig out progressives, who have a famously difficult time "coexisting." Whatever happened to those bumper stickers? Maybe they have all been burned, along with the "Question Authority" ones.
I always found that such a trite phrase, the level of detail that eichmann put into the final solution, suggests something other than banality, more like maniacal ocd, and how to explain the savagery of jasenovac in croatia, or oun fighters in the voyjina pocket, it's something more than just nazis, it is a sentiment that goes back to haman and the amalekites, forward to hamas in the modern incarnation,
Why does anyone take the WaPoo seriously? They believe that Canadian Trucker are fascists. The WaPoo published a cartoon to that effect. According to the WaPoo, anyone who objects to government mandates is a fascist, while the mandates are just "democracy." The WaPoo is run by neobarbarians and owned by a neobarbarian, who would like to tell all of us how to think and have us obey our government masters.
"As literature, it’s fantastic."
As history, not so much.
By the way, what do Maus and his fellow progs think about the effort to fire a UI law prof who included redacted slurs on an exam?
Crap, crap, crap
Or just the 6 million Ideas?
Should have been "just the 6 million Jews"
John LGBTQBNY Henry
I would say high school would be the appropriate time, not middle school.
had the allied landings not succeeded, it may have been as high as nine to 12 million, that was the plan after all, designed at the wansee conference, this is the sentiment expressed in the hometown of the synagogue hijacker, (funny how that story dissapeared)
Growing up I had access to this book...
https://www.amazon.com/PICTURE-HISTORY-Billings-Hardcover-Incorporated/dp/B0000EEKZI
It hardened me up for when my mother committed suicide when I was 21.
Eighth grade in public school curriculum. Not smart. Liberal, but not smart.
No one who banned this book has read it, as anyone who has sees how insane this is.
@Mark, the book is not banned. I’ve read it, though not recently, and I do not regard it as the best possible book for teaching the Holocaust. My objection to the book is a couple comments upthread. If you think the Nazis were a unique subculture of h. sapiens then you need to read about the Milgram experiment.
A guy walks into a bar and notices a man talking to the bartender down at the other end. The guy does a double take because the man talking to the bartender really resembles Hitler.
So the guy goes up to the man and says “Excuse me, but did anybody ever tell you that you look like Hitler?”
The man replies, “Oh, but I am Hitler. I have been reincarnated and I am back on Earth to kill 10 million Jews and 33 geese!”
“Oh, my God! That’s terrible! But why 33 geese?”
Hitler then turns to the bartender and says “See? I told you nobody cares about the Jews.”
Sad. When I taught 8th grade World History 40 years ago I showed my classes "Night and Fog" areal life harrowing depiction of Maus. You could always hear a pin drop when it was screened. It would shut up a class of mouthy 14 and 15 years old.
I have Maus on my bookshelf. I consider it superficial and ill-conceived. Spiegelman somehow convinced himself that the so-called "graphic novel" was a suitable vehicle for the subject, when in fact he perpetuates the stereotypes that helped set the National Socialist war against the Jews in motion.
Briefly, Maus is an overblown take on the "underground comix" idiom of the 60s counterculture, and as such, it revels in its coarseness and crudity. Germans are portrayed as cats, Jews as mice, and Poles are pigs. Very clever. Unfortunately, since mankind first cultivated and stored cereals mice and rats have been despoilers of our basic food, at least 20 percent of the world's food every year, not to mention the destruction they cause by their gnawing and burrowing and the diseases they spread. Rats and mice were exactly the analogs used by Nazi propaganda to inflame anti-Semitism. The comparison was so crude and ridiculous that even Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's master of propaganda and as vicious a Jew-hater as Hitler himself, considered Der ewige Jude to be a shameful film, virtually pornographic. Why Art Spiegelman would buy into that same disgusting calumny is baffling...
Besides, he's a lousy cartoonist. He had the finished outline of a good novel and ruined it.
I remember watching schindler's list, that's a film you can only take a few times really, it really strikes at your soul, ralph fiennes probably underplayed how savage amon goeth was
diametric equivalence - definition
When two statements meant to oppose each other are more or less synonyms.
example:
“this is about an artist trying to push the envelope as part of an endless movement to coarsen the culture…”
"You are far off. Read the book. It’s excellent. A great work of art."
The synonymity being that despite both being statements of 'fact', they're both merely expressions of personal opinion.
You give 8th grades comic books with nudity, they're going to focusing on the nudity, not the "plot".
The people defending assigning this to 8th graders are either stupid, pig ignorant, or else more interested in pushing a political agenda (the destruction of childhood) than they are in education
Maybe he can do a graphic novel of the Crowcreek Massacre.
Or the Rwandan genocide.
Plenty of genocides to choose from.
In 8th grade 40 years ago we read Night by Elie Wiesel. It was harrowing but excellent. Not sure exactly why Maus was chosen for that age, but leave to some of these "conservative" groups to micromanage curriculum stupidly. Finally, we are getting traction on the importance of parents paying attention to what their kids are learning, and these hicks go right ahead and make a mess of it.
I just finished reading "Saving My Enemy" by Bob Welch. It is the true story of an American soldier and a German one. The German relates his time in the Hitler Youth and beyond. Fascinating story and also eerie when compared to today's institutions.
When we were in Germany in 2002, we walked around the Ehrenbreitstein Fortress. In a somewhat hidden spot was a memorial to the WWII German soldiers. They had loved ones too, and not all the German soldiers were monsters like Hitler. They may have had no choice.
Children should be taught the dark side of history in age appropriate stages. Both sides. It wasn't until I was out of high school that I learned how badly Germany was treated after WWI, which ultimately led to WWII. (Led by an Austrian!)
speilberg chose to start his portrait of schindler at the middle, putting his wehrmacht and abwehr background aside, amon goeth's earlier background as a smuggler of weapons was left out, his savagery was on full display,
Richard said...
I was born in 45 to a veteran of the ETO. We knew where the term "trainload of dead babies" came from. I sure wouldn't want my granddaghtrers, age ten and fourteen, to hear about that.
What the fuck is going on here.
Robert Cook: "More appropriate for school children?" Schoolchildren experienced terror and ultimately death in the Holocaust. Why are schoolchildren too tender to learn the ugly facts of life? Why do we think it is normal to infantilize children?"
Children should absolutely learn about the horrors of leftists coming to power and the crimes of the left that led to 100 million dead in the 20th century, all stemming from a political point of view the western leftists are pushing in our schools today.
We should have an entire curriculum based solely on that given the historical proximity and desire of so many in the west to try it again with "the right people in charge this time".
Of course, you'll have to get deniers of such history, like Robert Cook, to accept the facts re: the reality of leftist governance and oppression first and its pretty clear that's never going to happen.
John henry said...
Does Maus address the 12 million people murdered in the National Socialist death camps?
Or just the 6 million Ideas?
My recollection is the latter. If so, it should be banned on the grounds of historical accuracy. Unless it is supplemented with other material that does address the other 6mm.
This is a much better argument.
I'm also with others who wonder if Maus or National Socialist death camps is appropriate for middle school. it may be but perhaps middle school is too early.
Not for middle school perhaps but high schools should certainly teach about the 100 million people murdered by socialism in the 20th century. I don't think they are, generally.
John LGBTQBNY Henry
Do you all forget you were in 6th grade at one point? 7th? 8th? Do you all really think that your minds were too delicate for this when you were 12 or 13 or 14?
What kinds of weaklings are you all trying to raise?
Children are capable of processing this type of information much earlier than you all are giving them credit for.
The school board in Tennessee is listening to a bunch of Karen's who are overprotective of their children's mushy brains.
Nazis elected to the school board ban books on the Holocaust. That falls into the category of "dog bites man."
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...
This is a lie. The book was swapped out of the curriculum for another Holocaust book but the district explicitly said they might bring it back. Oregon took Anne Frank out of the curriculum. So are Democrats there “banning books” or is it just how districts work, occasionally adding or subtracting works to the recommended reading list. This focus on the artist and the Holocaust is a smokescreen for progressive teachers unions that want no transparency no oversight and no parents meddling in their grooming and activism training. See through the emotionalism to see how DNC/Media spins news to rile up Biden’s base.
This is a good argument.
Stop treating middle school students like toddlers.
Don't you people remember the jokes you told each other in 6th grade?
Dead Baby jokes were very common. We told them.
And I know that sexual longings are kind of a thing in 6th grade.
Hiding from that is not the best way to deal with it.
rehajm: I'm a little familiar with the Y12 Plant and moreso with the Savannah River Plant too. Conceived, designed and fabricated by the deep state and immigrants. The locals provided maid and food service.
"If Massachusetts were to skip this book when the teachers were planning curriculum (hint: schools there have), would you feel the same about it as you do because the you hear about it in Tennessee?"
Eleanor makes a valid, but incomplete, point. The subject doesn't matter. The ultimate motivation for stories like this one, whether it's books, or NASCAR, or racism, or religion, or cultural tastes, is to prop up the egos of Wapo's readership specifically, and the North East coast generally by denigrating flyover country. The same can be said of the NYT and the rest of East Coast periodicals.
It's simultaneously maddening and pathetic how both superior and insecure they are to constantly need this type of reassurance.
John Henry says
"Does Maus address the 12 million people murdered in the National Socialist death camps?
Or just the 6 million Ideas?
My recollection is the latter. If so, it should be banned on the grounds of historical accuracy (sic). Unless it is supplemented with other material that does address the other 6mm.
I'm also with others who wonder if Maus or National Socialist death camps is appropriate for middle school. it may be but perhaps middle school is too early."
idk. How young were you when you became an antisemite? Prob. makes sense to give kids a dose of the truth before their minds are poisoned for life like yours. Think of it as a vaccine against hate.
It's more important to teach the kids using princesses and friendly faeries conveying the Disneyland model of the world.
I am with Cookie! I think that schoolchildren should be taught of the horrors inflicted by strong central governments like Stalin's Russia in Ukraine, The Killing Fields should be shown in junior high, and a treatment of The Great Leap Forward, especially to include cannibalization of children, so that kids know where the siren songs of socialism, the one that seduced Germany, actually lead.
What a teapot tempest. Kids are exposed to the Atrocity Feed everyday, and should learn very early in life that there are people who want to kill them, either by direct action or, more subtly, by encouraging them to undertake foolish crusades.
I have shelves of books about WWII and German history, which my son had and has complete access to. He isn't interested, and in truth I don't know what, if anything, he learned about the Holocaust in the public schools.
Knowing the general quality of our schoolteachers, probably not much.
But then, this is Tennessee.
The ultimate motivation for stories like this one, whether it's books, or NASCAR, or racism, or religion, or cultural tastes, is to prop up the egos of Wapo's readership specifically, and the North East coast generally by denigrating flyover country.
Didn't Howard admit he lived in Central Mass? Not Boston or Cambridge?
Central Mass is where the hicks live...
@ Achilles - Yes, I remember well (far better than you, I am sure), and I have also had five sons and five granddaughters, and yes, middle school is too early. Adults are fond of remembering attitudes from 17 as "just the same" as 15, which were in turn "just the same" as 13, as 11. They overestimate their sophistication in earlier years. Some children enter MiddleSchool at 9. Get to know a class of sixth graders rather than relying on your faulty memory. Or do some research about memory. I mistakenly gave my highly intelligent, very stable 6th-grader Animal Farm because I had loved it in 8th grade. Terrible idea. Maus is valuable. Not for seventh-graders. Go with Number The Stars or something instead.
And the discussion always proceeds in exactly this way, with parents describing some material as not age-appropriate being condemned and dismissed as benighted censors who don't want their children to know about anything difficult, by adults with faulty memories who romanticise and exaggerate their own childhood readiness.
why shouldn't they be able to ban such a book? Leftist/liberal schools ban all sorts of books all the time.
WW II ended 77 years ago. Its time we moved on. I graduated from HS in the early 80s. I don't remember anyone talkinga bout Kaiser bill and WW I. Yet here we are in 2022 and everyone acts like Hitler and 1945, just happened yesterday.
"It's simultaneously maddening and pathetic how both superior and insecure they are to constantly need this type of reassurance."
Well said, and it's even more sad when the Flyover People themselves buy into it, and seek the good opinion of the likes of Howard or jim5301.
Liking Maus and Speigleman's comics is a class marker. All "The cool kids" like it, so if you care about it, you're a "Cool kid" too. But if you don't, well you're a hick, and you don't want to be one of those.
Its funny the way people instead of just liking what they like, always try to be fashionable and like, or pretent to like, what the fashionable people or elite - like. that's why Mike Pence and his wife went to "Hamilton". Does anyone think Mike Pence likes "Hamilton"? But going to "Hamilton" is an elite thing to do, so there he was.
One reason Trump was/is hated, is he just likes what he likes. He eats fast food, he went to wrestling matches, he doesn't go to broadway shows or the symphony. Or if does listen to classical music, its because he likes it. He makes no attempt to curry favor with the elite by conforming.
Words matter. Removing one piece of literature from required reading is not "banning." Banning is when it is removed from the library and not allowed on campus, possibly supplemented by tossing it into a fire. Well, unless you are one of those "everything not forbidden is required" totalitarian types, which probably includes a significant amount of the writers at the NYT and WaPo. Let's not sully our discussion of the language with the opinions of overeducated fools who deem themselves experts, especially ones whose opinions on matters change at the whim of Twitter randos.
Unless there was some new development, the school board wanted a different piece of literature for the Holocaust study. And? Is there something special about Maus? Is it the mythical indispensable piece of literature? Nothing else will do in regard to this topic?
Let's be honest. The NYT and WaPo despise parents who want to take back their schools from the progressive fanatics that until recently held near monopoly power, teaching such "acceptable" things as only white people can be racist, while also abusing the children with unnecessary masking, Zoom classes, and lunch outside in freezing temperatures where they have to sit the entire time for "social distancing" purposes. So our "betters" at the papers of record have been desperately trying to come up with some scandal for a counterattack, and this effort - a disagreement on which Holocaust literature is best for 8th graders at one school board - is the best they can come up with. It would be pathetic if it was not so sinister.
For the record, I have no opinion if Maus should or should not be the selected 8th grade Holocaust reading for one school board in Tennessee. For that matter, I am not sure who should even care other than the school board since they are elected to make such decisions. I suppose the authors and publishers of the possible options for the slot might care from a monetary perspective. It speaks to the bad faith of the NYT and WaPo that they care at all.
i feel it werid and strange, that American children are learning about the Holocaust. why aren't they learning American patriotism and American history? We've gotten to the point where American kids know more about Auschwitz then they do about Valley Forge or the Bataan death march.
Very, very, weird. But is the USA even a country anymore?
AVI, what upset your 6th-grader about Animal Farm? I recall my son read it a few years later, and drew the appropriate lessons.
I was 9.5 y.o. when I got a last hug from my father, a decorated WWII veteran, only son of German immigrants. The next morning he was dead. Pancreatic cancer, age 39. Nobody should learn about death that way, but learn about it--especially mass public death--kids should.
Early.
WWII and Nazis filled the airwaves, and today the Holocaust so permeates our culture and historical consciousness that any talk of censorship is just laughable.
It's not a matter of whether it gets taught or not, but how and when. And by whom?
The reason this particular holocaust is so important to liberals is that it is a piece of their propaganda efforts to create fear of Republicanism. They start with a genuine horror, and then through further propaganda, based on lies, they associate this horror with their political rivals who have policy differences with them. This is why they ignore the 100 million that communism killed in the 20th century, where is the political payoff there?
But there are trillions of dollars in potential graft at stake, against any notions we might have of "fair play" in politics.
Achilles writes, "The school board in Tennessee is listening to a bunch of Karen's who are overprotective of their children's mushy brains."
I'm no friend of Karens, however, Karens and every other parent ought to protect their children's mushy brains, the NEA certainly won't. Shock and awe rarely worked on our enemies (the Japs had to be nuked twice!) so why use such tactics on our kids? There's plenty of time to toughen them up, besides, 8th graders will be better off studying the Constitution and the responsible citizen's role in American society than rehashing the Holocaust using such crude implements as offered by Maus
rcocean - American children aren't learning American History? I always thought WWII was American History, but I'll defer to your ignorance.
I haven’t read it and surely am unimpressed by the Pulitzer. Nevertheless, I think censorship is generally a bad idea and I hate to see conservatives partake of it except in extremely rare circumstances. Realistic depictions of the Holocaust, however harsh, are not among them.
Howard said...
It's more important to teach the kids using princesses and friendly faeries conveying the Disneyland model of the world.
Even Howard is applying more perspective than most of you people on this subject.
The first industrialized mass murder of large numbers of people occurred during WWI. Most of the deaths in that war happened as a result of artillery fire. There were relatively few heroic deaths. Most soldiers simply got vaporized during artillery barrages. This industrialized murder was restricted to the military. In the aftermath of WWI, mass extermination was extended to civilians. I think the early Bolshevik state while not the sole practitioner of mass murder for political ends was certainly in the forefront. They used murder not just to terrorize and repress the opposition but rather mass murder to eliminate the opposition. For example, Lenin, after surviving an assassination attempt ordered all 1500 White Russian prisoners imprisoned in the Peter & Paul Fortress to be murdered. His assassin had nothing to do with the White Russians. She was with a group somewhat to the left of Lenin. Lenin expressed regret that he had to execute her.....WWI introduced totalitarian governments and mass murder. They ploughed the ground. The Bolsheviks manured the ground and planted the seeds. The Nazis gathered the harvest.
Eli Wiesel. My daughter’s recommended author.
What is the basis for the FCC obscenity labeling of music material and airwaves?
The parents are not making shit up, imho.
Assistant Village Idiot said...
@ Achilles - Yes, I remember well (far better than you, I am sure), and I have also had five sons and five granddaughters, and yes, middle school is too early. Adults are fond of remembering attitudes from 17 as "just the same" as 15, which were in turn "just the same" as 13, as 11. They overestimate their sophistication in earlier years. Some children enter MiddleSchool at 9. Get to know a class of sixth graders rather than relying on your faulty memory
What are you even talking about? Your whole post is a stupid neener neener taunt.
I have an 8 year old daughter in second grade and a 5 year old.
We are forcing them to be self dependent. I tell them what would actually happen in the Disney stories they are intent on watching.
Yes they complain about more realistic movies being scary. But they are also told what 5 year olds and 8 year olds deal with in Afghanistan.
Humans have had our current general physiology and brain chemistry for 100 millennia give or take. It has only been in the last 50 years or so that we have coddled the shit out of our kids to the point where they grow up into Xanax addicted basket cases.
By the time they are 12 in 6th grade my kids will be able to handle pictures of naked dead bodies. It will be around 6th grade that they start learning what happens when governments act to maintain control of their populations.
They need to start learning the truth about evil and not the shit pedaled in Disney movies or our schools.
They need to be able to live in a world where I am not there to protect them.
Unfortunately, since mankind first cultivated and stored cereals mice and rats have been despoilers of our basic food, at least 20 percent of the world's food every year, not to mention the destruction they cause by their gnawing and burrowing and the diseases they spread.
Very true. This is why the Iowa-based publishers of the Maus, for Farmers! edition wisely decided to depict Jews as ears of corn instead.
As for the depiction of each nation generally as a distinct animal with all its foibles and frailties, I suppose this doesn't really appeal to me all that much either. Other than for the mice however, who somehow are made to seem personable and quaint in a highly anthropomorphized form of the furry little creatures that kids find cute enough to keep as pets. But it's hard to argue with success. The book has been popular enough to set some kind of standard in reaching broader audiences on the topic, and has shot up to top various categories of bestseller lists on Amazon in the wake of the current fiasco.
@ Farmgirl - Night would be a better choice for that age group, yes.
The Devil's Arithmetic is also good.
@ Narr - all sorts of children's literature teaches about death, and sadness, and loss, and danger. Those are very good things, to be encouraged, as it is better for children to learn at one remove than to have to face it in real life. Pain follows us throughout life, sometimes unfairly young. That is not a reason to accept just any hard news that is served up to children in literrary form. some things are better than others, and timing matters.
Lem said...
What is the basis for the FCC obscenity labeling of music material and airwaves?
A bureaucracy making up arbitrary rules and enforcing them in a way that maintains their power and funding?
You mean that basis?
I get the sense that the left feels the appropriate lesson to learn from the Holocaust is that white people are evil and that conservative white people are super evil....From the start of WWI to the years immediately after WWII, there were any number of atrocities enacted. The Holocaust was the apotheosis of those horrors, but not the beginning or end of those horrors.....Ethnic cleansing, mass exterminations, fire bombing of civilian populations. We all made our contributions.
@ Achilles - What I am describing is not coddling, if you read carefully. Two of my children were Transylvanian peasants who were significantly abused and neglected. That was not good for them to learn about "reality" when so young. It required repair. I was a psychiatric social worker for forty years and dealt with plenty of kids who were forced to learn about "reality" too young. You are confusing self-dependence in the training of children with forcing them to see the world as you do, regardless of its effect on them. Somehow you have this idea that if they aren't made to see the worst things in the world they won't be able to function as adults. You should be willing to be told that there is no evidence for that proposition. It's just a feeling you have. You believe a myth, and even used the word "forced" with regard to your children yourself. You seem unable to even consider the possibility that you might be a teeny bit wrong, which is a bad sign.
Do I seem harsh? My, my, you must have a hard time accepting reality...
Although it's been years since I had school age children, I sympathize with the concerns of parents, but the solution is not banning Maus, CRT, sex-ed, etc. The solution is school choice. If the parents of most children attending East School want their kids to read Maus, learn CRT, etc. then school administrators and teachers should be responsive to that. Parents who don't think it's appropriate can decide if it's enough of a problem to merit moving their kids to West School. If it is, the kid and the education dollars go to West School. Of course, if East School ignores parental objections to CRT, new math, Common Core, etc. parents will place their kids in other schools and East School will either serve a smaller number of students, or shut down.
When parents can choose which school best serves the needs of their child, we can quit fighting over curriculum and instead show parents how the curriculum/education approach our school is offering will benefit their kids.
Anyone who continues to refer to this incident as "banning" a book is either too stupid or too dishonest to bother engaging. Taking a book out of the curriculum is not banning a book.
William said...
The first industrialized mass murder of large numbers of people occurred during WWI.
Is the word "industrialized" how you skip over things like what the Mongols did to the Middle East/Eurasia?
China had some amazingly bloody unifications. There are some big numbers there.
rcocean said: "i feel it werid and strange, that American children are learning about the Holocaust. why aren't they learning American patriotism and American history? We've gotten to the point where American kids know more about Auschwitz then they do about Valley Forge or the Bataan death march.
Very, very, weird. But is the USA even a country anymore?"
Just finished the most recent episodes of Ozark. The bad guy Mexican drug lord comments at one point that America isn't a nation anymore. It's a big market. A giant LLC. I think he's right. The immigration act of 1965 was the final nail in the coffin.
Before anyone cries "Waaaah. Raaaycisss!" please recall that nation comes from the same root as nativity. The U.S. is multinational, polyglot, empire. We are not of common blood and no longer even of common culture.
@ Narr - all sorts of children's literature teaches about death, and sadness, and loss, and danger.
You can make the argument that that is the precise purpose of the Narnia books as an example. (from a Christain point of view no less)
Assistant Village Idiot said...
You seem unable to even consider the possibility that you might be a teeny bit wrong, which is a bad sign.
Do I seem harsh? My, my, you must have a hard time accepting reality...
I might be wrong. I am most of the time in the beginning.
But the world is not the way we wish wish it to be. You are talking about some idealized wish casting. Odds are that kids are going to have to accommodate trauma and shocking ideas by the time they are 12. Almost every child has been able to do this in the history of our race which goes back thousands of years.
My kids will be able to deal with pictures of dead people by the time they are 12. They may not be able to be immediately help out in a mass casualty accident at 12, but they will not be panicking either.
The 8 year old already has an idea of the difference between Disney Evil and real world evil.
I also find it interesting that you have to resort to name calling and cheap taunts.
The same people saying this is denying the history of concentration camps are saying toughen up.
I, in general, agree.
Kids SHOULD be aware it's a rough world out there.
So, yes, push Maus into the curriculum (is it history?).
Cover child molestation.
Take field trips into homeless camps.
Hand them over to Coyotes to travel from Central America.
Let them serve in a CCP labor camp.
No lines can be drawn or well have weaklings!
Our children must be prepared:
Unless someone scrawl the word Trump, in chalk, on a sidewalk.
Or a comedian makes a joke about [fill-in-the-blank]
Or someone does not blindly follow the dictates of (poli)SCIENCE!
No way to prepare them for those horrors.
@Achilles: With respect, I side with Assistant Village Idiot on this issue....I was born in 1943. My childhood was a shit show, but an American shit show. It was a walk in the park compared to what kids in Central and Eastern Europe endured. I never missed a meal, nor had to tremble in a bomb shelter while people above me got incinerated, nor had to live through a long, winter ride in an unheated box car. Such, such were the joys for the kids of Europe during those years....My own experience and knowledge of harsh reality hasn't made me a better person. Rather the opposite. I don't see much point to adding to the fears and trauma that are endemic to childhood.
This is the transcript of the hearing if anyone is interested:
https://core-docs.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/asset/uploaded_file/1818370/Called_Meeting_Minutes_1-10-22.pdf
The stated reason for removing the book was that it contained the words "damn" and "bitch." Does anyone here really believe that was the true reason? There was talk about contacting the publisher to see if it would give permission to redact out those words, but that was rejected as too much trouble.
Bitter Clinger: "Anyone who continues to refer to this incident as "banning" a book is either too stupid or too dishonest to bother engaging."
That would be every single lefty, liberal, democratical and GOpe-er at Althouse.
But only every single one.
Maybe the parents think the subject deserves more respect than a comic book. It's like how my father didn't allow us to watch Hogan's Heroes, "because there's nothing funny about prisoner of war camps".
"Conceived, designed and fabricated by the deep state and immigrants. The locals provided maid and food service."
This is an example of seeing one turtle down. Sure, most of those nuclear engineers graduated from elite universities, but the students at those universities at that time were recruited by scouring the entire nation, using standardized tests, like the old SAT to find the best students, students who graduated from local high schools all over America. MIT is not primarily attended by students from Massachusetts, though Salem State probably is.
Once this model is destroyed, the whole edifice will, maybe not collapse, but be greatly degraded, as merit goes out the window. Those students who did those great things did not get into those elite schools, which BTW had 100 year head starts due to the time line of colonization and Indian displacement, did not get in based on their Woke Q rather than their intellectual merit. Talk about fighting the last war.
Of course California created some great universities, created them during the years it was a red state, BTW.
I read Maus as an adult and I don't think it's a book I would encourage a 10 to 13 year old to read much less require though I admired it. I'd suggest Primo Levi's "If This is a Man" or "Night" by Elie Weisel.
I think it's evidence of the decay of education that educators think middle school students need to be given graphic novels when there are great contemporary prose accounts.
I also think they all middle schoolers ought to be required to read "A Day in the Life of Ivan Ivanovich" by Solzynitsen to understand it's totalitarianism that makes these sorts of government slaughters possible. (It may have to be in an edition that blanks out the swear words like the one from the Readers Digest Book Club I read about that age for Mcmin county).
Strongest point here is that the Germans are depicted as a different species than the Jews, and as a vermin species, no less. Reminds me of that incredible "Jew Hunter" scene in "Inglorious Basterds."
Of course, what made the Jews "mice" (Maus) and the Nazis "cats"? One side had guns, and the other didn't. An issue that the Jews have remedied in Israel, to the great consternation of the world.
ehajm said...
Blogger Howard said...
Is it any wonder Tennessee is the world leader in biotechnology, advanced robotics, computer science, physics, etc.
Oh wait, that's woke Massachusetts.
***************
Howard, you low buffoon: virtually ALL the science and technology done and developed in Mass came long before it got "woke".
Now, science is a tool of oppressors, and in any case there's no objective "truth" any more, just "lived experiences", whatever the fuck that is.
Althouse is right. The book is great literature, and literature is a legitimate way to teach history, if the literature is not false to the underlying facts--a claim that I have never heard made about Maus. Autobiography equally so. Maus has autobiographical elements at two levels, because the core narrative is told in the words of Spiegelman's father, while the framing narrative is told by the son, who is trying both to memorialize his father's and mother's experience and to make sense of how it played out in their lives and his, including importantly in his mother's suicide. Althouse can say better than I, but I think the graphics are remarkable in conveying the weight and terror of the experience.
That does not mean it is not good history, as some here are suggesting. It is a historically accurate account of the Holocaust experience told from the perspective of a Polish Jew who survived Auschwitz. It does not focus on the experience of the many non Jewish Poles who died, or the Communists, Social Democrats, Gypsies, disabled persons, and gays who also were murdered.
The narrower focus is completely legitimate, because there is something different and important and generalizable about singling out a group of people for extermination on religious/racial grounds, particularly when the rationale for singling out combines medieval anti Semitic Christian tropes with scientific racism.
The depiction of the Jews as mice, the Germans as cats, and the Poles as pigs is an artistic device that makes what I take to be both a historical and moral point--which is that the Holocaust was centrally about the Germans treating both the Jews and the Poles as categorically different species, and, sadly, to a significant extent the Poles also treating the Jews that way. It dramatizes, in a way that I still find both moving and disturbing, the experience of being seen and treated as inhuman.
To say that you can achieve the same thing, just by teaching "the facts" seems to me not obvious. Think how dry most high school history books are. That doesn't meant that the facts aren't important, or shouldn't be taught. They can provide the framing narrative, while Maus conveys what it meant for the people involved and for all of us.
That said, I think there is a decent argument that Maus is too much for many thirteen year-olds because the truths that it graphically (in multiple senses) depicts about the pure cruelty and evil of religious and racial bigotry, the horrifying consequences, and their potential to echo down through the lives of the survivors, may require more maturity and life experience than most 13 year olds have and/or more sensitivity and care from the teacher than is realistically available. But dropping the book because of incidental nudity or swear words would be laughable, if it weren't so sad.
A book I'd recommend to middle schoolers with the larger context of the Holocaust in World War II would be Herman Wouk's "The Winds of War" but a bit long to fit into the curriculum.
I suppose we might give the Jacobins of the French Revolution the honor of being the first to mass produce murder. They loaded the peasants of the Vendee region into barges and then sunk the barge. Every efficient and no one's hands got bloody. Still, the number of peasants murdered by that means only numbered in the thousands. Well, it was a start.... They Mongols were more hands on and artisanal when it came to mass murder. I know they killed a million people in Baghdad after their conquest of that city, but each murder was hand crafted. The Mongols knew how to kill quickly and efficiently, but it must have been quite a chore to kill all those people by hand.....When it comes to mass murder, I hope no civilization ever exceeds what we lived through in WWII. Maybe, maybe not. Germans used to think that the Thirty Years War was the worst period of their history.
America can survive Maus being dropped from the curriculum in one backwater school district. This is not like dropping gifted child education as more sophisticated areas are deciding to do.
"As leaders in conservative areas across the country push for more control over the way history is taught....."
^^^^^^
What a load. The stealthy insertion of "wokism" and CRT/DEI's poisonous ideology of racial hatred in school curricula is what has led parents to push back against * the corruption * of the way history is taught.
William said...
@Achilles: With respect, I side with Assistant Village Idiot on this issue....I was born in 1943. My childhood was a shit show, but an American shit show. It was a walk in the park compared to what kids in Central and Eastern Europe endured. I never missed a meal, nor had to tremble in a bomb shelter while people above me got incinerated, nor had to live through a long, winter ride in an unheated box car. Such, such were the joys for the kids of Europe during those years....My own experience and knowledge of harsh reality hasn't made me a better person. Rather the opposite. I don't see much point to adding to the fears and trauma that are endemic to childhood.
That is acceptable and I understand. My upbringing was similar.
Looking back on it now I wish my parents had demanded more of me. I wish they had forced me to deal with reality. I wish they had forced me to be more resourceful.
I was mentally weak in high school and college. I had no discipline. I had no fear. I wasted so much potential in the first 40+ years of my life.
I think there is a middle ground to some extent but the world also does not care what we want for our kids.
We are born with so much and you only really find your potential when faced with hardship.
You don't know what you are truly capable of until you are forced.
do they want to teach Holocaust in isolation?
if so then so that they can scare children into thinking Nazi thinking = R thinking.
why not teach all the various politicl atrocities mass killings / exterminations as a subject ? commnunists wanted to kill people in large numbers too.
and there were Jews and other ethnicities involved in the atrocities too who were fascists and communists
"The material edited out wasn't the stuff about terror and death. It was the stuff about sexual longings, thoughts on her genitalia and bitchy comments about some of the people she was hiding with. There are actually many versions."
Well, then it wasn't edited to protect the fragile sensibilities of young readhers; it was edited to protect Anne Frank's privacy.
now inglorious bastards max landa, a much more menacing figure then blofeld, is the typology of arendt's banality, I think the relevant passages are in war and remembrance,
"Physician heal thyself."
I'm not the "physician" in your comment.
All may be fair in lust and abortion, but there is no redeeming value to exposing children to the graphic details of slavery; diversity, inequity, and exclusion; redistributive and retributive change; transgender conversion therapy; gender chauvinism (e.g. masculinism); planned parent/hood (granny and baby "burdens"); and other wicked solutions.
Have any of the journalists who are writing about this reached out to the publisher to see if they can find out how many/what school districts have this book in their curriculum? It's news that one district is dropping it from the reading list, but how many never added it in the first place?
Achilles said...
A bureaucracy making up arbitrary rules and enforcing them in a way that maintains their power and funding?
I thought they were doing it for the churrin... (as Rush would say, in his Joselyn Elder's impression)
jim5301 said...
The stated reason for removing the book was that it contained the words "damn" and "bitch." Does anyone here really believe that was the true reason?
Considering that McMinn County, TN is in Appalachia I can say that that is probably the exact reason they don't want the book used as part of the curriculum. Do you have any evidence that it is not the reason?
It's fascinating to see what kind of school board direction meets with approved outrage, vs bumpkin outrage at what's being taught in other school districts.
Personally I think the kids (8th graders) can handle it and it might do them some good to read it. Kids see and hear so much more at such an early age than we realize. I suspect it's so in every generation. But we always assume earlier days didn't have the coarseness of today. The reality is that every time, every decade going back to forever has it's own bag of shit to deal with. It's all relative to the times people live in.
This is a local issue that is not so much a censorship issue as it is a curriculum issue. Let them fight it out locally. In the meantime, this has raised enough news that I suspect more kids all over will be reading "Maus" than would have had it been required. Who doesn't love that shiny object that you are told you cannot have?
"Children should absolutely learn about the horrors of leftists coming to power and the crimes of the left that led to 100 million dead in the 20th century, all stemming from a political point of view the western leftists are pushing in our schools today."
They should learn about the horrors of all tyrannies, yes. In the case of the Nazis, they were not leftists, socialists, or communists, no matter how much you wish or insist it were so.
@tim, I made much the same point in my 9:17 comment as you make in your 12:53 comment. Which I take as the two of us (and Lewis Wetzel) seeing eye to eye, and not a case of Bidenesque plagiarism. [wink]
If I was teaching the Holocaust I would absolutely want to get the Milgram experiment in there somehow. So many Americans think that they would have stood up to a totalitarian government, but in reality damned few would have that level of moral courage.
@Achilles, two serious blunders on your part. First, you seem to accept that either the Holocaust is taught using Maus, or it is not being taught at all. Amazingly, there exist other sources, including sources that are not, fundamentally, comic books. Secondly, you push the notion that your opinion ought to outweigh the parents’ opinions. “For their own good,” of course. In other words, the only difference between you and the purveyors of Project 1619 and CRT is which bullshit you are trying to push on the kids. Eff you.
2the Assistant VIdiot :
I don’t think it was a mistake- I loved Animal Farm. It stayed w/me and I appreciate its lessons, gleaning more of its wisdom the older I get. Hopefully, that will happen to the young ones- that they see something in life and find the parallel and go: Oh! I’m sure it was poor Boxer’s fate that was shocking- using someone good through lies and the moving, always, of goalposts…
Sometimes it takes us years to make sense of the well meaning things our family members did for us…
I looked up this writer- he has an interview on CNN about this- such a humble, well meaning man. Very generous in thought to those who wish to replace his book…
To be clear, I'm not taking a side on Maus (though I agree that the 'profanity' complaint is just stupid--where DO people get the idea that words like those are new to 6th graders? But I digress). It will work for some and not for others, and I don't care for the graphic novel as a genre anyway.
My credentials to speak about these topics are 1) I was history-loving boy who knew more about WWII and Nazis and the whole period by the time I left high-school than most college history majors did. B) I majored in modern history and political science in college and did all coursework for an MA in Modern Europe. 6) I've taught college history. 6a) And given lectures to veterans' and other interest and heritage groups.
And I took a semester of Kiddy Lit in library school, where I learned from tidy, dapper Prof. [] (father, scholar and gentleman, church organist) the importance of teaching children that cruelty and evil exist.
Gebrueder Grimm were favorites of his. (Not Walt's namby-pamby manglings; whose empire--pay attention Howard--is now working for Xi.)
And I'm a father myself, so understand that every other father here wants their children to be strong and resilient and better off than they were. Not sure about non-parents.
Can’t 8th graders read the book on their own time, if they wanted to? It’s such a weird concept- this arguing over books taught in school- as if that’s the only place to learn.
Hey lets get those 7th graders some photos of the scrapings at an abortionist's back room. They'll absorb it well if presented properly. It is, after all, more deadly than Treblinka.
After reading the comments I see many didn't read the whole story, the book wasn't banned, just taken off required reading.
I'm wondering though, if the parents and commenter here, think the book is too strong, too graphic, whatever, have ever read the original children's fairy tales, by Grimm, and many others that were pretty horrifying. I think you would have to look in a used book store to find the original of many children's stories.
They were not talking about 3-4 year olds here, these children have probably killed people in their video games!
"They should learn about the horrors of all tyrannies, yes. In the case of the Nazis, they were not leftists, socialists, or communists, no matter how much you wish or insist it were so."
*****************
Yeah, that "nationalist" in there with "Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei" or
National Socialist Workers Party" makes them right-wing, and not socialists.
Wikipedia says so!
SNORT
Big Mike,
"If I was teaching the Holocaust I would absolutely want to get the Milgram experiment in there somehow."
I've been thinking about the Milgram experiment lately. Apparently it was crap in a lot of ways. Milgram seems to have done some real cherry-picking. Some of his test subjects seem to have been on to the hoax and rolled with it enthusiastically, knowing perfectly well they weren't hurting anyone. Among those who didn't catch on, apparently there were more refusers than were convenient to the hypothesis, so he found ways to invalidate those entries while keeping the ones that fit.
But more and more I think Milgram was really onto something after all, even if he cut corners to prove what he already "knew," which is certainly a problem in science.
Louise B, 8:21: Thank you for telling us of your father. I admire that respect for their dignity.
Robert Cook: "They should learn about the horrors of all tyrannies, yes. In the case of the Nazis, they were not leftists, socialists, or communists, no matter how much you wish or insist it were so."
In my comment, I did not make the assertion that the Nazi's were........(even though they most certainly were socialists and communists like yourself are loathe to be lumped in with your brethren).
But you are on record arguing on this very blog that the communists, who utilized a philosophy you wholeheartedly endorse, did NOT murder over 100 million people.
So go ahead comrade, wow us all here. You always utilize that squishy snail-like substance as you avoid admitting the obvious about your preferred murderous philosophical pals, so here's your chance!
Simply explicitly state that the commies in the 20th century did indeed murder over 100 million people.
We'll wait..........
They should learn about the horrors of all tyrannies, yes. In the case of the Nazis, they were not leftists, socialists, or communists, no matter how much you wish or insist it were so.
The National Socialist party is not socialist?! Next we will hear that the Democratic Socialists aren't socialists either. I don't insist that they were socialist, they came out and said it.
I grew up in this county, and my entire k-12 education took place there, including 8th grade. It wasn’t part of the curriculum then, even though it had been out for nearly 20 years at that point. In fact, I never even heard of it until almost every single FB friend of mine from my hometown was ranting and wailing the last few days about this book being “banned.” (As red as that county is, the county seat - my home town - has a surprising number of woke folks). Heck, even Neil Gaiman tweeted about my tiny home county…that was something I never expected to happen.
But as far as I can tell, the book wasn’t actually banned. Just removed as required reading from the curriculum (which, again, wasn’t even part of the curriculum 1-2 decades ago when I was there). They plan on adding another holocaust book in its place, and Maus can still be borrowed from the library.
So….remind me again…what’s the big deal here? Or is this just another opportunity to punch down at those deplorable, backward, white, religious southern folk?
Just more political gaslighting. Very, very sad. The book isn't banned, the Holocaust isn't banned, they just removed the book from the curriculum.
They should learn about the horrors of all tyrannies, yes. In the case of the Nazis, they were not leftists, socialists, or communists, no matter how much you wish or insist it were so.
Nor apparently how much they said so themselves...
Collectivism is always an ideology of the Left....
Maus is a work of art. Not a history book. It can also be seen as a work of propaganda. Not Jewish propaganda, but Post Modernism. There is Zero reason to include Maus in a school’s curriculum on the Holocaust.
It was created for adults, it is intentionally shocking and graphic. The author is extremely unkind to his own father in his portrayal of him. Why would you want the work of someone so angry, immoral and deranged exposed to children when there are hundreds of sensitive and intelligent historical books written about the subject?
If they're teaching about the Holocaust with different books, why is this a major story?Seems like the usual ginned-up, "Look at them backwater yokels! Haw haw haw!"
I agree with Big Mike 1:53 response to @Achilles.
American children aren't learning American History? I always thought WWII was American History, but I'll defer to your ignorance.
Leaving aside that I mentioned the Bataan Death March, I was talking about the Holocaust not WW2. In case you forgot, 15 million Americans were in "The service" and fought Tojo and Hitler. 400,000 Died.
The Germans started the Holocaust. THe USA ended it. That was the only America involvement in the "Holocaust". We don't need lectures on "We didn't do enough".
BTW, isn't it funny that while 14 million Chinese Civilans died in WW2, I don't see the Rape of Naking taught in school, or books about how "We didn't do enough to stop the Chinese Holocaust"
natatomic said...
So….remind me again…what’s the big deal here? Or is this just another opportunity to punch down at those deplorable, backward, white, religious southern folk?
More of a case of the demand for Progressive outrage being greater than the supply.
"If I was teaching the Holocaust I would absolutely want to get the Milgram experiment in there somehow. So many Americans think that they would have stood up to a totalitarian government, but in reality damned few would have that level of moral courage."
I don't think it was a lack of moral courage. The majority of Germans supported Hitler and his programs. They were all too happy to ignore or deny (and some even to support) whatever they heard rumored (or knew for certain) about Hitler's extermination camps. In the same way, if a charismatic demagogue came to power in America (ahem), many Americans would happily surrender to his or her pandering, rabble-rousing, name-calling, and scapegoating, and would applaud his or her extreme plans to "clean up" the elements he/she identified as the cause(s) of our nation's problems/decline. I can easily see many Americans enthusiastically supporting a "final solution," most of them by denying the full truth of what that meant, but some even with full awareness of the full dimensions of the "solution."
I think the appalling--or ridiculous--thing about the school board's vote is the completely trivial reasons they objected to the book, (for profanity and the mother's nudity). The book is hardly prurient, and every student in the 8th grade can (and many probably have) logged onto PornHub or similar sites, and almost all certainly have heard or use profanity. (I was a rare rarity--redundance intended for emphasis--among my classmates from third grade on up in that I did not ever use any manner of profanities or swear words. I was shocked to find out that parents of some of my classmates used raw language in their homes in front of their children. My parents never used any profanity worse than "Hell" or "Damn.")
If we agree that NOT just any old book makes it into the classroom, then it means there is criteria for choosing them. I still don't see why the parents can't be in the loop.
As Ronaldus Magnus might've said. "I'm Paying for this Microphone!"
Briefly, Maus is an overblown take on the "underground comix" idiom of the 60s counterculture, and as such, it revels in its coarseness and crudity. Germans are portrayed as cats, Jews as mice, and Poles are pigs. Very clever.
-0------
that sounds almost like a Nazi was writing it to win awards and pats on head?
I've never read Maus, but still know a lot about the Holocaust. What sucks is there is no book on what the Japanese did to folks to educate 8th graders with. Not sure there is even one on Stalin's killings.
There's no reason for "Maus" being in any school library. Isn't it a comic book? Yes. What great classic BOOK is kept off the shelf to make room for it?
We don't need more comic books in school libraries, given the low educational level of most American School kids.
I always thought WWII was American History, but I'll defer to your ignorance.
----
in any considered historical view the wars were self preening by USA Presidents who messed up their countries with their bad ideas and looked for way out + keep friends rich and happy at the same time with government largesse
in that sense yes = american history
I wouldn't be surprised if a number of 8th graders have already had some level of exposure to the basics of the Holocaust. Reading /pol/ on 4chan would do it. What conclusions they draw from it is something else entirely.
I think Maus would be a great book to teach 8th graders about the holocaust. Horrifying and shocking in all the proper ways. If kids are going to exposed to profanity and nudity for the first time, a lesson about the holocaust would be a good place to do it.
However, it's self-aggrandizing and dishonest to refer to what the school board is doing as "banning" a book that is currently
#1 in Biographies & History Graphic Novels
#1 in Fiction Satire
#2 in Memoirs (Books)
on Amazon.
There is a line from a Nero Wolfe novel about the only use for censorship is to generate interest in literature. Nero is right again.
How America reacts to the Maus Book controversy:
25% - A book? what's a booK?
25% - well, if them thar smart people want a book in a library, who is we'uns to disagree?
25% - does this involve money? cause if not, I don't care.
10% - The cool kids like Maus, so anyone who doesn't like it is a hick. Unlike me.
03% - Maybe, we should let the local school district decide what belongs in their library.
02% - While I'm usually in favor of censorship, I like Maus, so those Hicks had better not get rid of it. /s/ The Cool Kids
and every student in the 8th grade can (and many probably have) logged onto PornHub or similar sites, and almost all certainly have heard or use profanity.
I bet most of them know where to buy drugs, that doesn't mean they should come with school lunches.
I don't see the Rape of Naking taught in school,
I lectured about it just before the Christmas break.
if the parents and commenter here, think the book is too strong, too graphic, whatever, have ever read the original children's fairy tales, by Grimm, and many others that were pretty horrifying.
Which is precisely why most Americans only know the Disney versions of those fairy tales.
Narayanan said...
I always thought WWII was American History, but I'll defer to your ignorance.
----
in any considered historical view the wars were self preening by USA Presidents
************
Yeah, FDR was "self-preening" when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and Hitler declared war against us a few days later.
In any historical view "considered" by.....Narayanan.
SNORT
Natatomic: precisely.
"lectured about it just before the Christmas break."
Generalization is met with one exception.
That's the intertubes.
Sometimes the "Bad Guys" really are Bad Guys. FDR enjoyed preening as much as any prez, and more than some, but for all his (and Winston's) flaws they saw some important things more clearly than their peers and even some people today.
Interesting to compare the reactions of some forum members here to this news item, in contrast to their reaction to Neil Young/Joe Rogan/Spotify thing.
Two points I haven't seen made yet in this thread:
1. The original Brothers Grimm stories were indeed quite brutal. They were also one ingredient in a German culture that turned Nazi a century or so later. Defending modern books by comparing them to the original Grimm tales is maybe not such a good idea.
2. A day or two ago, many people on my Twitter feed were praising a high-school girl in TN for saying (as best I recall) "no society that bans books has ever been 'the good guys'". None of the replies knew (or maybe cared) that this is utterly and obviously false. Last I heard, the Netherlands banned Dutch translations of Mein Kampf, allowing only German originals, assuming that serious historians studying the era would all know German, while neo-Nazi assholes would be too lazy or stupid to learn the language. Germany (now one of the "good guys") banned the book until around six years ago, when the copyright ran out and made it much more difficult. In the English-speaking world, the U.K. was certainly one of the "good guys" in World War II, yet their valiant soldiers could not legally buy or read Lady Chatterley's Lover, which was banned from 1928-1959. And I don't mean kept off reading-lists in middle school, I mean it was illegal to sell it, import it, or buy it - maybe even possess or read it. Of course, trade from France, where it was published, was cut off during the war, but postal inspectors before the war routinely opened packages from France and confiscated any copies found. Lolita was also banned for some years in countries that qualified as "good guys" by most standards, along with many other books of less literary value. The girl's claim was utter nonsense.
I concur with what @Stephen said at 12:58.
Blogger effinayright said...
Yeah, FDR was "self-preening" when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and Hitler declared war against us a few days later.
It would be interesting to teach just why Germany declared war on us. You can look at the actual declaration which gives some of the reasons.
Or you can read some history and see that FDR had been trying to goad Germany into declaring war on us for a couple of years previous. My reaction to the German declaration is "What took them so long?"
We were financing their enemies, supplying offensive weaponry on the cuff, invading Iceland, bombing and depth charging their submarines, issuing "sink on sight" orders to sink any German vessel and more.
FDR had made a hash of getting us out of the depression and the only solution he could see was to drag us into WWII. He started in 39 and kept escalating and escalating until Dec 41.
That should be included in the history lessons that high schoolers get. The utter folly of us being in WWI, WWII or any other European war like the one Brandon is fumbling us into.
John LGBTBNY Henry
In any historical view "considered" by.....Narayanan.
FDR dragged us into the war with Germany on purpose.
It is less clear whether he got into the war with Japan on purpose or by incompetence.
There are arguments for both views.
John LGBTQBNY Henry
Big Mike said...
@Achilles, two serious blunders on your part. First, you seem to accept that either the Holocaust is taught using Maus, or it is not being taught at all. Amazingly, there exist other sources, including sources that are not, fundamentally, comic books. Secondly, you push the notion that your opinion ought to outweigh the parents’ opinions. “For their own good,” of course. In other words, the only difference between you and the purveyors of Project 1619 and CRT is which bullshit you are trying to push on the kids. Eff you.
Eff you. Good work. Very adult method of discussion.
I see you did not read my other posts where I agreed with other people that Maus isn't the only or even best way to teach about the holocaust.
You could see my post at 11:06 for example.
Or you could resort to stupid taunts and feeling good about yourself. If you want to act like a child that is cool too.
But I don't want people like you in charge of infantilizing schools. Kids in the US are in general growing up coddled and whiny. And you people wonder why young people are coming out of our education system the way they are.
This is why I want school choice so I don't have to deal with people that resort to this sort of reasoning ability or lack thereof.
"The National Socialist party is not socialist?!"
No, they were not.
"Next we will hear that the Democratic Socialists aren't socialists either. I don't insist that they were socialist, they came out and said it."
Oldest con in the book, swallowed by stupid people all over: believing the come-on and labeling and ignoring the actual behavior.
farmgirl said...
Can’t 8th graders read the book on their own time, if they wanted to? It’s such a weird concept- this arguing over books taught in school- as if that’s the only place to learn.
This really is the point of the argument.
We need school choice.
Then we don't have to argue.
Gahrie said...
if the parents and commenter here, think the book is too strong, too graphic, whatever, have ever read the original children's fairy tales, by Grimm, and many others that were pretty horrifying.
Which is precisely why most Americans only know the Disney versions of those fairy tales.
And Disney currently has much of it's merch made by slave labor in Chinese concentration camps.
I would prefer non-Disney.
"But you are on record arguing on this very blog that the communists, who utilized a philosophy you wholeheartedly endorse, did NOT murder over 100 million people."
Umm...no. I have never said that.
Robert Cook: "Umm...no. I have never said that."
You did then what you are doing now.
But easy to resolve:
Simply explicitly state that the commies in the 20th century did indeed murder over 100 million people
We'll wait....
I am a Jew. I knew many survivors of the camps and I had relatives who died in the camps. There are many ways to teach the holocaust and it needs to be age appropriate. It is reasonable for middle school parents to decide that Maus is not appropriate for their children. I wouldn't use it to teach my children at any age.
It's a hard, cruel world Adolf, and some people just can't cut it in the big leagues.
But just think about how wonderful the world would be, how much better some people's lives would be, if everyone just stepped aside whenever the Germans got rambunctious . . .
”You did then what you are doing now.”
What am I doing? When was ‘then’?
”But easy to resolve:
“Simply explicitly state that the commies in the 20th century did indeed murder over 100 million people”
Hahaha! Nope, you don’t get out of your lie that easily. Quote me.
I don't claim to know what Robert Cook may or may not have said about the subject in the past, but I am curious: can he admit/agree that communists (or at least people calling themselves communists) "in the twentieth century did indeed murder over 100 million people"? If the total was significantly less than that, roughly how many was it? An order of magnitude would be good, a +/- 10% number even better. Can he do it? Will he?
Dr Weevil: "I don't claim to know what Robert Cook may or may not have said about the subject in the past, but I am curious: can he admit/agree that communists (or at least people calling themselves communists) "in the twentieth century did indeed murder over 100 million people"? If the total was significantly less than that, roughly how many was it? An order of magnitude would be good, a +/- 10% number even better. Can he do it? Will he?"
Watch...and as before, and always, our dime store coffee klatsch unreconstructed stalinist most certainly will not.
Lets see what comrade cookie does next....
Althouse fell for an information op. That's all this garbage is. A tiny information op.
Cookie fell for a much larger information op: The massive effort of commie sympathizers and socialists in academia to whitewash the connections between fascists and National socialists and their Marxist/Bolshevik kissing cousins.
Remember: Democrats are the ones that also bought the Lost Cause mythology, the ridiculous Big Switch to explain away the Dixiecrats hoping their betters wouldn't notice almost all of them retired or died in office as Democrats, and spent years going to the mat to defend Castro, Mao, and Stalin when it counted (look at all those fucktards who lined up to hear Pete Seeger literally sing paeans to Mao and Ho Chih Minh).
National socialists = international socialists
But only every single time.
Without exception.
@Achilles, try to understand. Parents. Have. Rights.
Nikole Hannah Jones Is wrong. The school board for Loudoun County, Virginia, is wrong. Merrick Garland is wrong. And you are wrong.
And you are in some really bad company.
Trying to tell the communists from the fascists is like trying to keep track of sides in Ireland, it seems obvious to them, but we outsiders need a scorecard.
Both sides are most similar to absolute monarchies, where the head of state is also directly in charge of the economy, and below the head of state, the differences in the jobs under communism and fascism are mostly matters of tailoring and letterhead. The communists are way ahead in causing deaths though, it's not even close.
The work employs postmodernist techniques and represents Jews as mice, Germans as cats, Poles as pigs, Americans as dogs, the English as fish, the French as frogs, and the Swedish as deer.
Speaking as a former student in Hebrew school, who has read and watched, in my school and out, formal presentations of Holocaust and other WWII documentary material like Nacht und Nebel, Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: a lot of that stuff is beyond the ability of, whatchamacallit, a tween, to comprehend.
The bodies stacked in the pits like cordwood? The Last Jew of Vilitsa? The marks of human fingernails in the concrete walls of the gas Chambers? The mind can scarcely grasp what it is seeing. It is perhaps a mercy as expressed by H.P. Lovecraft:
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.
Man was not meant to know this stuff. It's not easy to take.
Maus came along after my time in Hebrew school, but I found it incredibly powerful. The characterization of the nations as different species? People who grew up on Tom and Jerry, Tweety and Sylvester, Bugs and Daffy, will strain at that gnat? The whole thing is making the history, to use a buzzword, accessible.
And it is a personal history, very personal, messy in spots. Some people prefer their hagiography bleached white; this is not hagiography, it's the story of one man, one family. Our Bible isn't whitewashed either; it doesn't tell a story of a perfect man, but of a number of imperfect ones.
And to come upon the depiction of the artist's mother's suicide, and to choke on a word while you're looking at her in a bathtub of blood...words fail. There is an immaturity, a dogmatism, in such a point of view. A test they could never pass.
It's hard to believe that such a verdict on the work was reached by people who had read it
the differences in the jobs under communism and fascism are mostly matters of tailoring and letterhead.
The only significant difference between the fascists and the communists is that the fascists were nationalists and wanted to create a world dominated by Germany and the communists were internationalists and wanted to create a one world government.
Why is there so much emphasis on the holocaust in us schools?
Ray - SoCal asked about emphasis on the Holocaust in US schools.
That is a whole field of historical inquiry in itself, and a very controversial one. Start with Peter Novick's "The Holocaust in American Life," from around 2000. It's a minefield.
Communism is to Nazism as Red Fascism is to Black Fascism; but Marxism as a philosophy of history grew out of a much different soil than Nazi ideology, which repudiated the best parts of the European and German past, explicitly and with quickly disastrous consequences.
It's (poisoned) honey vs poisoned vinegar.
Ref: rocean's "WW II ended 77 years ago. Its time we moved on..."
Maybe r should consider Mississippi Wliliam Faulkner's aphorism... "The past is never dead. It's not even past".
Using the Nom de Sock Puppet "Ahouse comments", John LGBTBNY Henry offered specious claims about FDR's intentions vis a vis Germany.
OK, so we supported our historical allies instead of the Nazis.
Was that a mistake on our part? Should we have stayed neutral as Hitler took over the entire Continent?
We sank their submarines befopre war was declared? Did we not have the right to sink subs attacking our convoys before war was declared?
Does the name "Reuben James" strike a familiar note?
As for reading the German war declaration to learn the reasons: SNORT. OF COURSE Hitler always spoke the truth!!! Just what color is the cotton candy up there on Sugar Mountain?
The other stuff, where you claim to know FDR's inner thoughts, is just doo-doo.
Big Mike said...
@Achilles, try to understand. Parents. Have. Rights.
Nikole Hannah Jones Is wrong. The school board for Loudoun County, Virginia, is wrong. Merrick Garland is wrong. And you are wrong.
And you are in some really bad company.
I will just chock your comments up to someone who completely lacks reading comprehension.
You are really stupid if you can somehow lump me in with Nikole Hannah Jones.
The English-language version of Night by Elie Wiesel that is read in high school is a translation of the original French book (novel or memoir or both?). It's said that it was changed from the actual Yiddish original and toned down to make it less stark and graphic. I don't know if this is true, but writers can adapt their own versions of the past, moderating it to make it more acceptable to audiences. I don't think outsiders ought to rewrite an author's text, but the fact that authors do revise and acknowledge that not every audience may be ready to hear a particular version of their story suggests that school boards may also be able to decide that one account of past events can be replaced with another if it's judged that the young readers just aren't ready for it.
”Lets see what comrade cookie does next....”
Well, I won’t be goaded to respond to a bad faith challenge to prove anything to you after you have lied about statements you ascribe to me. If you assert I said it before, please produce the quote.
I haven't asserted anything about your honesty, RC, so how about answering me? How many people did people calling themselves communists murder in the 20th century? If not 100,000,000, was it more, or less? A lot less? Half that many? A tenth? A hundredth? Give us an estimate.
I haven't lied about you Comrade Marvin....
Do you acknowledge the fact that communism was directly responsible for 100 million deaths in the twentieth century?
As everyone can see as it has once again been plainly and irrefutably demonstrated, Robert Cook will continue to deny and obfuscate and minimize or outright avoid admitting the irrefutable fact that his communist philosophical bedmates, who advocated for the very policies Cookie advocates for today, were directly responsible for the conscious mass murder of 100 million human beings in the 20th century.
National socialsts = international socialists....but only always.
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